In The Hammer, I initially saw the large lizard as a curiosity, an interesting way to introduce the mysterious doorway in the Castle Rocks. At that point, Tsarek was an homage to a series of short stories from 1961, the year I was born, written by Bertrand R. Brinley and titled The Mad Scientists Club. In "The Big Egg" the boys in the club discover a dinosaur egg that they try to hatch. This played into my own story when Corvan reports at school that he has seen a large lizard in his backyard. He imagines that since he lives near a large deposit of dinosaur bones, maybe an egg from a dinosaur was exposed to the warm sun and hatched.

There was a wonderful proliferation of science fiction novels in the 1950's and 60's but, like the Mad Scientists Club, most of the books from that era have been forgotten. Some call that time period in history, the golden age of Golden Age of Science fiction, but others say there is an ongoing golden age of Science Fiction and it is 14 years of age. I like that last definition. It seems to be about the right age for those of us who immersed ourselves into a science fiction or fantasy world.

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My favorite day at school was when we would get our Scholastic Book order forms and figure out how far our allowance would stretch. I would pour over the pictures of the covers and the descriptions to make the best choice with my meagre funds.

One of those books that I still have in my library was Stranger from the Depths, by Gerry Turner. The beautiful wraparound cover art of the aquatic man named Saa, drawn by a great sci-fi artist, Emanuel Schongut, caught my attention and I just had to have it. I think it cost $1 at the time. Saa had an intriguing storyline, and he would eventually became the inspiration for Tsarek, one of my favorite characters in the Cor Series.

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