“D A N G E R I S M Y B U S I N E S S T A K E S M E B A C K F O R T Y Y E A R S T O

MY B E G I N N I N G S . T H A N K G O D F O R T H E P U L P S ! " — E l m o r e L e o n a r d

LEE S E RV E R

AN I L L U S T R A T E D H I S T O R Y DF T H E F A B U L O U S P U L P M A G A Z I N E S ; 18 9 B - 13 5 3
 $ 1 7 .9 5

A t the turn o f the century, A m erica saw the

rapid rise o f a n ew literary phenom enon: the pulps.

N am ed “pulps" for the cheap paper on w h ic h th ey

w ere printed, these w ild ly in v en tiv e periodicals

featured bold titles, such as W eird Tales, A stou nding

Stories, and Spicy D etective. A d orn ed w ith bright,

often garish covers th e y could be bought for as little

as a dime, yet th ey offered outrageous selections o f

burgeoning popular fiction, from tales o f h o rror and

science fictio n to lurid rom ances and hard-boiled

d etectiv e stories.

A s the popu larity of the pulps increased, certain

fictio n al characters, such as Targan, Zorro, D oc

Savage, Sam Spade, H opalong Cassidy, and C onan

the B arbarian w ere im m ortalized, and a n e w eccen­

tric and hearty breed o f w rite r emerged. C h u rn in g

out these stories for a p enn y-a-w ord o r less becam e
the p ro v ing ground for h undreds o f struggling
authors, m an y o f w h o m h ave sin ce becom e the most

w id e ly read w riters o f th is century, in clu d in g

Edgar R ice Burroughs, D ashiell H am m ett, Louis

L’Am our, R a y Bradbury, H P. Lovecraft, and

R aym ond Chandler.

J 3 a n g e r Is M y Business is about the rise and fall o f

the colorful pulps and the legend ary publishers,

editors, and w riters w h o m ade them an un forget­

table sensation. C ap tu rin g the m ood o f A m erica in

the R oaring T w e n tie s and the years o f the G reat

Depression, the te x t features exclu sive, firsthand
recollections b y p ulp veterans, w h o offer com ical
and poignant anecdotes and g iv e th is h isto ry a

lively, behind-the-scenes perspective. W ith over

1 0 0 rare illustrations, inclu ding dozens o f m agazine

covers, in terio r illustrations, and arch iv al photos o f
pulp notables, D an ger Is M y Business is an essential

item for both collectors and pop-culture enthusiasts.

 I
For Elizabeth S.

• . \ Y- • T . ■. *
Copyright © 1993 by Lee Server. PublishingxCo; p. 10.(bottom), 5 9 ,77, 95, 1 0 4 -1 0 8 , and 1 1 0 -1 1 2 image

'© Popular Publications; pp. 62, 6 6 (left), and 7 0 image © Pro

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written permission from the Publisher. Co; pp. 14, 6 4 ,7 8 ,7 9 , 93, and 130 (top) image © Standard Magazines

Inc; pp. 120 and 12 4 image © Stellar Publishing Co; p. 12, 15 (top), 16,

Printed in Hong Kong. , x 17, 20, 21, 22 (right), 2 5 ,4 7 (top), 7 3 ,8 0 ,8 7 (right), 90-9 2 , 94, 9 6 ,9 8 ,

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Library o f Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Publications; pp. 10 (top), 60, 6 1 ,7 2 image © Trpjan Publications; p. 57

Server, Lee. (top) image © W ings Publishing Co; p. 1 1 9 image © Ziff-Dgvis

Danger is my business: an illustrated history o f Publishing Co.

the fabulous pulp magazines, 1 8 9 6 -1 9 5 3 / by Lee

Server. v

p. - cm , Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books,

ISBN 0 -8 1 1 8 -0 3 5 5 -4 (he).— 112 East Third Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. Vf>T 1C8

ISBN 0 -8 1 1 8 -0 1 1 2 -8 (pb).

1. American periodicals—History. 2. Fantastic fiction, American- 10 9 8 7 0 5 4 3 2' 1 .

History and criticism 3. Detective and ipystery stories,

Is \ • Chronicle Books

American—History and criticism. L T itle.' 275 Fifth St. ' -

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, 0 5 1 " .0 9 0 4 1 —dc20 ' CIP

Opposite: Edgar Rice Burroughs in l g 1 6 ,

EDITING: Terry Ryan
Previous page: Robert Leslie Bellem's. ‘ Spicy’ P I. Dan
BOOK AND COVER DESIGN: Turner got his own magazine, H ollyw ood Detective. The
prolific Bellem wrote the entire contents of every issue.
T om Morgan, Blue Design, San Francisco

COPYRIGHT CREDITS FOR MAGAZINES AND ILLUSTRATIONS:

P. 63 image © Beacon Magazines Inc;pp. 4 8 ,4 9 , 53, 116, 117, 121, 129

image © Better Publications, Inc; p. 50 image © Butterick Publishing

Co; p. 8 7 image © C. H. Young Publications Co; pp. 401 and 6 4 1 imag^

© Claytoh Magazines Inc, pp. 32 and 33 image © Constructive

Publishing Co; pp. 8, 9 ,8 1 -8 3 ,8 7 (top), 88, and 8 9 image © Culture

Publications; p p 31 and 64 (right) image © Dell Publishing; p. 52

image © Doubleday, Doran & Co; p. 126 image © Experimenter

Publishing Co; p. 58 image © Fight Stories Inc, p: 29 image © Flying

Stories Inc; pp. 18, 19, 27, 28, 34, and 156 image © Frank A. Munsey

Co, p. 221 image © Frank Tousey; p. 30 image © Good Story Magazine;

p. 85 image © H. M. Publishing Co; p. 130 (bottom) image © Love

Romances Publishing Co; pp. 1 1 4 and 115 image © Magazine

Publishing Inc; p. 102 image © Manvis Publications Inc; pp. 13, 30, 35,

37, 3 8 ,4 0 (right), 44, and 4 7 (bottom) image © Popular Fiction

 i

05 t r o ly 6 ro o 5 0 0 o C * 5 5

An Illustrated History of the Fabulous Pulp Magazines.

Lee Server

C hronicle Books
SA N FRANCISCO

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 Table Of Contents

Introduction ......................................................................................................... 9

F iction F actories ............................................................................................... 17

The Birth and Life of the Pulps

E mpire o f the N ecromancers ...........................................................................3 3

Horror and Fantasy Pulps

E ast of B orneo, W est of the P e c o s .............................................................4 9

T he Adventure Pulps

T wenty Bucks a D ay and E xpenses ...............................................................61

T he Private Eye Pulps

P opular L o ve ..........................................................................................................7 9
Romance and Sex Pulps

S hadows and Superm en .................................................................................... 91

T he Hero Pulps

W hen the Blood-G od R uled ........................................................................ 105

Tales of W eird Menace

W orlds of T omorrow .....................................................................................117

Science Fiction Pulps

F inal I s s u e ............................................................................................................135
The End of an Era

A ppendix ................................................................................................................. 139

Collecting Pulps

A cknowledgments............................................................................................ 141

B ibliography..........................................................................................................141

In d e x ........................................................................................................................ 1 4 3
 ••

STORIE!

Introduction

' h E PULPS CA M E and w ent in the span o f a human

T life. W hen the last o f them expired in the 1950s, they

had been looked upon for some time as prim itive and out­
moded—publishing’s taw dry dinosaurs. A mericans had
found new sources for cheap thrills in paperback novels,
comic books, and television. Once, though, in their heyday
between the tw o w orld wars, pulp magazines had crowded
the country’s newsstands and drugstores w ith hundreds o f
titles and could claim a faithful readership in the tens o f
millions each month. By bland definition, the pulps were
rough-hewn all-fiction periodicals costing from five cents to
a quarter, but this gives no hint o f their actual, extraordinary
nature. T hriving on unconstrained creativity, held account­
able to few standards o f logic, believability, or “good taste,”
the pulps were literary dream machines, offering regular
h entry to intensive worlds o f excitement, danger, glory, ro­
mance. Each brittle page held the promise o f escape from
m m e s A . ia w s o n mundane reality, a promise gaudily fulfilled
T h e pulps took you to the W ild W est and to outer
space; to ancient Rome, South Seas islands, desert outposts
o f the Foreign Legion, gangland haunts, and haunted houses;

Left: This 1 9 3 6 issue of Spicy Detective offered the staple

ingredients of the ‘Spicy" line of pulps, a smoking gun and a
young woman in lingerie.
10 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S

The airbrushing sity o f titles—W eird T ales, A stounding Science-Fiction,

technique and Spicy Detective, Romantic Detectiue, Ranch Romances, U n­
abstraction distinguish derw orld Romances,Gun Molls, Gay Love, Pocket L ov e,R A F
this cover of an obscure Aces, Fight Stories,Jungle Stories, O gark Stories, W all Street

1940s pulp, Leading Stories,R ailroad Stories, O riental Stories, Courtroom Stories,
and Zeppelin Stories, to name a few. Som ething for every
Western. Western
reader’s taste, no matter how narrow or obscure, and quite
titles almost always
a few things left over w ith no kn ow n appeal at all.
featured more bluntly
realistic illustrations.
HEY W E R E seven inches w ide and ten inches high.

T The covers were printed on coated paper and featured

Adventure was one of
the earliest, longest-
running, and best of
all the pulps. The
issue for April i g j 6
featured a typically
glistening portrait by
the magazine's regular
cover artist, Hubert
Rogers.
to the adventurous domains o f T artan the Ape Man and
Conan the Barbarian, the hospital corridors o f Dr. Kildare,
the mean streets o f Sam Spade, and the violent realms o f
The Shadow, The Spider, and Doc Savage. O n pulp pages,
the imagination was loosed and roamed nearly out o f con­
trol. W hen the pulps exhausted the possibilities in extant
character types and popular fiction categories, they in­
vented new ones—science fiction, sword-and-sorcery,
hard-boiled detectives, occult detectives, erotic cow boy
stories, tales o f “W eird Menace,” gangsters, flying spies, su­
perheroes, masked avengers.
In the creative boom years o f the 1 9 2 0 s and 1930s,
new pulps flared in all directions, offering a manic diver­
three-color painted illustrations, most in the notorious pulp
tradition o f bright hues and flamboyant action, displaying
braw ny men and half-dressed women, figures frozen in a
moment o f maximum impact,a knife plunging into flesh, ack-
ack guns exploding, or a terrified damsel poised in mid­
scream Between the covers, one found the cheap, drab-col­
ored paper stock from w hich pulps got their name, pages like
nubby slices o f raw tree, the unbound side untrimmed, mak­
ing the edges difficult to maneuver.
The front and back pages w ere given over largely to
advertisements. W ith their reputation for sensationalism
and low-class readers, the pulps seldom attracted brand-
name or high-ticket ads. These w ent to the mighty
“slicks”—Cosmopolitan, Colliers, T h e Saturday Evening Post.
The pulps had to make do w ith advertising for the frow ­
siest sort o f oddball services and mail-order junk: general
issue false teeth (“6 0 Days Free Trial”), remedies for piles,
correspondence courses for aspiring private detectives and
magicians, offers o f “Coffee A gency franchises” (“... A ll ap­
plications w ill be held strictly conftdentia!!"),“physical love"
manuals, and quack medical digests (“Do YO U have epi­
lepsy and don’t know it?"). The contents page o f each pulp
detailed an editorial package o f from three or four to a
dosen or more items. There was usually an assortment o f
short features and fillers such as editorials, readers’ mail,
advice from experts (“T o be perfectly frank, your method
o f handling snake skins is somewhat cru d e ...’ ), little po­
ems (“Kisses—I have had many/One was like the pretty
peck o f a robin"), and pen-pal and personals columns (“I am
a youth o f tw enty summers, tall, w ith steel blue eyes. I am
a forest ran ger..."). The rest—8 5 percent o f the total—was
fiction, densely typeset, two-colum n expanses o f imagina­
tive w riting in all styles and siz;es. N o exact count is pos­
sible, but approxim ately one m illion stories w ere pub­
lished during the pulps’ 60-odd years in existence.
Thousands o f people contributed to this mountain o f
 INTRO'DUCTION 11

fiction, but few o f them could be properly called “pulp

w riters” T hat title belongs only to a small corps o f profes­
sional storytellers, a few hundred men and women w ho
produced a highly disproportionate share o f all the pulp
fiction. The w ork paid very little—an average o f a penny a
word and sometimes as little as one-tenth that rate. The
more unscrupulouseditors printed stories and never paid
for them at all. Steady markets could fold overnight. Some
stories might never find a buyer. It was a tough line o f
work. The only w riters w ho could make a living from the
pulps were the ones w ith the right Combination o f talent,
instincts, stamina, and mania to produce good commercial
fiction on a constant, almost round-the-clock basis.
Long before Kerouac, the pulpsters had, by necessity,
invented their ow n fonp o f automatic writing. “Up in the
morning and hit the typewriter," says pulp veteran R ich ­
ard Sale of his work routine in those days. “I w rote a story
a day. Three thousand words, five thousand words. Som e­
times it carried oyer into the next day i f you were doing
novelettes—that would be 12,000 words. You might spend
some more time for the top magazines—Argosy; Adventure,
Blue Book^butTor the others you really rattled them o ff
First draft was the last draft, straight out o f the typew riter
and send it off. You had to keep them coming all the tim e .
.. otherwise you’d starve.”
Hugh Cave, w ho began w riting for the pulps in 1929.
and continued to do so for the next 1 2 years) selling over
eight hundred stories, recalls, “For most o f that period I tried “I tell you I’ m Sieur de Caulain."

to average tw o sales a w eek But sometimes you had to write

a lot more than that in a w eek A story might take weeks or
months to sell. It was a full-time job. More than full-time: I
used to put in 18 Tours a day at the typewriter. A lot o f
■writers stayed w ith one type o f fiction but that limited your
prospective markets. I tried to do them all. Detective, W est­
ern, horror, supernatural, “Spicy" sex, historical, Far East ad­
venture; jungle adventure... everything but love stories. I
contributed to around one hundred different magazines in
those years. I have a list here... A ce High, A ce Mysteries, A c­
tion Stories, Adventure, A ll Detective, A ll Fiction Detective,
Argosy, Astounding, let’s see, that’s the ‘A’s ...’’
The top pulp w riters churned out 5 0 0 ,0 0 0 and one
m illion words per year, year after year, a prodigious feat
o f typing, let alone original, coherent storytelling.
Frederick Faust (a,ka. M ax Brand and assorted other pen
names), W alter Gibson, A rthur J. Burks, and a few others
could manage a staggering, finger-bruising annual pro­
duction o f tw o and three m illion words. Burks, a burly -
An illustration for the story “D ead Man Alive" in the
December i g j 8 Golden Fleece.
ex-M arine w ho w rote his first story w hile fighting revo­
lutionaries in Nicaragua, was know n as the Speed M er­
chant o f the Pulps, a w riter so fast and so successful that
he was a legend even among other prolific pros. “He was
the fastest o f them all," says Hugh Cave. “And he could do
it anyw here, in a room full o f people talking, could sit
dow n w ithout think in g and start w ritin g a story, begin­
ning to end.” “Burks w as so fast," says Jean Verral, a pulp
editor at C layton and Popular in the 1 9 2 0 s and early
1 9 30s, “that he w ould w rite right past the end o f the story
and keep going for another couple o f pages w ith almost a
new plot starting. You ju st had to edit that out .. .one time
I bought a story from him and as a jo k e I sent back the
 % T V K IC IA
1 m o n t h
MAY t « t
TS 1 » 3 »

jgP
l '1 j
m HI
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m
1 * \

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DEATH'S HARLEQUIN
 INTRODUCTION
last tw o pages and told him, ‘W e o nly w ant to b u y up to
page 20.’ He never rew rote anything once it left his type­
w riter and he put his rejected stories into a tru nk and
never looked at them again”
T h e professional pulp w riter could not lie around and
w ait for inspiration, he had to develop w ays o f accessing
it on demand. “Sometimes,” says Richard Sale, “you’d sit
there at the typew riter and ju st look around the room and
pick an object, a n y th in g ... or think o f something impos­
sible, find an absolutely impossible thing and then liter­
ally go backwards and solve it." Some w riters used me­
chanical aids to come up w ith story ideas. N eophytes and
desperate pros invested in a thick, expensive book called
Plotto, containing b rie f algebraic descriptions o f every
possible story construction kn ow n to mankind. Pulp
scribes studied the w ork o f their competition, searching
for new angles, fresh formulas. A nything new and success­
ful was sure to generate a hundred immediate pastiches
and variations. Some w riters plagiarised themselves, recy­
cling or repackaging the same material for different mar­
kets. Change the setting from Tom bstone to Malaya, turn
the marauding Apaches into marauding
headhunters, and an old or rejected
W estern became a new jungle adven­
ture story. Many w riters had their ow n
particular, idiosyncratic approach to lit­
Ta le v"
erary creation. “W h en I needed some­ l^UCCvtSC c>j-
thing to start the mind going,” says Hugh (yU'
Cave, “one o f the things I did was to buy
a Racing Form, open it up and look at the
names o f the horses running that day—
you know, the horses have very colorful
names. A nd I w ould p ick out a string o f
those names—let’s say one w as Lucky
Lady and another w as Sailor Boy and so
on—and I would play w ith those and get
the skeleton o f a plot going.” A w riter for
W eird Tales, the horror and fantasy magazine, had a unique
source for some o f his bizarre story ideas: the ranting, vio­
lent confessions contained in “fan mail” he regularly re­
ceived from a reader/psychopath A pulp pro took his in­
spiration w here he found it and didn’t look b ack
ULP W R IT E R S w ere a disparate group—ex-new s­
P papermen, lawyers, retired soldiers o f fortune, con
Hammett, w ho wrotedetectivestories,had beenadetective.
Opposite: T he erotic and the bizarre frequently mingled on
men, convicts, poets, ranch hands, and hermits. Dashiell
13
Bruno Fischer, w ho specialised in sadistic W eird M enace
stories, had been the editor o f the Socialist party newspaper.
W alter Gibson, author ofhundreds o f Shadow novels, was a
magician. Tough-guy w riter Roger T orrey was a lumber­
jack in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Borden Chase—real name
Frank Fow ler—a star contributor to Argosy and Adventure,
w as a chauffeur for Frankie Yale, the w ell-know n bootleg­
ger and king o f the protection rackets; w hen some friends o f
A1 Capone shot Yale 1 1 0 times, Chase started looking for
another line o f w o rk
Pulp w riters w ere scattered all over the country, w ith
another handful in Canada and England, and for many
years M ax Brand w rote his cow boy stories in a Renais­
sance villa in Italy. There w as a sizable contingent o f
pulpsters in H ollyw ood, California, and an odd colony ex­
isted in the pinpoint-siz,ed Florida tow n o f A nna Maria,
w here the local residents became spooked by all the odd
visitors pacing the beach, plotting murder mysteries and
spicy sex stories. T h e foremost gathering place for pulp
w riters—accomplished and aspiring—was N ew York
City. M anhattan w as the w orld capital o f rough-paper
publishing, home to all the major
houses and most o f the m inor ones:
Munsey’s dow ntow n at 2 8 0 Broad­
way; Street & Sm ith in its ow n build’
ing at 7 9 Seventh Avenue, being
shaken apart by the big presses run­
ning in the basement; Dell at 100 Fifth;
Popular Publications at 2 0 5 East 42nd
Above: Although never one of the more financially successful
titles, W eird Tales was the artistic peak among pulp
publications. This issue for March t g j 8 features one of the
exquisitely erotic covers by Margaret Brundage.
the cover of a pulp.
 14 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
Street; Fiction House a few doors down at 2 2 0 Ease, Stan­
dard at 22 W est 48th; W arn er at 5 1 5 Madison; Culture
Publications at 4 8 0 Lexington; Clayton Magazines at 155
East 44th. From these addresses flow ed the manna o f
countless story assignments and paychecks.
D uring the G reat Depression, w riters by the hun­
dreds came to N ew York like D orothy to Oz, Portable
Remingtons in hand, they checked into cheap residential
hotels in m idtow n Manhattan. T h e big library on Fifth
A venue w as nearby, handy for doing necessary research
on the crusades, or w itch craft, or headhunters. W ith a
new story to peddle, a N ew Y o rk -based w riter could
take it to the publishers in person, hoping for a face-to-
face w ith an editor, and an assurance that the m anuscript
w ouldn’t go to the bottom o f the slush pile. Some pulp
houses w ere friendlier than others; at Popular, there w as
a ping pong table and on occasion there w as a game o f
craps going in som ebody’s office, publisher H enry
Steeger a frequent participant.
A prom ise io a dying friend
m akes Chris Volmer
a likely c an d id ate lor
his own murder!
By LAWRENCE TREAT
Pictured, a typical rough-and-
tumble detective story.
Editors w ere generally overw orked and underpaid.
Some w ere creative and some w ere hacks. T h ey numbered
nearly as high a percentage o f eccentrics as the writers.
There w as John Campbell at Astounding, always ready to
engage a visitor in arcane technological speculation; Black
Mask’s Joseph Shaw, master o f the epee, toting a sword cane
to w ork; Charles Ingerman, philologist, fluent in nine lan­
guages, the somewhat unlikely editor o f D etective Fiction
W eekly. Another detective story editor was an active Com-
m u nist“He thought no one knew —I think he got into some
trouble about it years later," recalls w riter Lawrence Treat,
“but he w ould get very excited i f a story had a business­
man as the killer, and if the murder victim was in a union
you had a guaranteed sale.” Ken W hite, editor o f D im e D e­
tective, did not like meeting writers. He told one, “I get a
picture o f a w riter from his stories and think he’s a big
tough guy and then he comes in and he’s a pip-squeak w ho
w ouldn’t talk back to a schoolteacher. You’re better o ff
w ith me i f you don’t ruin my illusions"
But if an editor putting an issue to bed suddenly
needed a particular-siged story by the next morning, a vis­
iting w riter could grab the assignment. Sometimes the
editor’s needs w ere even more pressing. Richard Sale re­
members being strong-armed in the halls o f Munsey’s.“Jack
Byrne, an editor there, caught me, said he needed a story in
a hurry. Emergency! So he sat me dow n and I knocked out
a three-thousand-word story... turned out to be a good little
story. But I ju st happened to be there w hen the editor
needed that space filled now. I gave him the story, w ent to
the w indow , and they issued me a check right then and
there and I w ent home. I got 9 0 bucks."
T h e fledgling pulp w riter w ith no luck and no con­
tacts in the business had one last hope, a visit to the desk
space o f Ed Bodin, a seedy pulp agent and king o f the low-
end sale. Bodin marketed any story you brought him for a
$ 1 handling fee; he shared a small office room w ith a pri­
vate detective, a button broker, and a repo man.
In N ew York, pulp w riters got to know each other
socially at publishers’ annual Christmas parties, A rt Burks’
bathtub gin parties, certain after-hours w atering holes, and
regular meetings o f the Am erican Fiction G uild (member­
ship secured w ith five pulp sales). “There was a great deal
o f camaraderie," says Lawrence T reat, w riter for dozens o f
detective pulps. “T h e literary establishment did not hold
us in high esteem and it was an us against them kind o f
feeling w e had. I made some very great friendships in those
days.” T h e Am erican Fiction Guild put out a newsletter

kTION
DRAGON
ISKANDER
By HAT SCHACHNER
VALOR C\
BITTER J ally w orked hard ... w riting for days on end, never seeing
PORKS
r.r.rtvNN AM
Cornell Woolrich Richard Sale
WBIStKILY
Smooth Kyle R etu rns /
Top: One of the most successful
titles of the pulps' first two decades
was Top Notch. By the ' 3 0 s, it
was just one of many struggling
adventure magazines, occasionally
enlivened by an appealing Tom
Lovell cover painting.
Above: Argosy was the magazine
that began the pulp era. For many
decades it was a top-seller and a
respected purveyor of mainstream
adventure and mystery stories.
15
w ith marketing tips and met every other w eek at R osoff s
restaurant in midtown.“It was a very friendly atmosphere,”
Richard Sale recalls. “You could talk over a story problem,
or i f a guy had an offer that he couldn’t fulfill he’d pass it
on to you ... You know, it was nice to have an audience
because w riting was a very lonely life"
“Some o f those fellows," says H enry Steeger, “they re­
anyone. It took some very talented people to w ork like that
and w rite so many good stories, thousands o f stories w hen
you add them u p ... I don’t kn ow how they did i t ...”
H E PULPS in their time w ere looked down on as
T publishing’s poor, ill-bred stepchild. One glance at
their gaudy covers, ugly paper, and endless gray blocks o f
type was enough to condemn them in tasteful circles. W ith-
out the sophisticated design, the pretty pictures, and the
name-brand authors o f the expensive, slick magazines, the
pulps had to make do w ith imagination and the power o f
the w ritten word. This, as it happened, was their glory.
Although it was not understood at the time, the pulps were
creating an innovative and lasting form o f literature—in­
troducing new styles o f w riting and genres o f popular fic­
tion, discovering w riters w ho would become some o f the
most w idely read authors in the world, including Edgar
R ice Burroughs, M ax Brand, Raym ond Chandler, H. P.
Lovecraft, Louis L’Amour, Dashiell Hammett, Robert E.
Howard, John D. MacDonald, Ray Bradbury, Erie Stanley
Gardner, Robert Heinlein,and Kenneth Robeson (aka Lester
Dent, author o f the best-selling adventures o f Doc Savage).
The w ork o f these and other pulp graduates continues to
find a large and international readership, and the pulp-
created genres—science fiction, horror, private eye, W est­
ern, superhero—now dominate not only popular literature
but every sort o f mass entertainment, from movies and tele­
vision to comic books.This legacy w ill remain long after the
last o f the pulp magazines themselves—haphazardly saved
and physically unsuited for preservation—have all turned
to dust
The following chapters attempt to chart the course o f the
pulp era and to detail some o f its highlights, drawing on rare
materials and the generous recollections o f veteran writers,
publishers, artists, and editors. It is my hope that these pages
w ill bring back at least a glimpse o f the creative excitement o f
a time long gone... the fabulous days o f the pulps!
m. * .r

"Ik -llo
ih w
ha n d so»m \ A v h a t J
v, -v o u u p* h e r o •'* ■M.1
f r 'K 'i'n *
t R E T U R N
p E R A L D l
HV
Western Stories was the first
and for many years the most
successful all-Western fiction
magazine. Max Brand, one of the
pseudonyms of Frederick Faust,
was ns most popular contributor.
'|
:
Fiction Factories
T H E B IR T H A N D L IF E O F T H E P U L P S
It is certainly better for certain classes o f persons to read
exciting stories than to be doing w hat they would be doing
if not reading.
— F ro m a s p e e c h g iv e n a t a
CONFERENCE OF LIBRARIANS (1879)
*HE PULP M A G A Z IN E was officially fathered by
T Frank A Munsey w ith his publication of T h e Golden
Argosy in 1882, but the tradition to w hich the pulps be­
long—that of cheap, popular, and sensational periodic litera­
ture—began some 50 years earlier. Reading for pleasure had
once been the exclusive province o f the upper echelon of
American society, but in the 18 30s a confluence o f factors—
the invention o f the steam printing-press, the expanding
postal services and rail ways, and a growing literate w orking
class—made fiction affordable and accessible to the “com­
mon man.” The first of the cheap, mass-produced publica­
tions were the so-called story weeklies, four pages long,
18 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
printed on newspaper, containing reading matter plagia­
rised from the high-priced American and English maga­
zines. W hen the many competing weeklies found them­
selves all printing the same stories, they began to look for
original material to steal. They sponsored various story­
w riting contests, offering prises o f $ 1 0 0 or so to the w in ­
ning entry, along w ith the stipulation that all non-prise-
w inning submissions became the property o f the w eekly
and could be published w ithout remuneration. The story
weeklies might then obtain a year’s worth o f new fiction
without paying for it (the prige offers were usually bogus,
in any case). In this w ay was a young and understandably
gloomy Edgar Allan Poe suckered out o f a half-dogen o f his
first short stories.
Eventually, the owners o f the weeklies realised that
to maintain a steady flow of usable material, they were
going to have to pay for it And from this need, the hack
fiction w riter was born. Before that time, it was generally
assumed that the creation o f stories was done only at the
commands o f a tortured muse, and the creation o f stories
for a living was possible by only a tiny number o f the su­
premely talented. But the cheap story w eekly publishers
found out that fiction—like so many other items produced
in the heady days o f the Industrial Revolution—could be
manufactured to specifications and on demand, w ritten
not out o f the authors’ life experiences, philosophical in­
sights, or aesthetic visions, but rather out o f the demands
o f the market. F iction became a commodity, like the indus­
trial-age items o f clothing that no longer had to be hand­
made, one at a time.
T h e story w eeklies, w ith names like U ncle Sam, T h e
Star Spangled Banner, Saturday Night,and T h e N ew York
W eekly, designed their contents for the tastes o f a reader-
ship o f w orking-class A m ericans and immigrants. The
stories w ere eventful, colorful, and sentimental. Subtleties
and com plexities w ere left for the elitist magazines. One
w eekly boasted o f its contents as containing “sensational
fiction w ith no philosophy!" Escapist literature, intended
to be easily consumed and ju st as easily forgotten, came
into its ow n in the pages o f the weeklies, w ith their ac­
tion-packed tales o f the high seas and urban lowlife, melo­
dramatic mysteries and romances. E ver m indful o f con­
sumer trends, the publishers turned every popular story
into an instant genre, com missioning countless variations
on a successful character type, setting, or plot twist. If
readers enjoyed one story about an innocent girl being
abducted by w h ite slavers, or about an orphan new sboy
m aking his fortune, or about an evil guardian putting his
rich ward in an insane asylum, they would get to enjoy
many, m any more.
T h e authors o f these lurid tales w ere a new breed o f
writer. Disparaged as “penny-a-line scribblers,” they
would never have found their calling in the gentlemanly
fiction publications that existed before the story w eek­
lies. But then few o f the sophisticated and literary authors
o f the day w ould have had any idea how to please the
w eeklies’ hum ble audience. T h e fiction hacks saw them ­
selves not as artists but as craftsmen, taking a craftsman’s
pride in the w o rk—its mass readership, the speed at
w h ich it was w ritten, the paycheck it earned. Some fic­
 FICTION FACTORIES 19

tion hacks became famous. In 18 4 0 s America, the name
o f Joseph Holt Ingraham w as know n far and w id e as the
author o f the im m ensely popular Fanny H .— O r th e
H un chback and the Roue, and hundreds o f other serial­
aced the story w ith a cover letter from the imaginary w aif
T hese sheets . . . have been written by work-weary hands;
they have been wet with almost hopeless tears . . . Oh! do

ised novels. Longfellow said o f him, “He is tremendous— print it, if it is worthy, for my whole heart has gone into
really tremendous. I think w e may say that he w rites the it. Respectfully, almost hopefully,
w orst novels ever w ritten by anybody.” Edw ard Zane
Carroll Judson, w ho used the pen name Ned Buntline, had Your O rphan Friend,
been a sailor and a soldier and was once unsuccessfully Ju lia E dw ards
hanged by a lynch mob before he turned to w ritin g for
the weeklies. W andering in the Far W est after the C iv il A fter 1860, the story weeklies shared the cheap fic­
W ar, he became acquainted w ith a 23-year-old buffalo tion market w ith the dime novels, w hich appealed to the
hunter named W illiam Frederick Cody. Judson renamed same tastes and made use o f the same w riters and popular
the young man Buffalo Bill and began recording roman­ characters. Many o f the “novels” were reprinted serials from
ticised versions o f his exploits for T h e N ew York W eekly. the weeklies. Both formats were endlessly formulaic and
Buntline’s tales o f Bill and assorted other frontiersm en for the most part atrociously written. T he plots were me­
and gunslingers w ould be translated and published chanical and the characters bore next to no resemblance to
around the world. Even greater success w as achieved by the w ay real people behaved. Here, from one o f the enor­
a shy U nitarian m inister turned w riter named Horatio mously popular adventures o f young detective N ick
Alger, Jr., author o f 1 1 9 stories o f poor orphan boys Carter, is a typically breathless and ridiculous encounter:
whose honesty is invariably rewarded in the end. Alger's
fiction was thought to be inspirational, and to this day
the phrase “a Horatio A lger story” is invoked to describe
any born-poor A m erican w ho has ever w orked, inher­
ited, or stolen his w ay to success.
O f course, the m ajority o f fiction hacks did not find
fame from their w riting, and many did not even receive
credit. Bylines w ere frequently assigned to established
house names controlled by the publisher. A uthorship
was just another com m odity to the publishers, important
only insofar as it could be used to sell more copies. A
popular but dead or overpriced author such as Dumas
would have his name appropriated and affixed to the
w ork o f an anonymous hack. Sim ilarly, another hack’s
work might necessitate the creation o f a new, more appro­
priate and exploitable authorial personality. W hen, for ex­
ample, T h e N ew York W eekly printed a sentimental fic­
tion about Manhattan lowlife, the story was falsely as­
cribed to a young slum girl. The cynical editors even pref-

Opposite and Right: Frank Munsey's Argosy magazine,

launched in 1 8 8 2 as a fiction weekly for children, became the
prototype for all pulp magazines to follow. As a fiction
weekly, Argosy thrived for nearly 60 years. Pictured here
are issues spanning the first fifty.
20 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
“I know that you are under the floor o f this room directly
under the spot w here I stand. I f you try to escape I will
shoot through the floor and certainly hurt you if I do not
kill you. If you answer me I may perm it you to escape. You
understand English or you wouldn't be w here you are. If
you don’t answer 1 will shoot just to prove that you are not
there—or that you are. A r e you there?"
‘ Yes. M e here, allee samee, like lat in a tlap," came the
reply in pigeon English.
‘ Hello! A Chinaman, eh?" said N ick, and he w inked at
himself in the mirror opposite . . .
The weeklies and dime novels w ere awful stuff for the
most part, but they did create the first mass market for fic­
tion in America. The families and
w orking men and wom en w ho had
once read nothing more in a lifetim e
than the Bible, some schoolhouse prim ­
ers, and a few perennial classics had
been taught a reading habit by the
cheap story papers and books. A nd this
habit remained even after the readers
began drifting aw ay from the estab­
lished forms, bored w ith the stale and
repetitive plots and characters. T h ey
were ready for something new —“in ap-
Above: Can one ever get enough stories about pole-vaulting?
H ere is one from the May 8, 1928, Sport Story.
Opposite: T he December 15, 19 13 , issue of Top Notch
offered readers a gripping tale of the now-forgotten sport of
automobile polo. From Tangled Battle: ‘Cleve, his right foot
on the forward spring, and his left hand clinging to the steel
truss which protected the radiator, leaned far out to make one
of his swinging drives . . . "
pearance," as the historian Mary Noel writes, “i f not in sub­
stance” The pulps would repeat many o f the publishing
practices invented by the weeklies—the use o f continuing
series characters, hack writers, house names, the exploita­
tion o f popular enthusiasms, the emphasis on action and
sensation, and little or no “philosophy” T h ey would also
develop their ow n stale, repetitive formulas and bad w rit­
ing. And, in their time, the pulps would follow the week-
lies/dime novels’ trajectory from birth to ubiqu ity to
oblivion. But they w ould also generate w orks o f lasting
merit and a level o f creativity that w ould far outdistance
the first, prim itive pop-fiction magazines.
R A NK M U N SEY was a M aine telegrapher and aspir­
F ing pu blishing magnate in 1 8 8 2 w hen he launched
a cheap fictio n w eekly for child ren called The Golden
Argosy. In a cou ntry filled to bursting w ith story w eek ­
lies, M unsey’s lone entry did not make a dent. Slipping
into debt, M unsey tinkered w ith his
periodical, shortening the title to A r­
gosy and aim ing at an older audience.
He started a second publication, m od­
estly titled M unsey s, a general-interest
m agazine w ith illustrations. Munsey's
w as an u n exp ected success and in ­
spired a further rew ork in g o f Argosy
as a cheap and th ick periodical. S in ce
Argosy w ould be an all-fictio n maga­
zin e w ith no p ictu res, M unsey d e­
cided he could cut costs even further
by p rin tin g on the most inexp en siv e
paper av ailable—it d id n't m atter how
crum m y the th in g looked, the ow ner
reasoned, as long as the print w as leg­
ible and there w as plenty o f it. T h e late 1 8 9 0 s version o f
A rgosy had y ellow covers, 191 pulpw ood pages, 30
coated stock pages (foradvertisem ents—those had tolook
a little less crum my), and 1 3 5 ,0 0 0 w ords o f m iscella­
neous novels, serials,short stories,and poetry T h e fiction
w as not at all distinguished, but neither w as it the lu d i­
crous stu ff o f the story w eeklies. A t ten cents per issue,
and heavy as a lead w eight, the n ew Argosy w as a hit.
In 1905, Munsey launched another fiction pulp, All-
Story, and in the next few years he would add several more
new titles, all variations on Argosy's plump package o f es­
capist lit. O ther publishers copied Munsey’s formula, and
refined it. Street & Smith started their ow n bulky, rough-
T W IC E -A -M O N T H
22 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S

Far Left: Seen here, a typical issUe of Pluck

and Luck, a pre-pulp weekly: T he cover
$tory is no doubt, as timely today as when it
was written!

