was a very deep thinker, and enjoyed reading heavy material." Like
father, like son. "Homer always talked over his ideas with me, and
although I couldn't always follow his thoughts it seemed to help
him to express them to another--it made some things come more
clearly to him."

Flint was a great admirer of H. G. Wells (this little grandmother-
schoolteacher told me) and had probably read all his works up to
the time when he (Flint) died in 1924. He had read Doyle and
Haggard, but: "Wells was his favourite--the real thinker."

Flint found a fellow-thinker in Austin Hall, whom he met in San
Jose, California, while working at a shop where shoes were
repaired electrically--"a rather new concept at the time." Hall,
learning that Flint lived in the same city, sought him out, and
they became fast friends. Each stimulated the other. As Hall told
me twenty years ago of the origin of THE BLIND SPOT:

"One day after we had lunched together, I held my finger up in
front of one of my eyes and said: 'Homer, couldn't a story be
written about that blind spot in the eye?' Not much was said about
it at the time, but four days later, again at lunch, I outlined
the whole story to him. I wrote the first eighteen chapters; Homer
took up the tale as 'Hobart Fenton' and wrote the chapters about
the house of miracles, the living death, the rousing of Aradna's
mind, and so forth, up to 'The Man from Space,' where once again I
took over."

To THE BLIND SPOT Hall contributed a great knowledge of history
and anthropology, while Flint's fortes were physics and medicine.