A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog entry commemorating August Derleth’s passing in 1971. That post mentioned Augie’s mentorship of bestselling SFF/horror writer, David Drake. Don Herron, a long-time friend of the DMR Blog, sent me an email about Augie and Dave.

For those who don't know, Don Herron is a legend in the literary criticism community. He started out as a fan of Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs and other pulp authors while growing up in Tennessee. Don moved to San Francisco in 1974, but then sojourned to St. Paul, Minnesota in 1975-76 to hang out with Richard L. Tierney, Donald Wandrei and others in that circle. He returned to Baghdad-by-the-Bay in 1977 and has made San Francisco and environs his home turf ever since.

Upon returning to San Francisco, Mr. Herron became friends with Fritz Leiber. Don also began doing his 'Dashiell Hammett Tour', which explored all of the locales in Darkest Frisco referenced by Hammett in the 'Continental Op' stories and inThe Maltese Falcon. Today, the tour is just shy of its forty-fifth anniversary and is famous around the planet.

Don is also famous for editing books about Robert E. Howard and Philip K. Dick…and with being co-editor of the legendary REH journal, The Cimmerian--but his anecdote for this blog entry concerns David Drake and August Derleth.

Here is how Don told it to me a few days ago:

"I met Drake, did a special Hammett Tour for him (arranged by the guy at Borderlands Bookstore who got cancelled a year or two back for sexist remarks or whatever --- made some news sources, especially within the f&sf community). Nice guy, Drake. (The cancelled guy seemed okay, too, for a sf fan type --- guess he's had to find a job in the civilian world.)
[Drake] told me about how Derleth accepted his first story, and it was the most BRUTAL acceptance he ever got. Derleth told him he liked it, but was going to rewrite the whole thing the way it should be written, and that Drake could check his carbon against the published version for comparison. Of course, Drake hadn't kept a carbon. ALL THOSE YEARS LATER, Drake still sounded a little stunned by the abruptness of Derleth. 'It was brutal,' he said, and he meant it."

That's how Augie rolled. I should also note that Drake taking the Hammett tour demonstrates his admiration for the author of The Maltese Falcon. Thus, it should come as no surprise that Drake's Hammer's Slammers novel, The Sharp End, was explicitly based on Hammett's Red Harvest --as was Kurosawa's Yojimbo and Leone's A Fistful of Dollars. As I've pointed out before, Red Harvest was published a good five years before Howard's "Red Nails" was a bloody twinkle in Bob's eye. Make of that what you will.

I should probably do a post on Dashiell Hammett.