Talk:Henry Kuttner
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I'm not happy with what I wrote. Obviously it is the "The user is cautioned..." sentence which crystalizes my problems. The only reference I have to hand right now is L. Sprague de Camp's old Sword and Sorcery anthologies: Swords & Sorcery (New York, Pyramid Books, 1963), The Fantastic Swordsmen (New York, Pyramid Books, 1967) and Warlocks and Warriors (New York, G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1970). De Camp has almost a template biography of him in the front of these books: "...a small, dark, quiet, excessively shy man who in his youth worked for a Los Angeles Literary agency and began writing professionally in the 1930's....During his last two decades, he wrote largely in collaboration with his wife, C. L. Moore." (p. 67, Warlocks And Warriors, NY, Berkley, 1971)
In de Camp's introduction to "The Black God's Kiss" he writes "As a result of correspondence with the Lovecraft circle, Miss Moore--tall, dark and glamourous-looking--collaborated on a story with Henry Kuttner and in 1940 married him." (p.167, op. cit.) I've heard and read it elsewhere but that's my reason for adding the Lovecraft link.
Seekers of Tomorrow, by Sam Moskowitz (World, New York, 1966) was my original source for the number 3 stories by Moore. Moskowitz is not reliable. I've heard it many times since then, in fact I believe at a 1974 gathering of Darkover fans at the DisCon World Science Fiction Convention in Washington D.C. Marion Zimmer Bradley cited it. I don't have that in writing, of course; I was there and don't know if anyone recorded it.
I have yet to see any definitive proof, or any proof she wrote any given story which was credited to him. At most, in her introduction to Robots Have No Tails Moore wrote "I was rather astounded on rereading the Gallegher stories to realize that not a word of any of them is mine." Introduction to Robots Have No Tails (New York, Lancer Books, no date)
Jplatt39 18:24, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC) Amended Jplatt39 20:08, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
++Another source on the Kuttner-Moore collaborations is James Gunn in the Road to Science Fiction #3.
[edit] Problem
C.L. Moore's page contradicts the Kuttner page on how they met, could someone dig up some more references and double check... or see if they contradicted each other at some point? The CL Moore page states Kuttner was a fan of Moore and wrote her thinking she was a male and then they met that way. But this page says they were both fans of Lovecraft and met that way... one of them or a combo must be right... --Hitsuji Kinno 05:30, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Combo
I believe the version on the Moore page was first published by Sam Moskowitz in Seekers of Tomorrow. It's in the garage right now which is too far to walk to. I took this phrasing from L. Sprague De Camp's introductions to a couple of Elak stories from some anthologies he edited in the 1960s. Both knew both of them personally and were repeating what they were told.
The Lovecraft Circle was a group of inveterate letter writers. We talk about Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard as if they were close friends, but the truth is they met on very few occasions. Most of the what the group did they did through correspondence or fanzines (before we had the term). It is reasonable to believe he thought it a good idea to write Mr. Moore because she was writing to someone else he was exchanging letters with. This is actually more a different phrasing of the same story than a contradiction.
By the way, since this is a talk page, the attribution of the accusation that Moskowitz's books were full of errors to Gharlane of Eddore was probably just caution. They are, and there are no doubt problems with DeCamp's anecdotes. However, it should count for something that Moore never, to my knowledge, contradicted either version and they are both part of the authorized biography --Jplatt39 12:46, 26 March 2007 (UTC) Revised Jplatt39 13:09, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
For completeness, most of Seekers of Tomorrow and I believe Explorers of the Infinite were first published in Fantastic Magazine when Cele Goldsmith Lalli was the editor. Jplatt39 00:21, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
