{"id":21618,"date":"2019-01-03T06:05:17","date_gmt":"2019-01-03T03:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tentaclii.wordpress.com\/?p=21618"},"modified":"2019-01-03T06:05:17","modified_gmt":"2019-01-03T03:05:17","slug":"the-dealings-of-daniel-kesserich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/2019\/01\/03\/the-dealings-of-daniel-kesserich\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dealings of Daniel Kesserich"},"content":{"rendered":"

New to me, The Dealings of Daniel Kesserich<\/em> by Fritz Leiber. It’s of interest for being an early strongly Lovecraft-influenced tale of substantial length, and for being left out of the book Fritz Leiber and H.P. Lovecraft: Writers of the Dark<\/a><\/em>. Apparently the setting is the California of the small desert towns. It was drafted by a young raw Fritz Leiber in 1936, under the influence of Lovecraft. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There’s no mention of it in Joshi’s survey book Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos<\/em>, and Joshi remarks elsewhere that it “it is not to be considered a ‘Lovecraftian’ story” even though it does include Lovecraft’s “style and trademark concepts” — which makes it sound even more interesting than a simple Mythos monster romper-stomper. Early attempts by major writers at Lovecraft’s style<\/em> and themes are always of interest here at Tentaclii<\/em> and I’m pleased to find a substantial non-Derleth one that I was previously unaware of. There’s more… the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Literature<\/em> also terms it “a Wellsian romance”, and Supernatural Fiction Writers<\/em> calls it “clearly influenced by H. G. Wells” — which again appeals due to my interest in Wells’s The Time Machine<\/em>. Definitely one for my reading pile, and it’s short enough to pick up when in the mood and to get through fairly quickly. <\/p>\n

Presumably Lovecraft was sent a carbon of the draft of Dealings of Daniel Kesserich<\/em>? Joshi writes of… “Fritz Leiber, who had shown some of his first attempts at sword-and-sorcery to his correspondent H. P. Lovecraft” so it might be fairly safe to assume he could have also sent the draft of “Daniel Kesserich”.<\/p>\n

Later the tale was revised and pitched at the pulp magazine Unknown Worlds<\/em>. Presumably it was then rejected or held, or sent back for revision, since it was filed and lost for around 50 years.<\/p>\n

There’s no audiobook or ebook. A free “to borrow” copy is available on Archive.org<\/a>, and I see that the slim hardback edition<\/a> is currently available at a fairly modest price on Amazon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New to me, The Dealings of Daniel Kesserich by Fritz Leiber. It’s of interest for being an early strongly Lovecraft-influenced …<\/p>\n

Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical-context","category-new-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21618\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}