![]() ![]() Wong Kim Tien, a benign Manchu sorcerer from Seabury Quinn’s “The Living Buddhess.” Dr. Price’s “Dope War of the Black Tong.” During Zarnak’s absence, his home in River Street was watched over by Dr. The story has Zarnak returning from another dimension after the events of Robert M. Since other writers have Zarnak with two eyes in later stories, I gave the explanation that Zarnak sometimes uses a glass eye. Therefore, Zarnak wears an eye patch in my story. Joe Pulver had Zarnak lose an eye in “The Door in the House of Slumbering Demons.” When I asked Joe about this, he replied that it was cool for Zarnak to wear an eye patch like Nick Fury. ![]() The plot of that serial involves evil sorcerers trying to resurrect a high priestess of Lemuria, a mythical continent used by Lin Carter for his Thongor novels. Lugosi also played an occult detective similar to Zarnak in the 1934 serial The Return of Chandu. Lin Carter was a fan of this serial as demonstrated by his usage of Zorka in The Earth- Shaker, a Prince Zarkon novel. The name Anton Zarnak may have been inspired by Alex Zorka, the mad scientist played by Lugosi in the 1939 serial The Phantom Creeps. In “Curse of the Black Pharaoh,” Zarnak hails from Transylvania, which was ethnically Hungarian even though it was annexed by Rumania after World War I. Why do I give Anton Zarnak a voice like Bela Lugosi? Because I always thought that Lin Carter based Zarnak on Lugosi. The history of El Rojo is that of the unnamed city from Henry Kuttner’s “Towers of Death.” Like the unnamed metropolis in the Steve Harrison stories, Kuttner’s “small city” is filled with immigrants from Asia and the Middle East. I suggest that San Francisco later absorbed El Rojo in the same way that Los Angeles absorbed San Pedro. To be faithful to Howard’s writings, I place River Street on the West Coast in a fictional community called El Rojo that is not far from San Francisco. Henderson picked upon this and explicitly mentioned San Francisco in “The Pain We Desire.” Although the city is unnamed in that story, it is strongly implied to be San Francisco. Price’s “The Soul of the Devil-Bought” has River Street on the West Coast. That story also features the Wiltshaw family and Butch Cronin.Īware of the West Coast/East Coast controversy, Robert M. Although not a Steve Harrison story, “Guests of the Hoodoo Room,” has an unnamed West Coast metropolis with a very similar River Street. “The Silver Heel” has an unemployed reporter from San Francisco looking for a new job in the unnamed city which contains River Street. Two pieces of evidence in Howard’s stories indicate that River Street is on the West Coast. Lin Carter apparently made the first interpretation when he placed River Street in New York in two Anton Zarnak stories, “Dead of Night” and “Perchance to Dream.” Garfield could have entered the United States in New York during 1925, and then made his way to the West Coast to take up residence in River Street by 1934. ![]() The second interpretation is based on the fact that Garfield had been overseas before his presence in New York. 1934.” The first interpretation is that Garfield arrived in New York where River Street exists. When Blosser completed the story, Steve Harrison found these entries in a notebook: “Adam Garfield arriv. Fred Blosser’s completion does mention New York, but the reference can be interpreted in two radically different ways. “The Mystery of Tannernoe Lodge” has no references to New York in Howard’s unfinished fragment. “The Silver Heel” mentions New York as a separate place. Howard’s prose, there is no evidence that River Street was ever intended to be in New York. ![]()
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