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Homer Eon Flint
Jul. 27th, 2007 08:28 amHomer Eon Flint has got to be the greatest name for a science fiction writer ever. "Eon" is the perfect touch, and I wonder if it was a given name or an assumed one. (He was born "Flindt," for example.) Iain Banks should have written his SF as Eon Banks, evoking the muddy confines of the great river of time. Or maybe I should write an epic space opera under the nom de plume of Virgil Eon Banks. Yeah, I'll get right on that.
I've been reading two of Flint's novellas, "The Lord of Death" and "The Queen of Life", both published in 1919 in All-Story (or maybe Argosy -- I can't find the information on the internet). They have struck me as mostly philosophical and political/utopian in tone, but the article about him in SCIFIPEDIA (an online encyclopedia I hadn't heard of before) argues that he was "the first practitioner of what quickly came to be called the 'super-science' story," as later practiced by Doc Smith and John W. Campbell. And indeed, there is a monster magnet invented as a weapon in "The Lord of Death," and, most interesting of any of the technological ideas used in either story so far, there are mechanical plants on the Venus of "The Queen of Life" that quarry minerals underground (the surface is completely covered with human habitation) and convert them into foodstuff -- "starch, sugar, and proteids" -- using artificial leaves and manufactured chlorophyll.
It's true of these stories, as The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says about Flint in general, that his "writing style and pulp-magazine habits did not always adequately express his deep interest in the emergence of behavioral and historical patterns from various political and social philosophies," but it is also said elsewhere that his writing got better over time. He didn't have much time, however, as he died under mysterious circumstances in 1924. According to his granddaughter, Vella Munn, Flint's broken body was found under a wrecked car at the bottom of a ravine. A man named E.L. Handley, whose car it was, claimed that he'd picked up the hitch-hiking Flint, who then pulled a gun on him, forced him out of the car, and drove off. The police found a black suitcase full of money in the car, and it may have been from an earlier bank robbery in Fresno. While Flint owned guns, the one found near the car was not one of his. Handley himself was a "known gangster" who was later convicted of another crime, so quite possibly his story is not trustworthy. Certainly Flint showed no other early warning signs of becoming a car-jacking bank-robber! (Except maybe changing his name. Hmmmmm.)
A bizarre story worthy of the greatest name in "Different" stories, as the developing genre is called in the brief intro to the two novellas by one C.W. Wolfe of Albuquerque in Ace's 1965 paperback reprint.
I've been reading two of Flint's novellas, "The Lord of Death" and "The Queen of Life", both published in 1919 in All-Story (or maybe Argosy -- I can't find the information on the internet). They have struck me as mostly philosophical and political/utopian in tone, but the article about him in SCIFIPEDIA (an online encyclopedia I hadn't heard of before) argues that he was "the first practitioner of what quickly came to be called the 'super-science' story," as later practiced by Doc Smith and John W. Campbell. And indeed, there is a monster magnet invented as a weapon in "The Lord of Death," and, most interesting of any of the technological ideas used in either story so far, there are mechanical plants on the Venus of "The Queen of Life" that quarry minerals underground (the surface is completely covered with human habitation) and convert them into foodstuff -- "starch, sugar, and proteids" -- using artificial leaves and manufactured chlorophyll.
It's true of these stories, as The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says about Flint in general, that his "writing style and pulp-magazine habits did not always adequately express his deep interest in the emergence of behavioral and historical patterns from various political and social philosophies," but it is also said elsewhere that his writing got better over time. He didn't have much time, however, as he died under mysterious circumstances in 1924. According to his granddaughter, Vella Munn, Flint's broken body was found under a wrecked car at the bottom of a ravine. A man named E.L. Handley, whose car it was, claimed that he'd picked up the hitch-hiking Flint, who then pulled a gun on him, forced him out of the car, and drove off. The police found a black suitcase full of money in the car, and it may have been from an earlier bank robbery in Fresno. While Flint owned guns, the one found near the car was not one of his. Handley himself was a "known gangster" who was later convicted of another crime, so quite possibly his story is not trustworthy. Certainly Flint showed no other early warning signs of becoming a car-jacking bank-robber! (Except maybe changing his name. Hmmmmm.)
A bizarre story worthy of the greatest name in "Different" stories, as the developing genre is called in the brief intro to the two novellas by one C.W. Wolfe of Albuquerque in Ace's 1965 paperback reprint.
