Duane W. Rimel

A young writer and a longer career

Rimel belonged to the younger generation that approached Lovecraft through enthusiasm for weird fiction. His later writing extended beyond that early relationship. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction records the time-travel novel Time Swap, published in 1969 under the name Rex Weldon, alongside his poetry and shorter fiction.

The distance between the 1930s correspondence and the later novel is a useful reminder that the Lovecraft connection represents one phase of a long life. Rimel was not simply a fictional name or a pseudonym used by Lovecraft. He was a separate author whose bibliography continued after his mentor's death.

Sources: The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction — Duane W. Rimel

Mentoring through correspondence

Letters to F. Lee Baldwin, Duane W. Rimel, and Nils Frome appeared from Hippocampus Press in 2016, edited by David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi. Its Rimel section occupies 212 pages within the volume.

The edition describes a novice seeking help with writing and publication in pulp or fan magazines. It identifies assistance connected with The Sorcery of Aphlar, The Tree on the Hill and The Disinterment, while the appendices preserve memoirs, poems and fiction by Rimel.

The collection places literary advice within a network of readers and contributors, rather than an isolated transaction concerning a manuscript.

Sources: Letters to F. Lee Baldwin, Duane W. Rimel, and Nils Frome — edition record

The Tree on the Hill: photography and a deceptive landscape

The Tree on the Hill begins with an excursion and an apparently beautiful place associated with unusual dreams. Photographs subsequently reveal incompatible shadows and details the narrator did not grasp while present. His companion Theunis recognizes the importance of the discrepancy.

The Chronicle of Nath supplies a possible explanation involving a predatory shadow and an ancient gem. Theunis uses the gem to examine the photographs and suffers severely from the revelation. The apparent tree is therefore not simply a rare botanical specimen: the story makes its attractive form part of a dangerous concealment.

The mechanism links ordinary photography with forbidden interpretation. A camera can preserve something without enabling its owner to understand what has been recorded. The narrative also allows intervention, although understanding carries a cost. The work's first publication in Polaris in 1940 came after Lovecraft's death, so its date of appearance should not be confused with the earlier period of collaboration.

Sources: The Tree on the Hill — original text, The Tree on the Hill — publication data

The Disinterment: rescue turned into captivity

The Disinterment follows a narrator whose fear of isolation because of disease makes a proposed escape through apparent death seem acceptable. His supposed protector, Andrews, instead subjects him to a horrifying experiment.

During recovery, the narrator experiences estrangement from his own limbs and increasingly suspects that he is being observed as a specimen. Escape does not restore his earlier security. The final discovery reveals his original headless body, making sense of the altered bodily experience without fully identifying the replacement body.

The horror depends on the difference between preserving a person's consciousness and preserving the life that person expected to continue. A promise of rescue has made the narrator vulnerable to another man's experiment. The familiar label of reanimation describes only part of the result: identity, bodily continuity and consent are all at stake. The story appeared in the January 1937 Weird Tales.

Sources: The Disinterment — original text, The Disinterment — publication data

The authorship dispute

The extent of Lovecraft's contribution to The Disinterment has been disputed. Accounts of the exchange include Lovecraft's description of limited verbal changes and Rimel's later assertion of substantial authorship. S. T. Joshi has argued for a much larger Lovecraft contribution on stylistic grounds.

Those are different kinds of evidence. Contemporary statements, retrospective memories and stylistic comparison do not necessarily yield the same answer. A confident percentage of authorship would suggest a precision the surviving record does not provide.

The appropriate credit therefore keeps Rimel visible and identifies Lovecraft's involvement while leaving the disputed extent explicit. The disagreement also illustrates why inclusion in a collected edition of collaborations cannot, by itself, establish that every story received the same degree of rewriting.

Sources: Duane W. Rimel — biographical context

The Sorcery of Aphlar: knowledge expelled from a city

The Sorcery of Aphlar concerns a council that banishes a wise man from Bel-haz-en. The city has declined in knowledge, while Aphlar's reading and solitary thought make him suspect to its rulers. In exile he continues his studies and communicates with the nonhuman life around his cave.

When the council eventually sends killers, the intended victim is absent. An anomalously light sphere, strange markings and the final attention of a snail suggest an escape beyond the assassins' understanding, but the text does not explain a complete mechanism.

Its compact design contrasts institutional power with knowledge the institution cannot recognize. The city can expel a thinker and order his death; it cannot necessarily understand what he has discovered. The conclusion preserves ambiguity rather than supplying a catalog of the sorcerer's abilities.

The tale belongs in discussion of Rimel's developing weird fiction. Lovecraft's assistance is part of its context, but the story should not be absorbed uncritically into a list of wholly Lovecraft-written works.

Sources: Duane W. Rimel — The Sorcery of Aphlar

The material life of a letter

Miskatonic Missives devotes its first number to Lovecraft's letter to Rimel of 19 November 1934. Edited by Sean Branney and Andrew Leman, the volume surrounds the letter with associated texts, images and contextual objects.

Its contents include discussion of The Shadow Out of Time, writing about story outlines, Rimel fiction, Baldwin's biographical sketch and reproductions connected with pens, candy and other everyday subjects. The book's 108 pages include this surrounding material; they are not the length of a single letter.

This approach shows why correspondence matters beyond the extraction of isolated opinions. Literary work traveled beside ordinary purchases, illustrations, jokes and shared references. Reconstructing that setting helps recover what a recipient might have recognized without explanation and what later readers must research.

Sources: Miskatonic Missives, Volume I — Rimel letter and contextual contents

An image-maker and a remembered participant

Rimel contributed a linocut portrait to F. Lee Baldwin's early Lovecraft biography. His memoirs H. P. Lovecraft As I Knew Him and A Fan Looks Back appear in the correspondence volume's appendices. Together, portrait, recollections and letters document participation extending beyond the disputed story credits.

Sources: Letters to F. Lee Baldwin, Duane W. Rimel, and Nils Frome — edition record