Left: Forerunners of the pulp magazines were

the story weeklies and the dime novels. T he ■
weekly adventure^ of N ick Carter, a callout
young detective, reached their peak of
popularity in the 1880s and i8goS.

paper collection o f light fiction, T h e Popular M agazine, and Left: A new Tarzan 1
used illustrated covers, soft-focused paintings by such no­ Murder Across story meant increased
table commercial artists as N. C. W yeth and Henry
ReuterdahL Street & Sm ith had been a leading purveyor o f
the Miles sales for any magazine.
In the ju ngle stronghold of the
weeklies and dime novels since the 1860s and would be­ W arrior Women — amazons ns Opposite: Edgar Rice
cruel as they are beautiful— sits
a sinister figure in his awesome
come the-archetypal pulp house o f the golden age, publisher trophy-room. A t his fingertips
Burroughs, the creator
is the Occult .Force that reads
o f T h e Shadow, Astounding Stones, and Doc Savage. T h e Popu­ the secrets o f human minds, of Tarzan, dictating a
that .seals the doom of traitors
lar, aptly titled, was" followed in 1 9 1 0 b y T o p Notch.Other, no matter where they! hide. T h is novel in the early
is the amazing menace that Tar-
firms entered the pulp market that same year—Doubleday xan.m ust destroy in Edgar Rice
'Burroughs’ newest novel—
193os- r
brought out Short Stories; and the Butterick Company
launched A dventure The first specialised pulps appeared:
Railroad Stories and then, from Street & Smith, the first all-
TARZAN
AND THE MAGIC MEN
crime fiction magazine, Detective Story.
Up to around 191 2 , most o f the fiction published in Hereis'theibest-loved character
in Am erican'fiction, back again
■the pulps had been genteel and inconsequential. N ow there in the magazine in-which he was
bora. .Here is a.trfle of high ad­
began to appear more unusual fare—stories that had imagi­ venture, written 'by one of the
favorite :story-tellers of our
tim e. Throw off the cares o f a
nation and impact had created a lingering com motion -work--a-day world— -let politics
go hang— while you -rush head­
among readers and a demand for more o f the same. Editors lo n g w ith Tarzan -on th e primi­
tive rdanger trail. Meet him in
w ith lively minds and discerning eyes had come to be in the current issue iof

charge o f several titles: the multi-talented Robert H. Davis,

Munsey executive and head man at All-Story; A rthur S. ARGOSY
Hoffman at Adventure, Robert Simpson,a colorful Scot and
Now On Sale
GET YOUR C O PY TODAY
former trader on the A frican Gold Coast, now editor o f
Argosy These men and a handful o f w riters established the
parameters for w hat would become the definitive pulp
story—larger than, life, lucidly written, plot driven, w ith
strong characters and lots o f action, preferably violent.
The February 1 9 1 2 issue o f A ll-Story m arked the
professional debut o f a w riter w hose im portance to the
history o f pulp m agazines is com parable to D. W .
G riffith ’s place in the histo ry o f film. T h e first tw o seri­
alised novels by Edgar R ice Burroughs electrified A ll-
Story’s readership, d rew new audiences to the pulps, and
influenced a generation o f pop-fiction scribes. Born in
187 5 , Burroughs had failed at a dogen jo b s and enter­
prises—clerk, railroad cop, gold miner, soldier, salesman,
etc.—before he turned to w ritin g at the age o f 35. H is
first novel, U nder the Moons o f M ars (later published in
book form as A Princess o f Mars), w as the story o f John
Carter, a V irg in ia gentlem an m ysteriously teleported to
the red planet—k n o w n to the local inhabitants as
“Barsoom.” Soon, C arter is tangling w ith the 15-foot,
four-armed Tharks, the green men o f Mars, sw ord-
w ield in g creatures rid ing huge, eight-legged beasts.
Eventu ally C arter runs into the luscious D ejah T horis,
hum anoid Princess o f Helium . T h ro u gh various eye­
popping adventures across the planet’s bizarre, w arring
empires, Carter restores D ejah to her throne, marries her,
impregnates her. T h e ir plump, first-born “egg” is nearly
ready to. hatch w hen a sudden w h irlw in d o f events
brings Jo h n C arter back to Earth. A n adventure epic o f
nonstop inv entio n and exotic action, U nder the Moons
o f M ars ends in a rush o f unresolved suspense. Breath­
less readers w ailed for a sequel. Burroughs delivered
one, T h e Gods o f Mars, appearing ju st six months after
the first story ended. It w as another explosion o f dag­
gling im agination—strange creatures, hairsbreadth es­
capes, fierce battles, a w elter o f bloodshed, and another
cliff-hangin g clim ax to leave readers gasping. But in be­
tw een this double dose o f M artian extravagance, A ll-
Story published the second w o rk by Mr. Burroughs, a
novel that w ould prove to be even more spectacularly
successful than the first: T a r ta n o f the Apes.
It begins in prologue. Lord and Lady Greystoke are
abandoned on the uninhabited A frican coast by a ship’s
crew o f mutineers. A baby boy is born, the parents die o f
fever and despair, and the child is saved by Kala, an ador­
ing female ape w ho has ju st lost her ow n baby. The “W hite
Skin" boy—named “Targan" in ape lingo—grows into
young manhood w ith his primate family, loved by his
stepmother, hated b y his stepfather, Tublat. Targan’s supe-
24 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
rior intelligence and the knife he finds in the abandoned
cabin o f his parents enable him to defeat the patriarch in a
primal and epiphanic fight to the death:
As the body rolled to the ground T artan o f the A pes
placed his foot upon the neck o f his lifelong enemy and
raising his eyes to the full moon threw back his fierce
young head and voiced the w ild and terrible cry o f his
people.
O ne by one the tribe swung down from their arboreal
retreats and form ed a circle about T a rta n and his van­
quished foe. W h en they had all come T a r ta n turned
toward them.
“I am Targan," he cried. “I am a great killer. Let all
respect T arta n o f the A pes and K ala, his mother. T h ere
be none among you as mighty as
Targan. L et his enemies beware."
The reaction o f All-Story readers to
T artan was virtual frengy. A saga had
begun that would reach every corner
o f the planet. Incredibly, the Munsey
editors turned dow n the second
T a rta n story, T h e Return o f Tarzan,
and it was quickly picked up by Street
& Sm ith for their N ew Story Magazine.
Subsequent sequels over the years
w ent to the highest bidder—Argosy,
Blue Book, T hrilling Adventures—and
the readers followed, increasing when-
Above: Pulp heroes were frequent visitors to dangerous
tropical ports. Writer George Worts specialized in
Asian-Pacific settings.
Opposite: T he early pulp covers were a fa r cry from the
luridly realistic style of the 1930s. T he painting for this
19 13 issue of The Popular is the work of Henry Reuterdahl.
ever the lord o f the jungle made a new appearance. Those
w ho know the character only from the great M GM series
w ith Joh n n y W eissmuller, or its subsequent derivatives,
might be surprised to learn that Burroughs’ creation tran­
scended his prim itive upbringing, becom ing a rather so­
phisticated fellow, com fortable in Paris, London, and Hol­
lywood, a linguist and an airplane p ilo t T h e movies also
ignored the encounters Targan had w ith science-fictional
monsters and lost enclaves o f Crusaders and ancient Ro­
mans.
As a writer, Burroughs was uneven, to say the least His
plots w ere often no more than a piling on o f events. C oin­
cidence followed coincidence w ithout apology. His prose
could at times reach some very ragged patches. Character­
isation tended to be a thin as a page o f manuscript. But
Burroughs had other qualities in abundance—the w ild
imagination, a gift for describing action, a powerful sense
o f m y th Burroughs claimed that his stories came to him as
daydreams—w hat has been termed by Robert Sampson a
“pre-cognitive reverie,” a decidedly in­
tense form o f daydreaming in w hich
Burroughs’ unconscious shaped his
ideas into near-finished form before re­
leasing them to his conscious mind.
H ow ever it all worked, it w orked for
most o f three decades, producing dogens
o f book-length adventures o f Targan
and John Carter o f Mars, as w ell as nu­
merous others—W esterns, the Pellucidar
series, The Land T hat T im e Forgot, the
Venus novels begun in Argosy in 1931.
Burroughs’ gifts waned in the later years,
but his name remained a w atchword for
reading pleasure long past his death in
1950. He made a fortune, the first w riter
to become a corporation, and his California hometown was
renamed Targana in his honor.
Burroughs and his colossal creations w ere followed by
a slew o f w hat would come to be seen as archetypally
“pulpy” w riters and genres. Masked avengers—ubiquitous
in the superhero pulps o f the 1930s—made their earliest
pulp appearances in the stories o f Johnston M cC ulley and
Frank L. Packard. Veteran reporter M cC ulley created
Zorro, skilled swordsman and black-clad crusader against
the repressive Spanish authorities in Old C alifornia Zorro
made his first appearance in a 1 9 1 9 All-Story serial, T h e
Curse o f Capistrano. Canadian Packard’s masked man was
or
S ^ ^ ^ T n TW K F -V M O N TH r 7 i ' - i n rs

f M A RC H
HOMTH-f Ntt FW T
26 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
The Gray Seal,a mysterious crime-fighter by night whose
name derives from the mark or “seal” he places on his v ic­
tims. No one know s that T he G ray Seal is the secret iden­
tity o f Manhattan playboy Jim m ie Dale. Jim m ie/Gray
would be a decided influence on such later avengers as The
Shadow, The Spider, and the Phantom Detective.
Science fiction and fantasy attained new heights o f
popular acclaim in the brilliant stories by a newsman
named Abraham Merritt. His first published fiction was a
short story titled Through the Dragon Glass, a hauntingly
effective tale o f a man w ho discovers a passage through an
ancient Chinese mirror into a bizarre alternative w orld of
both beauty and horror. Longer w orks followed—T he
Moon Pool, T h e Conquest o f the Moon Pool, T h e Face in the
A byss,T he Ship o f Ishtar—most o f them lost-civilization sto­
ries in a tradition pioneered by H. Rider Haggard Merritt’s
w ork was profoundly imagined and written in a distinc­
tive, lyrical prose style His stories had all the compulsive
readability o f Burroughs but w ith additional layers o f mean­
ing, symbolism, and poetic reflection. Merritt affected read­
ers deeply—ten and tw enty years after their first publica­
tion, his stories such as T h e Moon Pool and T h e Ship o f Ishtar
were voted to the top in polls o f all-time favorites.
The W estern w ould become the single genre most
closely identified w ith the pulps. And no w riter was more
closely identified w ith the pulp W estern than M ax Brand.
Brand was actually a pen name—one o f many—belonging
to Frederick Schiller Faust, a tragic poet manque w ho be­
came one o f the most popular and productive—3 0 million
published words, the equivalent o f 5 3 0 books—w riters
w ho ever lived. Professionally speaking, Faust was a
deeply schizophrenic personality. He lavished time and
anguish on the,slow production o f his classically styled
poems, the only w orks for w hich he w illingly took public
credit. His audience for these creations could be counted
by name. He w rote his pulp fiction, conversely, w ith an
almost unconscious ease, as fast as the contemporary me­
chanics o f a typew riter w ould allow, producing reams o f
highly remunerative and sought-after work. He derived no
pleasure from these stories and hid from recognition for
them behind an army o f pseudonyms (Brand, John
Frederick, George Challis, George O w en Baxter, David
Manning, Nicholas Silver, M artin Dexter, Peter H enry
Morland, etc.). The w riter w ho w ould do as much as any­
one to popularize the m ythical dimensions o f the W est­
ern professed to find the actual W est “disgusting” and
wrote most o f his W estern tales amidst the Renaissance
splendors o f his villa near Florence, Italy.
Faust was an aimless, penniless 24-year-old college-
educated poet at loose ends in N ew York C ity w hen he
wangled a letter o f recommendation from the sister o f
Samuel Clemens to Robert Davis at M uncey’s. Davis, w ho
disliked the importuning o f Faust’s elderly patroness, gave
him paper and a plot and dismissed h im Faust stunned
Davis w hen he returned before the end o f the day w ith a
completed professional piece o f fictio n T he story, Conva­
lescence, a p p ea red in the March 1 9 1 7 All-Story, and an ex­
traordinary career was begun. Faust began turning out an
inexhaustible supply o f first-rate pulp fiction, earning
$ 8 ,2 8 1 in the first nine months, an enormous sum o f
money by the standards o f the time. His first W estern, T h e
Untamed, published in serial form beginning w ith the De­
cem ber 1 9 1 8 A ll Story, set the course for much o f his fic­
tion to come. Previously, W estern literature had been con­
cerned w ith an aura o f realism and a historical context.
Faust had no interest in these things. H is W est was a po­
eticized location w ith few reference points to specific
times or locales. He used the idea o f a violent, frontier
A m erica as an almost abstract setting for retellings o f an­
cient epics and classical myths. The hero o f T h e Untamed,
the mysterious youth “W h istlin '" Dan Barry, is explicitly
linked to “the great god Pan." Trailin'uses the story o f O e­
dipus, Pillar Mountain the Theseus myth, and H ired Guns
is a W estern version o f the Iliad. In this w ay w ere Faust’s
W esterns both phonier and grander than earlier stories in
the genre. C haracteristically w hen Faust’s publishers sent
him on a trip out W est to soak up atmosphere, he spent
nearly all his time inside a hotel room, pounding out more
o f his inauthentic and phenomenally popular Westerns.
Faust’s production rate was so high that Western Story
or one o f his other regular markets would print several o f
his stories in a single issue, each under a different pen name.
This, o f course, w as unknow n to the readers, w ho wrote
in to debate the relative artistry o f Faust’s various identi­
ties. H is most fam iliar byline, “Max Brand,” was created
w ith the help o f playw right Sophie Treadwell, w ho ad­
vanced the theory that the successful pseudonym always
consisted o f tw o monosyllables w ith the same vowel
sound in each. Her theory as applied to M ax Brand, was
proven entirely sound.
Faust’s one-man storytelling factory produced not
only W esterns by the hundreds but numerous historical
novels, detective stories, and adventure stories, and count­
less miscellaneous melodramas. H is stories about the noble
 xciting New Serial of Arcli
FRANK RICHARDSO

Arthur
Leo Zayal*

re to the ^ A bove and left: Each week, Argosy

ipas. Rogues offered a new collection of action-
\e Comes an Irish \ % packed stories and serials. H ere are
three typical issues from the t g jo s .
on the Rampage /

SENOR
LATFOO T
pornell Woolrich
C. K.Shaw
Hoffman Price
Other Fiction S ta rs
 F tCTI ON — FACTS — P I C T U R E S

A L L COMPLETE

r for 1Best Title to This Picture (5ee p — ^ ^ 4

 FICTION FACTORIES
Dr. Kildare w ere nearly as popular as his shoot-'em-ups.
Faust had a talent for fast, gripping, straight-ahead narra­
tive that knew few equals. It earned him a great deal o f
money. In the years before the Depression, w hen a huge
pulp readership was shared by only a handful o f maga­
zines, publishers could pay their top w riters as much as
ten cents per word. These rates, plus frequent story sales to
Hollywood, meant a very nice—i f busy—life for Faust.
Looking for a residence conducive to the creation o f epic
poetry, he settled in Italy, buying a villa on the bank o f the
Arno,overlooking the birthplace o f the Renaissance. In the
mornings, he applied a furious hunt-
and-peck technique to an Underwood
perched on a desk that once belonged to
a Benedictine monastery. In the after­
noons, he stretched out in a leather easy
chair, quill pen in hand, and w orked on
poems w ith such titles as Dionysus in
Hades. In the evenings, he taught him self
Greek so as to be able to read Homer in
the original.
Faust was by all accounts a fascinat­
ing, knowledgeable, and generous indi­
vidual. W hen w ar became imminent in
Europe—and market conditions cut his
pulp rates in half—he returned to
America and spent some o f his last
w orking years at the H ollyw ood studios, m aking a large
salary as an indentured screenw riter for W arn er Bros, and
MGM. W hen he died, at the age o f 52, the “King o f the
Pulps” received editorial tributes in a range o f interna­
tional publications, from T h e Infantry Journ al to the Lon­
don Times. Journalist Q uentin Reynolds wrote, “No man
could invent so many plots (not even Balzac) or so crow d a
few thousand words w ith action as Max Brand." Faust's b i­
ographer, Robert Easton, believed the w riter was an exem ­
plar o f his age: “...what Babe Ruth and Red Grange w ere to
sports, Charles Lindbergh to flying, H enry Ford to indus­
try the expression o f an expansive time, w hen horizons
seemed larger and possibilities less limited."
HE PULPS had been evolving at a stately and con­
T servative pace. A fter more than tw o decades, there
were j ust tw o dozen pulp titles in existence. Developments
came much more rapidly in the fast-paced 1920s.T he num­
ber o f titles grew exponentially, the number o f publishers
did the same, and the pulps showed increasing specializa-
29
Below: T he August. t g 2g A ir Stories featured this ethereal
cover painting by Charles Dameron: riflemen on a cliff
shooting down at a passing bi-plane.
Opposite: Railroad Stories was one of the first special interest
pulps. It contained, besides fiction, true tales of railroad
workers and hobos, and photos of notable locomotives.
tion and experimentation. The 1920s
saw slimmer, faster pulps. The old thick
monthlies—some offered more than tw o
hundred pages o f small type—began to
disappear, replaced by a trim 1 28-page
standard issue. C o v e r illu stratio n s
moved aw ay from the muted tones and
quiet poses o f the past; publishers dis­
covered the audience appeal o f bright
primary colors and voluptuous images
o f sex and violence. W here the early
pulps had offered an average of three
serials per issue, the streamlined pulps offered one. Stories
would now become shorter, move faster.The elaborate Vic-
torian prose was on its w ay out, to be replaced by livelier,
more idiomatic w riting (although some pulps would al­
ways retain a special place for purple excesses).
The tw o pioneering pulp houses, Munsey’s and Street
& Smith, continued to dominate the field in the 1920s but
the com petition was arriving in droves, everything from
established publishing empires like Macfadden to hole-in-
the-wall operations whose assets were a registered title
and an armful o f manuscripts.
Significant newcomers to pulp publishing in the late
19 2 0 s and early 1 9 3 0 s included George Delacorte, Jr.’s
Dell Publishing, founded in 1922. Along w ith m ovieand
confession magazines aimed at the w orking classes, Dell
put out such pulps as C u pid’s Diary, Scotland Yard, W ar
Birds (later transformed into T eren ce X. O 'Leary’s W a r
Birds), Public Enemy (later Federal Agent), and the short­
lived super-villain title Doctor Death W illiam Clayton had
a thriving rough-paper chain in the 1920s, his assets in­
30 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S

eluding Ranch Romances, Cow boy Stories, Clues, Strange
T ales,and Astounding Stories, one o f the first science-fiction
magazines. Clayton bought out his partner, ran into unfore­
seen financial difficulties, and w ent bankrupt in early
1933. A A. W y n ’s A ce Magazines produced some o f the
livelier second-rung pulps in the golden age, among them
Secret A gent X, E erie Stories, and T en D etective Aces.
Fawcett, the publishers o f Battle Stories, T riple X, and Star­
tling Detective Adventures, operated o ff the beaten path in
Robbinsdale, Minnesota. O w ners W . H. (Billy) and Roscoe
Faw cett were W orld W ar I veterans and used their ranks
o f captain on appropriate mastheads. The editorial page o f
Battle Stories carried a photo o f a rakish Roscoe in his fly­
ing helmet and goggles. Fiction House was built on no-
nonsense masculine interest magazines—Action Stories,
Air Stories, Wings,Fight Stories. It was founded by tw o pulp
“road men "Jack Kelly and Jack Glenister, w ho pooled their
money and rented a tiny office in the shabby neighbor­
hood west o f Penn Station. T heir A ir Stories, about flying
adventures o f all sorts, and Fight Stories, about boxing, were
pioneering and successful examples o f the narrow ly spe­
cialised pulps.
Narrow interest titles were a fatal obsession w ith pub­
lisher Harold Hersey, the king of the laughably esoteric pulp.
A former boy wonder editor at Street & Smith and Clayton,
Hersey started his ow n company in the 1920s, and he was
soon giving birth to as many new titles as the big, established
publishing houses. However, unlike the offspring o f the big
houses, almost none o f Hersey’s titles ever grew old—many,
in fact, expired after a single issue. Hersey was what you call
an “idea man," and the problem was that most o f his ideas
were no good. He came up w ith the pulp called Strange Sui­
cides, featuring stories about people w ho killed themselves.
Lucky Stories took the opposite perspective, upbeat tales o f
people w ho thought life was swelL The first issue included
a true story about ex-President W ilson and how he believed
in luck, a story about how college students were supersti­
tious, and a novelette titled A Murderer's Lucky Break. The
cover urged, “Buy this Magazine for Good L u ck.. .” The first
issue was also the last. Another one-shot was Fire Fighters,
w ith nothing but stories about putting out fires. Speed Sto­
ries offered fiction containing fast-moving vehicles. Then
cam s M edical Horror Stories, a combination o f light reading
and muckraking, w ith its exposes o f medical quackery and
bogus elixirs. Since a large percentage o f pulp sales hap­
pened at drugstore newsstands, M edical Horror Stories was
considered biting the hand that fed, and Hersey caught hell
from numerous quack-druggists. He quickly put the
w histleblow ing magazine out o f its misery. Hersey’s Court­
room Stones debuted w ith a lengthy narrative retelling o f

From Harold Hersey’s

Courtroom Stories,
The Trial o f Oscar
Wilde.

ft n R is M S

The Trial of Oscar Wilde

By ROBERT W. SNEDDON

The name of Oscar Wilde is surrounded by an aura of gossip, half-

truths, bitter memories—and at the same time ive recognize him
as the supreme critic of all the ages. This gripping true story
 FICTION FACTORIES
T he Trial of Oscar W ilde.Thecover painting depictedama-
tronly Oscar under cross-examination (“W ild e admitted his
friendship w ith Fred Atkins, bookmaker’s clerk ‘After
lunch,’ asked counsel, ‘did you suggest he should have his
hair curled?”’). This magazine was a relative hit, lasting sev­
eral issues. Even Hersey’s conventional genre magazines
could be a bit “o ff’ as in the case o f his ambiguously titled fort­
nightly, Twice a Month Love. Typical o f his luckless instincts,
Hersey chose for his company colophon the same ancient
broken-cross design adopted by the Na^is.
The dawn o f the Great Depression saw the start o f tw o
pulp houses that soon owned huge shares o f the cheap fic­
tion market. Standard Publications was begun by fiat. A
magazine distributor, the American N ews Company, lost
their biggest client, Street & Smith, and encouraged 25-
year-old Ned L. Pines to start a new line o f pulps for them
to distribute. Pines turned the editorial reins over to a
young Munsey veteran, Leo Margulies, an aggressive char­
acter w ith bluntly commercial instincts. Standard—also
know n as Beacon and Better Publications—had such
quintessential pulp titles as T h e Phantom Detective, Star­
tling Stories, and C aptain Future. T h ey w ere particularly
know n for their signature faith in the word thrilling as a
component in a magazine title, namely: Thrilling Detective,
Thrilling Love, Thrilling Western, Thrilling Mystery, T hrill­
ing Adventures, T hrilling Spy Stories, Thrilling Wonder
Stories, and Thrilling Ranch Stories.
Popular Publications was founded in 1 9 3 0 by H enry
Steeger and Harold Goldsmith. Borrow ing $ 5 ,0 0 0 each,
they came out w ith four titles: Battle Aces, Gang World,
Detective Action Stories, and W estern Rangers. Ten years
later, Popular was the biggest all-pulp publisher in the
world. Goldsmith had come from the financial department
at A. A. W y n ’s company. Steeger, a young Princeton gradu­
ate, did a two-year apprenticeship at Dell.“W e started w ith
four titles w ith the hope that at least one would be a suc­
cess," Steeger recalled for me. “And that w as w hat hap­
pened. O nly the air book sold. Things w ere uncertain for a
long while. W e were always slipping out o f the office to
hide from creditors. Then, in our second year in business
w e came out w ith Dime Detective and that hit. That one
was selling 30 0 ,0 0 0 copies for us and was very profitable.
In the beginning, I did everything that had to be done—
editor, art director, ideas for new books. W e had Edith
Symes, an editor w ho had been w ith Dell, helping—she
later married Steve Fisher—and that was about it for the
first year or so. I found the stories and w hen w e had the
31
A dozen years and
more after the
Armistice, pulp
readers were still
enjoying fiction about
the war. These covers
from Over the Top
and W ar Stories show
similarly agonizing
images from No-Man's-
Land.
series characters—The Spider, Operator #5—I came up
w ith many o f the storylines. I also had a great deal to do
w ith the choice o f artists and covers for the magazines we
did.” Steeger was the first publisher to apply a kind o f sci­
entific principle to the choosing o f cover illustrations, de­
term ining w hat w ere the consistently best-selling color
schemes (red, yellow, black for men’s magazines; blue and
green for wom en’s). “Most o f our sales w ere on the news­
stand, little subscription,” Steeger explained. “The covers
w ere our entire advertising campaign, our sales pitch.
There was a lot o f com petition out there and you had just
a few seconds to catch someone’s eye, so the covers had to
do an effective jo b in a hurry.” Popular had some o f the pulp
era’s best and most distinctive magazines. Dime D etective
was second only to Black M ask in the quality o f its private-
eye stories. T h e Spider and Operator # 5 brought an adult
perspective and visceral action to the otherwise juvenile
“hero" genre. Dime Mystery, Terror Tales, and Horror Sto­
ries were the flagships o f a memorably bizarre Steeger-cre-
ated pulp genre know n to infam y as “W eird Menace."
Steeger was certainly one o f the most creative and compe­
tent figures in the magazine business. In less than five years,
Popular became the leading publisher in the field, w ith a
combined circulation o f 1,500,000 per month. As it grew,
the company would eventually encompass some o f its
most notable competition, taking control o f such landmark
titles as A dventure, Black Mask, and that venerable and
groundbreaking all-fiction creation o f Frank Munsey’s,
Argosy. T h e company that invented pulp magazines w ent
out o f business in 1942.
 f t

I Iff Prowl

*
‘•mice

Maefadden Publications entered

the ‘weird fiction' field with the
short-lived Ghost Stories.
 Empire o f the
Necromancers

H O R R O R AN D FA N T A SY PULPS

I f you have an idea w hich you have considered too bizarre to

write, too w eird or strange, let us see it.

— N o t ic e to W r it e r s

T he T h r il l B o o k

HE F IR S T M A G A Z IN E to be devoted to tales o f

T horror and the fantastic appeared on newsstands in

February 1 9 1 9 .T h e Thrill Book, published by Street & Smith,
was an inelegant-looking creation, done in the physical for­
mat o f the dying dime novels, and at 4 8 pages was less than
half the siz;e o f the average pulp But it arrived full o f purpose
and potential. The editor, 26-year-old Harold Hersey, had
detailed his hopes and needs for the new magazine in a two-
page “Notice to W riters"

W e are strongly desirous o f securing strange, bizarre,

occult, mysterious tales—novelettes o f ten thousand words
34 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
containing mystic happenings, w eird adventures, feats of
leger-de-main, spiritualism, et cetera . . . I f w e w ere to give
you a formula w e would say—sum up the demands o f all
other magazines, and then give us good stories which not
one o f them would take because o f their odd qualities and
harrowing nature.
The initial offerings w ere reasonably odd i f not par­
ticularly harrowing or good The lead story came from the
Popular -Magazine slush pile. W o lf o f the Steppes was the
first published fiction by G reye La Spina, the only female
newspaper photographer in N ew Y ork A w kw ardly told
in a series o f flashbacks w ithin flashbacks, the story con­
cerns an elderly doctor’s rescue o f a terrified young Rus­
sian woman. She has escaped from her nemesis, Serge
Vassilovich, a m agician-w erew olf w ith unusually hairy
eyebrows and long forefingers. Old Dr. Greeley and his
mystical friend Dr. Thomas Connors lay a trap for Serge,
killing him and then returning him to his lupine form to
beat a murder rap. T h e Ivory Hunters by W ill Gage Carey
was comical nonsense about lost sailors and baseball-play­
ing, cannibalistic Eskimos. There w ere tw o opening in­
stallments o f outlandish serials. J. Hampton Bishop’s In the
Shadow o f Race was derived from Haggard by w ay o f
Burroughs w ith its A frican explorers, blonde jungle god­
dess, and trained apes. J. C. Kofoed’s T h e Jew eled Ibis was a
ludicrously complicated tale o f Egyptian spells and sleep­
ing priestesses. Another short fiction, T h e M an W ho Met
Himself, by Donovan Bayley, detailed a battle o f w its be­
tween a drunk and his naked subliminal self A n editorial,
a pair o f poems, and some factual odds and ends (H alted by
Ghosts on W ay to W ork, Finds Q ueer Race in Malay, Says
Earth Is on W ane, etc.) rounded out the historic first issue.
The next seven offered similar collections o f second-rate
thrills. Hersey w as fired at that point, replaced by Ronald
Oliphant, and the magazine grew to conventional pulp
siz,e and began to publish some recognisable names o f the
time—H. Bedford-Jones, T od Robbins, Murray Leinster—
along w ith the nonentities. A nother eight issues were
filled w ith an indiscrim inate m ix o f outre fiction and
swashbuckling adventure. Having failed to find a sizable
readership or a coherent editorial policy, T h e T hrill Book
was canceled abruptly after its 16th appearance, a little
more than seven months after its debut
The next pulp to specialise in the supernatural would
have a considerably longer life—over 30 years, 2 7 9 issues—
and published some o f the best w ork in the genre—a sub­
stantial portion, in fact, o f the all-time greatest w ork in the
history o f weird and fantastic literature. A Chicago-based,
shakily financed monthly, W eird Tales was the primary—
and at the time the only—forum for the era’s masters o f the
macabre. In its pages, readers confronted the terrifying, the
bizarre, the spectacular, and the perverse O ne more refuta­
tion o f the stereotypical image o f “pulp” as predictable for­
mula, W eird Tales was unique, complex, daring.
The magazine was created by Jacob Clark
Henneberger, publisher o f College Humor magazine, a life­
long Edgar Allan Poe enthusiast, and an idealist: “I must
confess that the main motive in establishing W eird Tales
was to give the w riter free rein to express his innermost
feelings in a manner befitting great literature.” T he cover
story for the first issue was O oze by A nthony M Rud, an
“extraordinary novelette" concerning the eating habits of
a giant amoeba in the deep South—not quite great litera­
ture yet. But a w riter’s free rein was certainly evidenced in
the notorious C. M Eddy story T h e Loved Dead, w ith its
necrophiliac narrator “O ne morning Mr. Gresham came
much earlier than usual—came to find me stretched out
upon a cold slab deep in ghoulish slumber, my arms
wrapped around the stark stiff, naked body o f a fetid
corpse" Actually, most o f the early stories, chosen by edi­
tor Edw in Baird, w ere tame and old-fashioned. Things
began to improve rapidly w hen Baird was replaced by his
assistant, Farnsworth W right, a man o f erudition and lit­
erary insight and adventurousness. Born in 1888, W right
had served as a French interpreter in the U.S. A rm y dur­
ing W orld W ar LHe contracted a case o f sleeping sickness,
w hich developed into the relentlessly debilitating
Parkinson’s disease. T h e constant shaking caused by the
disease eventually left him unable to sign his name w ith ­
out using both hands. Some visitors to the W eird Tales of­
fice w ere taken aback at their first meeting w ith W right,
im agining his trem bling was the result o f reading too
many scary stories. W righ t’s tastes in fantastic fiction were
both catholic and inspired. T h e stories he bought ranged
across a limitless spectrum o f the imaginary, from folkloric
tales o f vampires and w erewolves to galactic science fic-
Opposite: W eird Tales, begun in 1 9 2 3 , quickly became and
remains the greatest of all horror and fantasy publications.
T he vampiric flapper pictured here is the work of Margaret
Brundage.
36 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
tion, historical speculations, arabesque fantasies, psycho-
pathic memoirs, ghost stories, exotic adventures, sword-
and-sorcery epics. Although he continually tried to find
material he hoped would slow the magazine’s perennial
slide toward financial ruin (sales w ere seldom much above
the break-even point), W righ t found it difficult i f not im ­
possible to reject a story simply because it was “taboo" or
not “commercial." In turn, most contributors to the maga­
zine held W righ t in the highest esteem “He was a great
man, a great editor,” says Jack W illiamson. “He struggled
nobly in the face o f his physical infirm ities and really
loved literature and the fantastic. He didn’t look down on
the pulps, and in fact his dream project was a ‘W righ t’s
Edition’ o f Shakespeare in pulp format, but he only got as
far as one volume, w ith illustrations by Virgil Finley.”
Highlights from the magazine during W righ t’s tenure
Weird Tales, April 1 9 3 4 .
would fill many thick volumes and have done so: Jum bee,
a story o f voodoo in the Caribbean by Henry S.
W hitehead, the Archdeacon o f the Episcopal Church in
the Virgin Islands; A rthur J. Burks’ great ghost story T he
Ghosts o f Steam boat Coulee; Edmond Hamilton’s three-part
epic Across Space, in w hich Martians attempt to pull the
Earth out o f its orbir, Mive, by Carl Jacobi, a tale o f giant
carnivorous butterflies; Mary Elizabeth Counselman’s
stunning short-short T h ree M arked Pennies; T h e W erew olf
o f Ponkert, by H. W arner Munro, told in the voice o f the
tortured title character; N ictzin Dyalhis’ T h e Sea Witch, a
haunting story o f an old man’s return to youth; T h e Horror
on the Links, the first o f Seabury Quinn's 9 3 stories about
French occult detective Jules de Grandin. From his home
base in Harrisonville, N ew Jersey, the Poirot-ish de
Grandin battled the gamut o f supernatural bad guys—
mummies, werewolves, ghosts, zombies,a surprising num­
ber o f them operating in the otherwise quiet N ew Jersey
town. The stories featured breakneck action and lots o f
k in k y sexuality and w ere among the readers’ favorites.
There w ere grand-scale serials in the tradition o f
Burroughs and A. Merritt: O tis A delbert Kline’s Tam a,
Son o f the Tiger, Thom as Kelley’s I Found Cleopatra, Jack
W illiam son’s Golden Blood. The last was a superb fantasy-
adventure about a soldier o f fortune (character based on
pulp scribe E. H offmann Price) and a lost civ ilization in
the Arabian sands (atmosphere courtesy o f T. E. Lawrence’s
Revolt in the D esert), and it inspired one o f the magazine’s
best cover illustrations, by J. A llen St. John. W rig h t wrote
breathlessly o f it to W illiam son: “that colossal golden
tiger loom ing gigantic against the s k y ... and in the fore­
ground Price and Fouad sitting astride their w hite cam­
els and looking quite L illiputian by com parison... W hat
a gorgeous splash o f color—the golden-yellow tiger, the
v ivid green o f Vekyra’s robe and the intense crim son o f
M alikar’s garment. Allah!"
It could be said w ith only slight exaggeration that any
issue ofW eird Tales from the mid-’20s to the mid-’30s con­
stituted a “Best O P collection, so frequently did W righ t’s
editorial choices strike gold.
Although it was considered a difficult market to crack,
and W righ t cultivated a group o f regular contributors, he
had no predisposition against unpedigreed talent, and
many a neophyte w riter made his or her first sale to the
(even then) legendary magazine. E. Hoffmann Price, W eird
Tales regular and W righ t’s friend and fellow Oriental-rug
enthusiast, recalled: “W right's enthusiasm upon getting a

