Above: The back cover of
Ray Harryhausen - Master of the Majicks Volume 2
Three Volumes...?
As Mike Hankin’s manuscript grew over the years, and as we continued to discover and acquire new photos and other illustrations, it became apparent that a single book would be quite substantial and very likely not cost-effective, both for us to produce and for customers to afford. So, it was decided to break up the book into three separate volumes— much more manageable from the standpoint of physical production and more flexible from a purchasing standpoint.
This format is not without tricky problems, notably the question of how much supplemental information to include in the three volumes. In the end, you will see that some of the Introductory chapters and Appendices are included only in this volume, while some are repeated in the other volumes. This is both for convenience to the reader and according to relevance to the main content of each volume.
Why Volume 2 First...?
Many of our consultants who reviewed the manuscript for factual accuracy commented that, while the contents of Volume One (Ray’s early years, The Fairy Tales, The Puppetoons, etc.) were enjoyable and informative, they were anxious to get to “the good stuff” —i.e., the feature films. So, in the grand trandition of Star Wars Episode IV (also released first), we elected to start off with a bang by presenting the volume that contained Ray’s first group of classic feature films. Volume Three is currently in release (from The Three Worlds of Gulliver through Clash of the Titans), and finally Volume One.
