Mike Ashley – Weird Legacies

Mike Ashley (ed.) – Weird Legacies (Star, 1977)

Foreword – Robert Bloch
Preface – Mike Ashley

Robert E. Howard – Skulls In The Stars
Mary E. Counselman – The Three Marked Pennies
Edmond Hamilton – He That Hath Wings
Francis Flagg – The Distortion Out Of Space
Clark Ashton Smith & Lin Carter – The Utmost Abomination
Eric Frank Russell & Leslie J. Johnson – Eternal Rediffusion
Ray Bradbury – The Ducker
Robert Bloch & Henry Kuttner – The Black Kiss
H. P. Lovecraft & August Derleth – The Survivor

Compact paperback collection of WT wonders. Personally, I must admit to being disappointed with the selection, although this is worth having for Mike Ashley’s notes alone. Weird Legacies get off to a flier with – arguably – Solomon Kane’s finest moment, but after Mary E. Counselman’s excellent story of randomly dispensed good fortune and abject tragedy things take a turn for the SF and fantasy. That said, the Edmond Hamilton story is worth a piece of anyone’s time.

Robert E. Howard – The Skulls In The Stars: As he travels across the mist-shrouded, swampy fens, Solomon Kane is beset by a terrifying, red eyed figure with a terrible laugh. This spectre has already been responsible for the deaths of several men, and Kane is all but shredded by the thing’s claws.
When the Puritan learns of the reason for the haunting, he dispenses his usual impartial, brutal justice to the miscreant responsible.

Mary Elizabeth Counselman – The Three Marked Pennies: “On the seventh day after this announcement the possessor of each marked penny will receive a gift.

To the first: $100, 000 in cash.
To The second: A trip around the world
To The third: Death.”

Edmond Hamilton – He That Hath Wings: David Rand is born with a misshapen spine and shoulders . At first, the kindly Dr. Harriman believes that the orphan’s deformity is a hunched back, but x-rays reveal that he is sprouting wings ..