A C. L. (Catherine Lucille) Moore
story for Weird Tales.
Another weird and tintiling tale about Northwest Smith, by the author
o f "Shambleau"—an amazing story o f ultimate horror
new name from the slush pile was beautiful to see. And
the time, I think in the early thirties, when I bounced into
C hicago he was fairly babbling and stuttering, he had no
time to greet me. He handed me C. L. Moore’s first manu­
script and paced the floor and muttered as I read, and then
he closed shop and declared it 'C. L. Moore Day.”' The slush
pile discovery was Sham bleau, the first o f the Northwest
Smith stories. The outlaw-spaceman hero rescues a girl
from a Martian mob but soon discovers she is not a girl at
all but a Shambleau, a bizarre female monster. Moore’s
w riting was richly atmospheric, full o f surreal imagery
and a grim nihilism. The Sm ith stories took the
Burroughsian vision o f interplanetary adventure—space­
ships and swords—and added in-depth characterisation
and dark poetry. It was an astonishing series. Nearly, as
good were Moore's six tales o f Jirel o f Joiry, a sw ashbuck­
ling swordswoman in an imaginary medieval world o f
37
“Men do not come here uninvited—and live.”
black magic. Both Sm ith and Jirel were so popular w ith
readers that they demanded the pair meet. Moore obliged
w ith Quest o f the Starston ein the Novem ber 1 9 3 7 W eird
Tales. It was not at first w idely know n that C: L. Moore’s
initials stood for Catherine Lucille. A fan letter from an­
other w riter o f fantasy fiction, Henry Kuttner, was ad­
dressed to “Mr.” Moore. The confusion was sorted out and
the tw o w riters w ere married.
Among W rig h t’s other notable discoveries was a
youthful Tennessee W illiam s, whose first published story,
T h e V engeance o f Nitocris, appeared in the August 1928
W eird Tales. In this short story about ancient Egypt, a deca­
dent pharaoh commits an angry-desecration o f the altar o f
Osiris and is torn to pieces by the outraged Theban citi­
zenry. His sister, the new Queen Nitocris, plots an elabo­
rate and satisfying but suicidal revenge. A fter much car­
nage, the final paragraph is poignant:.
38 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
T herefore, upon h er en tran ce into th e p a la ce she
ordered her slaves to fill instantly her boudoir w ith hot
and smoking ashes. W h en this had been done, she went
to the room, en tered it, closed the door and locked it
securely, and then flu n g h erself dow n upon a couch in
the cen ter o f the room. In a short tim e th e scorching
heat and the suffocating thick fum es o f th e smoke
overpow ered her. O nly her beautiful dead body re­
m ained fo r th e hands o f th e mob.
Not bad for a 14-year-old.
T h e January 1 9 3 5 issue o f W T included the profes­
sional debut o f another young author, Robert Bloch. A de­
voted reader o f the magazine since the age o f ten, Bloch
was a mainstay o f the letters column, called T h e Eyrie, and
as a m em ber o f the so-called Lovecraft C ircle—more
about that in a moment—corresponded w ith many o f the
magazine’s leading contributors. “I saw m y first copy o f
W eird Tales in August 1927,” Bloch recalls,“and its pages
opened up a w hole new w orld for m e ... It became a sort
o f nontheological Book o f Revelation. T h e sale o f m y first
story to the magazine w as the most exciting event in my
17-year-old life.” Bloch’s shocking T h e
Feast in the A b b e y was follow ed by 66
other stories for W eird T ales—among
them, such classics as Yours Truly, Ja c k
the Ripper, Enoch, and T h e Skull o f the
M arquis de Sade—all distinguished by
the author’s mordant w it and ironic
prose style.
Three w riters in particular have
come to represent the great and unique
qualities o f W eird Tales. T h ey are the
holy trin ity o f W T : H. P. Lovecraft,
Clark A shton Sm ith, and Robert E.
Above: Despite the magazine's often grim and gruesome
contents, W eird Tales' most frequent cover artist Margaret
Brundage preferred the erotic to the horrific. H er distinctive
cover art was drawn with pastels.
Opposite: H. P. Lovecraft in the t g jo s .
Howard. Each man w ould have a relatively short w rit­
ing career—tw o w ould die untim ely deaths—and each
w ould produce a body o f w o rk o f stunning originality
and im aginative brilliance.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born on August 20,
1890, in Providence, Rhode Island. T h e Lovecrafts were
an U sher-like clan o f crum bling aristocrats, touched by
madness and consumed by eccentricity. H. P.’s father was
institutionalized, and his mother was neurotically ob­
sessed w ith keeping her son from contact w ith the outside
world. “I was very peculiar,” he w rote o f his younger self
T h e isolated child became a precocious reader in his
grandfather’s old library, soaking up the lore in musty vol­
umes on Greco-Roman mythology, the mysterious East,
and colonial N ew England. He adored the stories o f Edgar
Allan Poe, Jules Verne, and, later, Lord Dunsany, the Brit­
ish peer and fantast w ho w rote o f imaginary worlds, com­
plete w ith their ow n gods and myths. In his late 20s, still
reclusive and by conventional standards “peculiar,”
Lovecraft began w riting fantasy stories and sketches for
amateur publications. These came to the attention o f
Henneberger, W eird Tales' founder, and he solicited sub­
missions from the Rhode Island hermit. T h e han dw rit­
ten manuscripts Lovecraft sent in w ere dismissed by edi­
tor E d w in Baird but the publisher
overruled him. T h e Lovecraft byline
appeared in W eird T ales for the first
time in the O ctober 1 9 2 3 issue, accom­
panying a short story titled Dagon, an
exercise in sheer h ysteria
Henneberger saw clearly the man’s
enormous talent. Aside from buying
everything Lovecraft initially subm it­
ted, the publisher hired him to ghost­
w rite a story for W eird Tales' most fa­
mous contributor, Harry Houdini.
W ritten in a tongue-in-cheek but still
hair-raising style, Imprisoned with the
Pharaohs was finished, lost, and then
w ritten again from scratch on
Lovecraft’s w edding night. “W h en I buckled dow n to the
under-the-pyramid stuff,” he joked to a correspondent, “I
let m yself loose and coughed up some o f the most name­
less, slithering, unmentionable H O R R O R that ever stalked
cloven-hoofed through the tenebrous and necrophagous
abysses o f elder night." Lovecraft’s marriage, perhaps need­
less to say, did not last long.
Above: Strange Talcs was Clayton's
answer to W eird Tales. Editor
Harry Bates used many of the W T
regulars, paying them more money,
more frequently.

Right: The November 1 9 3 5 W eird

Tales featured one of the popular
Conan stories by Robert E.
Howard. One of the magazine’s most
important regular contributors,
Howard ended his life abruptly at
the age 0/ 3 0 .
 EMPIRE OF T H E
He hit his stride in the March 1 9 2 4 issue w ith T h e Rats
in the W alls, the first o f his now-classic tales o f skin-crawl­
ing horror. The final, metrical sentence is a clear echo o f Poe:
T hey must know it was the rats; the slithering scurrying
rats whose scam pering will never let m e sleep; the daemon
rats that race behind the paddin g in this room and beckon
me down to greater horrors than l have ever known; the
rats they can never hear; the rats, the rats in the walls.
Lovecraft’s greatest work belongs to an unofficial story cycle
that has come to be know n as “The Cthulhu Mythos” Re­
shaping and expanding on ideas culled from the w ritings
o f Dunsany, A rthur Machen, and Robert W . Chambers,
Lovecraft created a series offictions that, he wrote,“are based
on the fundamental lore or legend that this w orld was in­
habited at one time by another race who, in practicing black
magic, lost their foothold and were expelled, yet live on out­
side ever ready to take possession, o f this earth again."
Lovecraft’s exiled beings, the A ncient Ones, w ith such
names as Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, Yog-Sothoth, continually
and horrifically return to Earth w ith the assistance o f igno­
rant or evil mortals. Their bios and the secrets o f the planet’s
dread early history are contained in the mouldering pages
o f the few remaining copies o f the mad A rab Abdul
Alha^red’s ancient volume T h e Necronomicon. The first in­
stallment in the Mythos, T h e Call o f Cthulhu (W T , Febru­
ary 19 28) is eerie enough but distanced by a series o f narra­
tive frames. T h e Dunwich Horror, published in April 1929,
has a more direct impact, w ith its rampaging “teratologically
fabulous" monsters. The story was inspired in part by a trip
Lovecraft took to western Massachusetts in the area o f Athol,
w hich he transformed into the infernal Cold Spring Glen,
home to the “repellently decadent" Whateleys. The theme
o f death and rebirth, the nasty nativity and crucifixion o f
the Yog-Sothoth-fathered creature, can be read as an outra­
geous remake o f Christian myth. The story cycle continued
w ith T he W hisperer in Darkness, T he Shadow over Innsmouth,
A t the Mountains o f Madness, T h e H aunter o f the D ark (in
w hich he kills o ff his real-life correspondent and acolyte
Robert Bloch), and a half-do7,en other loosely connected
nightmares.
Lovecraft affected a dispassionate attitude toward the
supernatural and denied any personal, psychological im­
pulse for his work. T o be sure, much o f the terrifying effec­
tiveness o f his fiction comes from skilled storytelling.
Lovecraft cleverly gave the god-awful events a heightened
NECROMANCERS 41
sense o f reality by m aking many o f his narrators or pro­
tagonists sober-sided rationalists—professional men or aca­
dem ics from the distinguished M iskatonic University,
home to one o f the hideous extant Necronomicons. W hen
people such as these bear witness, the monstrous happen­
ings must be true. And in the M ythos stories, Lovecraft in­
stills a disturbing afterglow—w hatever the conclusion of
an individual story, the reader realises that the foul A n­
cient Ones are still out there somewhere, w aiting to return.
However, regardless o f these and other entertainer’s calcu­
lations, the real pow er in Lovecraft’s w ork doubtless came
from a deeper source. M any o f the horrific concepts and the
grotesque imagery in the stories Lovecraft witnessed in his
dreams, and the continuing themes o f madness and famil­
ial decay w ere obviously matters o f personal concern for
the writer.
A fter the end o f his b rie f marriage and “period o f ex­
ile,” as he called his wedded stay in Brooklyn, N ew York,
Lovecraft returned to the fam ily home in Providence,
Rhode Island, forever. He resided w ith his tw o elderly
aunts, his living expenses barely met by a small inheritance
and the pittance he made from the sale o f his pulp stories.
He had few acquaintances and no further intimate contacts
w ith women. But Lovecraft was an obsessive letter-writer,
and formed an epistolary relationship w ith a large net­
w o rk o f W eird T ales fans and fellow writers, including
August Derleth, E. Hoffmann Price, H enry W hitehead,
Clark A shton Sm ith, Robert Howard, Bernard Austin
D w yer, J. Vernon Shea—the Lovecraft Circle, as it was
k n o w n Depending on the correspondent, his letters could
be acidulous or sweet. He encouraged many an aspiring
w riter and helped the talented ones break into print, in­
cluding a teenaged Robert Bloch
O n March 15, 1937, the 46-year-old Lovecraft died
from intestinal cancer and Bright’s disease A t the time o f his
death, Lovecraft was little know n beyond the readership o f
the “tasteless” W eird Tales, and his passing w ent unnoticed
by the media and the literary establishment. O nly many
years later, w ith countless worldw ide republications and
translations o f his work, did he come to be seen as the great­
est w riter o f horror stories since Edgar Allan Poe.
IKE L O V E C R A F T , C lark A shton Sm ith w as a
L hermetic personality and ill at ease in the 20th cen­
tury. He lived most o f his life w ith his parents in a primitive
cabin in rural Auburn, California, near the gold mines o f
Placer County. In this unlikely region, the self-educated
Clark Ashton Smith, E. Hoffmann Price, Edmond Hamilton,
Jack Williamson, and Monte Lindsley, in Auburn,
California, 1 9 4 0 .
Smith became a highly regarded poet o f fin de siecle tradi-
tional verse His first book o f poetry, T h e St ar'T reader and
O ther Poems, was published in 1 9 1 2 w hen he was 19. It
was not until the late 1920s, after a strangely affecting
experience in the Donner Pass in the Sierras, that Sm ith
began to w rite his otherworldly fiction. For the next doz,en
years or so, he became a regular and acclaimed contributor
to W eird Tales and to the handful o f pulps dedicated to
science fiction and fantasy.
Most o f Sm ith’s 1 1 0 stories w ere set in one o f four
w holly imagined earthly locales: Zothique, the last barely
habitable continent in a fading future w here magic has
replaced science; Poseidonis, one o f the isles o f doomed
Atlantis; medieval Averoigne; and the prehistoric polar
continent o f Hyperborea. In addition, there w ere several
jaunts to the extra-terrestrial settings o f Mars and planet
Xiccarph. Sm ith could w rite conventional horror-show
fiction, and he created some o f the most grotesque and un­
settling beasts in the literature. T h e Vaults o f Yoh'Vombis
(W T, May 1932), for instance, an electrifying tale o f a
group o f archaeologists encountering leechlike, skull­
sucking monsters in an aeon-deserted M artian catacomb,
is pure scream-out-loud entertainment. But his most char­
acteristic and singular w o rk w as com plex, profound,
haunted by specters o f loss and regret. H is settings are
often w orlds on the eve o f destruction, his dying-race
characters “grow n hopeless o f all but o bliv ion " T h e ma­
levolent and pow erful w izards and necromancers w ho
figure in many o f the tales are at the end o f their reign,
resigned and melancholic. T h ere is M alygris, the m agi­
cian o f T h e Last Incantation, w hose reviving o f the long-
dead girl he loved in his youth is a soul-shattering disas­
ter—“He could believe no longer in love or youth or
beauty, and even the memory o f these things was a dubi-
table mirage, a thing that m ight or might not have been.”
In T h e M aze o f M aal D w eb, a tour de force o f compact
im agining and descriptive power, a valiant young man
o f X iccarph pursues his kidnapped lover to the danger­
ous labyrinth o f a tyrant-wizard. In a stunning climax, the
brave hero is suddenly, h orribly defeated and the per­
spective abruptly sw itches to evil Maal D w eb himself,
rueful and alone w ith his metal automatons: “A nd it may
have been that there w ere times w hen he w earied a little
 EMPI RE OF T H E
even o f this, and preferred the silence o f the petrified
women, or the muteness o f the beasts that could no longer
call themselves men" N ostalgia and psychic pain haunt
another o f Sm ith’s m asterworks, T h e E m pire o f th e N ec­
romancers, arguably his greatest story. M matmuor and
Sodosma, tw o black magicians capable o f raising the
dead, attempt to create their ow n kingdom from the de­
ceased citizens o f a c ity doomed by plague. T h e corrupt
w izards succeed, filling their kingdom w ith a populace
of resurrected skeletons and plague-scarred corpses. But
the dead, longing to return to their interrupted sleep, rebel
and the necromancers are given their ju st desserts:
Hestaiyon lifted the great sword and struck o ff the head of
Mmatmuor and the head o f Sodosma, each with a single
blow. Then, as had been directed, he quartered the
remains with mighty strokes. A n d the necromancers gave
up their unclean lives, and lay supine, without movement,
adding a deeper red to the rose and a brighter hue to the
sad purple o f their couches.
Sm ith had the poet’s love o f rare words and elaborate
imagery. His best w ork has a narcotic, incantatory effect
on the reader. “Take one step across the threshold o f his sto­
ries," Ray Bradbury has w ritten,“and you plunge into color,
sound, taste, smell, and texture—into language.” Sm ith v ir­
tually ceased w riting fiction after 1937. He occupied him ­
self w ith other things, including the carving o f grotesque
sculptures, now highly priced by collectors. He married at
Munsey's Fantastic
Novels was made up
of decades-old serials
originally printed in
Argosy and All-
Story. T he issue for
January 1 9 4 1 had a
cover by Virgil Finlay,
best known for his
interior illustrations in
Weird Tales.
NECROMANCERS 43
the age o f 61, but continued to lead a relatively isolated life
in the backwoods o f California, and died there in 1961
W h y he gave up w riting has never been explained.
R
O B E R T E. H O W A R D , the third member o f the
r W eird Tales triumvirate, wrote horror and fantastic
fiction in a variety o f styles, some o f it clearly in homage to
Lovecraft, but the m ajority o f his w ork belonged to the
genre o f heroic fantasy, now generally referred to as sword -
and-sorcery. T he style derived in part from the interplan­
etary romances o f Edgar Rice Burroughs, the exotic and
supernatural-tinged adventure stories o f Talbot Mundy,
and the historical tales o f Mongol barbarians by Harold
Lamb. Howard’s stories w ere intensely imagined, action-
packed, blood-drenched epics, w ritten in a grand, vivid
muscular prose that fairly leapt o ff the page He created a
number o f invincible, pitiless warrior-heroes: Bran Mak
Morn, leader o f the Caledonian Piets against the legions o f
ancient Rome, Solomon Kane, an Elizabethan Puritan, bat
tling savagery and the supernatural in darkest Africa; Kull,
a king in ancient Atlantis; and his most famous and success­
ful creation, Conan, the barbarian adventurer. Conan lived
in the H yborian Age o f some 12,000 years ago, a time o f
magic and monsters, spectacular violence, and exclusively
voluptuous women. There were 17 Conan stories o f vari­
ous lengths published in W eird Tales, and Howard devel­
oped the series in non-chronological order, taking the char­
acter back and forth from youth to middle age, and through
various forms o f employment, including mercenary, thief,
pirate, and king.
Howard claimed to have based Conan on various
roughnecks he encountered in his Texas homeland, but
there w as psychic autobiography involved as w ell—in
dreams Howard recurringly saw him self as an ancient bar­
barian—and the author’s passionate b elief in his material
gives the Conan stories their undeniable v ivacity and
force. In Queen o f the Black Coast, drifting on a dark poison
river in search o f a treasure-laden lost city, an unusually
loquacious Conan states his life’s philosophy, and defines
the character's wish-fulfillm ent appeal:
“Let me live deep w hile I live: let me know the rich juices
o f red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot
em brace o f w hite arms, and the m ad exultation o f battle
when the blue blades flam e and crimson, and la m
content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood
G olden B lood
 EMPIRE OF T H E
over questions o f reality and illusion. I know this: if life is
an illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus,
the illusion is real to me. I live. I burn with life, I love, I
slay, and am content."
Robert Ervin Howard w as born in 1 9 0 6 in the small
Texas tow n o f Peaster. W h en Robert w as nine, the family
moved to Cross Plains, w here he lived w ith his mother and
father for the rest o f his life. He had been interested in w rit­
ing from a very early age and was greatly inspired by
books o f history and W estern lore and the stories in A d ­
venture magazine. Spear and Fang, his first sale to W eird
Tales, was printed in the issue for Ju ly 192 5 , and from
1 9 2 8 his byline appeared in the magazine an average o f
eight times a year. A lthough W eird T ales was his most
sympathetic market, H ow ard—unlike Lovecraft
Sm ith—considered him self a professional pulp w riter and
in addition to his fantastic material he w rote and sold ad­
venture, W estern, detective, and sports stories.
Howard grew up to be a large, strong young man and
indulged in the usual masculine rites o f hunting, fishing,
and drinking, but he clearly stood apart from the simple
farmers and small-town mentalities o f Cross Plains. Many
considered the moody, inw ard w riter for suspect pulp
magazines to be—in one resident’s term—“a weirdie.’’ As
Howard once wrote, “It is no light thing to enter into a pro­
fession absolutely foreign to the people among w hich one’s
lot is cast ” His love life—or lack o f it—has been the subject
o f much speculation, and Howard w as know n to have
been devoted to his dom ineering mother to an unusual
degree. He was prone to bouts o f despairing self-reflection
and spoke o f suicide on a number o f occasions. Depression
did not slow his productivity, however, and from his bat­
tered Underwood flow ed thousands o f pages o f fiction,
verse, and correspondence.
In the spring o f 1936, Mrs. Howard became gravely
ill. O n the morning of June 1 l.after a sleepless night at his
comatose mother’s bedside, Robert w as informed that she
would never recover. A t the typew riter in his w orkroom
he w rote some lines o f poetry, then w ent outside to the
family’s '31 Chevrolet sedan. From the glove compartment.
Opposite: ‘ What a gorgeous splash of color," wrote W eird
Tales editor Farnsworth Wright of this J. Allen St. John cover
painting. "The golden yellow tiger, the vivid green of Vekyra's
robe and intense crimson of M alikar’s garment. Allah!"
NECROMANCERS 45
he took out a Colt .380 he had borrowed from a friend,
thumbed the safety, placed the barrel in his mouth, and
pulled the trigger.
Jack Scott, a young Cross Plains reporter and an ac­
quaintance o f Robert’s, arrived at the Howard house a
short time later. He recalled for me w hat happened next:
It was a news story and I was running a new spaper here
and I was a stringer for A ssociated Press. I went down
and the yard was filling with people already. Robert was
sitting in the front seat o f the car and h e’d blown his
brains out. I was standing in the yard w hen the J P —the
Ju stice o f the Peace—cam e out o f the house and called me
in, said, ‘ I want to ask you something." T h e J P acted as a
or coroner in those small towns and he had to render a
verdict on cause o f death. Fie took me into H ow ard’s room
and showed me a piece o f p ap er rolled into the typew riter
with some words on it and asked me to read it. It was a
little poem:
“A ll fled, all done, so lift me on the pyre;
T h e feast is over, and the lamps expire."
A n d then the J P —he was just a fin e farm er, not a literary
m an—says, “W hat does ’p y re’ mean?" A n d I told him it
meant Robert had killed himself. A n d the JP says, "Yep,"
and rendered the verdict. Robert's mother died that
evening and they w ere buried in a double funeral.
Robert Howard was 3 0 years old.
W
EIRD T A L E S was not a financially reliable
market for writers. T h e “payment on publica­
tion” policy often became “payment w henever" Regular
contributors w ere sometimes ow ed for five or six pub­
lished stories. Pathetic payment plans w ere sometimes
offered. Jack W illiam son, ow ed $ 6 0 0 for his serialised
novel Golden Blood, was eventually paid o ff in $50-per-
month installments. “T h ey ju st never had any money,”
says W illiam son. He visited the C hicago office and found
the circum stances very modest. “There was a tiny ante­
room and tw o small offices, one for Farnsw orth W right,
one for Bill Sprenger, the business manager. There w as no
46 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
secretary, no assistant editors” In search o f another for­
mula for success, W rig h t started an adventure-fantasy
magazine, Oriental Stories. W ith its specialised content
and W T stable o f contributors, this w as no less idiosyn­
cratic than W eird T ales and no more successful. It was
retooled and retitled T h e M agic C arpet M agazine after
nine issues and expired after another five. W eird Tales
was sold in 1 9 3 8 and editorial offices w ere moved from
Chicago to N ew Y o rk Farnsw orth W rig h t stayed w ith
the magazine but was fired in late 1939. He died not long
after from com plications related to an experim ental brain
operationThe magazine lasted until Septem ber 1954, but
never again attained the greatness o f its first dozjen years.
O nly a few publications ever tried to follow in W eird
Tales' footsteps. Clayton Publications brought out Strange
Tales in September 1931. Editor Harry Bates lured the best
W T writers w ith pay rates o f tw o cents a word and actual
paychecks as w ell Lovecraft failed to measure up but Smith
and Howard made several sales. Bates preferred streamlined
prose and fast-paced action, exemplified by Murgunstrumm,
Robert E. Howard of Cross Plains, Texas.
Hugh Cave’s feverish tale o f vampires at the Gray Toad Inn,
and Jack W illiam son’s sw ift and savage w erew olf novella,
W olves of Darkness. Clayton ran into massive financial prob­
lems in this period and after seven issues Strange Tales
folded along w ith the rest o f the Clayton chain. Macfadden
published Ghost Stories, w ith a narrow subject matter,
mostly poor stories, and a short life Better Publications put
out a short-lived and lousy fantasy magazine called Strange
Stories. Late in 1939, Munsey came up w ith an economical
title, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, w hich reprinted famous as
well as forgotten material from W orld W ar I-era issues o f
Munsey’s Argosy and All-Story, including stories by A.
Merritt and Ralph Milne Farley.
In March 1939, tw o decades after the demise o f the
pioneering pulp T h e T hrill Book, Street & Sm ith returned
to the realm o f the fantastic w ith Unknown, another
trailblaz;ing effort and the only magazine to bear artistic
comparison w ith W eird Tales. Unknown was edited by
John W . Campbell, the brilliant science-fiction w riter and
innovative editor o f Astounding Science-Fiction. Campbell,
the futurist, had a predictable disdain for w hat he saw as
the antique tone o f much o f the fiction in W T . He w rote a
note to potential contributors, disparaging his legendary
rival: "Unknown is not going to be science fiction, nor is it
going to be another W eird Tales. That’s genuinely fact; not
a b o ast... I do not w ant old-fashioned, 19th-century w rit­
ing, the kind that has burdened fantasy steadily in Weird
Tales. I do not w ant unpleasant gods and godlings w ith
penchants for vivisection, and nude and beauteous maid­
ens to be sacrificed.”
W h at he did w ant and published in the pages o f U n­
known w ere m ostly modern-dress and, b y his definition,
“logical” fantasy and horror stories, many w ith a strongly
ironic perspective. Robert Bloch, for instance, began to ex­
press in Unknown the sardonic sense o f hum or he had
kept largely in check at W eird Tales. Sim ilarly, the heroic
fantasies o f Cam pbell discovery F rit 2; Leiber, Jr, featur­
ing the adventures o f the w arrior Fafhrd and feisty side-
k ick the G ray Mouser, brought w it and fallibility to R ob­
ert E. H ow ard’s Conan country. “Cam pbell didn’t really
w ant that sort o f material in U nknow n,” says Leiber, the
man w ho coined the term sword-and-sorcery, “but he ap­
preciated the humor and the tone in my w ritin g ... He
had a certain humorous slant on things. M y story Conjure
W ife, about housew ives as modern w itches, started w ith
Cam pbell talking to me about all the things w om en kept
in their handbags.”

JfM A G IC
Top: T he only serious rival to
W eird Tales’ supremacy in the
horror and fantasy field was
Unknown. Begun in 1939 as a
companion to Astounding Science
Fiction, Unknown shared
Astounding's brilliant editor, John
Campbell.
Above: From the publishers of
W eird Tales came the short-lived
Oriental Stories and its successor,
Magic C arpet Both magazines
offered exotic adventure stories.
47
Cam pbell bought from a num ber o f W T veterans
(Manly W ad e W ellm an, Seabury Q uinn, C. L. Moore,
Bloch), but most Unknown contributions came from his
ow n A stounding stable (Robert Heinlein, Theodore Stur­
geon, A. E. Van Vogt, A lfred Bester, etc.). Campbell had an
unusually precise, detailed idea o f the sort o f things he
wanted to buy. Typ ical o f the high standards o f his Un­
known purchases w ere the stories by L. Ron Hubbard,
w hose T ypew riter in the Sky was a daz^lingly clever ac­
count o f a man trapped inside the pirate story being w rit­
ten to deadline by his pulp hack roommate. The sky booms
ominously w ith the sound o f typew riter keys as the pro­
tagonist desperately tries to alter the story’s formulaic cli­
max and avoid being murdered by a fictional buccaneer
hero. T h e plot is all the more entertaining for Hubbard’s
satiric jabs at him self and other speed-demon pulp pros.
Equally good, in an entirely different style, was Hubbard’s
gripping exercise in psychological suspense, sim ply titled
Fear, in w h ich a skeptical ethnology professor seemingly
encounters a m enacing collection o f horrific demons.
Hubbard sustains the tension and mystery almost to the
last paragraph
Unknown—or Unknown W orlds after a title m odifica­
tion—was not very successful. Brilliant as many o f his edi­
torial decisions w ere, John Cam pbell had a w ide preten­
tious streak and tried hard to disassociate his magazines
from the pulp fam ily tree. T o this end, he decided to dis­
pense w ith Unknoum’s illustrated covers in favor o f a
stark logo and list o f contents. T h is “dignified” w rapper
made Unknown look more like a medical journal than a
fantasy fiction magazine; Cam pbell must have thought
it w ould scare aw ay the riffraff U nknown closed dow n
after its 39th issue.
D
E SP IT E T H E P R E SE N C E o f brilliant w riters and
an overabundance o f greatly entertaining stories,
none o f the horror and fantasy pulps w ere moneymakers.
A large audience for this type o f material sim ply could not
be found. T w o o f H. P. Lovecraft’s correspondents and
devotees, A ugust Derleth and Donald W andrei, became
determined to seethe deceased w riter’s best w ork put into
book form. No publisher w as interested. Derleth and
W and rei decided to publish such a book themselves and
formed A rkham House for that purpose. T h e Lovecraft
volume, w ith few er than 1,300 copies printed, took four
years to sell out.
 East o f Borneo,
W est o f the Pecos
TH E A D V EN TU R E PULPS

Sailors from ships flying all the known flags w ere packed

several deep at the bar. T obacco and opium smoke mingled in

thick layers. T h e air smelled richly o f sweating, unwashed

humanity, o f the harbor mud at low tide, o f stale beer and

spilled whisky, gin and arrack, and it smelled, above

all, o f Singapore.

