<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Homer Eon Flint (1892-1924) is perhaps best remembered today as the co-author (with Austin Hall) of the fantasy adventure The Blind Spot (1921). Flint (born Flindt) was the first practitioner of what quickly came to be called the "super-science" story. The form generally focuses on the invention of some new technology, usually associated with space travel, followed by some form of interplanetary intrigue lardooned with "snappy" dialogue. Edward E. Smith and John W. Campbell were the two foremost successors to Flint during the heyday of the super-science story in the late 1920's and the 1930's. Under Campbell's editorial supervision at Astounding Science Fiction, the form eventually evolved into the "hard-science" story as practiced by Hal Clement, George O. Smith, and others.

Flint began his writing career as a scenarist for silent film in 1912-13, but following a few initial sales, the market dried up. Flint burst on the pulps scene in 1918 when he sold "The Planeteer" to All-Story Weekly, then one of the largest-selling magazines in the country. "The Planeteer" is unusual in that it envisions a more-or-less democratically socialist world-state, which in the sequel, [[["The King of Conserve island"]] (published a few months later), collapses due to corruption and political propaganda originating in a remaining island of capitalism. It is also worth mentioning that the motive force used to propel the story's spacecraft is controlled momentum, presaging the debate over the "Dean Device" in Campbell's magazine by 40 or 50 years.

The "Dr. Kinney" stories, first published in 1919 and 1921 and reprinted by Ace Books in 1965 (as The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life and The Devolutionist and the Emancipatrix), are the most widely known of his works today. They involve travel to Mercury, Venus and a ring-shaped world in another solar system. They may also include the first (or at least a very early) use of the trope that Adam and Eve originated on another planet (in "The Lord of Death").

Flint's contribution to The Blind Spot is a first-person narrative sequence told by one of the novel's supporting characters. As Forrest J. Ackerman explains in his foreword to the novel (included in the Ace paperback edition of 1964), Flint actually originated the idea for the story of a link between two worlds in a conversation with his friend Hall. To paraphrase Damon Knight's famous critique of the novel written after its book publication in 1949, Flint's section provides a strong dose of common sense when compared to the turgid prosody of Hall.

Flint's last science fiction story for Argosy-All-Story, "Out of the Moon"(1923-24), demonstrates real stylistic growth over the Dr. Kinney stories. Yet, "Out of the Moon" covers a lot of territory Flint had previously covered, including the tossing about of planets in the manner for which Edmond Hamilton was shortly to become famous. Toward the end of his life, Flint also branched out into writing mysteries, and would probably have eventually emerged as a writer who worked successfully in several genres, had he lived.

Flint was killed in what appears to have been a car-jacking in northern California, just days before he was to begin a new job that would have reunited him with his wife and children. (They had been separated because his wife had obtained a teaching position some 200 miles away.) Although he was highly original and influential in his day, his work has not aged well, which has tended to diminish prospects for his publication in book form. This in turn has meant he has rarely been given any critical consideration. Perhaps the best commentary on him is by his granddaughter, Vella Munn, whose 2001 essay "Homer Eon Flint: A Legacy" may be found at Strange Horizons.