FUCK YEAH MOORE & KUTTNER

Catherine Lucille Moore (1911-1987). Henry Kuttner (1915-1958). Apart, pretty damned good pulp writers. Together, fucking amazing and also amazingly adorable. Curious? Read the fucking posts, kids, and we'll blast off to the staaaaaaaaaaaaaaars.

[fuckyeahmooreandkuttner]

Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore won the 2004 Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery award.  You can read the writeup here.

[fuckyeahmooreandkuttner]

Henry Kuttner on the 1948 short story "Don't Look Now" for the 1954 anthology My Best Science Fiction Story.

Found here.

[kellyvivanco]

Startling Stories, September 1947 by horzel on Flickr.

[fuckyeahmooreandkuttner]

You don't have to write these things, you just have to type it out.

Henry Kuttner, quoted by Wade Wellman in Fawcett Companion: The Best of FCA

[fuckyeahmooreandkuttner]

Hank Kuttner and his wife, Kat, are still in NYC at last time of writing to me. 'Tis said that Kat supplies Hank with his ideas and he writes them up. Hank told me in his last letter that he is producing 65,000 words a month!

CLIPPINGS FROM CANADA by Leslie A. Croutch from Futurian War Digest #6, Mar. 1941

[twohandedengine]

H. P. Lovecraft’s Letters to Henry Kuttner, cover and two inside pages

This chapbook was published in a limited run in 1990, and yesterday, I bought a copy off Ebay.  I’m really excited to read it!  It includes ten letters Lovecraft wrote to Kuttner over the period of the year leading up to Lovecraft’s death.  (As you may already know, both Lovecraft and Kuttner died young—at 46 and 42, respectively—about thirty-one years apart in time.)

The text on the second picture is part of a letter, I assume.  The drawings are all Lovecraft’s.  See, “as a Californian it is clear that Kuttner knew nothing about New England history and topography”*, so Lovecraft drew him out some maps and shit so he could write better stories in the Cthulhu mythos.  (Why Salem and not somewhere in Rhode Island?  Because Kuttner was working on a story called “The Salem Horror” at the time.  o/)

*That is an actual quotation from the actual introduction of this actual book. (The Ebay page includes the first page of the intro, but it cuts off in the middle of a sentence and doesn’t seem like it’s worth putting up here.)  I AM SO EXCITED TO RECEIVE THIS THING.

[fuckyeahmooreandkuttner]

Ray Bradbury on his relationship with Moore and Kuttner, 2007

Q: Mr. Bradbury, could you tell us a little about your friendship wiith C.L.Moore and Henry Kuttner?

RAY: No, I had no friendship with C.L. Moore. She was married to Kuttner, but Kuttner was my friend and my teacher! And I have 60 letters from Henry Kuttner that he wrote to me, helping me with my stories. He was fantastic! I'm sure he didn't...quite..like me...he didn't understand me. Ah, he was very critical. For instance, he didn't like Forry Ackerman...and I had to tell him to treat Forry Ackerman like the 14 year old that Forry was...and he's still only 14, and that's great, and he changed my life...and he's still very primitive...and I'm glad he's still alive. He just got out of the hospital last week. But he changed my life. I was in high school, at the age of 17, and Forry put me to work and gave me Futura Fantasia which will be published in a new book this week. And Forry gave me the money to go to New York with the portfolio of Hannes Bok's paintings and artwork. And so I sold Hannes Bok to the editors. Forry Ackerman took me to Weird Tales, and I met Farnsworth Wright and I sold Hannes Bok to Weird Tales. So that's Forry Ackerman, you see. Wonderful!

[twohandedengine]

[fuckyeahmooreandkuttner]

twohandedengine:

Black God’s Kiss by C. L. Moore (pub. 1977), signed by Moore and Alicia Austin, the book’s illustrator

I’ve bought twenty books by C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner in the past ten months (most of them at the rock bottom-est used-book prices I could find, for the record), and this one is by far the most beloved in my collection so far.  Not only is it a signed copy, the illustrations in the book are absolutely beautiful.  They’re the closest I’ve seen to how I imagine Jirel of Joiry in my head.  At some point, I’m planning on (very carefully) scanning them in and posting them, though I’ve been a little busy lately.

Next goal is to acquire a book with Kuttner’s signature, which is going to be a significantly more costly endeavour than this was, being as he died almost sixty years ago.  But someday, someday.  :|

[fuckyeahmooreandkuttner]

Man Drowning - Henry Kuttner (1952)

Goddamn, is that a striking cover.  Here's a review from the Springfield Republican, July 6, 1952:

Mr. Kuttner writes powerfully and well of a man's moral deterioration into a pawn of murder with a skill which holds promise. 'Man Drowning' is packed with action and written with the clarity of a polished movie scenario.

[fuckyeahmooreandkuttner]

Henry Kuttner, date unknown

If anyone knows where to find the photograph this was cropped from (if there is one), please let me know!  I'd really like to see the full thing if possible, much as I enjoy his ascot.

[fuckyeahmooreandkuttner]

The Murder of Ann Avery - Henry Kuttner (1956)

Psychoanalyst solves brutal slaying!

[fuckyeahmooreandkuttner]

"Sword of Tomorrow" - Henry Kuttner (orig. pub. 1945)

I just love the typeface used for the title.

[fuckyeahmooreandkuttner]

I don't know whether you know about the Manana Literary Society or not. Anyway, it was a group of science-fiction and fantasy authors in and around Hollywood-Los Angeles area which Bob Heinlein more or less semi-organized as a way of getting new authors for me. He was a big help; through that loose, really 90% social group he found and got started into fantasy-science-fiction for me Anthony Boucher himself, Cleve Cartmill, Roby Wentz and one or two others. The group worked over Hank Kuttner 'til he turned into Lewis Padgett, a damn site better author.

John W. Campbell to A. E. van Vogt, 1942

[fuckyeahmooreandkuttner]

I went to California for the first time in 1937; I stayed with Hank Kuttner five weeks. It was at that occasion I met Fritz Leiber, Forry Ackerman, and C.L. Moore. I fell in love with California; it was a different world, an ideal place to be.

Robert Bloch, The Two Bobs: An Interview with Bob Bloch and Bob Tucker

[fuckyeahmooreandkuttner]

"Quest of the Starstone," illustration by Virgil Finlay (1938)

Finlay was also witness to Moore and Kuttner's wedding in June, 1940.

[fuckyeahmooreandkuttner]

Beneath him the clovered hill-slope was warm in the sun. Northwest Smith moved his shoulders against the earth and closed his eyes, breathing so deeply that the gun holstered upon his chest drew tight against its strap as he drank the fragrance of Earth and clover warm in the sun. Here in the hollow of the hills, willow-shaded, pillowed upon clover and the lap of Earth, he let his breath run out in a long sigh and drew one palm across the grass in a caress like a lover's.

"Song in a Minor Key" - C. L. Moore (1940)

Read the full story and some discussion here.

[fuckyeahmooreandkuttner]

http://sauer-thompson.com/conversations/archives/002673.html

Phillipe Mikriammos: You read a lot of science fiction, and have expressed admiration for The Star Virus by Barrington Bayley and Three to Conquer by Eric Frank Russell. Any other science fiction books that you have particularly liked?

William Burroughs: Fury, by Henry Kuttner.