—M u r d e r e r 's P a r a d is e by G eorge F. W o rts

^ E R E IS B U T O N E adventure story,” wrote pulp

T pro H enry Kuttner, “and it is laid in the South Seas. I

used to see it every w eek ... a mysterious map, a cannibal
island, a sunken treasure, a beautiful girl, a crew o f Lascars...
and an octopus or two." Kuttner was kidding, more or less,
although the pulps did have a fondness for tropic ports and
unshaven heroes in pith helmets and w hite linen suits. The
adventure genre actually covered a very broad domain—
50 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
every era in history from Pharaonic Egypt to Bolshevik
Russia, every exo tic locale from D eath V alley to the
Himalayas, every dangerous occupation from telephone
lineman to pirate.
T h e vicarious adventurer could p ick his thrills from
a huge stack o f magazines, at the bottom o f w h ich w ere
any num ber o f cheap W estern and knockabou t action
titles, and at the top four eclectic-content publications—
A dventure, Argosy, Blue Book, and Short Stories—consid­
ered to be the crow n jew els o f the pulp world. These four
offered higher pay—three or four times the norm —and
prestige, at least b y rough-paper standards, and in return
demanded “slick" quality prose and story construction,
realism, and authenticity. T h e regular contributors to the
top adventure m agazines w ere the pulp com m unity’s
elite, and many a successful pulpster w ould fail to ever
crack this lofty m arket even after years o f trying. “A d v en ­
ture bounced my stories tim e w ith o u t end,” w rote E.
H offman Price, best know n for his fantasy fictio n in
W eird Tales,“until came the one w h ich w as authentic, the
one in w h ich I clearly knew w hat I w as talking about."
T h e readership, too, logically enough, w as several cuts
above the average, know ledgeable about history, geogra­
phy, weapons, etc, evidenced by the learned and some­
times vituperative correspondence columns. T h e readers
read w ith a kind o f engagement and seriousness that
hardly exists today, and they w ere ever ready to pounce
on a w riter w ho d idn’t get his facts straight.
W ith the demand for realistic and authoritative ad­
venture stories, it is not surprising that many o f the top
names in the field w rote from firsthand experience. W ar
heroes w rote w ar stories, pilots w rote flying stories, sail­
ors w rote tales o f the sea, and cow boys w rote Westerns.
Editors eagerly pointed out w h ich w riter had lost an eye
in the battle at Belleau W ood, w h ich one w as ju st back
from T ah iti or tiger-hunting in Kumaon. Theodore Roscoe,
one o f Argosy’s leading contributors, was a globe-trotting
journalist. “I was always catching a freighter to some­
where," he recalled for me. “Europe, Africa, South America
...” Roscoe w ent to H aiti to investigate voodoo ceremonies,
resulting in a pair o f excellent Argosy serials, A G rave Must
Be D eep and Z Is for Zombie. H is T hibaut Corday series—
ironic, almost M aughamesque short stories about the
French Foreign Legion—grew out o f a trip to French Mo­
rocco and A lgeria “I w ent to the Legion headquarters at
Sidi bel A bbes and to a place called Biskra in the desert,
listening to stories, taking notes. There was a small w ar
w ith the A rabs going on but all the Legionnaires I saw
w ere w orking pick and shovel, building a road. Glamor­
ous, no. In Casablanca I met an old Legionnaire w ith hash-
marks up to his elbow. He had been in the Legion forever
and had a thousand stories. I used him as the prototype for
my narrator, Corday.”
For those w ithout personal experience to fictionalize,
diligent research was called for and it could mean much
more than a few trips to the library. T h e introverted Carl
Jacobi w rote dozens o f convincingly detailed tales o f con­
temporary Borneo and N ew Guinea w ithout ever ventur­
ing beyond his hometown o f Minneapolis. Aside from con­
sulting the appropriate published w orks on the subject—
Right: Theodore Roscoe, aboard a
freighter off the coast of Honduras,
circa 1 9 3 2 .
Opposite: From the North African
outposts of the French Foreign
Legion to the tropic isles of the
South Seas, Adventure’s W riters
Brigade roamed the world.
H om e Life o f a Borneo H ead Hunter, Ju n gle Wallah, etc.—
Jacobi solicited background info through correspondence
w ith the same sort ofpith-helm eted colonials he was w rit­
ing about. His letters o f inquiry to the back o f beyond trav­
eled by ocean liner, coastal freighter, river launch, and—for
the final leg through the jungle—by native runner, a jou r­
ney o f three months’ time, w ith another three or four
months needed for Jacobi to receive his reply. T h e results,
though, w ere w orth it—long detailed letters from lonely
traders and district officers, full o f biz,arre local customs
and violent incidents—“Dear Mr. Ja c o b i... In the middle
Sepik between Origam bi and the R iver there is a strong
secret society called ‘Sanguman.’ T h ey practice killing, the
motive for w hich is not understood y e t...” It then took only
Jacobi’s artful craftsmanship to turn this material into gems
like Spider W ires and East o f Samarinda.
O f the four distinguished general adventure pulps,
Argosy, the fiction magazine that started the pulp era, had
settled into an all-adventure format in the 1920s and of­
fered at least 2 0 years o f dependably exciting—if some­
times blandly exciting—male-oriented stories. The most
popular pulp w riters—Edgar R ice Burroughs and Max
Brand at the summit, Johnston McCulley, Luke Short, Otis
A delbert Kline, etc.—were w ell represented in the pages
o f the Munsey flagship. Short Stories, previously a literary
journal, turned pulp in 1 9 1 0 and had a long and distin­
guished run under the editorial guidance o f H arry E.
Maule. Blue Book had also had a pre-pulp incarnation, as a
genteel, general interest periodical, before sw itching to
rough paper and strictly masculine fare. It published many
o f the top names in adventure and historical w riting, in­
cluding Brand and other Faustian bylines, P. C. W ren o f
Beau Geste fame, Achmed A bdullah (The W h ite Russian/
Afghani author o f T h e T h ief o f B agdad and numerous ex­
otic pulp tales o f hatchet men and opium dens in N ew
York’s Chinatow n), and the prolific H. Bedford-Jones,
whose specialty w as the m ilitary and warfare through the
ages.
52 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
Below: W estern stories were overall the most popular of all
forms of pulp fiction.
Opposite: "Thrilling" was a favorite word of Standard
Publications. It was applied not only to spy stories, but love,
mystery, detective, and W estern stories as well.
The best o f the adventure magazines,
and inarguably one o f the handful o f
great pulp publications, was Adventure.
One o f many magazines put out by a
division o f a dress-pattern company,
Adventure debuted w ith an issue dated
Novem ber 1910. The first editor,
Trum bull W hite, was an outdoorsman
and explorer, and wanderlust got the
better o f him after less than a year. He
was replaced by a magazine pro named
Arthur Sullivant Hoffman. Hoffman was an “indoorsman,"
but he knew good stories from bad and he knew how to
find them He sought adventure fiction that would meet
the high literary standards set by recent masters o f the
form—Rider Haggard, Robert Louis Stevenson, Kipling,
Jack London. “It was slow work. T h e budget was very
small—far too small to compete for stories o f the best
know n w riters or even for the average stories o f the
smooth-paper magazines. W e gave our first and best atten­
tion to stories from unknow n writers.”
Hoffman did more than find first-rate fiction for his
magazine. He made innovative use o f A dventure’s back-
matter pages, previously considered the place for expend­
able filler. Together w ith his assistant editor, Sinclair
Lew is—the future w inner o f the N obel Prize for litera­
ture—Hoffman devised several popular and much im i­
tated editorial departments intended to make interactive
contact between the magazine and its readers. T h e Camp
Fire, ostensibly a letters column, became a rambunctious
open house w here editors, writers, and readers exchanged
comments, critiques, and sometimes insults. T h e Camp Fire
gave writers a chance to detail the biographical or factual
context for their stories, and new contributors w ere en­
couraged to submit their resumes. “There’s not much to say
about me," w rote Magda Leigh, one o f the magazine's few
wom en writers. T m ju st one o f those freaks. I should have
been a man and wasn’t. I love the sea and ships far better
than anything else in the world, w ith the exception ol my
daughter.... T h e strange part o f it all is that I ve never been
shipwrecked. I’ve been through a South Am erican revo­
lution (I adored it!), and any number o f earthquakes, and
even plague, but the sea has treated
me kindly.” A nother back:of-the-book
column was “A sk Adventure," a ques-
tion-and-answer information service
w herein the magazine’s far-flung “staff
o f experts” replied to queries about ev­
erything from bicycle repair to croco­
dile trapping. The “Lost Trails” depart­
ment allowed readers to advertise for
information about missing relatives
and long-lost friends. Hoffman created
a veterans’ “minute men” netw ork that
became the national organization The
Am erican Legion. He established and
printed updated information about so-
called Camp Fire Stations, scattered ad­
dresses w here peripatetic readers could pick up their mail,
cadge a meal or a bunk, and swap tall tales w ith kindred
spirits. These and other practical or romantic services fos­
tered a reader involvement and loyalty that w ere know n
to few other magazines.
W h ile Hoffman and his editorial team were
deskbound on the top floor o f the Butterick Building, on
Spring and Thom pson in N ew York, far from camp fires
or crocodiles, adventure sometimes came to them. On one
occasion, an A frican chieftain in full regalia arrived at
Hoffman’s office, demonstrated a w ar dance, took umbrage
at something—perhaps he had a story rejected—and began
firing a rifle at random in the hallways.
A m ong A dven tu re’s regular contributors—Hoffman
called them his W riters Brigade—w ere Harold Lamb,
w ritin g lusty adventures o f K hlit the Cossack and vari­
ous other hyperactive barbarians; G ordon Young, w ho
w rote about hard-boiled H urricane W illiam s, a n ih ilis­
tic South Seas drifter; A rthur O. Friel, specializing in dan­
gerous expeditions to the A m azon and O rinoco; W . C.
Tuttle, the M ark T w ain o f the pulp cow boy story; M ajor
M alcolm W heeler-N icholson, late o f the U.S. A rm y cav­
alry, turning some o f his many m ilitary exploits into ex-
54

citing fiction. (The last-named w riter w ent on to have an

injuriou s effect on the entire pulp industry w hen, in
193 4 , he turned entrepreneur and produced the w orld’s
first original material com ic book, N ew Fun.) A nother
A dventure favorite, Anglo-Italian Rafael Sabatini, made
his mark in the issue for June 3 ,1 9 2 1 , and his first install­
ment in the life o f sw ashbuckling Captain Peter Blood.
A n Irish doctor w ith a sea-roving past, Blood is arrested
for treating the w ounds o f a British traitor and packed o ff
to the slave mart on the W est Indian isle o f Barbados. He
escapes in a fierce revolt, commandeers a Spanish ship,
and turns buccaneer. T h e original nine stories o f Captain
Blood, each subtitled A T ale o f the B rethren o f th e Main,
w ere sunscorched daydreams crow ded w ith daggling
imagery—full-masted galleons on turquoise Caribbean,
gleaming cutlasses, w h ite sand beaches, lustrous pieces o f
eight—aimed straight at the pleasure centers o f arm chair
escapists. A dventure later printed Sabatini’s biographies
o f Casanova and S ir W alter Raleigh and serialiged his
epic novel, T h e Sea H aw k.
O f the many W estern w riters appearing in A dventure
none w as more popular or prolific than W alt Coburn. Be­
ginning in 1922, he w rote more than eight hundred nov­
elettes for A dventure as well as the other leading adven­
ture and W estern pulps. Coburn’s prose style and plotting
were often crude, but his characters, the tangential details,
and the sights and smells he put into his W estern stories
seemed to come straight from the range. In a field full o f
secondhand stereotyping, Coburn enlivened cow boy fic­
tion w ith quirky authenticity, as in this passage from T own
Tamer.

Sundown fetch ed him into the broken country south o f the

Little Rockies. Long ridges spotted with scrub pines. Long
draws thick with brush. It was the fall o f the year and
berries w ere ripe. W ild currants, green gooseberries
turning mahogany brown. C hokecherries tn clumps so
thick he had to ride around them. Brice would lean from
his saddle and scoop his hand full o f berries. H unger
wasn't bothering him much. A cowpuncher gets accus­
tomed to going for a day or two without grub.

Coburn was, in fact, an honest-to-God cow boy. His

father had settled Last Chance Gulch, w here Helena, M on­
tana, now stands. W alt had been a w rangler on ranches all
over the W est (w ith time o ff to ride w ith Pancho Villa’s
 E A S T O F B O R NE O ' . W E S T OF T HE P E C O S 55

army) and claimed that many o f his pulp yarns he had first
heard told by old-timers in the bunkhouse. Most o f his
characters Were unglamorous roughnecks and they drank
a corisiderable amount o f alcohol, a trait they shared w ith
their creator He wrote every morning, six days a week, and
always w ith a bottle o f “hooch” w ithin arm’s reach. Dur­
ing Prohibition, Coburn used to hide a stock o f tequila in
the stove o f his Arizona cottage. O ne time a pulp editor
from N ew York came to visit, there was a chill, and W alt
thoughtlessly fired up the stove. It exploded, nearly kill­
ing the visiting tenderfoot.
Perhaps the most significant member o f A dven tu res
W riters Brigade was Talbot Mundy, w^iose long associa­
tion w ith the magazine began in the February 1 9 1 1 issue
w ith a non-ffction sketch,'Pig Sticking in India, .only the
second piece he had ever written, and continued w ith
scores.of stories and serialised novels. He was another ad­
venturous, larger-than-life character, as A rthur Hoffman
made clear in his savory introduction to the w riter’s first
contribution:
- hijaptting tales o f high adventure w ith fascinating char­
acters and v ivid w ord pictures o f the “exotic East" His
w ork Was further distinguished by its lack o f colonial con-
’ formism, the so rt'o f cant and racism endemic to British
Empire stories. M undy’s recurring cast o f Orientals—the
crafty babu Chullunder Ghose, the Mata Hari—like
Yasmini, the fearless w arrior Narayan Singh, among
them—are at least as fully and sympathetically drawn as
his assorted Anglo-A m erican Secret Service aces and
W h ite Hunters, -
In the mid-'20s, he began w riting historical fiction, the
saga o f Tros o f Sam olhrace, a Greek adventurer and nem­
esis ofju liu s Caesar. T h e Tros series, totaling a mighty half-
a-million words in A dventure, was as pleasurable a read­
ing experience as any the pulps ever offered. Mundy’s char­
acterisation o f Caesar as “a liar, a brute, a treacherous hum­
bug” brought forth a deluge o f angry letters from history
buffs and Caesarians. Printed in T h e Cam p Eire in numer­
ous issues, the letters necessitated Mundy’s w riting some
ten thousand words—presum ably unpaid for—o f be-

Shake hands. with Mr. M undy—there i$ only time for me

to whisper these words in your ear: A n Englishman,
India, China, the Himalayas, Singapore, the Straits
Settlements, Persian Gulf, the Boer W a r . . . elephant .
hunting, pigsticking, single-handed yachting, twd cam ­
paigns against A frican tribes'. . .

M undy was a colorful character, all right, but he had

seriously misrepresented the facts o f his early life.Far from
the lordly soldier and sportsman h e claimed to have been,
Mundy in his India-Africa period was a con man, ivory
, poacher, bigamist, and deportee. In “British East”, the A fri­
cans gave him a Sw ahili nickname, M akundu V iazi—
W hite Arse. He began to w rite w hile healing from a skull-
fracture he received under sordid circumstances in N ew
York’s nptorious Gas House d istrict In America he remade
himself, changed his name, put the reprobate career behind
him, and became a best-selling adventure novelist and be­
atific Theosophist
Mundy worked primarily in Kipling-Haggard terri­
to ry -co lo n ia l India, the Northwest Frontier, East Africa.
His best novels in this vein,King—o f the K hyher Rifle^Om,
T h e Devil's Guard (Ramsden in magazine form), were ex-

Left: Ranch-hand-turned-wnter W alt Coburn.

Right: Talbot Mundy in Jerusalem, 1 9 2 0 .

56 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S

mused rebuttal. I f nothing else, the scholarly back-and-
forth illustrated the erudition o f the pulp magazine’s read­
ership Tros’ exploits w ere also read by fledgling writers
such as Robert Howard and Fritz Leiber and would influ­
ence the development o f the sword-and-sorcery genre.
“The Tros stories made a great impression on me as a young
man,’’ recalls Leiber. "I read and re-read them I can still p ic­
ture the ship Tros built, called the Liafail, a m agnificent
super-galley w ith these huge masts, built to take him
around the world. It was wonderful, imaginative w riting"
Mundy died in 1940, w hile w riting the scripts for the
children’s radio series Ja ck Armstrong, A ll A m erican Boy.
His real name (W illiam Lancaster Gribbon) and w ayw ard
early life were not know n until 4 0 years later and the de­
termined sleuthing o f his biographer, Peter Ellis.
T
'H E A D V E N T U R E PU LPS follow ed the trend
tow ard specialization in the 1 9 2 0 s and 1930s. A t
one tim e or another, there w ere pulps devoted entirely to
tales oP’darkest A frica” (J ungle Stories, Thrills o f the Jungle),
inscrutable A sia (Far East A dventures),pirates (Pirate Sto­
ries), beachcom bers (South Seas Stories), boxing (Fight Sto­
ries), the ancient past (Golden Fleece), and the French For­
eign Legion (Foreign Legion A dventures). T h e grow th o f
aviation, memories o f the spectacular dogfights o f W orld
W a r I, and the m u ch -p u blicized exp loits o f Charles
Lindbergh and other celebrated pilots and daredevils made
a very large im pact on the popular im agination and w ere
reflected by a slew o f pulps devoted to the air w ar and
flying adventures in general: Wings, A ir Stories, W a r Birds,
Sky Birds, Sky Fighters, Battle Aces, Zoom. T h e public’s
short-lived interest in lighter-than-air craft inspired just
one publication, Zeppelin Stories (by aficionados, the most
cherished o f all absurd pulp titles). There was not much
room for plot or character development in any o f the air
w ar magazines, storylines being largely an excuse for the
inevitable dogfights, w ith passages like the follow ing from
K nee D eep in Krauts by A llan R. Bosworth:

The Fokker rode down the skies, painting a trail of death with
dun, acrid tracer smoke. Her bullets chipped fabric from the
Ark's wings, sent splinters jlying from the sturdy hull.

Tac-a-tac-a-tac!

Floorboards rattled. A slug gashed the pit coaming.

Humpy C am pbell swore betw een clenched teeth and
jerk ed the A r k on over in a h a lf loop. H er load suddenly
lightened—the heavy body of Margo Dubois plunged out,
streaked for earth in a flu tter o f voluminous skirts.

CO N TR A C T was a contract, old about to- make fresh contracts; and' I

A Angus MacMomcs insisted, even

though the Amir Habibullah,
who had hired both of us, had beea dead
kept telling. Angus that’—to hell with the
contracts—we should pull stakes before
it was too late. x
Tac-a-tac-a-tac!

since a bleak day th at February—mur­
dered somewhere near his winter palace
down at Jalalabad. We never got many
details; they had a way, in Kabul, of
cutting you off short when you enquired.
Ilabibullali’s sudden demise was not a
popular subject. He’d gone the way of
many Afghan rulers and it was very
much a case of “Long live the king, the
king is dead/'
AmamiHah Khan, Habibullah’s suc­
cessor, kept sending us word that he wns
41
Contrary to popular belief, in Ama- A short burst and a bloody one. T racer etched a sky trail
nullah’s early days there was quite a
non-Moslem population in K a b u l - straight to the pilot’s pit. Screaming slugs found a mark
French and Italians and Germans; a few
British, like the Scotch Angus, aud one
American— me. Long before the snow deep in cringing flesh. T h e Fokker heeled, went over in a
had melted off the Paghmans, when the
court would move up to Paghman itself roaring pow er dive, and twisted toward earth.
for the summer, you could literally sec
this European crowd melting away,
melting away. Every day some familiar Crash!
face was missing.

T h e most important o f the adventure pulp offshoots,

T he mainstay of adventure pulps: brawling adventurers in
the W estern, became the most popular o f all forms o f pulp
exotic locales.
literature. In the pre-pulp era, there had been tw o strands

f FIGHTING ACI
COMPUre WAR A!ft
HOVEL BY
JOEL ROGERS
SHATTERED WINGS
By Gilbert Patten
THE TIDE OF DOOM
By H. Bedford-Jonei
Top: Artist Rudolph Belarski was
one of the brilliant workhorses of the
pulps, painting hundreds of covers
from the 1920s to the '4 os. This
fine example of his work comes from
the Spring 19 3 7 issue of W ings.
A bone: A parachuting pilot was a
frequent sight on the covers of pulp
adventure magazines. Another
aviator takes the plunge in this issue
of Rapid Fire Action Stories, from
1931.
57
o f the genre—the dime-novel hokum o f Ned Buntline and
his ilk, and literary stories by the likes o f M ark T w ain and
Bret Harte. Early in the 2 0th century, the tw o strands coa­
lesced in the rom anticised but adult-oriented novels o f
O w en W ister (The Virginian) and Zane G rey (H eritage of
J the W est, Riders o f the Purple Sage, etc.). G rey was a discov­
[
ery o f Street & Sm ith editor Charles A gnew MacLean,and
many o f the w riter’s best-selling books w ere serialised in
The Popular and other fam ily and general-fiction pulps. He
w as long-winded and his prose w as often as purple as the
sage, but he did pack a lot o f authentic frontier lore into
his novels and millions sw ore by them G rey’s success was
a crucial influence on the W estern fiction boom that be­
gan ju st after W o rld W a r 1 O ne o f the first o f the special­
ised pulps, Street & Sm ith’s W estern Story M agazine took
the place o f N ew Buffalo Bill, one o f the last o f the 19th-
century weeklies. It appeared on newsstands w ith a July
12, 1 9 1 9 , cover date and the subtitle Big Clean Stories of
Western Life. Indicating the escapist direction the W est­
ern story was taking, an editorial in that first issue empha­
sised not the m agasine’s historical accuracy or range o f
subject matter but its quotient o f wish-fulfillment:
. . . H unched up over a desk, are you? W ell, read about the
life you would like to lead, and the life you w ill lead, just as
soon as you can throw off the bonds that keep you from
making a break for the woods or the rolling plains . . .
T h e magasine had arrived in time to feed a surging
interest in the frontier life and legends o f Am erica’s recent
past. Perhaps the movies, w ith their charismatic cow boy
stars and glimpses o f spectacular W estern scenery, had
som ething to do w ith i t O r perhaps the nation had come
to a nostalgic realisation that its vaunted frontier spirit
now belonged to the history books. In any case, the first
W estern pulp was a great com mercial success, quickly
reaching a circulation o f a half-m illion per week. In the
years ahead, the W estern titles w ould become the most
numerous and financially reliable o f all pulps—A ce W est­
ern, Big Book W estern, C ow boy Stories, C rack Shot, Dime
W estern (among its subscribers was Franklin Delano
Roosevelt), Double Action Western, Frontier Stories, Lariat,
N ickel W estern, Quick Trigger, Pete Rice, Popular Western,
Riders o f the Range, Six-Gun, Spicy W estern, Star W estern,
T exas Rangers, T hrilling Western, Triple-X, W est, W estern
Outlauis,Western Trails, W ild W est W eekly—a comprehen­
sive list would go on for pages. In addition, the general
M M ILLIO N M E%
 E A S T OF B O R N E O , W E S T OF T H E P E C O S 59

adventure pulps continued to publish considerable mainstream fiction. H aycox in particular had a talent for
amounts o f W estern fiction and could afford the best o f the subtle characterisation and poetic and vivid descriptions
stories by the top w riters in the genre, an elite group that o f W estern landscape.
included Max Brand, W alt Coburn, W . C. Tuttle, Clarence There w ere many first-rate W estern w riters in the
Mulford, Luke Short, and Ernest H aycox pulps—Harry Olmstead, Thomas Blackburn, W illiam Cox,
Brand w rote m yth-m inded melodramas that did not W alker Tompkins, and others—great storytellers, but most
so much d istort the historic W e st as ignore it, oblivious o f them w orking in the late-pulp style, speed and action at
to specifics o f tim e or place. W . C. T u ttle, lik e W a lt the expense o f character and atmosphere.
Coburn, w as an authentic W esterner, son o f a M ontana As the number o f cheap W estern pulp magazines
lawman, and he spent some o f his younger years p u nch­ grew almost immeasurably in the 1930s, standards de­
ing cow s and rid ing the range. T u ttle derided the glam- clined, and the historically minded or atmospherically cor­
origation o f co w b o y life: “W h a t a jo b ! Forty-a-m onth rect w riters w ere inevitably overwhelmed by the churn-
plus frostbite. O ut o f the sack about five o’clo ck in the 'em-out hacks (“cow boy stories by Manhattan bellhops," as
morning, the tem perature about gero in the bunkhouse; one critic disparaged the typical pulp W esternJ.The W est­
outside ten or tw elve below , and a w ind blow ing. You ern fiction magazines remained in abundance until the
shiver into frogen overalls, fight y our w ay dow n to the very end o f the pulp era, but the final decade was sorely
stable, w here you harness a team o f frosted horses, take lacking in originality or style. The movies remained the
'em out and h itch them to a h ay rick w agon . .. Man, it most expressive canvas for the W estern—capable o f con­
was rom antic!” Tu ttle specialised in the com ic W estern, veying epic grandeur w ith a single lateral pan shot. But it
some w ry and folksy, some outright must be noted that nearly every classic
slapstick. He w as at his best in a long- W estern movie—from Stagecoach to Red
running, non-com ic series about River to T h e Searchers—was adapted
H ashknife H artley and Sleepy from the w ork o f veteran pulp writers.
Stevens, a “range d etective” and his
sidekick, published variously in Ad-
Denture, A rgosy, and Short Stories.
H ashknife and Sleepy w ere a sort o f
cow boy Holmes and W atson, drifting
into assorted frontier tow ns and solv­
ing crimes. T h e amalgam o f m ystery
and W estern m ight sound contrived
but T u ttle’s fu n k ily realistic atm o­
spherics, idiosyncratic dialogue, and
offhand hum or made for im m ensely
enjoyable reading.
Clarence Mulford was another w riter w ho drew an
honest portrait o f the W e st A N ew York civ il servant
w hen he began writing, he took numorous research trips
to the W estern states and kept a 17,000-card file o fW est-
ern data His very popular stories w ere about the w ander­
ing trail boss o f the Bar 2 0 ranch, Hopalong Cassidy. The
fictional Hopalong was a considerably tougher, more vio­ Above: A typical sports pulp of the 1930s. Sports titles were
lent character than the avuncular hero portrayed in the
a humble lot, unable to compete with the more imaginative
movies by Bill Boyd.
and melodramatic genres.
Luke Short (pseudonym for Frederick Glidden) and
Ernest H aycox w ere fine w riters whose stories and nov­ Opposite: T he long-running Fight Stories mixed hard-boiled
els were comparable to any well-crafted, historically sound boxing fiction with factual articles about famous fighters.
 Tw enty Bucks a Day
and Expenses
T H E P R IV A T E E Y E P U L P S

It is not a very fragrant world you live in, and certain writers

with tough minds and a cool spirit o f detachment can make

very interesting and even amusing patterns out o f it.

— R aym o n d C h a n d ler

'W O M EN IN V E N T E D the hard-boiled detective

T story: Carroll John Daly and Dashiell Hammett. Their

inventions w ere published w ithin months o f each other in
1 9 2 3 and in the pages o f the same magazine, Black Mask.
Both men w ere obscure tyros o f uncertain ambition, w rit­
ing for a three-year-old pulp “louse," as M ask’s co-founder,
H. L. Mencken, described it T h ey w ere hardly the sort any­
one would have expected to launch a literary revolution.
Daly had been an usher and projectionist and ow ner o f a
movie theater in A tlantic City, N ew Jersey. He was afraid
o f cold weather and dentists. Hammett, more pertinently,
was an off-and-on operative for the Pinkerton Detective
62 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
Agency, and dying from tuberculosis. He lived, o f course,
much to his ow n surprise, for nearly 4 0 more years. The
tw o men crossed paths at the Black M ask juncture, and for
a time their careers moved along parallel lines, then moved
very far apart Hammett became an acclaimed novelist, a
world-famous artist traveling in the highest circles o f N ew
York and H ollywood society. He made a m illion dollars
and spent them all, w ent through one o f the longest cre­
ative “dry spells" in literature, was by turns a hedonist and
an ascetic, w ent to jail, a martyr to M cCarthyism, and be­
came the posthumous subject o f novels, biographies, and
movies—in short, a legend. Carroll John Daly, much more
popular in their early years, would never leave the pulp
ghetto, and was still w riting for a few cents a w ord w hen
the last detective pulps closed shop in the 1950s—a sub­
urbanite, family man, forgotten hack
Before Daly and Hammett, the detective story was the
domain o f tw itty aristos and brainy, eccentric pu ^ le-solv-
ers. The w riting was Victorian, the murders emotionally
bloodless. The times demanded something new, something
stronger. A m erica in the 1 9 2 0 s was a tough, wised-up
place, w ith its veterans o f the W orld W ar I trenches, its
flappers and gangsters. The Volstead
A ct gave millions o f upright but thirsty
citizens their first unlawful experiences.
Cynicism was in the air, crime in the
headlines. Someone was bound to take
mystery fiction out o f the vicarage and
the country home and drop it down on
the turbulent mean streets, to give mur­
der—Chandler again—“back to the kind
Above: T he birthplace of the hard-boiled style was Black
Mask. Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Horace
McCoy were among the magazine's great discoveries.
Opposite: G-Men was one of several pulp titles devoted to the
glorification of the F.B.I. Director ]. Edgar Hoover closely
monitored the contents of these magazines and occasionally
contributed his byline to them.
o f people that commit it for reasons, not ju st to provide a
corpse; and w ith the means at hand, not hand-wrought du­
eling pistols, curare or tropical fish."
Chandler was referring to Hammett, but Daly got into
print first T h e hard-boiled groundbreaker was his second
appearance in Black Mask. T h e False Burton Combs, in D e­
cem ber 1922, featured not a detective but a tough-talking
“gentleman adventurer." The anonymous, first-person nar­
rator is colloquial, wisecracking, violent In the May 1923
issue o f Mask, a similar-sounding hero, this one named
T erry M ack “Private Investigator," would complete the
prototype. T h ree Gun T erry is officially the first detective
story in the new hard-boiled style. The ferocious, trigger-
happy hero is familiar w ith both sides o f the law. “I play
the game on the level, in my ow n way,” says M ack T m in
the center o f a triangle; between the crook and the police
and the victim ”—exactly the position to be occupied by the
thousands o f tough detectives that would follow. Indeed,
as W illiam F. Nolan points out in T h e Black Mask Boys,
“This pioneer private-eye tale is remarkable in that almost
every cliche that was to plague the genre from the 1920s
into the 1 98 0 s is evident in T h ree Gun Terry"
T w o w eeks later, Daly’s now stan­
dardised hero was renamed Race W il­
liams for a story called Knights o f the
O pen Palm. M aking his debut in Black
Mask’s incredible Ku Klux Klan special
issue (Daly’s story was, at least, one o f
the anti-Klan entries), Race would go on
to star in 70-som e magazine stories and
eight novels. He was an immediate sen­
sation w ith readers and became the
single most popular detective hero o f
his era. In retrospect, it may be difficult
to understand Daly’s impact His hyper­
active, semi-literate narrations seem
shrill and phony. But compared to the
prose that preceded him Daly comes o ff
as reliably streetwise. Here is dialogue from a pre-Daly
story, The Clue from the Tempest:
‘ If there is a scintilla o f evidence to verify this extraordi­
nary bunch o f mine—well, I shall he at one end o f a
thread which has begun to disentangle itself from the
whole maze."
And here is Race W illiam s speaking:
FEDERALS IN ACTION

fXPOJI
H O T E L M URDER.
By STEVE FISHER
A room locked from the inside, a corpse shot in the back,
and three suspects—that's the problem Mike Hanlon faces!
OOTSTEPS padded quickly
F along the corridors of the Hotel
Wellinglex. Crystal over-head
lights shafted white beams on the
red plush carpets. A room door
slammed.
A shot!
The bell captain, in the hall on the
twentieth floor, turned suddenly. He
rushed to the door of the room from
which the explosion had sounded. He
tried the knob, reached for his keys;
then remembering his instructions,
hesitated. He waited impatiently
until there was someone else in the
halL
C o p y t - i f fh t .
“Get the police— quickly!"
The man in the hall ran to the
bell captain.
“But— "
“I've got to stay here,” the hotel
employee said. “I heard a shot.
Unless it’s' suicide, there’s a killer in
that room. Hurry now! Get, some­
one!”
Mike Hanlon, of the Homicide
Division, got off the elevator and
came swinging up the hall. The red:
faced Irish dick had a ragged cigar
jammed in his mouth. His black eyes
were glittering.
The bell captain was in a nervous
19SS. by Standard if agazinft, In c.
158
 TWENTY BUCKS A DAY AND E X P E N S E S
‘ You’ve had one look at my gun,” I told them as they
sneaked out. “T h e next time you have cause to see it you’ll
see it smoking; now—beat it!’
W ith his philosophy o f shoot first and gather clues
later, Race W illiam s, detective, may have had little in com­
mon w ith Sherlock Holmes, but he w as a blood relative o f
N atty Bumpo, W yatt Earp, Deadeye Dick, and other rug­
ged individualist Americans o f fact and fiction. T h is was
a crucial aspect o f the new style—the pulp detective story
would henceforth em phasise action over mystery, and
cases would be solved by fists and 45s, not ratiocination.
As W illiam s comments, “There might be a hundred clues
around and I’d miss them. I’ve got to have a target to shoot
at" Daly, in any case, was not the sort o f w riter w ho would
have been comfortable w ith the elaborate plot-puzzles and
logical explications o f the “classical” detective story. His
storytelling was crude, repetitive, illogical, and prone to
exaggeration. In fact, for all their fresh, vivid details about
life in gangland, Race W illiam s’ adventures are told w ith
the braggadocio and hyperbole o f 19th-century tall tales:
“I tickled his chin with my gat."
“I handled three o f your breed last night. Come! Ju m p out
o f that night shirt or they’ll bury you in it."
‘N o laughter in my voice then—w hen I'm gunning I ’m a
bad m an—none worse!"
The colloquial narrative voice o f Daly’s stories was
artless and inconsistent, full o f bad grammar, arbitrary
paragraphing, and aw kw ard binges o f stream-of-con-
sciousness. Race W illiam s and Daly’s other cardboard he-
men were brutal and ignorant and frequently espoused the
virtues o f vigilantism. “The law,” Daly once wrote, “is too
cumbersome, too full o f loopholes to be o f much use "
For some or all o f the above reasons, B lack Mask's edi­
tors had little affection for Daly, despite the fact that his
name on the cover meant a guaranteed increase in sales—
as m uch as 25%. Daly once recalled ho w his initial entry
into the magazine only came about because the ch ie f edi­
tor was on vacation. A fter the stories w ere published, that
Opposite: Tough stuff from a mid-’j os issue of Thrilling
Detective.
65
editor, George Sutton, summoned Daly to his office for
some reluctant praise: “It’s lik e this, Daly, I am editor o f
this m agazine to see it make money. T o see the circula­
tion go up. I don’t like these stories—but the readers do. I
have never received so m any letters about a single char­
acter before. W rite them. I w on’t like them. But Til buy
them and print them.”
Daly never altered his style much, and by the 1 940s,
his gunslinging Roaring Tw enties detective had finally
gone out o f favor. He continued w riting, but mostly for sec­
ondary titles. A few years after the last pulps died in the
1950s, so did Carroll John Daly. He was 6 8 . Oddly, while
Daly w as fading into obscurity after W orld W ar II, a
young, rabid admirer o f his named M ickey Spillane wrote
a kind o f updated Race W illiam s pastiche, I, T h e Jury,fea­
turing a sim ilar ignorance-is-bliss vigilante called M ike
Hammer, and became an international sensation. Daly was
not pleased by his disciple’s success. T m broke," he said,
“and this guy gets rich w riting about my detective.”
For most o f his life, Daly lived quietly in W h ite Plains,
N ew Y o rk T h e houses on his block w ere identical, and
Daly sometimes could not find his w ay home. A trip to
Manhattan was a major undertaking, and in w inter he sel­
dom left his carefully temperature-controlled residence. “I
always felt that he used Race W illiam s as a means o f satis­
fying subconscious impulses w h ich he knew could never
be gratified in real life,” said Daly’s friend Erie Stanley
Gardner. “Daly had never had the slightest experience
w ith actual crim e or criminals, much less w ith bullet
w o u n d s... Daly him self wanted no part o f the rough and
tumble."
A M U E L D A SH IE L L H A M M E T T w as born in
S Maryland, M ay 2 7 ,1 8 9 4 . He left school at age 14 and
took a series o f railroad and factory jobs until in his 2 0 th
year, he answered a Help W anted ad in a Baltimore new s­
paper and w ent to w ork for Pinkerton’s National Detec­
tive Service. For various periods o f time over the next six
years, Hammett w as a Pinkerton operative, crisscrossing
the country on a variety o f assignments from investiga­
tions to security w ork and strikebreaking. During a stint
in the arm y during the First W orld W ar, he developed a
case o f tuberculosis, the first in a lifelong series o f lung dis­
eases. W h ile living in San Francisco in the early 1920s,
Hammett quit detective w ork for good and began to try
his hand at writing. Hammett did not immediately recog­
nize the potential importance o f his Pinkerton experience
Above: T he December 1 g j 6 Black
Mask featured some of the last
stones bought by former editor
Joseph Shaw, including the second
and final contribution by Lester
Dent. Dent's character, Oscar Sail,
was a seafaring Miami private eye.

