H. Warner Munn - Later Career

Later Career

After Weird Tales ceased publishing his work, Munn generally did not seek new outlets, and his post-Weird Tales output was minor, most of it either self-published in small press editions or issued haphazardly by publishers who sought him. While he had already completed The Ship from Atlantis, the second installment of the Merlin Saga, it was published only years later, when Donald A. Wollheim contracted to publish King of the World's Edge in book form and also accepted the sequel.

The publication of his last great work of fantasy, Merlin's Ring, was also the result of a publisher seeking him. Reprising Wollheim’s role, Lin Carter, editor of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, learned of it while enquiring about the availability of the first two Merlin books. In the event, it was issued by Ballantine Books soon after the end of Carter’s connection with the publisher, in the interregnum between the Adult Fantasy series and Ballantine’s new Del Rey Books fantasy series. Del Rey later completed Carter’s original intention by reissuing both of the first two books in a single volume with the title of Merlin's Godson.

Similarly, Robert E. Weinberg was responsible for the revival and completion of the Werewolf Clan stories when he expressed an interest in reprinting them in his periodical Lost Fantasies. Munn had originally written eight werewolf stories for Weird Tales before its change of editorship; he now wrote two more to fill gaps in the sequence, and the entire series appeared in three parts in Lost Fantasies, nos. 4-6, 1976–77, as "Ten Tales of the Werewolf Clan." Afterward Munn wrote and self-published three additional stories to finish the series. The complete series was issued by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. as Tales of the Werewolf Clan, Volumes 1-2 (1979–80).

Some of Munn’s late horror stories were published in anthology series like Best Horror Stories of the year and Daw Books’ The Year's Best Horror Stories.