Right. Joseph T. Shaw, editor

of Black Mask, the premiere
detective pulp.
 TWENTY BUCKS A DAY AND E X P E N S E S 67

as subject matter. His first fictional sale was a vignette to T h e strike lasted eight months. Both sides bled plenty. T h e
T he Smart Set, a snobbishly “aristocratic” magazine created
w obblies had to do their own bleeding. O ld Elihu hired
by Mencken and George Jean Nathan, the founders o f Black
gunmen, strike-breakers, national guardsmen and even
Mask. His first story for M ask, T h e Road Home, credited to
the pseudonym o f Peter Collinson, was atypical, w ith its parts o f the regular army, to do his. W h en the last skull

Conradian situation and Southeast Asian setting. had been cracked, the last rib kicked in, organised labor
It was in his third sale to Black Mask, w ith the story in Personville was a used firecracker.
titled Arson Plus, that Hammett w ould introduce the dis­
As Red Harvest, the novel was published in book form in
tinctive style that changed the face o f Am erican mystery
February 1929. In the next three years, Black M ask would
writing. Arson featured an operative for the Continental
Detective A gency in San Francisco. Like Daly’s Race W Il­ print three more Hammett novels—T h e D ain Curse, T he
M altese Falcon, T h e Glass Key—each one a masterpiece o f
hams, Hammett’s hero was an urban professional detective,
the crim e genre and the artistic summit o f the hard-boiled
tough, street smart, conversant w ith both sides o f the law.
style. Hammett published his last pulp story in Black Mask
Unlike Daly’s trigger-happy Narcissus, Hammett’s middle-
aged, paunchy private eye w as cool-tempered and self-ef­ in N ovem ber 1930. H is fifth and final novel, T h e Thin
Man, was published in 1934. He was 4 0 years old. Royal­
facing—literally anonymous, he came to be know n as the
ties and H ollyw ood money kept him in boozy and hotel
Continental O p for editorial and advertising purposes.
suites for another decade, but his career as a w riter was es­
The nameless protagonist, Hammett w rote to the editor at
Black Mask, was “more or less o f a type: the private detec­ sentially ended.

tive w ho oftenest is successful: neither the derby-hatted

H E T O U G H D E T E C T IV E story caught on and
and broad-toed blockhead o f one school o f fiction, nor the
all-knowing, infallible genius o f another. Tve worked w ith
several o f him ” T he O p’s first recorded case would prove
T o th er w rite rs began fo llo w in g in D a ly ’s or
Hammett’s footsteps—Erie Stanley Gardner, Nels Leroy
Jorgensen, Raoul W hitfield, Frederick Nebel. Gardner was
to be characteristic o f the stories to come: the understated,
a California law yer and ex—traveling salesman in his mid?
first-person narration; the terse, hard sentences; the me­
30s w hen he began trying to augment his income w ith the
thodical investigation. A rson Plus' m ystery is colorful
sale o f short fictio n H is first story for Black M ask was, by
enough—an insurance fraud involving impersonation and
Gardner’s ow n admission, “dreadful... Even the title was
arson—and the story ends in a car chase and shootout, but
d read fu l.. T h e Shrieking Skeleton." Even Gardner’s less
the effect o f the tale is realistic, not fanciful. Hammett’s
w riting had the ring o f truth; this was how a real detec­ dreadful stories w ere closer to Daly’s standards than to
Hammett’s. H is pulp fiction is w ritten in a fast-moving but
tive did his job.
O f course, as it turned out, Hammett had much more slapdash manner (in later years, he was know n to dictate
all his “writings"), w ithout style or resonance. Although,
to offer than a laconic voice o f experience. He was an art­
ist, unique and complex, an innovative prose stylist w ith like Hammett, Gardner had firsthand knowledge o f real
lawmen and criminals, his early crim e-w riting is depen­
a profound vision o f an A m erica driven by violence and
dent on gimm icks and juvenile heroics. H is numerous se­
corruption. Not all o f the Continental O p stories w ere first
ries characters—three dogen in all—for various pulps, in­
rate, and Hammett despaired o f his solidifying identity as
cluded an amateur juggler w ith a pool cue for a weapon
a w riter o f pulp detective fiction, but his artistry contin­
(Bob Larkin), a con-man (Paul Pry) and a skycraper-scaling
ued to grow, and in 1 9 2 7 he w rote a novel featuring the
nameless Op. T h e Cleansing o f Poisonville appeared serially “human fly" (Speed Dash).

in the pages o f Black Mask beginning w ith the November Gardner’s output in the pulp era w as phenomenal,
w ith over five hundred mostly novelette-length stories in
1 9 2 7 issue. As much a gangster epic as a detective story,
the 19 2 0 s and 1 9 30s, as w ell a s —from 1 9 3 3 o n —anaver-
Poisonville tells o f a Montana m ining tow n completely run
age o f three hardcover books per year. Gardner’s first novel,
by criminals and the O p’s attempt to destroy them by pit­
turned dow n for serialization by Black Mask, was pub­
ting one rival gang against another. T he novel contains—
lished by W illiam M orrow in March 1933. T h e C ase of
in the serialised version—26 murders, and w riting as spare
the Velvet Claws featured a tough attorney named Perry
and clear as any in the history o f American fiction:
68 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
Mason and would go on to sell 28 m illion copies in its first
15 years in print. Gardner, w hose no-frills, com pulsively
readable style o f storytelling was born and bred in the
pulps, came to be the most w idely read and translated o f
all American writers.
Beginning w ith the Novem ber 1 9 2 6 issue and for the
next ten years, Black M ask was edited by Joseph T. Shaw.
Although he did not discover Daly or Hammett or the
other early tough crime w riters mentioned above, Shaw
was the editor responsible for defining and refining the
new style o f hard-boiled realism, the man most responsible
for establishing hard-boiled as a literary force to be reck­
oned with. In his introduction to a 1 9 4 6 anthology o f early
stories from the magazine, Shaw described the sort o f mys­
tery story he sought for Black Mask:"W c w anted sim plic­
ity for the sake o f clarity, plausibility and b elief W e
wanted action, but w e held that action is meaningless un­
less it involves recognisable human character in three-di­
mensional form”
Shaw was as colorful as any o f his writers. A former
newspaper reporter and army captain (friends and associ­
ates always called him Cap), he had fought in Europe dur­
ing W orld W ar I, had w on an O lym pic medal for fencing,
and was the only man in N ew York licensed to carry a
sword cane. A lthough he had never even heard o f Black
M ask before he was asked to edit it, he took the jo b seri­
ously, even ponderously. U nlike the many pulp editors
w ho w ere more interested in quantity than quality, Shaw
maintained the highest standards in pulpdom Stories were
often returned to w riters more than once for revisions, but
most o f the regular contributors were inspired by Shaw ’s
detailed, serious response to their w o rk Raymond Chan­
dler, a Shaw discovery, w rote that Shaw “has a great in­
sight into w riting and he can give a man a buck up w hen
he needs it as nobody else I know can...” And in another
Below: A photo taken at a Los Angeles gathering of Black
Mask writers, January 1 1 , t g j 6. Front row: Arthur Barnes,
John K. Butler, W . T. Ballard, Horace McCoy, Norhert Davis.
Back row: Raymond Moffat, Raymond Chandler, Herbert
Stinson, Dunght Babcock, Eric Taylor, Dashiell Hammett.
 TWENTY B U C K S 'A D A Y A N D E X P E N S E S
vo lum e cxxvm M ay 13, 1 9 3 9 n um ber
Die, Senator!..........................S h ort N o v e l...........................T . T . Flynn
The web o f intrigue which it official Washington. A pulic-ltirrhtg mystery
of the strange things sublch never get into the newspapers
Q uicksand....................... S h ort S to r y .........................Edward S. Ronns
He was up to bis neck In murder, but It was hate squeezing bis heart
How to Entertain B urglars.........S p ecial F e a tu r e ..........Janies H argan
And bow to be on your best behavior while they're on their worst
T h e N utcracker M urders.................N o v e le tte ..................Richard Sale
Daffy Dill doubles In brats to learn that a little music may lead to a lot o f murder . . .
Illustrated Crim es....................... F e a tu r e ........................ Stookie A llen
Pssnisbmcnt Without Crime
Death W ears a N ig h tsh irt............S h o rt S t o r y ............ Lawrence T reat
. . . And sets a style fo r scientific sleuths
Listen, B roth er................... S h o rt S to r y ....................W illiam Brandon
You ain’t beard nothin’ yet. Just lookit them buzzards fight
Seven D irty D o llars.................. N o v e le t t e ....................Hjugh B. C av e
Irony and Hatred connive to steal a march on Death
C oPPe r ! .................................F e a tu r e ................................. Stookie A llen
Harlem’s Protector
T h e C lue o f the Psychological M o tive. T ru e S t o r y .James W . B ooth
In which an Intangible Is tbc] only mark o f murder
T h e y ’re Swindling Y o u ! .............. F e a tu r e ............... Frank W rentm ore
Lucky Stars
Solving Cipher Secrets.............. .. .F e a tu r e ................... M . E . O h a vcr
Flashes From Readers ................................. 1 .....................................
The Magazine With the Detective Shield on the Cover Is On Sale Every Tuesday
THE RED STAR NEWS COMPANY, Publi.hor.
WILLIAM T. I)EWART. Praldant
280 BROADWAY, NEW YORK, N. Y.
TIIKODORE PROEI1L, Truaurtr
£°UTMMIwnnBMnUHUIU London'"rc T 18' LTD'
Esrt is,ifcr— stm£&g
sasrvssur—— ....
Detective Fiction Weekly, May ij , 19 3 9 .
letter, “W e wrote better for him than we could have w rit­
ten for anybody else"
W ith Cap Shaw at the helm Black Mask’s circulation
increased throughout the late ’20s and early ’30s, peaking
at 103,000. The Depression and increasing com petition
from a slew o f hard-boiled imitators induced a circulation
slump, and late in 1936, after a decade w ith the magazine,
Shaw was fired. He wrote some mystery fiction (w hich
show ed no sign o f approaching his editorial standards)
and eventually became a moderately unsuccessful literary
agent, dying at age 7 7 in the elevator o f his Manhattan of­
fice building.
Although few would achieve anything like the suc­
cess or acclaim o f Dashiell Hammett, the w riters in Shaw ’s
stable were by and large a remarkably talented group, cre­
ating a rich array o f effects and characters w ithin the
bounds o f the hard-boiled style. Raoul W hitfield, a former
silent-film actor and W orld W ar I fighter pilot and even­
tually a close friend of Hammett’s, w rote ra^or-sharp de­
69
tective and crime stories, including tw o action-packed
novels,serialised in Mask Green Ice and Death in a Bowl.
Even better w ere his stories w ritten under the pen name
o f Ramon Dacolta, featuring the exotic adventures o f a
Philippines-based detective named Jo Gar. Having been
brought up in the Far East, W hitfield did a colorful jo b o f
2 transplanting the tough private-eye tales from the mean
4
streets and speakeasies o f urban A m erica to the muddy
36 Pasig and the sw eltering w aterfront o f tropical Manila.
44 W hen W hitfield ’s novels began appearing, critics linked
50 him w ith Hammett as the best o f the new breed o f crime
66 w riters—one high-minded essay labeled them the Matisse
68
and Cezanne o f modern mystery fiction. And like
78
Hammett, W h itfield ’s output ended abruptly. In eight
89
years, he w rote nine books and nearly tw o hundred sto­
ries, 88 in Black Mask alone. He then married a wealthy
103
socialite and stopped writing. The socialite was murdered,
104
W hitfield inherited her fortune, Spent every dollar, and
106
died, destitute, at age 46.
108
,. n O ther good w riters m imicked the Hammett style, ei­
ther by natural inclination or in calculated deference to
Cap Shaw ’s buying patterns. Frederick Nebel wrote the
popular Kennedy and MacBride series about a reporter and
a police captain (with a sex change, it became the Torchy
--
Blaine series at W arner Bros, starring Glenda Farrell and
Barton MacLane) and authored the adventures o f “Tough
Dick" Donahue o f the Inter-State Detective Agency, a p.i.
clearly patterned after Sam Spade. W . T Ballard placed his
hard-boiled hero in the employ o f a movie studio in the
fast and entertaining stories about H ollywood trouble­
shooter Bill Lennox. Roger Torrey and John K. Butler wrote
o f various two-fisred gumshoes for M ask and assorted
other private eye pulps throughout the ’30s and AOs, both
men masters o f the tough-guy idiom, both now unjustly
forgotten.
Cap Shaw discovered at least three w riters w ho
achieved the.artistic heights o f Dashiell Hammett. Horace
M cC oy was a W orld W ar I flier, a w ar hero awarded the
C roix de Guerre, and a Dallas sports and crime reporter
before he began w ritin g fictio n for Mask in late 1927. His
stories about the flying Texas lawmen know n as Hell’s
Stepsons com bined the landscapes and character types o f
the W estern w ith the detached tone ancTbloodletting of
the hard-boiled detective story A t loose ends in L A. after
a f i l l e d attempt to break into the movies, M cC oy took a
jo b as a bouncer at a Santa Monica marathon dance con­
test, one o f those tawdry, desperate spectacles that were the
70 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
Below: Editor Fanny Ellsworth, “Cap" Shaw ’s replacement,
bought stories with more emotional range. T he high-strung
suspense fiction of Cornell W oolrich became a fixture in the
magazine.
Depression-era equivalents o f bear-bait­
ing. From this experience, and w riting
in the “hard, brittle" style w ell-know n to
Black Mask readers, M cC oy produced a
great A m erican novel, T hey Shoot
Horses, Don't T h ey ? H is w o rk w ent
largely unnoticed in his ow n country,
but in France, M cCoy was acclaimed by
Sartre and Gide as an important novel­
ist and a father o f existentialism
Fast One w as a cold-hearted, ma­
chine gu n -p aced masterpiece, pub­
lished serially in five issues o f Black Mask. A saga o f gang­
land violence in Prohibition Los Angeles, it contains the
hardest-boiled w riting o f them all, prose so lean and mean
it makes Hammett’s sentences read like the w o rk o f Rafael
Sabatini. T he author o f Fast O ne and 12 short stories for
Black M ask was Paul Cain, otherw ise kn ow n as Peter
Ruric, whose real name was George Sims. Sim s liked to
change his name a lo t He like to change the names o f his
w ives and girlfriends, too. He married a cigarette girl from
the Mocambo club and changed her name from Virginia
to Mushel. He convinced a young dancer named M yrna
W illiam s to call herself M yrna Loy. N ot much more is
know n about him. T o an anthologist seeking biographi­
cal information (Cap Shaw himself, w ho knew no more
about Sims than anyone else), he sent a comical curriculum
vitae in w hich he claimed to be a former Dada painter,
bosun’s mate, and gynecologist. As Ruric, he w orked occa­
sionally in films, scripting the bizarre and brilliant Edgar
Ulmer—directed version o f T h e Black Cat w ith K arloff and
Lugosi. After- the AOs, Sim s dropped out o f sight, report­
edly living a seedy expatriate’s life on the Spanish island
o f Mallorca. U npublished for decades, he died in obscurity
on a H ollyw ood backstreet. H is one novel, Fast One, called
b y the N ew York Tim es “a ceaseless w elter o f bloodshed
and frenzy, a sustained bedlam o f killing and fiendishness"
is the enigm atic author’s legacy, frequently republished in
recent years to increasing acclaim—one o f the highlights
o f the entire pulp era
Shaw ’s third great discovery, and the only true success
story, was Raymond Chandler. In 193 3 , Chandler was a
45-year-old failed Bloomsbury poet and fired oil-company
manager w hen he sold his first story to
Black Mask, a detective novelette titled
Blackm ailers D on’t Shoot. From the be­
ginning, Chandler had little in common
w ith the fast churn-’em-out pulp pros.
H is first story took five months to w rite
and in his entire pulp career Chandler
never sold more than five stories in a
year. But his w o rk w as crafted to last.
Here is the w ell-know n but never-tire-
some opening to his story R ed Wind:
T h ere was a hot desert wind blowing
that night. It was one o f those hot dry
Santa A nas that come down through
the mountain passes and curl your hair
and m ake your nerves jum p and your skin itch. On nights
like that every booge party ends in a fight. M eek little
wives feel the edge o f the carving knife and study their
husbands' necks. A nything can happen. You can even get
a full glass o f beer at a cocktail lounge.
Born in America, raised in England, Chandler
received a classical education and began his adult years
w ith effete and grand artistic ambitions. But the aspiring
poet had to w ait for experience and middle age and the
w earying toll o f life’s disappointments to find his literary
voice. Chandler brought a deliberately poetic style and
rueful rom anticism to the tough detective story. In the
novels he wrote, T h e Big Sleep-, Farew ell, My Lovely; etc,
some adapted—“cannibalized" he called it—from the pulp
stories, Chandler perfected his synthesis o f the lyrical and
the hard-boiled. H is distinctive, simile-laden prose, and his
concept o f the private eye as a knight errant in a corrupt
world, would influence uncountable numbers o f followers
 LADY
FROM
HELL

* Story of
i Sinister Woman
-u jjc n c T h o m a s

* • - ’vS<
A bove and left: A t the peak of their

JjKJBS popularity in the late 1930s, there

were more than 5 0 different pulp
detective magazines.

! ^
 TWENTY BUCKS
in print and on film. Style cannot be copyrighted, or
Chandler would have made his fortune in lawsuits. In any
case, a zillion plagiarists, idolators, and satirists later,
Chandler’s best w ork remains unsurpassed.
Private-eye and crime pulps proliferated throughout
the 19 30s. More than 1 5 0 new titles w ere launched in the
years follow ing Black Mask's success. Some lasted only a
few issues, w hile others stayed in business for decades:
A ce-H igh Detective, Action Detective, A ll Star Detective Sto­
ries, A ll Story D etective, Best Detective,
Black’Aces, Candid Detective, Clues, Crack
Detective Stories, Detective Book,Detective
Classics, Detective Tales, D etective Trails,
Dime Detective, Double-Action Detective,
Double Detective, Exciting Detective, Fif­
teen D etective Stories, Fifteen-Story D etec­
tive, Five Detective Novels, Gold Seal
Detective, Hollywood Detective, N ickel D e­
tective, Popular Detective, Private Detec­
tive Stories, Red Star Detective, Romantic
Detective, Speed Detective, Super D etec­
tive, Sure-Fire D etective, T en D etective
Aces, Thrilling Detective, T op N otch D e­
tective, V ariety D etective . . . and so on.
W hat had been innovations in Black
Mask became familiar formula, a pulpwood logjam o f
tough, w isecracking detectives, curvy secretaries, shabby
offices w ith the requisite bottle o f booze in the desk
drawer, w ary police inspectors, greasy nightclub-ow ning
mobsters, their sap-wielding gorillas, and a seemingly end­
less supply o f mysterious blonde clients. O nly the
gunslinging cow boy and the W ild W est rivaled the pri­
vate eye and his urban w orld as the predominant pop-
culture mythology o f 1 9 3 0 s America.
HE A P P E T IT E for stereotypical hard-boiled
T detective stories may have been inexhaustible, but
in the pulps’ expansive heyday there was always enough
rough paper left to try any and all variations on a theme.
Big city gangsters grabbed the headlines during Prohibi­
tion,and several pulps, including Gangster Stories, T h e Un­
derworld,Gang World, and Gun Molls, dealt w ith crime from
the crim inal’s perspective, although the stories often fea­
tured the gangster protagonists in a commendable and
highly unlikely collaboration w ith the police. T h e gang­
ster pulps produced no w orks comparable to the great
gangster films being made in H ollyw ood in this period.
A DAY AND E X P E N S E S 73
Below: Street & Smith's Detective Story magazine was the
first all detective fiction pulp. T he March 5 , 1 9 3 2 , cover
featured the most common setting for Prohibition-era crime
fiction, the speakeasy.
Opposite: No figure was more emblematic of the pulp era
than the hard-boiled private eye.
Despite many o f them being habitues o f
mob-run speakeasies, the gangster pulp
hacks evidenced little knowledge o f the
crim inal m ilieu A n exception was
Armitage T rail. The author o f hundreds
o f underw orld stories, published under
an assortment o f pseudonyms, T rail—
real name M aurice Coons—was a gang­
ster groupie. For years, he cultivated
friendships w ith Chicago’s top rack­
eteers and killers. He eventually w rote a novel about
Capone, S carf ace—dedicated, as a matter o f fact, to pulp edi­
tor Leo M argulies—and sold the film rights to Howard
Hughes. Trail/Coons w ent out to California w ith the
book, got him self a chauffeur and a butler, put on a lot o f
weight, and dropped dead in Grauman’s Chinese Theatre
at age 28. A nyw ay—
A nother hard-boiled subgenre covered the good
deeds o f J. Edgar Hoover’s much-publiciged minions at the
Federal Bureau o f Investigation. In 1935, follow ing the
lead o f a hit Jim m y Cagney movie called G-Men and the
Crashing G-Man stories by D w ight Babcock in Black Mask,
Standard Publications launched G-Men magazine. Sub­
titled T h e Federals in Action, it featured not only F B I
agents but two-fisted heroes from other—less legendary—
branches o f the government, such as Rush Blackwell, Postal
Inspector. G-M en w as followed by Public Enem y (later
changed to Federal Agent), The Feds, and Ace G-Man Sto­
ries. Although endorsed by Hoover in the form o f letters to
the editors and reprints o f his speeches to chambers o f com­
merce and the like (“It is my personal opinion that the time
w ill come w hen every honest man w ill be glad to have his
74 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
fingerprints on file"), the G-Man pulps were not big on au­
thenticity. As Harry Steeger, publisher o f A ce G-M an S to­
nes, observed, “I don’t think many real F B I agents ever saw
the kind o f action w e had in our stories” A n understate­
ment: Steeger’s most popular G-Men characters belonged
to a highly fictional clique called the Suicide Squad
W hile the “classic” hard-boiled PI. never lost his pre­
cedence, every detective pulp offered variant crim e-fight­
ing types, some o f them believable, some silly, and a few
that were utterly absurd The most frequent—and certainly
the most logical—line o f w ork for non-professional sleuths
was journalism. T he 1920s and 1930s w ere the years o f
the crime-obsessed tabloids, w hen tough reporters rubbed
elbows w ith big-time gangsters and were frequently in­
vestigating very violent events, and many pulp writers
were themselves former or presently w orking newspaper­
men. Among the popular pulp journalists w ere Theodore
Tinsley’s creation,“Broadway wiseguy" Jerry Tracy o f the
N ew York Daily Planet, George Harmon Coxe’s Flashgun
Casey, Fred Maclssac’s Rambler Murphy, and W illiam
Writer R ichard Sale, in Hollywood, with actress B arbara
Bates, 1950.
Barrett’s Dean Culver, author o f a W inchellesque column
on crime, T h e Blue Barrel. The best newspaper-based se­
ries featured Joe “Daffy" Dill (with spinoff stories about
Dill’s W eegee-like pal, photographer Candid Jones), pub­
lished by Detective Fiction W eekly and w ritten by pulp
wordsmith extraordinaire Richard Sale. “I had some news­
paper experience on a couple o f papers," he told me. “I knew
the background and knew some colorful characters. Those
w ere the days w hen you had a dozen or so newspapers in
N ew Y o rk A lot o f the tabloids were pretty wild." The Dill
stories are told in a w isecracking, vernacular voice and
move at a lightning pace.
“Garbo," I snapped, “get a grip on yourself. This is the
finish. Call an am bulance and get that kid to a hospital.
Call Poppa H anley at H.Q. and tell him to come running.
W e've got the Pendleton killer. T hen call the Old Man
and break the yarn. I'll be back . . . ." A n d I tore out and
down the stairs.
Up until the final crim e-solving shootouts, nearly all o f
Dill’s narration and dialogue is slangy sarcasm—he even
answers the phone w ith a bantering, “Your nickel!" This
was the sort o f thing that was done to death in the detec­
tive pulps, but Sale’s brash skill kept the Dill stories fresh
and funny. Like many o f the younger pulp veterans, Sale
moved on to Hollywood. His first novel, N ot Too N arrow,
N ot Too Deep, was turned into the M GM Devil’s Island
drama Strange Cargo, starring Clark Gable and Joan
Crawford, and Sale eventually became a successful screen­
w riter and then director o f motion pictures.
If newspapermen w on hands down as the most be­
lievable o f the detective-variants, the competition for least
likely sleuth was stiff Professions represented among the
legion o f amateur pulp detectives included magician, in­
ventor, bookie, acrobat, tattoo artist, and mortician. The lat­
ter tw o were featured in D im e Detective. W illiam E.
Barrett’s Needle M ike was a gray-haired, gold-toothed,
jaundiced sleazeball practicing his tattoo trade in a ratty
office building otherwise occupied by shyster lawyers
and mail-order tricksters. In reality, M ike is young Ken
McNally, the son o f a St. Louis millionaire, w ho occasion­
ally drops out o f polite society and, heavily disguised, as­
sumes his grubby alternate identity.
H e looked into the mirror . . . T h e fa ce that stared out at
him was the tough, uncompromising fa c e o f N eedle Mike,
 TWENTY BUCKS A DAY AND E X P E N S E S 75

Right: Street & Smith’s

Detective Story, the first
detective pulp.
KEEN-EYED CLEVER
DETECTIVES t k j CRIMINALS

TWICE
A
MO NTH

the character that he had created to he his other self—the a ticklish embalming jo b —one with diabetic complications

self that went adventuring into the grim fringes o f the . . . Still later, he skipped supper to do a plastic on a
underworld when life amid luxury becam e too boring to be drunk driver, who otherwise would have to be buried

endured. without a face. H e grabbed a midnight lunch from an owl

Barrett told Dime D etective readers, “I met several
needle wielders and, although I haven’t a single blue mark
on my hide, the guild has fascinated me ever since” These
low er depths adventures w ere never mentioned on
Barrett’s resume in later years, w hen he became the ac­
claimed author o f religious-themed w orks such as his b i­
ography o f Pope Paul VI and the novel T h e Lilies of the
Field.
J.Paul Suter wrote ten stories for Dime Detective about
funeral director and reluctant detective Horatio
Humberton. The murder cases he w orks on are not nearly
as intriguing as the brief, deadpan glimpses of Humberton
practicing his vocation:
He could not devote all his time to criminology. Some of it
had to be spent in earning a living. T hat morning he had
wagon and hurried to police headquarters.
Perhaps the most unpromising o f the amateur detec­
tives was a character thought up by w riter Lawrence
Treat. “He was an advertising agency executive,” Treat re­
called. W hen I asked him—not having located the stories—
how an advertising exec would possibly become involved
in solving crimes, Treat took a long, perplexed pause be­
fore answering, “I don’t have any idea1W e tried everything
back then” The police in those days, said Treat, “used to
make fun o f a lot o f our stuff They preferred the ‘true crime’
magazines, w ith the real murder cases and the photos of
the corpses.” Treat’s crim e-w riting became more authentic
after he befriended a San Diego homicide cop. “I w ent out
w ith homicide detail for tw o weeks, and found out how
little I knew " Treat would go on to become the “father” o f
the police procedural novel.
76 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
In the mid-’30s, the hard-as-nails school o f mystery
w riting—a revolution ten years earlier—had become the
standard, and perhaps a bit passe. C oinciding w ith Cap
Shaw ’s dismissal from Black Mask, there came to promi­
nence several w riters w ho would take the hard-boiled
style in new directions. Cornell W oolrich had been a
promising young Fitggeraldian novelist in the Jazz Age.
By the time o f the Depression, he was a broke, despairing
recluse living w ith his mother at the Hotel Marseilles on
103rd Street and Broadway (Absolutely Fireproof was the
hotel’s utilitarian motto). In early 1934, he wrote his first
crime story, Death Sits in the Dentist's Chair, and sold it to
Detective Fiction W eekly for $ 1 1 0 . It was a clever story
about a murderous oral surgeon, and the narrator’s race to
save him self from the effects o f a deadly cyanide filling. His
second story, W alls T hat H ear You, w as even better. A
man's brother is found w ith his tongue and fingers cut o ff
The man tracks down the assailant, an insane abortionist,
and the story climaxes in a grueling m ix o f anger, suspense,
and dread. W oolrich, in these and over a hundred other
stories in the next half-decade, gave mystery fiction an in­
tensely emotional and psychological dimension. His typi­
cal stories, set in the grimy, low-rung Manhattan o f
cramped tenement buildings, subways, and dime-a-dance
halls, are tales o f torment and dark passion. W oolrich’s
w ord magic could draw a reader so deeply into his
protagonist’s dilemma that one finished the best o f the sto­
ries in a state o f almost unbearable anxiety. This was a long
way from the cool toughness o f Hammett
Steve Fisher was another w riter at this tim e w ho
gave emotions to the hard-boiled style. A young ex-navy
man, Fisher called his style “tough but tender.” He sold
Black M ask’s new editor, Fanny Ellsw orth, an unusual
story titled W ait for Me, about a W h ite Russian w hore
in Shanghai and the Am erican sailor w ho loves her. T h e
ending is tragic and haunting. T h e more em otionally
charged style caught on and w as featured in a num ber o f
detective pulps. A Popular Publications title, D etective
Tales, became devoted to non-series and “off-trail” crime
stories. Steve Fisher com plained that the magazine
“missed the w hole point" o f his and W oo lrich ’s innova­
tions. “I suppose w hat [editor Rogers Terrill] heard was
'emotion is in,’ and to him emotion w as having the hero’s
sister brutally murdered, or a sw eetheart kidnapped ...
the w eeping and w ailing ladled on. It was embarrassing.”
Perhaps Terrill didn’t give Fisher enough work. In fact
D etective Tales published many outstanding stories, in­
cluding notable and distinctly unformulaic w ork by Day
Keene, Dane G regory (Rob Robbins), and Fredric Brown.
A nother innovative approach to hard-boiled came from
N orbert Davis, a skilled, highly entertaining w riter w ho
brought a touch o f screw ball com edy to the tough-detec­
tive story in his D im e D etective series about M ax Latin.
Latin’s office is a booth in a noisy restaurant, surrounded
by rude w aiters and a blustering c h ef
The ultimate subversion o f Dashiell Hammett’s stan­
dard o f realism came in 1938, w ith Dime Mystery’s short­
lived devotion to the so-called “defective detective.” This
magagine, previously concerned w ith stories o f “W eird
Menace” (see chapter 7), suddenly turned itself over to the
exploits o f private eyes suffering from one or another dis­
ease or birth defect Calvin Kane had deformed legs and was
forced to crawl along the floor like a crab. Nicholas Street
was a detective w ho suffered from amnesia—he could solve
a case for you but don’t ask him where he was bom. The
husband-wife team o f Edith and Ejler Jacobson detailed the
activities o f Nat Perry, “the Bleeder,” a detective suffering
from hemophilia w ho could bleed to death from the slight­
est scratch Journalist and biographer John Kobler wrote
about private eye Peter Quest, w ho suffered from incurable
glaucoma and was attacked by seizures o f total blindness
during moments o f crisis. Further distinguishing him, Quest
had a death w ish and hoped one o f his violent encounters
w ith criminals would end his ocular suffering.“I plagiarized
the idea o f the blind detective from some old stories about
an English detective named M ax Carrados,” says Kobler, 50-
some years later. “The concept for the magazine was Rog
Terrill’s, I guess. I really don’t remember a thing about it The
whole thing sounds kind o f odd, doesn’t it?”
The detective story managed to survive this aberra­
tion. As in every other pulp genre there was room for ex­
cellence and room for ju n k Great crime w riters continued
to be nurtured by the rough-paper magazines right up
until their demise. Hard-boiled classicists such as W illiam
Campbell Gault and John D. MacDonald w ere among the
first-rate latecomers; they carried the tradition o f Hammett
and Chandler from the pulps into the paperback era to
come. A nd before that, pulp genius Cornell W oolrich,
moving on to novel-w riting in the 1940s, took mystery
fiction to its next creative plateau after hard-boiled—the
shadowy, doom-haunted landscape o f noir.
Right: Second only to Black Mask in the quality of its crime
stories was Dime Detective, from Popular Publications.
* MAGAZI NE

DEATH ItT*
THE RAW
A CARD/CAN STO RK
FREDERICK 4
A typical romance pulp featured
not onfy love stories but a variety
of features from lovelorn columns
to etiquette aduice to "loue
 Popular Love

RO M A N C E AND SE X PULPS

I glued my glims on her blonde loveliness; couldn't help

myself. T h e covers had skidded down from her gorgeous

shoulders; I could see plenty o f delishful shemale epidermis.

Layna had the face of an angel, the curves o f a scenic railway.

— fro m S p ic y D e t e c t iv e S t o r ie s

T
H E PU LPS W E R E A IM E D at the readers’ emo­
tions. Inevitably, some publishers targeted those emo­
tions emanating from the heart and the groin. The romance
pulps featured tales o f idealised love, and made up the only
rough-paper category aimed specifically at women.The sex—
or “Spicy”—pulps featured... well, idealised sex, and had an
almost exclusively adult male readership, although no accu­
rate statistics were kept on the number o f American boys
w ho sneaked a look at their fathers’ back-drawer stash o f
Spicys. Every big pulp house had its assortment o f sweet
romance titles, and some o f these w ere perpetually top
moneymakers. The major houses could have made a fortune
80 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
on “hot" titles too, but there w ere certain things respectable,
even semi-respectable, publishers didn’t do in the 1920s
and 1930s, and it was left to the fringe, independent outfits
to supply man’s baser magazine needs.
W
HEN S T R E E T & SM ITH created the first
successful romance pulp, Love Story, in 192 1 , it
had already had great success w ith female-oriented roman­
tic fiction. In the 19th century, their novels by the
unromantically pen-named Bertha M Clay were best-sell­
ers. There were many slick-paper magazines for women,
but these were generally upper middle-class in orientation
and more than a little hoity-toity. Publisher Ormond Smith
believed there was a huge untapped female market for the
more egalitarian style o f the pulps. The first attempt,
Woman’s Stories, failed, but in May o f ’21, Street & Smith
tried again and this time they had a winner. Under the
editorial guidance o f the ladylike Amita Fairgrieve, Love
Story became a charming m ixture o f beauty tips, poems,
and stories about modern girls—but not too modern—and
how they fall in love forever and ever. In an early issue, Ms.
Fairgrieve printed a boldly bombastic statement o f policy:
LO VE S T O R Y M A G A ZIN E
has recently m ade its appearance.
Its contents are, as its name implies,
based on the greatest thing in the
world: Love!
Love Story is not just another o f those
sex'problem magazines, which have
done incalculable harm.
Opposite: Hounded off the newsstands by bluenoses, the Spicy
line became the ‘speed" line and dropped entirely the erotic
theme that kept the Spicys going.
Love Story is clean at heart, and its love stories are
written around the love o f the one man for the one woman.
Civilization has been built upon this sort o f love—a ll the
great accomplishments o f mankind have been inspired by
good women who w ere greatly loved.
“She was a sweet woman, Amita Fairgrieve, very
sweet," recalls w riter Jean Francis W ebb. “She was a kind
person and looked out for you, and i f you w ere one o f her
favorites she really bought a lot o f stuff from you. But then
she got to where she didn’t w ant anyone to think they
w ere taking advantage o f her, so she would reject every
third story. It wasn’t that there was something wrong w ith
the third story, but that was her w ay o f show ing she
wouldn’t accept just anything. It got so I would show her
each third story ju st to get it over w ith and then take it
right over to sell to another magazine editor."
Under Fairgrieve, Love Story was an immediate suc­
cess, w ith a circulation o f over 100,000. In 1929, when an
ex-d ress model named Daisy Bacon took the editorial
helm, it became a phenomenon, w ith
sales o f more than 600,000, the most
popular pulp o f all time. A thoroughly
modern 1920s woman herself Daisy
Bacon believed her magazine's stories
might be sweet and sentimental but
they were not “old-fashioned" The hero­
ines o f Love Story represented the eman­
cipated females w ho now had the free­
dom to seek true love. “She doesn’t have
to marry to get somebody to support
her—she can do that herself” Bacon said
in a newspaper interview. “And so she
considers other things besides a man’s
money-making abilities. She looks for
charm, companionship, and other intan­
gibles in marriage today, w here formerly she had to con­
sider w hether or not a man was likely to be a good pro­
vider ... W hy, women are ju st beginning to know what
romance is all about, and how to go out after it”
A successful pulp spawned imitators, and Love Story
was followed by T ru e Love, Real Love, N ew Love, T h rill­
ing Love, Popular Love, Sw eetheart Stories, and Cupid's
Diary, to name but a few. There were, as w ell, the off­
shoots—love pulps w ith a W estern background became
82 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S

August, 1036 Vol. 6, No. 4 Contents page for the August

' 3 6 Spicy Detect! veStories.

THE LADY FROM NOWHERE 4

Clint Morgan
CRYSTAL CLUES ..................... 16
E. Hoffmann Price
DEAD MAN’S HEAD................. 28
Robert Leslie Bellem
CODE OF VALOR....................... 40
Ellery Watson Calder
MURDER BY THE BOOK........ 52
Cary Moran
SALLY THE SLEUTH............... 64
Barreaux
THE EARMARKS OF
MURDER.................................. 66
Curtis Blount
RED BLOT ............ 78
Jerome Severs Perry
BULLETS TO SPARE............... 90
Morton H. Edwards
TWO HANDS TO CHOKE.. . . 102
Colby Quinn
Bncx la publishad by
D rr r c T rr * 8 to * i» i
the 000 Uor-
C U L T D R B 1’ U B I. IC A T IO X S , I f l C . ,
ket Street, Wilmington, Delaware, The
publisher assumes no responsibility for re­
turn of unsolicited manusoripts.

a major romance subdivision, w ith such titles as Range­
land Love Stories, Romantic Range, Ranch Romances, W est­
ern Romances,and Thrilling Ranch Stories. Less successful
was an attempt to bring “love’s com pelling call” to, the
heartless denigens o f the crim inal underworld. In the
w aning years o f Prohibition, Popular Publications
launched U nderw orld Romances. Jean M ithoefer was the
very young associate editor o f the magazine, “The pub­
lisher ju st thought, love stories w ere doing good and
crim e stories w ere doing good, let’s com bine them. But
that magazine lasted ju st three issues, as I remember, be­
cause w e couldn’t get any good stories. T he wom en love
story w riters w rote kind o f silly gangsters, and we had:
some pretty tough crim e w riters w ho didn’t know how
to make their crim inals act romantic. I don’t know w ho
the readers for that magazine would have b e e n ... maybe
the w ives o f gangsters "
Most pulp love-stories w ere formulaic tales o f flirta­
tion and courtship, some light and frothy, some emotion­
ally charged and full o f heartbreak (although never con­
taining the masochistic suffering o f the “confession” story,
another genre entirely). T h e stories might, depending on
the editor and the year, be provocative, even racy at times—
a girl might, for instance,fall into the N ew York harbor and
be fished out by a young yachtsman w ho proceeds to strip
her o f all her w et clothes:
 POPULAR LOVE 83

A fain t smile flickered in his eyes. ‘ T h e crew are, natu­ Secure some picture representing romance and place it on

rally, men. Chinks, at that. W h a t would you have had me the night-table . . . A s soon as you settle yourself in bed lie

do? Let you die o f exposure? Besides, I—I didn ’t look. A t several moments on your left side to slow up your heart

least—" his flush m atched her own—“I tried not to . . . ." action. Start taking deep breaths. W ith all your heart
desire a romantic dream. D on’t leave either arm out­
Most often, though, the nature o f pulp love was cloy-
ingly sweet. A nd w hile the heroine could be a debutante stretched . . .
or an heiress or even a movie star, she was likely to be a
Although they w ere enormously popular in their day,
more modestly endowed, middle-class Am erican female,
w hen the love pulps eventually disappeared, they left be­
not unlike the love pulps’ primary readership o f shopgirls
hind no trace o f their existence. No great w riters or con­
and schoolgirls and secretaries and young married women.
tinuing series characters w ere born in their pages, and it
The story formula these readers responded to was a simple
appears likely that no pulp romance story has ever been
one: girl meets boy, girl marries boy. O f course, the road to
reprinted anywhere.
romantic happiness could be a bum py one, full o f obstacles
such as meddling relatives, tempting lotharios w ith pen­
“I did some o f the sexy stuff w hen I was starting out,"
cil-thin moustaches, and even a girl’s ow n foolish pride, but
recalls Jean W ebb. “Breezy Stories and a couple o f others.
nothing is ever allowed to alter the course o f true pulp love,
These w ere stories o f w hat they used to call ‘hot love,’ as
and each and every fictional romance was mandated to end
opposed to the ‘clean love’ stories I did for the romantic
happily, the heroine and her dreamboat pledged to each
pulps. T h ey w ere not at all explicit, you couldn’t use any
other in eternal devotion:
d irty words, but they w ere considered a bit shocking. I
‘ Oh, Kyle! Oh, K y l e - didn’t enjoy w riting them, either. I thought it was sordid. I
remember my grandmother didn’t w ant them anywhere

Gently, he took her in his arms. T enderly he kissed the in her house, she was so afraid someone might see them

tears from her cheeks, kissed the long black lashes closed,
kissed finally her lips.

“Love me?"

“Love you, Kyle!"

A nd so on: 4 ,9 5 0 w ords o f coqu etry and conflict, fol­

lowed by 5 0 o f rapturous climax. Most pulps offered a
short factual colum n or tw o and a page for readers' re­
sponses, but the love pulps gave significant space to back-
of-the-book non-fictional material. These features in­
cluded beauty pointers (“It seems to me that only the slim,
tapering finger can stand the long, pointed nail”), pen-pal
ads (“I am a girl o f fifteen w ho loves to have a good tim e .
..”), advice to the lovelorn (“You are undoubtedly in a very
trying situation, my dear”), advice from astrologists (“June
children are usually filled w ith unrest, and therefore it is
not strange that you are doubtful w hether to begin the
life o f a school teacher or a seed specialist"), and advice
that is ju st not categoriz,able:
Exotic foreign females provided the titillation in the
Before retiring, take a hot bath and a drink o f cold water.
typical Spicy Adventure story.
 LOVE STORIES OF THE REAL WEST

TV ChaUragr al Crrscnt Peak

B, M ARIE dc N ERVAUD

A k w and right: W estern- themed \

:^ p.'.Tomance pulps were nearly a
, Cfltogorv unto themselves Most major
rough paper publishers h a j at least 3
one Western-love title
 POPULAR
there" W illiam Campbell Gault, best know n for his excel­
lent detective fiction and juvenile sports stories, made his
first pulp sales to a pair o f fringe sex magazines, Paris
Nights and Scarlet Adventuress. The latter was an oversized
pulp devoted to tales o f“the woman adventuress," the sort,
according to the editorial guidelines for contributors,“w ho
has a definite goal—love, money, power, or revenge—to­
ward w hich she steadily forges, using the allure o f her
b o d y ...” Says Gault:“T hey w ere published in Pennsylva­
nia somewhere, and paid a third o f a cent a word. They
bought anything as long as you made all the female char­
acters voluptuous. I guess men read them like they read
Playboy today. T h ey were supposed to be hot stuff, but the
stories were about as sexy as church."
America before W orld W ar II could be a fanatically
puritanical place, and the various local
and state blue laws regarding sexual lit­
erature were strictly enforced in many
areas. For purposes o f decorum and
m inim ising risk, the sexy pulps were
rarely displayed openly but sold “un­
der the counter” and had to be re­
quested, even in a supposedly adult
male bastion like the cigar store. Since
many o f the sex pulps came from
oddball independent publishing com­
panies, they were often irregular in ap­
pearance compared to the uniform
product o f the mainstream publishers.
The dimensions varied—some sex
pulps were saddle stitched, and some
contained slick-paper inserts, six or tw elve pages usually
reserved for black-and-w hite photos o f naked women.
W hen the Spicy titles came along, they included comic
strips as a regular feature—the adventures o f Sally the
Sleuth, Diana Daw, and Polly o f the Plains, tough, luscious
heroines fighting bad guys and losing their clothes in the
process.
The first w ave o f sex pulps w as tied to the Zeitgeist
o f the Roaring Tw enties, a decade perceived to be made
up o f equal parts joie de vivre and moral turpitude. The
stories detailed—or more often teasingly im plied—in ci­
dents o f premarital sex, extram arital sex, even w ife-sw ap­
ping, all activities fueled by plenitudes o f bootleg gin.
Free-spirited young flappers, w ith their short skirts and
open minds, made perfect heroines for prurient literature.
In T h e Em ancipation o f A rab elle in the N ovem ber 1 9 2 8
LOVE 85
Below: French Night Life Stories documented the revelry in
Gay Paree. It was, in fact, one of many Gallic-set sex pulps.
issue o f Ginger Stories, the titular char­
acter is a saucy 18-year-old who, as the
story begins, has succumbed to the lat­
est frivolous flapper crage: “H alf o f the
tw enty-dollar gold piece her father had
given her .. had been spent in having
her legs, ju st above the knees, painted
w ith pictures o f the w orld’s most fa­
mous bachelors .. .Colonel Bindburgh
[sic] and the Prince o f W ales" Arabelle
reveals her thigh-portraits after im bib­
ing too much “pre-Volstead punch,"
raising her skirt w hile dancing the Charleston on a table-
top for an assortment o f lascivious men. T h e flapper's un­
seem ly behavior leads to tw o rich ly documented spank­
ings before the story’s ironic conclusion.
A m ericans o f the 19 2 0 s and 1 9 3 0 s —particularly
those interested in reading “hot” stories—w ere w ell
aware that their nation paled by comparison, sexually
speaking, to la belle France, the global capital o f naughty
activities. A nd the sex pulps fed this perception w ith a
slew o f G allic titles: Parisian Life, G ay Parisienne, Paris
Nights, French N ight Life, and French Scandals, each of­
fering up a selection o f erotica w ith a continental air. Pulp
Pa-ree w as an insouciant place populated entirely by
roues and their mistresses, horny a p ach e dancers, and
hornier rich nymphomaniacs, w here the leading form o f
employment w as nude figure modeling. I f he could man­
86 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
age to get through the idiom atic dialogue (“Mon Dieu, me,
I w eel be less decent in one small moment e e f you h af
your way!") the reader o f the French sex pulps could con­
sider him self a true man o f the world.
PRIL 1 9 3 4 was a significant date in the history o f
A . under-the-counter literature. It marked the debut
o f the line o f erotic fiction magazines know n to legendtext—a
the Spicys. “I hope nobody minds my m aking love in pub­
as
lic," S. J. Perelman effused in the pages o f T h e N ew Yorker,
“but i f Culture Publications, Inc, o f 9 0 0 M arket Street,
W ilm ington, Delaware, w ill have me, Pd love to marry
th em ... call it a schoolboy crush, puppy love, the senseless
infatuation o f a callow youth for a middle-aged, worldly-
w ise publishing hou se... I love them because they are the
publishers o f not only Spicy D etective but also Spicy W est-
ern, Spicy Mystery, and Spicy A dventure" A nd in these feel­
ings, Perelman was not alone—well, perhaps at T h e N ew
Yorker he was, but not elsewhere in red-blooded America.
The Spicys, brain-children o f publishers Harry Donenfeld
and Frank Armer, w ere both daring and innovative, raun­
chier than previous sex pulps, and more accessible to a
W riter Hugh Cave in t g j 2.
mainstream readership. W h ile the Gay Parisienne-ty p e
publications affected an ersatz; sophistication and used sex
and seduction as subject matter, the Spicys took up the
popular action genres—W estern, private eye, high adven­
ture—and infused them w ith blunt and often highly gra­
tuitous passages o f eroticism.
In the Spicys, the narrator’s lechery needed no con­
wom an merely bending over to tie her shoe was
sufficient to provoke four or five sentences o f salacious de­
scription. No matter how tense or action-packed a story
might become, there was alw ays time to stop and examine
the attributes o f every passing female:
H er cream y legs and sculptured thighs w ere the answer to
a celibate's dream. H er hips w ere boyish and yet fem inine:
her waist slender and inviting. T h e fla t plateau o f her
stomach swelled northw ard into two taut, milky-white
breasts o f flawless nubility. Ju st to glimpse those cone-
shaped hillocks through the brassiere m ade Dan breathe
faster . . .
# * #
A round her luscious silver-etched hips clings a torn piece of
pale silk scarcely large enough to disguise the loveliness of
her body. O ne arm is doubled under her back in such a
manner that her breasts, large and firm like mounds of
moon-lit snow, lift their proud swells into the cool night . . .
# # #
N aked to the waist, she picked up a longthonged whip
and flex ed it. H er full, tawny breasts undulated and
swayed under their covering as she drew back her arm —
Crack!
These are w hat w ere know n as the “hot parts," calcu­
lated to quicken the pulse o f impressionable Depression-
era males. Some surviving copies o f the Spicys show that
discrim inating readers often carefully underlined or en­
circled said hot parts for easy reference. Culture Publica­
tions knew w hat they w ere doing: the inclusion o f
concupiscent passages in otherw ise conventional detec­
tive and adventure stories enabled them to charge 15 cents
more than the price o f the “decent” competition. And suc-
 87

cess at the higher price allowed them to pay writers top-

of-the-line rates. A lthough most felt the need to adopt
pseudonyms, a number o f notable pulp pros did w rite for
the disreputable Spicys. Norvell Page was a contributor,
as w ere E. Hoffman Price, Henry Kuttner, Steve Fisher, and
Hugh C ave Cave told me, “It was a good m arket T hey paid
three cents a w ord and sometimes more, and anytime I
needed a quick check I could sit down and w rite one o f
those stories in an afternoon. They paid right away, on ac­
ceptance, unlike some o f the more ‘respectable’ magazines.
I never w ent to their offices, never met any editors. It was
all done through my agent, Lurton Blassingame It was fun.
I w rote a series character, a roguish fellow called ‘the Eel’—
he was an imitation o f a Damon Runyon character, told his
ow n stories in the first person. I was reading Runyon at
the time and so was everyone else. I didn’t put my own
name on the Spicy stories because I was trying to sell to
the slick magazines then and it just would not have been a
good idea for my real name to be plastered all over the
cover o f those Spicys. I invented a pen name for m yself
Justin Case”

Top: A S p ic y h e r o in e m a y lose* h e r
clothes hut s h e k e e p s a t i g h t h o l d oj

h e r . 58.

Above: E a r l y s e x p u l p s l i k e th is

is s u e o j Breezy Stories fr o m M a y 2 , Robert E. Howard, famed for his Conan series in Weird

1929, u s u a l ly s u g g e s t e d m u c h m o r e
Tales, wrote at least five pseudonymous stories for Spicy
A dventure—braw ling exploits o f sailor W ild Bill Clanton.
t h a n t h e y d e l iv e r e d .
He discussed the new market in a letter to his pen pal H. P.
Right: The m a le lo v e o b j e c t s in Lovecraft, advising him to take a crack at it: “Just w rite up
romance p u l p i l lu s t r a t i o n s w e r e o f t e n one o f your ow n sex adventures, altered to fit the plot." The
m o r e d e lic a t e ly f e a t u r e d than th e notion o f the sickly, reclusive, and puritanical Lovecraft
fe m a le s . doing an autobiographical “sex adventure” for one o f the
Spicy magazines is more harrow ing than any o f his horror
stories. The great Lovecraft did not follow Howard’s sug­
gestion.
 W/M
V i V ] .
5 5

rTT T»
\ fi Li
 POPULAR
There may have been other w ell-know n writers in the
Spicy pages, their pseudonymous bylines never to be ex­
posed. Indeed, it is likely that many a Sp icy detective and
adventure story was a reject from the straight markets, re­
cycled w ith a few hastily added sex scenes. There was re­
ally only one distinctive w riter for w hom Culture Publi­
cations was not a quick-buck or shameful secondary mar­
ket—for whom, in fact, Culture provided the only forum
for expressing his singular, goofball artistry. T hat w riter
was Robert Leslie Bellem, the Shakespeare o f the Spicys.
Bellem, an ex-reporter, had been selling to the pulps for sev­
eral years w hen the Spicys came into being. He w as one o f
the speed demons, capable o f churning out a roomful o f
copy every day o f the week, and he often w rote w hole is­
sues o f minor pulps, using his ow n and an assortment o f
pen names. Most o f his w ork was no better than compe­
tent and he would be one more obscure hack today i f not
for his creation o f a horny, Hollywood-based private eye
named Dan T urner. Turner first appeared in the June 1 9 3 4
issue o f Spicy D etective and qu ickly became the Spicys’
most popular offering. Eventually, the
character would have his ow n personal
pulp, Hollywood Detective, a n d Turner’s
adventures, all penned by Bellem, would
number in the hundreds.
W h at distinguished the T urner
stories, and earned them the rabid ad­
m iration o f readers like Perelman, was
their w acky colloquial voice, a version
o f the sim ile-and-slang-laden hard-
boiled style exaggerated to the point o f
delirious ridiculousness. A gun, for in­
stance, never fired; rather, a “roscoe”
“belched C how -chow ,” “coughed Ka-
C how ," “sneeged Ker-choob!" I f P. G.
W odehouse had decided to make his
Bertie W ooster a v iolent and salacious hard-boiled
gumshoe, the result night have sounded som ething like
Dan Turner. “W ill you come along w illingly,” the detec­
tive typically says to a guilty party, “or do I bunt you over
the crum pet till your sneeger leaks butterm ilk?”
Turner’s first home being a Spicy, there w ere naturally
many occasions for lechery, and Bellem was a master o f
dippy sex talk. He was particularly creative in his euphe­
misms for a women’s breasts, know n variously as “w hite
woman's melons,” “creamy bon-bons,” “firm little
tiddlywinks," “perky pretty-pretties," and “gorgeous
LOVE 89
whatchacallems.” U nlike most o f his Culture Publications
co-workers, w ho tended to merely impose a little sex on
an ordinary action plot, Bellem kn ew how to conceive a
story w ith organic erotic content. In T h e Corpse in the
Cabinet, for instance, Dan Turner is in a Turkish bathhouse
(“having a gallon o f Scotch steamed out o f my carcass...”)
w hen a scream comes from across a partition. Dan bursts
in on the crow ded ladies' section o f the bath, finds a dead
body, and for several pages proceeds to interrogate a lineup
o f sweating, stark-naked female murder suspects.
RO M T H E BEG IN N IN G the Spicys had enemies
F
in high places. The Post O ffice and various local gov­
ernments w ere continually scheming to put them out o f
business. The Spicys had their editorial offices in Manhat­
tan, but the publishers felt the need to use a Delaware mail-
drop address on the masthead in order to confuse the
bluenosed N ew York authorities. There were plenty o f
problems w ith distribution. In some cities, the Spicys were
banned or had their front covers removed before sales were
permitted. By the late ’30s, Culture was
forced to scale back the sex content and
eventually gave up the Spicy line alto­
gether. The tamer “Speed" line took its
place. By then, p u b lish e r H arry
D o n en feld had found a m uch less
troublesome and more profitable form
o f publishing—comic books. Culture’s
head man had taken over D C Comics,
the enormously successful home o f Su­
perman and Batman.
Above: The Corpse in the Cabinet was the featured story in
the January 1 9 3 5 issue of Spicy Detective Stories. Author
Robert Leslie Bellem, creator of concupiscent Hollywood
detective Dan Turner, was the prolific ’ Shakespeare of the
Spicys.”
Opposite: T he Spicys owed a good deal of their success to the
larger-than-life cover girls painted by H. J. W ard.
T h e S h a d o w w a s t h e fir s t a n d

most successful o f th e p u lp

su p er-h ero es
 Shadows and
Supermen
TH E H ERO PULPS

“W ell," said Doc Savage, ill at ease, “I guess you would

call our profession righting wrongs and punishing evih

doers, going to the fa r corners o f the earth if necessary."

‘ T hat sounds silly," said Fiesta.

T h e bronze man m ade no reply to that.

— “T he F la m in g F a l c o n s ",
D oc S a v a g e M a g a z in e

N T H E FA LL O F 1930, a mentally unstable radio w ri­

I ter named Harry Chariot—murdered a few years later

in a Bowery flophouse—thought up an identity for the pre­
viously anonymous narrator o f “The Detective Story Hour.”
He called him The Shadow. The radio program was a cheap
promotional showcase for Street & Sm ith Publishers' Detec­
tive Story Magazine. Each w eek an actor named James
LaCurto read over the airwaves a story from the magazine’s
92 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
current issue. N ow the programs began w ith LaCurto do­
ing a hammy, scarifying laugh and intoning the words,
“The Shadow k n o w s. . This new ly characterised narra­
tor became a hit w ith the listeners, and Street & Sm ith be­
gan hearing o f repeated requests for “the magazine w ith
that Shadow guy ..." There was no such magazine, o f
course, only D etective Story w ith its mostly humdrum pri­
vate-eye and mystery fiction. But news o f the public pas­
sion for the creepily cackling radio Shadow came to the
attention o f the S & S circulation chief, H enry Ralston. A
veteran'of more than 3 0 years in the cheap thrills business,
Ralston clung to some old, outmoded enthusiasms. He had
never forgotten the pleasures—and the profits—once gen­
erated by the dime novels w ith their larger-than-life he­
roes, N ick Carter, Buffalo Bill, and the rest. T h e response to
The Shadow gave Ralston the excuse he was looking for
to revive a single-character publication. It could be done
just like in the old days: target a young male audience, cre­
ate a house name byline to retain all creative control.
Ralston even found an ancient unpublished N ick Carter
manuscript that could be rew ritten for the new character.
He dumped the project on the desk o f D etective Story edi­
tor Frank Blackwell and told him to put out a magazine,
fast, w hile the radio show was still caus­
ing excitement.
Blackw ell may not have thought
much o f the idea—after all, even the low-
caste pulps looked down on the embar­
WIZARD
rassing dime novels—because he did not
give the assignment to one o f his regular
w riters but instead offered it to a rela­
tively unknow n Philadelphia magician
and author named W alter Gibson, w ho
happened to be stopping by the office
that particular day in December 1930.
Above: Street & Smith’s The W izard was a short-lived hero
pulp about ‘ Cash’ Gorman, a financier. T he magazine,
subtitled Adventures in Money Making did not catch on.
Opposite: As this Rudolph Belarski painting for March ’j 8
shows, the streets aren't safe even for a man in a diuing helmet.
Gibson, 33 years old, had been a reporter, one o f the first
composers o f crossword puzzles, and a ghostw riter for the
world-famous magician Harry Blackstone. G ibson and
Blackw ell decided to toss the N ick Carter manuscript and
start fresh, and G ibson began w riting on the train ride
back to Philadelphia—the book-length story had to be
completed at once, the premiere issue o f T h e Shadow sched­
uled to hit the newsstands in a little over tw o months' time.
W ith an A pril 1931 cover date, the first issue o f T he
Shadow, w ent on sale right on schedule T he novel opens
on a scene thick w ith tension, mystery, and despair. O n a
N ew York bridge clouded by a black mist, a young man
prepares to commit suicide. He leans above the distant dark
waters and his fingers loosen their hold on the rail. Sud­
denly, w hile “balanced betw een life and death," he is
gripped by an iron force. Someone drags him back, some­
one w ith an irresistible power. The would-be corpse sees
a frightening figure before him, “a tall black,-cloaked fig­
ure that might have represented death itself . . . The
stranger’s face was entirely obscured by a broad-brimmed
felt hat bent dow nw ard over his features; and the long,
black cloak looked like part o f the thickening fog." Hauled
into the back o f a chauffeured limousine, the daged man
hears the mysterious stranger’s offer o f
a new lease on life. “I shall improve i t ... I
shall make it useful. But I shall risk it,
too. Perhaps I shall lose it, for I have lost
lives, ju st as I have saved them." A few
paragraphs later, the young man has
sworn his allegiance, a hold-up man has
been shot dead, and the stranger has
vanished—“like a shadow!”
And so begins the first issue o f the
first single-character pulp, the begin­
ning o f the great epoch o f pulp heroes
and superheroes. T h e Shadow was a
sensation, moving quickly from quar­
terly issuance to m onthly to biweekly.
The character would make Street &
Sm ith several fortunes in licensing fees and royalties, and
the magazine w ould last for nearly tw o decades. Old
H enry Ralston had been right, the old dime novel formula
could be repackaged and made to w ork again.
The Shadow himself, a Victorian w raith w ith his
black cloak and sinister cackle, might have felt right at
home in a 1 9th-century story paper. He also owed some­
thing to the flamboyant pulp heroes o f the p re -1920 pe-
mm

THE MASTER OF DEATH

A F UL L- L EN G TH N O V E L FEA TUR ING
TH E W O R L D S GREATEST SLEUTH

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: A V IN H. JO HNSTO N

ROBERT WALLACE • EARLE D O W
\
 94
riod, Johnston M cCulley’s masked swordsman o f Old
Capistrano, Zorro, and Frank Packard’s Jim m ie Dale, a ka.
The Gray Seal. The Shadow may have actually seemed
startlingly fresh in the 1930s, w hen crim e-fighting hero­
ics had become the exclusive province o f the hard-boiled,
bluntly realistic private eye. The setting, too, although os­
tensibly contemporary, had little in common w ith the
mean streets realism o f most pulp crime fiction o f that time.
Filtered through W alter Gibson's theatrical imagination,
The Shadow existed somewhere near the foggy gaslit
world o f Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula
In the first novels, The Shadow is an almost periph­
eral character, making sudden, decisive appearances at
critical points in the narrative The Shadow prefers to use
an informal army o f recruits and lieutenants to do his
groundwork, investigating incipient crimes, setting the
traps that w ill thwart the hordes of evil; then, when the
time is right, and from some unknown sanctum, he arrives,
a being in black, striking sw iftly w ith blaming automatics.
The ending is invariable—the foe vanquished, crime for
the time being stilled, and the midnight victory announced
by,the creepy peals o f The Shadow’s mighty laugh (that
radio actor’s improvisation becoming
On Sale F ir s t and T h ir d F rid a y
fo\. X X III
Number 4
October 15
1937
TWICE A MONTH
, ,M, n. |Uln. . r . .roucl*! b , •* *
m m am sm um m c o n t e n t s i
QympiaXi SAoJawflovst
F k o n tift& S h s r io m T k lu a it
Ga , ix & L to r
T H w u ffd t
Thrilling Stories and Features
MURDER IN THE CARDS . . Robert Arthur
F ortu n e tolling w o t m jotoriotto t f J .I H to th e law . S m gotH a g a
a u r d t r t r w isn'tI
C O D E S ................................................Henry L jt t a f
Iu tt r c tt ie g in io rm ttio a c o n to r t in g C odon, C lg k o n , C rygtogroono tm i
Secret Imho,
DEATH IN THE RAIN . . . Stephen OeaM
S h crid w D oom *, crook H o n ! l o t o l li t o o c o e e e . w aflte th e eereere o t W ood-
' The Shadow, October 15, 1 g j / .
D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
Shadow ’s permanent and most famous characteristic). For
a time, The Shadow was so mysterious that no one in­
volved in his creation had a clear idea w hat he looked like.
The definitive depiction o f the character was the belated
w ork o f cover artist George Roz;en, w ho took over the jo b
when the previous painter, his tw in brother, Jerome, was
injured in an auto accident. George had one initial diffi­
culty, a blind spot about the description o f The Shadow’s
nose as “haw klike” He was finally told to copy the nose o f
the assistant art director. As the series w ent on, readers
gradually came to know more about their hero. The
Shadow acquired familiar props—his tw in 45s, an
autogyro—and his true identity was revealed. Known only
to a pair o f close-mouthed Xinca Indians (and, implicitly,
to millions o f trustw orthy readers), The Shadow was Ac­
tually Kent Allard, the famous aviator (Lamont Cranston
was merely one o f The Shadow ’s many impersonations—
the revised radio series, starring Orson W elles, got that all
wrong).
Street & Sm ith maintained a close proprietary w atch
over their breadwinner throughout most o f his existence.
Individual plots and general developments in the series
the literary had to pass thropgh an unusual committee system. W riter
W alter Gibson would w ork out a detailed synopsis for the
next novel and then take it to overseer Henry Ralston and
new editor John N anovic for approval or amendment.
N ew gimmicks, settings, characters vvere kicked around
Yearly
Subscription
$ 2.00 by the three during committee meetings. Gibson w el­
Six Months
$ 1.00 comed the guidance since his standing assignment was the
Single Copy production o f tw o '60,000- to 70,000-w ord novels per
10 Cents
month. It was a grueling task, but Gibson seemed to relish
it.“T o meet T h e Shadow's scheduled had to hit'5,000 words
or more per day," G ibson once recalled, “I made 10,000
words my goal and found Lcould reach it. Some stories I
wrote in four days e a ch ... O n these occasions, I averaged
15,000 words a day, or nearly 6 0 typew ritten pages, a pace
o f four to five pages an hour for 12 to 15 hours. By living,
thinking, even dreaming the story in one continued pro­
cess, I found ideas came faster and faster" Gibson typed so
furiously that his fingers bled. Incredibly, he maintained
this pace^and.a generally high standard o f storytelling—
. . . m for more than a decade, producing a total o f 2 8 2 Shadow
novels. , —
. . . ts
Blackwell’s-original, arbitrary choice o f Gibson could
. . . not, as it turned out, have been more inspired. It was the
perfect matchup o f author and character. A sa magician and
as a historian o f magic, Gibson brought to T he Shadow a
 SHADOWS AND SUPERMEN 95

unique perspective. T he stories w ere the literary equiva­

lent o f a master illusionist’s stage act, full o f tricks, threats
o f sudden death, and mysterioso atmospherics. Despite his
output, Gibson w as no h ack He felt an intense dedication
to the series and the character he had largely created. Each
novel had to top the last in plot twists, trickery, surprise
ending. His one frustration w ith the assignment that
would take up so much o f his life was its enforced ano­
nymity. Street & Sm ith never wavered from its policy re­
garding T h e Shadow's byline—all o f G ibson’s novels
would be credited to the house name o f M axw ell Grant.
As the magazine soared to prominence, and the new radio
series and motion picture adaptations followed, Gibson’s
crucial contribution to it all remained unknow n outside
pulp circles. O nly in his old age did G ibson get to enjoy
public acclaim from the legions o f Shadow readers around
the world.

T T O O K M O R E than a year for publishers to try and

I emulate T h e Shadow's great success, but from early

1 9 3 3 the im itators began to arrive, an assortm ent o f
single-character pulps featuring mysterious avengers and
larger-than-life enemies o f evil. The first to hit the stands
was Standard’s T h e Phantom D etective. Created, w ith a
minimum o f ingenuity, by editorial head Leo Margulies,
The Phantom w as the crim e-fighting alter ego o f R ich ­
ard Curtis Van Loan, a Park A venue playboy. T h e Phan­
tom w as a master o f disguise, although his most frequent
disguise w as a rather unmasterful Lone R an ger-typ e
mask and a derby hat. T h e cases that caused Van Loan to
abandon his polo ponies and don his mask and bow ler
w ere the ones too big for the entire N ew York police
force. The Phantom’s foes w ere usually megalomaniacal
conquerors like T h e Mad Red, a Com munist w ith a fiend­
ish plan for w orld domination. Phantom D etective stories
tended to be bloody nonsense. Margulies assigned them
to a stable o f hacks (Anatole Feldman, D. L. Champion,
Laurence Donovan, Norman Daniels, etc.), all w ritin g
under the house names o f G. W aym on Jones or Robert
W allace, and through the years there w as little consis­
tency regarding the tone or the scope o f the series or the
precise personality o f T h e Phantom D etective him self
W ith no sym pathetic biographer like T h e Shadow ’s
Gibson, the character rem ained lifeless. Still, the series
contained enough outlandish villain y and blood-and-
thunder action to m aintain moderate sales and keep The
Phantom in business for 2 0 years.
Jimmy Christopher was Operator # 5 , “America’s secret
service ace."
A month after T h e Phantom Detective's debut, Street
& Sm ith issued their ow n follow-ups to T h e Shadow. Not
surprisingly, considering his enthusiasm for the dime
novel heroes o f the past, H enry Ralston decided to put
N ick Carter back on the newsstands. O f course, the char­
acter had to be m odernised instead o f the dippy Rover Boy
o f the 1890s, the new N ick was a tough private investiga­
tor, tackling crime syndicates and such. O f course, this be­
ing a juvenile hero pulp and not Black Mask, N ick’s inves­
tigations involved spectacular props such as his bomb-car­
rying private airplane w ith a floor that could convert into
a giant magnifying glass. The public showed little interest
in the character and the face-lifted N ick was re-retired
The second hero pulp Street & Sm ith launched that
same month—March 1 9 3 3 —was considerably more suc­
cessful. Doc Savage Magazine would last for 17 years, 181
issues, and come to be regarded as one o f the supreme
achievements in the history o f the pulps. O nce again, the
initial idea came from Henry Ralston. He conceived o f a
single-character magazine that could be the high-adven­
ture equivalent o f T h e Shadow mysteries. John Nanovic,
the young editor w ho had been w orking on T h e Shadow
since the fourth issue, took Ralston's rough concept and
96 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
wrote a detailed outline and character genesis for the pro­
posed pulp. Clark Savage, Jr, is a braw ny genius, a surgeon,
mineralogist, engineer, inventor, and master oflanguages,
as well as being the Supreme Adventurer. His skin color
is a glowing bronz,e (“bespeaking o f long years spent be­
neath tropic suns and northern skies"), his hair is a match­
ing hue, and so are his set-well-apart, magnetic-like gold-
flake-resembling eyes—not for nothing is he know n as the
Man o f Bronge. Headquartered in a Manhattan skyscraper,
Doc is the leader o f an almost equally colorful group o f five
other adventurers: Renny, another braw ny giant and a
world-renowned engineer; Long Tom, a skinny electron­
ics genius; Johnny, scrawny, studious-looking, a geologist,
and “the greatest physicist o f the land"; Monk, chemist o f
genius w ith the body o f a gorilla; and Ham, sardonic,
nattily dressed, Harvard-educated lawyer, w ielding a
sword cane w ith a drug-laced tip. Financed by gold re­
serves from a hidden Central Am erican mine, Doc and
gang begin their spectacular task:
. . . to go here and there, from one end o f the world to the
other, looking for excitement and adventure; striving to
help those who need help; to punish those who deserve it
. . . People, tribes and nations would gain their help when
sore pressed. Industry would be served by them. A rt and
science would profit by their daring . . .
It was an exciting enough declaration o f intent, but
there was no initial guarantee that Doc Savage would fare
any better w ith the readers than the reincarnated N ick
Carter. The Nanovic-penned outline lacked spirit and its
gold-mine plot was plain dull Doc’s future became assured
only when Ralston and Nanovic chose as his amanuensis
a man by the name of Lester Dent, a 28-year-old Missouri
w riter w ith a limitless im aginations devious sense o f hu­
mor, and a flair for gadgetry and science—all hallmarks o f
the series to come.
O nly a few years before he was picked for the
monthly Savage assignment, Lester Dent had been a $ 125-
a-month “brass pounder"—a telegrapher—at the Associated
Press office in Tulsa, Oklahoma, attempting to w rite ad­
venture stories during the midnight-to-eight graveyard
shift. In December 1930, he received an amazing, inexpli­
cable telegram from Richard Martinsen at Dell Publishing:
“If you make less than $ 1 0 0 a w eek on your present job,
advise you to quit. Come to N ew York and be taken under
our w ing w ith a $500-a-m onth draw ing account." Dent
was soon living in Manhattan, w riting the entire contents
o f tw o Dell pulps, Scotland Y ard and Sky Riders. He made
$ 1,500 the first month.Both pulps folded a few issues later
and Dent was left to his ow n devices.
O ne o f the stories he sold w hile freelancing was a
gaudy action tale titled T h e Sinister Ray, featuring a bril­
liant “scientific detective” named Lynn Lash. This was
likely the story that brought Dent to the attention o f Henry
Ralston. Even more than W alter Gibson and his Shadow,
Dent and Doc Savage were the perfect symbiosis o f cre­
ator and creation. “He put a lot o f him self into that charac­
ter,” his w idow , Norma, told me. “A lot o f his w riter friends
used to call him ‘Doc’ because he was so much like Doc
Savage." Strange but true, the telegrapher/hack from Mis­
souri and the bronze Supreme Adventurer had much in
common. Physically, both were prepossessing figures. Dent
was a huge man, six foot tw o and over tw o hundred
pounds, and a flamboyant dresser, affecting for a time
needle-point mustachios or full beard. Like Doc, Dent eas­
ily mastered a variety o f technical skills. He was a pilot,
electrician, radio operator, plumber, and architect. “He de­
signed our entire house from scratch," said Norma “Taught
him self how to do it, drew up the blueprints and every­
thing.” And Dent shared w ith Savage a yearning for adven­
ture. He prospected for gold in the Mojave and for three
years sailed the Caribbean on his yacht Albatross, search­
ing for sunken Spanish treasure. “He had a treasure map
he bought from someone,” Mrs. Dent recalled, “and there
was supposed to be a big gold table w orth millions o f dol­
lars sunk out there. W e never found it but someone else did
many years later. He would dive for treasure during the
day and then sit on the deck and w rite his Doc Savage
story all night"
Certainly Dent’s productivity as a w riter qualified
him for superhuman status. He could w rite around the
clock, putting him self as much as a year ahead o f schedule
w hen he wanted time o ff and he often worked on three
different stories at once, moving from typew riter to type­
w riter to keep from getting bored.
Above: Lester Dent, author of the
Doc Savage novels.

Opposite: Pictured, the emblem for

the Doc Savage Club. Most of the
single-character "hero pulps,"
aimed at a juvenile readership,
had similar organizations.
Membership dues from the
youngsters were a good source of
income for hero-pulp publishers.
 •lories

Although Street & Smith required

the use of a house name (Kenneth
Robeson) for all issues of the
magazine, the majority of the Doc
Savage stories were utritten by an
muentioe Missouri wordsmith named
Lester Dent. Seen here, the April
'jg issue made timely use of the
New York World’s Fair.
GOB;
complete
and other
 SHADOWS AND
A firm believer in fiction formulas and “master plots”
for pulp w riting, Dent referred to the bulk o f his output as
“salable crap," but i f his Savage w o rk w as mechanical, he
disguised it w ell w ith an endless supply o f dazzling dis­
tractions. Particularly in the w ild and w ooly early years,
Dent really delivered the goods: great villains (The M ystic
Mullah; The Sargasso Ogre; the dreadful John Sunlight; the
tittering “Tibetan" M o-Gwei; the piano-playing—“always
a prelude o f unpleasantness for somebody"—sadist Count
Ram.adanoff the speedy 131 -year-old Dan Thunden); great
gadgets (600-shot-per-m inute handgun; oxygen pills for
breathing underwater; rocket-propelled dirigible; hollow
false teeth containing explosive chemicals and tiny tools; a
banjo rifle, bullets fired by plucking a string; a platinum
suit for deflecting certain death rays); great threats (geneti­
cally mutating monsters; exploding “terror falcons”; flesh-
eating ants; mind-freezing radiation); and great buildings
even (Doc’s icelike A rctic refuge, the Fortress o f Solitude,
guarded by a tribe o f Eskimos; his privately ow ned “col­
lege" where evildoers are sent for brainwashing).
Dent was a recklessly generous storyteller, providing
each issue o f Doc Savage w ith enough imaginative mate­
rial to supply a year’s w orth o f competing hero pulps. O ne
typically over-the-top narrative, Septem ber 1 9 3 3 ’s T h e
Lost Oasis, involves a hijacked zeppelin, a gorgeous English
aviatrix, trained vampire bats in N ew York harbor, a pair
o f Middle Eastern bad guys, a desert prison camp, Doc and
gang in an autogyro dogfight, jew el-bearing vultures, car
chases, man-eating plants, a slave revolt, and a lost A frican
diamond mine. Although the inventions and science-fic­
tional elements w ere a strong part o f the series' appeal, the
stories themselves transcended categorization, roaming
freely from science fiction to supernatural horror to
w hizbang action to lost w orld adventure a la Burroughs
or Rider Haggard. W ith Dent behind the typewriter, Doc
Savage M agazine became a crazily exhilarating reading ex­
perience, a monthly ten-cent hallucinogen for 14-year-old
boys o f all ages.
A TE IN 1933, that most eventful year for the super-
L j hero, Popular Publications weighed in w ith tw o
memorable titles. T h e Spider reshuffled established ingredi­ thetic “mercy bullets" or reprogramming seminars for the
ents—The Phantom Detective’s mask and day jo b (New
York millionaire),old-timer Jim m ie Dale’s calling cards,and
The Shadow’s black duds. Known only to his girlfriend,
Nita Van Sloan, and his H indu manservant, Ram Singh,
Richard W entw orth’s secret identity is T he Spider, “Mas­
SUPERMEN 99
ter o f Men,”a ruthless crime fighter w ho stamps the corpses
o f his numerous victim s w ith a vermilion, spider-shaped
seal. “W e saw how very successful T h e Shadow was and we
wanted to do something like it,” said T h e Spider's creator,
H enry Steeger.“And I think w e improved on it."
The first tw o issues w ere stodgily w ritten by R. T. M
Scott, a Canadian ex-army major. He was replaced by wild-
eyed, hard-boiled hack Norvell Page, using the pen name
o f Grant Stockbridge. In this same period, Steeger had be­
gun his notoriously sadistic “shudder pulps"—to w hich
Page contributed numerous lurid stories—and T h e Spider
would take a sim ilarly intense approach to violence and
sex From the first, Page’s Spider novels have a harsh, vis­
ceral power. In Wings o f the Black D eath, Richard
W en tw o rth battles a cruel, blackm ailing crim inal w ho
threatens N ew York w ith bubonic plague (“ ‘I think it best,’
he said, ‘that Ram Singh drive you back to tow n at once.
T h e man w ho ju st phoned declared that he was about to
loose the Black Death upon all o f usf ’’), the effects o f w hich
are described in sickening detail:
Works’ head sagged forw ard. Breath rasped more harshly
in his throat. H e belched. Blood poured from his jaws. It
tore a muffled scream o f agony from him.
“Quick, man!” W entw orth shot at him. “Do you know who
the blackmailer was?"
Suddenly W orks convulsed, reared back in his chair with
clutching hands digging into his throat.
“Speak, man, speak!’ Wentworth cried.
T h e purple lips opened, suffocation blackened his face.
Blood gushed out. Sound issued from that ghastly mouth.
But it was sound that was translatable into no word. It
was the death rattle.
In T h e Spider, for once, the viciousness o f the crim i­
nals was matched b y the hero. None o f Doc Savage’s anes­
opponents o f Richard W entw orth. Justice for them is sud­
den and final:
But the S pider’s bullet had sped true. A round blue hole
gaped in the forehead o f John H arper.
MAGAZINE
N O O F LO N B JU JU
•find of Danger And
leath to the Unwary
D fpm plete Wove I
 SHADOWS
For an instant he sat straight up in his chair, a surprised
look upon his face. T hen he slumped forw ard, his head
spilling blood on the stolen jewels over which he had
gloated. His life o f greedy crime was ended.
* * * grabbed you b y the collar and didn’t let go.
T h e Spider sprang upon him, slammed home his fist. T he
head rolled limply over. T h e larynx had been crushed in,
closing the windpipe and killing him instantly.
* * # during W orld W ar I, and had been a salesman and air­
In the end, the Black D eath was a coward and died a
coward's death, with terror in his eyes, with T h e S pider’s
fingers crushing the life slowly out of him.
As for sex, both W entw orth and the lovely Nita con­
tinually encounter the sort o f lasciviousness that would
have sent Doc Savage fleeing to his Fortress o f Solitude and
bolting the door. There are orgies, threats o f rape, sexual
torture:
They lifted her bodily from the floor, stretched arms and
legs to the great thick spokes o f the wheel and bound them
there, ripped off her clothing with rough hands. Even
before the task was finished, a gnout whistled through the
air to lay its streaks o f torn red across her w hite body.
Temptresses:
H er body was alive and warm and urgent and she raised
herself up against him, and her lips found his with a kiss
so passionately abandoned that it burned like something
annealed in a white-hot oven.
It was another effective innovation from Henry
Steeger, pulp publishing’s Young Turk: a superhero book
aimed at an adult sensibility. The stories grew larger and
more fantastic as they w ent on, and author Norvell Page
Opposite: T he hero 0 / 1 8 1 issues of Doc Savage Magazine
was Clark Savage, Jr., surgeon, inventor, aviator, engineer,
brawny punisher of evildoers, the Man of Bronze, the
Supreme Adventurer.
AND SUPERMEN 101
came increasingly to identify w ith his creation. “Some
have said Norvell Page was a bit eccentric," said Henry
Steeger. “He used to wear a black cape and a large black hat
like The Spider, and he may have thought he was that char­
acter. Talented man, though”True. Although lacking Lester
Dent’s relentless inventiveness, Page wrote prose that
T h e other hero pulp Popular brought out in O ctober
1 9 3 3 w as equally distinguished and captured an imme­
diate and loyal readership. G -8 and His Battle A ces was
the creation o f Robert J. Hogan, a 36-year-old m inister’s
son from Buskirk, N ew York. Hogan had learned to fly
craft dem onstrator for C u rtiss-W right at the Syracuse
airport. He lost the jo b in the Depression and began w rit­
ing stories for the vast array o f aviation magazines. He
came to Steeger w ith an idea for a hero pulp w ith an air
w ar background. G -8 w ould be a W o rld W ar I flying
spy, his persona and experiences inspired by a real-life
pilot o f Hogan’s acquaintance, Harold Nevin. Steeger
w ent for it, but hedged his bet by including the title and
typeface o f his first successful pulp, B attle Aces. These
w ere not going to be your average air ace stories, as evi­
denced by the first o f Frederick Blakeslee’s many stun­
ning G -8 cover paintings, a m oonlit v iew o f tw o Spads
chasing a giant bat, the hero strapped to one o f the rodent’s
wings. W ith the outlandishness the pulps had become
noted for, G -8 com bined flying fiction w ith science fic­
tion and frequent doses o f horror-fantasy.
In the opening adventure, T he Bat Staffel, the young
American spy is cooling his heels in the dungeon o f
Freiburg Castle, stooped over in an old codger disguise and
about to be executed. He wangles a meeting w ith the man
w ho would become his most frequent adversary in the is­
sues ahead, Der evil H err Doktor Krueger, and in the time-
honored tradition o f criminal masterminds, H err Doktor
feels compelled to reveal his top secret plans to G -8 before
killing him The Germans, it seems, are about to unleash the
“poison breath’’ o f the great bats o f the Jura caves, a breath so
deadly that a few canned drops—as Krueger demonstrates—
shrink a guinea pig to dust Now, w ith this info to relay, G-
8 must escape, using the doktor as a shield and heaving the
cannister o f bat breath at the guards.
“Gott im H im m el’
Aided in his escape by tw o passing fliers—future
Battle Aces N ippy W eston and Bull Martin—G -8 returns
to Paris headquarters, gets General Pershing’s new man-
102 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
date (“You may take matters entirely in your ow n hands”)
and sets o ff to destroy the Bat Staffel, and a total o f 109
other gaudy opponents to come. M ercifully, few o f our
fighting men in W orld W ar I knew o f the terrifying ex­
perimental w eaponry in the hands o f the German enemy:
the bat halitosis, the skeleton ray, the dragon, the lightning
machine, the chemical that turns men into mummies, the
Zombies, robots, wolf-men, hawk-men, tiger-men, Martians,
and more. But superspy G -8 knew and each month he and
his devil-may-care flying buddies, N ippy and Bull, did
w hat it took to intercept the Kaiser’s bizarre arsenal.
Fora time, the air was crowded w ith flying hero pulps.
T h e Lone E agle from Better Publications featured conven­
tional heroics, w hile another Popular title, Dusty Ayres and
His Battle Birds, was even more fanciful than G-8 . Dreamed
up during a possibly liquid lunch betw een H enry Steeger
and w riter Robert Sidney Bow en (a W orld W ar I vet and
former Royal A ir Force ace), Dusty w as to take place in the
near-future, during a spectacular w ar betw een the U.S. and
an imaginary Central A sian country ruled b y a merciless,
masked dictator know n as Fire Eyes, Em peror o f the
World. Having conquered all o f A sia and Europe, Fire
Eyes’ fierce armies invade Am erica—one cover shows a
BOOK ONE OF
KA-ZAR OF THE BEASTS
Pearl H arb o r-lik e air attack on N ew York City. Street &
Sm ith’s Bill Barnes A ir Adventure, had a contemporary
setting and was aimed at very young boys o f an earnest
disposition. It resembled a hobbyist publication, w ith its
non-violent covers depicting custom ised aircraft (su­
perbly rendered by Frank Tinsley, an aviation specialist),
and pages o f model airplane diagrams. T h e novels were
credited to George L. Eaton, a house name, but most were
w ritten by a young Canadian named Charles Spain Verral.
“The editor, F. O rlin Tremaine, offered him the jo b after
the first w riter didn't w ork out,” recalls his w ife, Jean
M ithoefer Verral. “W e w ere in a little trouble, very broke,
and I had been quite ill and confined to b e d ... we didn’t
kn ow w hat w e w ere going to do. T hen Street & Sm ith
accepted the Bill Barnes story and gave him a check for
$50 0 . He cashed it in all small bills and he came home and
threw them all over me in the bed. Oh, it rained money!"
T eren ce X. O ’Leary's W a r Birds, from Dell, was an
obvious derivative o f both G -8 and Dusty Ayres. There
w ere futuristic air ships, ray guns, and invasions o f
Am erica by imaginary evil empires. T h e magazine’s titu­
lar character had taken a peculiar route to superherodom
O riginally, in the pages o f W ar Stories in the early ’20s, he
was a low ly W orld W ar I trench soldier and a caricature
o f a vaudeville Irishman. A few years later, he had become
slightly less obnoxious in Faw cett’s Battle Stories. Then,
w ithout w arning in M arch 193 3 , he resurfaced as “the
w orld’s greatest hero” and the “dyno-blasting" star o f his
ow n magazine. T erence X. O ’L eary ’s W a r Birds lasted for
three issues. A uthor A rthur Em pey w as a dreadful w riter
and a radical right-winger. A w orld w ar vet and author o f
the best-seller Over the Top, Em pey lived in Hollywood
in the 1 9 3 0 s and co-founded—w ith movie star Gary Coo­
per—a blackshirts-type private army, the Hollywood
Hussars, w h ich aspired to m ilitary political power in the
name o f “Am ericanism "
Perhaps Empey w ould have enjoyed reading O pera­
tor # 5 , the righteous and xenophobic adventures o f Jim m y
Christopher, “ace undercover agent o f the United States
Government,” and ch ie f opponent o f various hordes o f
rampaging, blood-maddened foreigners. T h e paintings by
cover artist John H ow itt w ere often feverish, Goyaesque
images o f desperate, anguished A m ericans manning the
barricades. Far from escapist entertainment, O perator # 5
had an ugly timeliness, exploiting the lingering air o f an­
ger and social upheaval caused b y the Depression and the
increasingly bellicose atmosphere in Europe and Asia.
 103

A nother creation o f H enry Steeger, O perator # 5 was ini­

tially w ritten by talented workhorse Frederick C. Davis.
The magazine reached its apogee in the issues devoted
to the “Purple Invasion" In these stories, a “w oefully unpre­
pared” America is invaded by the powerful, multi-national
armies o f Rudolph I, Emperor o f the Purple Empire. Every­
w here is devastation, death, torture, Purple encampments
protected w ith living w alls o f Am erican youths hung
upon crosses. It is a violent, paranoid pulp, and amazingly
prem onitory o f the holocaustic w orld that lay ju st a few
years away.
N ew single-character hero pulps appeared through­
out the decade. A few thrived; many expired after the first
sales figures w h eeled in. Among the characters featured
in homonymous magazines there w ere cow boys (Pete
Rice, The Masked Rider, T h e Rio Kid), secret agents (Se­
cret A gent X), aspiring T artan s (Ka-Zar), and, o f course,
many more masked, cowled, costumed, dual-identity
crime-fighters (The Ghost, The W hisperer, The Avenger,
s
A Captain Satan). Some oddities came and went. Street &
Sm ith’s T h e W iz ard was about a superhero o f finance,
«MI WIIMOU 1
* c o v u rtr m
“Cash" Gorman. Plots dealt w ith corporate takeovers and
..i. . f 1
- -cl.
i*,U It, 4,1-4,.! h,*4i' 1
rl
union beefs. Actually, it was an intelligent, interestingly
l »«#»: 11061* «(,,!. «,
"»» ttttnt mviiiei) 1
detailed magazine; it lasted four issues. There w ere even a
few super-villain pulps. F o ra few months Dell offered Doc­
tor Death, about a white-haired mad scientist Popular came
up w ith T h e Mysterious W u Fang, concerning the mis­
deeds o f a Fu Manchu type as reported by the industrious
Robert Hogan. A fter seven appearances, W u Fang myste­
riously disappeared, replaced on the newsstands by the re­
markably similar Dr. Yen Sin. T w o other madmen, The
Octopus and The Scorpion, completed the very short-lived
Top: E ach cover of Bill Barnes, A ir
super-villain cycle.
Adventurer f e a t u r e d a d iffe r e n t,
The heyday o f the hero pulps ended as the 194 0 s be­
c u s to m iz e d a ir c r a ft, c r e a te d b y
gan. Many titles w ere canceled, w hile others such as T he
il lu s t r a t o r F r a n k T i n s l e y .
Shadow and Doc Savage w ere toned down, losing much o f
A bove: Operator #5 w as a violent, the ripe melodrama and outrageousness that had distin­

a p o c a ly p tic p u lp . T h e Purple guished them. Tastes w ere changing. The juvenile readers
had turned to comic books, and to the science-fiction maga­
Invasion is s u e s d e t a i l e d t h e t a k e o v e r
zines. The first generation o f hero pulp readers, the devoted
of America by brutal f o r e i g n a r m ie s .
teenagers w ho had know n irrational jo y w ith the arrival
Opposite: Ka-Zar, O c t o b e r 1 936. o f each new adventure o f Doc and G -8 and the rest, were
young men in the 1940s, going into uniform and having
their ow n dangerous adventures in exotic places.
But the great pulp heroes did not die, despite w hat the
publishers’ ledgers said to the contrary. T h ey lived on in
the memories o f boys grown old, stars in a lost adolescent
universe.
IM IM H 9 D IK V V M V lC
M S C /M M G L V D /FF£R EN r
*r S r £ *Y -T £ *M * NOVELETTE B Y
GARRISON STORM ’
\

m m

ftk , ■
1
SSL
0 ,

Hooded robes were a favorite j

rm m ■
item of apparel for W eird
Menace villains. This Jun e '40
Dime Mystery featured a cover
m iIP
story by Harrison Storm and a
novella by Russel! Gray; both
i
names were pseudonyms for
Bruno Fischer.
...St
f a WYA
 mi

W h en the
Blood-God Ruled
T A L E S O F W E IR D M E N A C E

T hey say there is nothing more ghastly than to witness the

torturing o f a fellow human being. I say there is! I say it is a

thousand times more ghastly to know that such horror is

going on and yet b e blinded to it, seeing it only through the

lurid workings o f a fever-w arped imagination!

—“D eath T olls the B ell"

T error T ales, 1935

' h E O C T O B E R 1 9 3 3 ISS U E o f Dime M ystery

T M agazine launched w hat w ould prove to be the most

depraved and blood-soaked chapter in the annals o f A m eri­
can publishing. It was in the O ctober issue that Popular Pub­
lications premiered the new format for its faltering, year-old
magazine. Dime Detective had been a huge hit for Popular,
but the mystery companion had never found an audience
In those days, new pulps w ere quickly dispatched i f they
106 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
didn’t turn a fast profit. Easier to tempt the consumer w ith
a brand-new title than to tinker w ith a lemon. But Popular
was committed to its Dime generic titles and so they de­
cided to try a revised format, something sufficiently star­
tling to give Mystery a second chance. Instead o f crim e de­
tection, the magazine would now offer an odd m ixture o f
Gothic atmosphere,grotesque threats, and vicious villains.
From here on, stories would address w hat an early edito­
rial called “a primitive, age-old urge in the heart o f every
red-blooded human, the keen desire to know fear.. . . ”
T h e “Terror” or “W eird Menace” stories, as they came
to be known, had many o f the trappings o f the horror genre,
but there were distinct differences. U nlike the traditional
scary story, the new form eschewed the supernatural. All
activities, no matter how bizarre, w ould be given a natu­
ral—i f not necessarily logical—explanation by story’s end.
This self-imposed restriction meant that new concepts and
faces o f horror had to be invented. No ghosts or vampires
or black magicians, but equally creepy types out o f real life,
the mutilated and the psychotic, renegade scientists and
crackpot cult leaders. Plots would revolve around earthly
motivations like greed, revenge, or in­
sanity.
The other distinguishing aspect o f
the new form was its intensity, a calcu­
lated assault on the reader’s nervous sys­
tem Editor Roger Terrill defined the dif­
ference between terror and the older
fright style: “Horror is what a girl would
feel if, from a safe distance, she watched
the ghoul practice diabolical rites upon
a victim Terror is what the girl would
feel if, on a dark night, she . . . knew she
was marked for the next victim ” T o ef-
Above: Dime Mystery Magazine inaugurated the strange
and bloody pulp subgenre known to infamy as W eird Menace.
Opposite: No matter how far-fetched the activities depicted
km a W eird Menace story, they were all expected to have a
‘ logical" explanation. This scene is from the Dime Mystery
for July 1 9 3 8 :
feet this more involving perspective, the horrific elements
o f each story were described w ith an unprecedented sav­
agery, an attention to detail that, as the genre developed, in­
cluded heavy dollops o f Sadean sexuality.
Like a flash, it batten ed itself upon the corpse's breasts,
clinging with all four clawing hands, the sharp nails
digging demoniacally into dead pliant flesh. . . . Its fanged
slash o f a mouth fastened on the girl's gory, tom throat.
Then, w hile Travis Brant w atched in nauseated
fascination, it began to suck the dead woman's clotting,
congealing blood.
I stopped to spin around as Helen's moans rang again.
Someone had brought a bridle and jam m ed the steel bar
betw een her teeth. T hey forced her down on her hands
and knees and they w ere driving her like a horse, flogging
her and sawing her reins till the foam
on her lips dripped crimson.
T h e creator o f W eird Menace was
Popular’s resourceful president, Henry
Steeger. “I got the idea during a trip to
Paris. T h ey had the Grand Guignol
Theatre there, w ith these violent situa­
tions, and the audience w as very enthu­
siastic. I thought, ‘W e could do a maga­
zine like that, w ith the same sort o f em­
phasis.’ ” T h e theatre was a notorious Pa­
risian nightspot w here audiences w ere
treated to the sight o f on-stage w h ip ­
pings, gougings, and all variety o f simu­
lated gore. Steeger may also have had an
eye on such contemporaneous movies
as Island o f Lost Souls, Mystery o f the W a x Museum, and
Freaks, each offering similar modern-dress horrors—vivi-
sectionists, deformed maniacs, denizens o f the carnival
sideshow, all staples o f the W eird Menace world.
D im e M ystery’s metamorphosis w as a success, and as
reader interest grew, Steeger started tw o more gory pulps,
T error Tales, debuting in Septem ber 193 4 , and H orror
Stories, four months later. For these two, readers had to pay
15 cents, a nickel prem ium for an increased dosage o f
blood, no doubt. T h e new titles also did well, and by 19 3 5
lO DIME ©

M Y S T ER Y
108 D A N G E R f S MY B U S I N E S S

other pulp houses w ere ju m ping on the Terror band­
wagon. Subsequent titles included T hrilling Mastery, fie­
ri c M ysteries, E erie Stories, Sinister Stories, A ce Mystery,
Spicy Mystery, Strange D etective Masteries, Startling Mys­
tery, an d Uncanny Tales.
< A t their most effective, W eird Menace stories had ^
'Usually, the out-of-control tone was entirely justified
by the,events unfolding, as in this passage from Corpses
on Parade:'
In hideous nudity she advanced one step toward me. H er
breasts, her hips, seemed half-decomposed. A n d the smell!

visceral power and nihilistic sensibility that anticipates
T h e T exas Chainsaw M assacre and other “splatter” films
and books o f the 197 0 s and 1980s. W eird Menace was a
negative utopia o f non-stop unpleasantness. The thrills
these tales induced w ere o f the sort one might obtain from
an upside-down roller coaster ride through a slaughter­
house—fine, i f you like that sort o f thing. T he titles alone
were enough to set the stom ach-churning Flesh fo r the
Swamp Men, T h e Tongueless Horror, Coming o f the Rat Men,
Revolt of the Circus Freaks, Hosts o f the Leper King, M eat
for Satan's Locker, fiach story could be depended on for its
share o f blood-letting and putrefaction, told in a sensuous,
hothouse prose on the verge o f hysteria from .the very first
paragraph.
It was like the fumes that might arise from a city’s garbage
lying for hours under an August sun . . . . T h en —I ’ve
read about lips melting in an em brace, but I ’ll never read
it again without being sick. For that was exactly what
T h ea ’s lips did. T hey squashed, with the same plosh of
rotten fruit that had m arked the disintegration o f K itty’s
hand . . . I didn’t turn to look. I ran. My mouth felt
gfioulishfy filthy, as though I w ere a cannibal epicure.
A t other times, the unrelentingly oppressive atmo­
sphere could make a narrator a tad-jumpy, as in the hero’s
hopped-up reaction to a vague, shadovyy figure he notices
in a scene from Satan’s W orkshop:

SATAN CALLS THE STRIKE

«// » »■/ U 1 ^ '
By A r t-------
hur (Author
(Authoro ef f"Soto*
LEO ZAOAT
"Satan Calls His Children;' tie.)
A P u lse -J o ltin g
N o v e l o f M y s te r y wards of a whirpoo! o f dust that drifted
past her gate in the grey and brooding
an d M e n ac e
dusk. Such a miniature cyclone it was.
she said, as a fitful wind sometimes sucks
up. or as dances in the wake o f a speeding
truck. She was puzzled by it because not
the slightest breeze relieved the sultry In­
dian Summer heat, and there was no
truck. For this reason she watched the
whirling dust jet as it whispered between
the slattern fences of her millworker
neighbors, breasting the little rise in the
road there, till it vanished over the crest
where the Turnpike becomes Galeton's
Main Street.

Death, Famine, and destructive Lust

came, that hot summer, to the little
town o f Galeton—came in the forms o f a sightless, cadav■ _
erous old man, a starved child o f Satan, and an evilly
voluptuous, blood-thirsting woman. N o man could say w hence cam e this
hell-spawned trio; but their arrival turned a peaceful village into a town
o f terror and sudden, aw ful death. the company houses,
that line B o s to n
Turnpike at each end
O O N E ever discovered how the layoff had extended through that Monday.

N first of the terrible three came to In consequence there were more than the
Galeton. usual number of loungers at the depot, but
The Raunt Silk Mill, where seven- none of them saw the grey man alight
o f Galeton, recalled his
entering the village.
Someone else might have passed
eighths of the town worked, had been shut from a passenger train or come up out the loungers or the women unobserved, Sonia swore
down for a week-end overhaul, and the o f tile freight yard bv the onlv feasible but not Asians. Not unless they were all slope hid it, it took on
Right: Bruno Fischer in 1 9 4 0 .
Opposite: The horror stories in the W eird
Menace magazines took place in ordinary,
contemporary settings.
For all I knew, it might he a bloated, rotting corpse risen
from an unhallowed tomb, a fiend from H ell sent hy the
Devil on some unholy errand! If I had been certain that it
had a material body like my own, I would have gone out
and fought with it. I would have gloried in battering it to
a crimson pulp with my fists, in letting its blood spray
over me in a scarlet torrent! But I wasn’t sure . . .
Villains, w hen they did materialise, w ere a m ix o f
scheming psychopaths—mad scientists, religious cultists,
vengeful old crones—and their repellant assistants—
gnarled dwarves, brainless mutants, horny hunchbacks.
They invariably came equipped w ith a panoply o f elabo­
rate devices for torture and slow death, bubbling vats, bugz;
saws, iron maidens, branding irons, or flame throwers. Both
male and female protagonists suffered from the villains’
bloodlust, but the worst sort o f unsavory endurance tests
w ere reserved for beautiful, helpless young women. Once
captured, the leading ladies w ere quickly reduced to a
wardrobe o f tattered lingerie or less, then hung from base­
ment rafters, strapped to a surgeon’s table, dipped in boil­
ing chemicals, or put through some other equally uncom­
fortable regimen.
M otivation for all this villain y was not the T error
pulps’ strong suit. Very often a couple—usually on their
honeym oon—has the m isfortune to stum ble into the
w rong Old Dark House. I f the hom eow ner is o f a scien­
tific bent, he w ill undoubtedly need the heroine’s naked
body for his latest crackpot experiment:
“I ’m going to transfer your w ife’s personality—soul—will—
whatever you call it, to one o f these fish. Which shall it
be? T hat slimy eel? T h e sting ray? No, I think the octopus
would m ake you a better wife. Think o f being em braced
110 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S

by eight sucking arms and nibbled, perhaps by that huge
beak!"
Even w hen the mad doctor's goals are less grotesque,
his methods remain painful in the extreme. In Beauty Born
in Hell, he turns ordinary-looking wom en into literally
raving beauties w ith a caustic program o f beatings, cos­
metic surgery, and mind control. “You see, it makes very
little difference to me w hether I get good raw material to
start with,” says the ow ner o f the w orld’s strangest salon.
“Let them be fat or thin—as ugly as you please, Til turn out
beauties in the end—and as alike as tw o peas in a p o d ..."
Once the women have undergone their excruciating
makeover, the doctor puts them all on stage in a dancing
chorus line.
W hen not compelled b y science or aesthetics, T error
villains fell back on more selfish motives. Sim ple lust was
domain is m ine by r ig h t. ..ju s prim ae noctis—the law o f
the first night.” M uch w eird m enacing was done by
greedy or vengeful relatives or business partners, desir­
ing a greater share o f an inheritance or com pany profits,
or paying back some crushing insult from years past.
These m otives usually became evident only in the final
paragraphs o f the story after pages o f elaboration and
un likely action, and the w riters sometimes had a lot o f
explaining to do in a few sentences:
“I've got the w hole story," snapped Purcell, ‘ if you're man
enough to listen. T h e C alder girl spilled it. C handra Lai
saw Elise on the street once, desired her, checked up on
her, found you, bribed the C alder girl to help him. T hey
took their time. T h e C alder girl practised until she could
imitate the voice o f your wife. She was well paid, but not

often enough to get the ball rolling. The vicious antago­
nist would feel an instant passion for the passing hero­
ine, or have an outdated attachment to le droit de seigneur:
T am the law here!" snarls the lord o f the manor in D eath ’s
Bridal N ight, “and the first night o f every bride in my
enough to justify the murder o f Bergstrom, for which she
must pay the penalty as an accomplice. E dna C alder
suggested C handra Lai to Elise. H e wasn't a Hindu. H e
just m ade up fo r the part. H e has a record at headqu ar­
ters a mile long. For crimes, and attem pted crimes, of
passion

Many times the reader was left feeling like the hero at the
conclusion o f The H orror in His Bed:

"I know it was some kind o f fam ily grudge," Peters said,
“but I still don’t understand just what his motive was."

T error w riters seemed to take the attitude (not un­

know n throughout the pulp field) that the thrill was in the
ride, not in the destination. So w hat if the ending was lame
or made no sense, as long as everything up to then scared
the hell out o f you The proscription against the supernatu­
ral explanation was supposed to intensify plot credibility,
but it often w orked the other w ay around.
Nevertheless, there w ere any number o f stories that
met the W eird Menace ideal o f a naturalistic horror story,
making creative use o f terrors to be found in modern
1930s A m erica C hildren o f M urder takes a honeymoon­
ing couple slumming on N ew York C ity’s Lower East Side.
There, they find twisted, “leprous-looking” tenements
Joseph W ilson knew the boundless horror o f those who are b elo v ed by
the dead. . . . where the sunlight never penetrates, an “overpowering
smell o f decay, o f stagnant bilge," and horrid street urchins
H E MAN who stumbled into the

T
police station looked as if he had
just come from a slaughter house.
Blood spattered lus trousers and streaked
his face. The front of his shirt looked as
which the lieutenant sat and just stood
there, saying nothing. He dropped his “w ith weakened faces and all-know ing eyes" w ho go on a
eyes to his right hand, and we noticed that
it was tightly clenched. T he hand wa- pyromaniacal rampage, setting fire to derelicts. In Nat
covercd with blood and hits of gore.

Top and Above: Terror Tales u>as
Popular Publications' second W eird
Menace title. It debuted in Septem­
ber ' and four months later was
joined by Horror Stories.
Opposite: Gruesome doings in Death
Came Calling by Russell Gray,
a.k.a. Bruno Fischer.
Ill
Schachner’s Lash o f the Living D ead, hell on earth is the
Stygian depths o f a Pennsylvania coal mine, w here en­
tombed immigrant miners become the “legions o f the
damned.” Even better is Furnaces o f the Damned, by Francis
James (one o f his 40-odd contributions to the genre).
Dubbed a “Novelette o f Horrible Revolt,” Furnaces was set
in and around a tow n’s nightmarish steel mill, know n
unaffectionately as Little Hell, and not merely for the
“tongues o f crimson” leaping from the roaring furnaces:
Every steel mill has its quota o f unfortunate occurrences,
men burned or caught and mangled in whirling machines.
But H alstead had many more such cases than it should
normally have had, ghastly catastrophes, unparalleled in
their hideous tortures.
Up and down the streets o f the little village, they were
never out o f one’s sight—misshapen and crippled forms of
men whose arms or legs had been crushed in gears or
trapped in spewing molten masses from a tapped cupola
furnace.
No w alk through the tow n o f Halstead is complete
w ithout a startling encounter w ith a maimed ex—steel
worker. N ew lyw eds Tom and Margaret stumble upon one
during an evening stroll. In the light o f a flaming chimney
mouth they see “a face—half o f a face, for one side o f the
man’s countenance had been sw ept clean from the grin­
ning bones as though torn by the raking o f giant hooks.
A nd his bloated torso waddled on legs that had been cut
o ff at the knees. Revulsion stabbing me, I turned back to
Margaret. ‘It’s only another one o f those cripples out o f the
works,’ I muttered. ‘ ... T h e place is full o f them ’”
T h e young bride comes to believe that the swarms o f
maimed mill workers are follow ing her, “ ... dogging my
steps on my w ay home. Trailing me everywhere, trying to
touch me!” The husband scoffs, but does concede a recent
rash o f strange disappearances from the village, half a
do^en girls missing in the last few weeks. Could it be that
the tow n’s half-human creatures w ere making aw ay w ith
the girls, “taking them where and for w hat heinous pur­
pose no one could guess’? In a word, yes. W h en Margaret
is inevitably abducted, the horrified husband trails her
kidnappers to the steel mill, w here a fiendish, mutilated
mob has gathered for a fiery ceremony. There, among tow ­
ering vats and “gaudy-hued vapors,” the narrator sees his
DARK M ELO D Y
O F MADNESS
me M rsrtur-rvutoa m/m.
4 ? CORNELL W O OLRiCH

THE PRIESTESS
OF SHAME
 WHEN THE BLOOD-GOD
w ife and a dogen other missing young women. “Stark na­
ked they were, and w ith them the cripples w ere playing.
Playing—God!”
In a scene out o f American management's worst night­
mares, the crowd o f vicious laborers listen to rabble-rous­
ing speeches by Hans, a renegade foreman, and his myste­
rious masked partner. Stirred into a frengy o f hate and de­
struction, the mob begins tossing sacrifices into rivers o f
lavalike liquid. The hero can take no more, and springs into
action:“Into the midst o f those creatures I stormed, jabbing
and slashing, and I took them by surprise. Satanic, hate-
knotted faces whipped around in ama^e." The “creatures"
disperse; the hero pushes Hans into the furnace and un­
masks the masked man. Hardly the satanic union organiser
he pretends to be, it is none other than Rodney Halstead,
wastrel son o f the mill’s owner. Desperate for cash, Rodney
had inspired the wounded w orkers’ “horrible revolt" to
make his family sell the steel mill to his creditors “for a
song." Young Halstead is arrested, and the furnaces get back
on schedule, but the newlyweds have had enough.“W e got
out o f that town," concludes the narrator, “and I found a jo b
elsewhere.”
O
VER A H U N D RED W R IT E R S contributed to
the two-hundred-odd issues
com prising the entire T error oeuvre, al­
though the great m ajority o f the stories
were w ritten by a mere handful o f highly
productive pros. Men such as A rthur J
Burks, Hugh Cave, A rthur Leo Zagat,
Paul Ernst, and a few others practically
cornered the market in W eird Menace,
each one selling dozens o f stories. Some
would have tw o or three stories in a
single issue. W hen publishers used more
than one o f a w riter’s stories at a time, it
was common practice to put a different
byline on each contribution—readers de­
manded a fair complement o f authors for
their dime. Among W eird Menace w rit­
ers, pseudonyms were sometimes adopted for more per­
sonal reasons. Baynard Kendrick, mystery novelist and co­
founder o f the Mystery W riters o f America, explaining his
ow n W eird Menace modesty, said, “O ne o f my stories that
made quite a hit was one w here they burned the panties
o ff the girls w ith a blo w to rch ... Hell, you don’t think I’d
put my ow n name on a thing like that?”
RULED 113
Bruno Fischer, author o f such sociopathic classics as
School for Satan's Show Girls, Models for the Pain Sculpture,
and W h ite Flesh Must Rot, published all o f his 55 Terror
stories under his pen names, Russell Gray and Harrison
Storm. “I was a little ... I wouldn’t say em barrassed,” he re­
called for me, “but it was the thing to do, to use a pseud­
onym for these m agazines...” Fischer is a notable figure in
the W eird Menace saga, not only for being one o f the most
popular and productive writers, but because he made his
pulp debut in W eird Menace and specialised in it almost
exclusively until the genre’s demise. “A t the time I started
selling to the pulps I was the editor o f the Socialist Call, the
official w eekly magazine o f the Socialist party. I was get­
ting $ 2 5 a w eek—w hen I got it. I'd been married for about
a year, and even then, 1 9 3 5 - 1 9 3 6 , in the midst o f the De­
pression, you could ju st get along on $25. So —I was think­
ing about ways to make some money on the side. And I was
talking to another guy over some drinks and he told me
that he had w ritten pulp stories in Chicago. I don’t think I
had ever read a pulp at that time. So, on the w ay home I
bought a few o f them and read them. A nd when my wife
got home I told her, ‘All our troubles are overf”
Attracted to the Terror titles—“I thought that was
right up my alley"—Fischer turned out a six-thousand-
w ord story that weekend and sent it
to Rogers Terrill at Popular Publica­
tions, home o f the “Big 3" terror pulps.
“About ten days or tw o weeks later I
got a check for $60. W ow ! That was
real money. A cent a word. So I sat
dow n and wrote a ten-thousand-
w ord story. I got a raise to a cent-and-
a-quarter for that one, $ 125. W ell, that
would be like getting a couple thou­
sand dollars today. So I kept w riting
pulp, and after aw hile I dropped my
Opposite: Suspense master Cornell Woolrich wrote only a few
W eird Menace tales, although his ability to convey terror and
paranoia was perfectly suited to the genre. His brilliant short
novel, Dark Melody o f Madness was printed in the July ’3 5
Dime Mystery.
114 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
The Pain M aster’s Bride
Edmund Neymores fell chill horror at sight of Fulton
Xavier’s sensational statue of a man in pain. But Neu-
mores did not know real horror until he saw the
ghastly torment of a helpless girl as she posed for a
jo b at the Socialist Call and became a full-time w riter”
Fischer became one o f Popular’s most reliable produc­
ers. Many o f the stories were written to order, on the basis o f
artwork that was already in-house “The covers were sup­
posed to illustrate a story; however, the covers were some­
times printed in advance, before there was a story. So what
the editor did was show me the cover or a drawing—it was
usually a picture o f a half-naked woman and someone strip­
ping the rest o f the clothes o ff her. And on that basis I wrote
dogens o f stories." W hen family and friends found out what
Fischer was writing, the reaction was mixed." A few people
would go, ‘O h myT you know,” he remembers. “O r to my
wife, ‘W oo, what Bruno wrote! H ow can you let him write
something like that? And it was such mild stuff, believe me.
But my father was so proud that he used to carry these pulps
Left: Brides and newlyweds
were frequently the subjects
of painful scientific experi­
ments in the W eird Menace
pulps.
Opposite: W eird Menace
villains were always having
"mad desires’ of one sort or
another, and most had easy
access to a blowtorch.
w ith the monsters and the naked women on the cover and
show them to people
O ne w riter whose style and temperament would seem
to have been perfectly suited for the Terrors, Cornell
W oolrich—literature’s future master o f suspense and
founding father o f the noir sensibility w ith such w orks as
Phantom Lady, T h e Bride W ore Black, and Rear Window,
and a prodigious story salesman in this period—contrib­
uted only four stories to these pulps. Vampire's Honeymoon,
written for Horror Stories, is a straight supernatural tale, and
poorly told Baal's Daughter, published in the January 1936
Thrilling Mystery, is unadulterated W eird Menace, w ith
whippings, strippings, torture by fire and hot oil in jec­
tions, and a tongueless goon. It is also, in the words o f
W oolrich scholar Francis M Nevins, “so overloaded w ith
 WHEN THE BLOOD-GOD
stupid inconsistencies and grotesque twaddle, that to claw
one’s w ay through its pages is an act o f masochism" The
tw o other W oolrich stories in this style, however, are
among the few genuine masterpieces o f the genre.
D ark M elody o f Madness (Dime Mystery, Ju ly 1935), is
a poetic and intricately structured evocation o f fear and
fate. A t four in the morning, a man staggers dazedly into a
N ew Orleans police station and confesses a murder. It is
Eddie Bloch, celebrated jaz,^ bandleader. Cops listen to his
weird confession. In need o f a new musical direction for
his band, Eddie finds it at a bloody secret voodoo cer­
emony. He steals the ceremonial rhythms for a hit record,
and the voodoo high priest, Papa Benjamin, puts a curse on
him W h en his drummer dies, Eddie begins to take the
curse seriously, loses lots o f weight, and becomes a hysteri­
cal w reck Ultimately, he is driven to insanity by the ha­
rassment o f the voodoo cult and feels compelled to com­
mit murder. There are a half-dozen clim actic tw ists before
the last haunting lin e “A ll she says is: ‘Stand close to me,
boys—real close to me, I’m afraid o f the d ark’"
Graves for the Living (Dime Mystery, June 1937), is typi­
cally W eird Menace in its outrageous plot and tone o f hys­
teria, but otherwise avoids the standard sex and torture spec­
tacle for a more psychological brand o f terror, a tour de force
o f sustained anxiety. W oolrich’s hero is haunted by an un­
derstandable fear o f premature burial. As a child, he w it­
nessed the disinterment o f his father's corpse, the gruesome
occupant o f the coffin show ing obvious signs o f post-
funerary life: “The eyes were open and staring, dilated w ith
horror, stretched to their uttermost w idth ... There were
dried brown spots all about the w hite quilting that lined
the lower half o f the coffin, that had been blood-spots flung
from his flailing, gashed fingertips.” W ith this image never
far from the hero’s mind, he becomes a habitue o f graveyards
and during one such visit, stumbles upon a strange religious
cult, the Friends o f Death The cult purports to bring the dead
back to life, but it is actually a scam involving poisons and
aerated gravesites. W hen the hero betrays the sacred order,
RULED 115
he finds they are an unforgiving and omniscient bunch, evil
minions wherever he turns. In dramatizing the state o f para­
noia, W oolrich has no peers. Graves ends after a gut-wrench-
ing race against time, the hero’s fiancee buried alive while
he frantically searches for her grave, exhuming coffin after
coffin w ith his bare hands.
T
H E O C T O B E R 1 9 3 8 IS S U E o f Dime Mystery
signaled the beginning o f the end for W eird Menace
Exactly five years after it inaugurated the Terror format, Mys­
tery went in a new and even more eccentric direction Instead
o f W eird Menace, all stories would now feature weird heroes,
crime fighters w ith strange quirks and afflictions—the so-
called defective detectives It was an idea that had actually been
hatched in one o f Popular’s minor weird publications, Strange
Detective Mysteries, and now the weird flagship would be
given over entirely to private eyes w ith deformities.
Mystery’s sister publications at Popular and the rivals
at other houses continued to offer terror and torture as be­
fore. If anything, stories, titles, and cover illustrations hit a
new peak o f depravity. Cover girls showed an increase in
voluptuousness and a decrease in wardrobe. As the decade
ended, an inevitable backlash set in. A rticles and editori­
als attacking the W eird Menace pulps had been coming for
some time. T yp ical w ere the fulminations in an issue o f
Am erican Mercury“Thism onth,asevery month, 1,508,000
copies o f terror magazines, know n to the trade as the shud­
der group, w ill be sold throughout the nation. T hey w ill
contain enough illustrated sex perversion to give Krafft-
Ebing the unholy jitters.”
As would happen to com ic books and Communists in
the 1950s, the T error pulps became the object o f disaffec­
tion and w itch-hunts by outraged moralists and political
opportunists such as N ew York’s M ayor LaGuardia Maga­
zines w ere threatened w ith confiscation. Popular toned
dow n the sex and sadism in its Terror titles, sales began to
sink, and the magazines limped through the first year o f
the new decade. Bruno Fischer, w hose sole income at the
time came from the W eird Menace pulps, recalls,“In 1940
I was living in Florida w ith my fam ily w hen the whole
terror-horror market collapsed. There w as a lot o f govern­
ment pressure, Congress w as investigating and all th a t...
And one day I got a letter saying the magazines had folded,
and all my unpublished stories w ere returned. T hey just
stopped, ju st like that. It was a shock. Just one day the mar­
ket was gone.”
Pulp’s bloody reign o f terror w as over.
Thrilling Wonder Stories was
home to countless alien villains,
(mown affectionately as bug-eyed
monsters or BEMs. T h ese classic
specimens are from the Ju n e
1 q iQ issue.
W orlds o f Tom orrow

S C IE N C E F IC T IO N P U L P S

Both my w ife and m yself a re regular readers o f your

W ond er Stories, and naturally there are lots o f stories we

read that call for discussion. I contend that it is impossible

that in the fu tu re ‘ time traveling’ m achines will be invented

that will transport one through time to the future, say

1,000 years—and my w ife says that it will be possible to do

so. W h o is correct?

—Letter to the E ditor, 1931

D
E P E N D IN G O N y o u r d e fin itio n o f term s,
the science fictio n story can be traced back to
Homer’s Odyssey, and prototypical S-F themes w ere ex­
plored centuries ago in such w orks as Thom as More’s Uto­
pia (published in 1515), C yrano de Bergerac’s Voyage to the
Moon (1 6 5 0 ),and M ary W . Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). In
the late 19th century, Jules Verne and H, G. W ells w ere
brilliant populari 7,ers o f scientific and speculative fiction,
118 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
as was “the A m erican Jules Verne,” Luis Senarens, author
o f hundreds o f “invention stories” for the cheap w eeklies
and dime novels. T h e “scientific romances" o f Edgar R ice
Burroughs and A. M erritt electrified readers o f the early
general-interest pulps in the teens o f the 2 0th century. But
all these efforts w ere haphazardly produced and pub­
lished, belonging to no clearly defined category or tradi-
tio n ltaw aited th esp ecialty p u lp so fth e 1 9 2 0 s and 1 9 3 0 s
to give the various strands o f S-F material a common name,
a home, and a set o f guiding principles that w ould mark
the foundation o f a distinguished and enduring form o f
literature. The pulps alone discovered and nurtured the
entire generation o f w riters responsible for the matura­
tion and so-called golden age o f science fiction, and it all
happened in less than 2 0 years.
The first magazine devoted to science fiction—Amaz­
ing Stones—was the creation o f a Luxem bourg emigrant
named Hugo G ernsback W hen he was nine, Gernsback
read a German translation o f a book by an Am erican as­
tronomer, Mars as the A b od e o f Life. Reading the book af­
fected young Hugo so strongly that he
developed a fever and became delirious.
The boy had found a calling. He came
to the United States in 1 904, w hen he
was 2 0 , an expert in telephonies and
electronics and a fledgling inventor. In
the next decade, he would invent and
market the w orld’s first home radio set,
the Telim eo W ireless, begin publishing
the w orld’s first radio magazine, open
the first store to sell radios, and coin the
term television. In 192 2 , he had some
blank pages to fill in an issue o f his pe-
Above: Astounding Stories, from Clayton, was the first
science-fiction magazine to be published by a major pulp
publisher. When Clayton went bankrupt, the title was
revived by Street & Smith and tbrived in one form or
another for several decades.
Opposite: Starting in 1 9 4 5 , Amazing Stories courted
controversy by publishing the ‘ non-fiction’ of Richard Shaver,
a Pennsylvania welder who believed the earth had been
invaded by a race of malevolent creatures turning humans
into degenerate zombies.
riodical M odern Electronics and so he w rote the initial in­
stallment o f a serial titled Ralph 1 2 4 C 4 1 + . . . A Romance
o f the Y ear 2 660. W ritten w ith all the style and verve o f a
technical manual, the serial was a remarkable feat o f proph­
ecy, describing such inventions-to-be as tape recorders,
synthetics, radar, fluorescent lighting, plastics, microfilm,
night baseball, and jukeboxes. Gernsback’s magazine—the
title changed to Electrical E xperim enter and then Science
and Invention—began to publish more and more futuristic
stories grounded in science. T h e response to these was
strong enough that G ernsback decided to launch a nearly
all fiction magazine, and A m azing Stories made its debut
w ith an A pril 1 9 2 6 cover date. It was an immediate suc­
cess, selling over 1 0 0 ,0 0 0 copies per issue. Gernsback had
tapped into a kind o f underground o f science-oriented-fic-
tion enthusiasts, readers delighted to find a single source
for material they previously had had to search for in ran­
dom issues o f Argosy, All-Story, W eird Tales, and others.
T h ere had not even been a generally accepted name for
these types o f stories. Publishers variously referred
to them as “off-trail,” “im possible,”
“pseudo-scientific," “w eird-scientific,"
“science fantasy," “scientific romance,"
and “different.” G ernsback once again
took the matter in hand. He first created
the term scientifiction, tinkered w ith it,
and finally settled on a less w him sical
tw o-w ord term, science fiction.
The A m azing staffhad little in com­
mon w ith that o f any other pulp maga­
zine. Besides G ernsback himself, the
monocle-wearing Luxem bourger ge­
nius and prophet, there was assistant
editor C. A. Brandt (a German chemist
and the man w ho introduced the calcu­
lating machine to America) and manag­
ing editor Dr. T. O ’Conor Sloane (a 75-year-old inventor,
author o f the 1 8 9 2 tome Electric Toy M aking for Amateurs,
and the son-in-law o f Thom as A. Edison). Even Amazing's
regular cover artist, Austrian-born Frank R Paul (brilliant
on m achinery and architecture, but his human figures all
looked like ancient Mughals) apparently had an appropri­
ate gift for scientific prophecy. A ccording to A rthur C.
Clarke, Paul’s depiction o f Jupiter, for example, had fine
details that w ere supposedly not know n to earthlings be­
fore the Voyager space-probes o f a half-century later. W ith
w ise staff and eager audience in place, the only thing left
 Stones
W ONDER
Stones
"THE SOULLESS ENTI
By Anthony Pdchcr

OiHai Selnca FictionSlorWi

leiTKii lime
"THE SATELLITE OF DOOM"
By 0. D. Sharp
"THEFLAMING CLOUD"
By Frill] Nawton
"Th. OUTPOST .nth. MOON"
By Joilyn Ma.wall

Above and left: Austrian-born

Frank R. Paul, the regular cover
artist for Wonder Stories and other
Gernsback publications, was
excellent with machines and aliens
but his renderings of human beings
often left something to be desired.
 WORLDS OF
was to find enough good stories. T he scientific standards
and extrem ely low pay scale at A m azing pretty much ex­
cluded the participation o f the usual pulp pros-for-hire.
Gernsback filled the early issues w ith reprints by the old
masters—Verne, W ells, Poe—and new fiction by fledgling
young writers, many w ith a strong, even obsessive inter­
est in the brave new w orld o f scientific possibilities.
“I grew up secluded, poor, on a ranch in N ew Mexico,
and w ithout many prospects," says Jack W illiam son, one
o f Hugo Gernsback’s earliest “discoveries." “I became fasci­
nated w ith science, the prospects that seemed unlimited.
For people o f school age in the 1920s,
science seemed like a sort o f wonderland
that would be a means o f changing the
world and m aking things perfect. And
this w as a feeling shared by many o f us
w ho w ere draw n to w riting science fic­
tion in that period. I was fascinated w ith
these stories and w ith the first issue o f
Am azing that I read. W hen my first story
was printed in the magazine, I was
thrilled and delighted." W illiam son’s
first sale, T h e M etal Man, appeared in the
Decem ber 1 9 2 8 issue. A blurb com­
pared it to M erritt’s T h e Moon Pool and
raved: “Unless w e are very much mis­
taken, this story w ill be hailed w ith de­
light by every scientifiction fan. W e hope Mr. W illiam son
can be induced to w rite a num ber o f stories in a similar
vein." As it happened, W illiam son could be induced, and
was still w riting distinguished science fiction 6 3 years
later. O ther Gernsback discoveries included the satirical
Stanton Coblentz; Philip Francis Nowlan, creator o f Buck
Rogers, a pulp hero long before he became a star in comic
strips; David H. Keller, M D , w ho made his debut w ith the
intriguing Revolt o f the Pedestrians, about a future w here
humans are the abused playthings o f the ruling automo­
biles; Raymond Z. Gallun, a pioneer in the “modern" phase
o f SF; and E. E. “Doc” Smith, the most popular and influen­
tial o f all A m azing writers.
Possessor o f a doctorate in chemical engineering
(“PhD " was proudly attached to all his pulp bylines), Sm ith
was a chemist in a M ichigan donut factory w hen he be­
gan w orking on a novel o f outer space adventure. Unsure
o f him self w ith characterisations and “love interest,” he
asked for assistance from a woman named Mrs. Lee
H aw kins Garby. Sm ith spent four years w riting his mas-
TOMORROW 121
Below: In the pulps, fem ale space-women generally dressed
more like showgirls, as in this September 1 5 4 8 issue of
Startling Stories.
sive novel and another eight years un­
successfully marketing it before
Gernsback bought it for Am azing. T he
Skylark o f S pace caused a sensation
among science fiction readers and w rit­
ers.
T h e prototype for w hat w ould be
know n as “space opera,” Sm ith’s novel
was an action epic o f genuinely cosmic
scope and jaw -droppingly spectacular
technology. Skylark's characterisations
w ere prim itive, the love triangle was
laughable (Mrs. G arby had failed in her
appointed task), and the plot was in essence a very long
chase scene as noble scientist Richard Seaton pursued the
evil space pirate “Blacky" Duquesne across the galaxies. But
i f Sm ith lacked subtlety and com plexity, he had a
com pensatingly abundant im agination and audacity.
Sm ith’s dynam ic use o f scientific principles, his vivid,
sw eeping action scenes, and his breathtakingly spacious
canvas at once made all the previous forms o f outer-space
fiction seem paltry and old-fashioned by comparison.
Smith, w ith his epic-scientific style, w ould become for a
time the m ajor influence on younger S-F writers, replac­
ing M erritt and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Gernsback, how ­
ever, understood Burroughs’ continuing popularity w ith
readers and for a special A m azing Stories A nnual he com­
missioned the pulp superstar to w rite a new novel, T h e
M aster M ind o f Mars. A t a hefty and unprecedented cover
price o f 5 0 cents, the magazine was a near-sellout.
By 1929, G ernsback had a grow ing media empire.
Besides Am azing and A m azing Annual, he had technical,
health, and risque-joke magazines, a radio station, and pos-
122 D A N G E R ES MY B U S I N E S S

sibly the w orld’s first regularly transmitting television sta­
tion. Then, apparently as a result o f an opaque feud w ith
the far more powerful publishing
Macfadden—the tw o lived in the same apartment build­
ing at 5 2 7 Riverside Drive—Gernsback was forced info
bankruptcy. A nother company took over Amazing', w hile
Gernsback immediately established a new company and
a new S-F magazine, Science Wonder Stories. Since he had
illicitly grabbed most o f the manuscripts that had been
submitted to Amazing, there was a good deal o f continuity
between the tw o periodicals. Gernsback followed Science
W on der w ith A ir W on der Stories, Scientific D etective
mogul Bernarr Monthly, and Science W on der Quarterly. T h e Great Depres­
sion had a grave impact on sales, and the various wondrous
magazines had to be merged as a single S-F publication,
W on der Stories. Sales never picked up, and in 1 9 3 6
G ernsback unloaded the title on Ned Pines.
Hugo Gernsback is seen tqday as a Moses-like figure
in the history o f science fiction, the great visionary and
virtual founder o f the formal genre. But he did have his

Left: A n ad for the upcoming issue of

Amazing Stories.
THE HOUSE OF Opposite: Pictured here are participants

M IR A C L E S at one of the first science-fiction conven­

tions. Front row: Otto Binder, Manly
T T Y W ad e Wellman,'Julius Schwartz. Back

T R A N G E things came out of Laboratory

row: Ja ck Williamson, L. Sprague de
S Eleven. A n d stranger still was Head
Chemist, Borden Keohanc. “ Human life is
Camp, Dr. John Clark, Frank Belknap
cheapl" he said. A n d somehow these grim Long, Mort Weisinger, .Edmond
words linked up with a strange pit of utter
cold, far beneath the Laboratory Eleven. Hamilton, and Otis A delbert Kline.
What strange horror lay in that place no
eyes had ever seen? Blaine Rising thought
he knew, but he couldn’t prove it. Then
when the trapdoor opened beneath lovely
Marcella Kingman, Blaine Rising went mad,
but even in madness, he could not have
dreamed of the retribution that was to come
to Borden Keohane. Don’t fail to read this
sensational story of scientific miracles illu ttr a tto n Iro m T h « f i t o f A b*olu to Z»ro

THE PIT OF ABSOLUTE ZERO

By DON WILCOX

E D W I N K C I O A T u k ** you lo the country W H E R E T IM E S T O O D S T IL L . H e r e 1!

▼T 1 1 ^ l \ « J L r V n I a story that w j|| r c a ||y thrill you Q 0 w|th Kent Rider into a
weird timeless valley, while beyond its confines a world floes mad with war. Escape with him in a desperate
attempt to halt the slaughter of helpless women and children. Then stand aghast at an Incredible revelation,
and a cruel deception.

ROBERT MOORE W ILLIAM S «w

T k
il1
« .I. M
<•» imejinetron »i»
e rtr.n se hidden crypt .n d .
deadly menace beneath the famous pyramid of G izeh .

RALPH MILNE FARLEY !v<f,,you*c'°“ t),e,ivKol m

u<J- oi
..................nd hidden deep in 7 ^ ,t,,0 “ 3h '* , ,n in “

AND OTHER ARTICLES IN THE

BIG JULY ISSUE OF
six ON
COMPLETE S A LE
STORIES MAY 10
STORIES
131
flaws, including a notable—even for pulp publishers—pen­
chant for exploiting his writers. Although he was taking a
salary o f around $ 1 ,0 0 0 a w eek from his magazines,
Gernsback paid writers as little—and as seldom—as pos­
sible. He gave Lovecraft $ 2 5 for the brilliant T h e Colour
Out o f Space. “Doc" Sm ith earned a less-than-whopping
$ 125 for his huge Skylark noveL Many writers were finally
forced to get lawyers and sue Gernsback for the meager
amounts he owed them but refused to pay. It has left de­
cidedly m ixed feelings about the great pioneer among the
survivors w ho actually w rote for h im “I w as not particu­
larly impressed by him,” says Raymond Z. Gallun, whose
first tw o stories, T h e Crystal Ray and T h e Space Dwellers,
appeared respectively in the November 1 9 2 9 issues o f A ir
W on der Stories and Science W on der Stories. “He was pretty
much o f a crank and would revise your story w ithout rea­
son or permission. And he hung onto a nickel like no one
else and he knew it. He once sent out a Christmas card re­
ferring to him self as ‘The Deadbeat Philanthropist.’ He
wouldn’t pay for the stories he published and I was living
in W isconsin and had to find an attorney in N ew York.
Ultimately she got the money out o f him.” Says Jack
W illiamson: “I ow e Gernsback a great debt o f gratitude for
printing my work, accepting me as a writer, and so forth,
but I became disappointed w ith h im He was slow and
reluctant in the matter o f payment for material w hen it was
unnecessary. He w ould print a story w ithout even telling
the w riter he was using it. I finally got an attorney to col­
lect for various stories, and paid a 20% commission. But
you couldn’t cross him o ff the list because he was one o f
the few available markets for science fiction.”
The first non-Gernsback-created science fiction maga­
zine—and the first to be produced by a large, mainstream
pulp publisher—was Clayton’s im posingly named A s­
tounding Stories o f Super-Science, arriving on newsstands
late in 1 9 2 9 w ith a January 1 9 3 0 cover date. A luridly ex­
citing scene from a Victor Rousseau story, T h e Beetle Horde,
was depicted on the cover—somewhere in Antarctica, a
crashed aviator and a distressed damsel in a fur coat battle
a sharp-toothed giant insect. Inside, the magazine’s inten­
tions w ere trumpeted by editor H arry Bates:
To-morrow . . . astounding things are going to happen.
Your children—or their children—are going to take a trip
 i al'i *T jT T B o

Stories
Hugo C e r n s b a c k f«

& %

THE CALL OF
THE MECH-MEN
 WORLDS
to t h e m o o n . T h e y w ill b e a b le to r e n d e r th e m s e lv e s
i n v i s i b l e — a p r o b l e m t h a t h a s a l r e a d y b e e n p a r t l y s o lv e d .
T h e y w ill b e a b le to d is in t e g r a t e t h e ir b o d ie s in N e w
a n d r e in te g r a te th e m in C h i n a — a n d in a matter of
secon d s.
A s to u n d in g ? I n d e e d , y es.
I m p o s s ib le ? W e l l — te le v is io n w o u ld h a v e b e e n im p o s s ib le ,
a lm o s t u n t h i n k a b l e , t e n y e a r s a g o .
N o w y o u w i l l s e e t h e k i n d o f m a g a z i n e t h a t i t is o u r
p le a s u r e to o ffe r y o u b e g in n in g w it h th is , t h e f i r s t n u m b e r
of A stounding Stories.
I t is a m a g a z i n e w h o s e s t o r i e s w i l l a n t i c i p a t e t h e s u p e r -
s c ie n t if ic a c h ie v e m e n t s o f T o - m o r r o w — w h o s e s to r ie s w ill
not o n ly b e s tr ic tly a c c u r a te in th e ir s c ie n c e b u t w ill h e
v iv id ly , d r a m a t ic a lly a n d t h r illin g ly to ld .
Bates’ claims o f strict accuracy w ere not strictly fol-
lowed, as evidenced b y that first cover story. A crash-
landed expedition at the South Pole is captured b y tran­
sited beetles and taken to Submundia, a civilisation be­
neath the earth’s crust ruled b y a drug-craz,ed archaeolo­
gist. The madman plans to turn his human-devouring
beetles loose on the outside world, vengeance on those
w h o once ridiculed his radical scientific theories. The he­
roes destroy the bugs w ith incendiary bombs, but the d y ­
ing villain confesses his back-up plan:“ Invasion b y — n ew
species of— monotremes,’ he croaked.'Deep dow n in the—
Earth.’ Monotremes— egg-laying platypus as big as an el­
e p h an t-ex istin g long before the Pleistocene E p o ch ...”
A sto u n d mg offered escapist entertainment in the clas­
sic pulp tradition. Editor Bates w as not averse to intrigu­
ing scientific premises or technical data, so long as they
didn't interfere w ith a steady flo w o f pulse-racing action.
“Doc” Smith—style space opera predominated, intergalac-
tic adventures full o f ray guns, fiendish aliens, and dueling
spaceships.
O p p o s ite : W onder Stories w a s t h e la s t m a jo r s c i e n c e - f i c t i o n
p u lp c r e a te d b y H u g o G e r n s b a c k .
OF TOMORROW 125
Bates w as a talented and amusing man. “He had a cy n i­
cal sense o f humor,” recalls Jack W illiamson. “He sent me a
check for a story and attached a three-word message: ‘God
Y ork
Is Love.’ He thought Gernsback’s fiction w as boring. He
w anted believable science but it had to support a good,
entertaining story. He didn’t give a lot o f advice but w hat
he did tell yo u made sense. I learned a lot from him. Bates
has been neglected in the histories o f science fiction, but I
think he made a genuine contribution in those early days.”
W h en the w hole Clayton chain folded in P933, Bates was
out o f a job. Street & Smith bought the Astounding title and
revived it after a seven-month coma, but a n ew editor was
hired. Bates turned to w ritin g full-time and sold a number
o f science fiction stories to the magazine he had helped
create. His novelette F a r e w e l l t o t h e M a s t e r {A s t o u n d i n g ,
October 1940), about the arrival o f an alien spaceship in
W ashington, D.C, w as turned into the classic 19 5 1 film
T h e D a y th e E a r t h S to o d S till. The m ovie version altered
the original ending, losing the surprise and stunning im­
pact o f the final line o f dialogue, spoken b y Gnut, the giant
robot: “You m isunderstand. . . I am the Master.”
Harry Bates’ fortunes declined in the 1 940s. He lived
b y him self in a tin y room near the Street &t Smith build­
ing on 7th A ven u e and 14th Street. “He w as a loner and
just gradually w en t to seed,” says a w riter acquaintance.
“He didn’t take care o f him self at all and there w ere emo­
tional problems." He died in 19 8 1, his final years spent in
destitution on the streets o f low er Manhattan.
A t S & S, the man chosen to edit the revived A sto u n d ­
in g w as F. O rlin Tremaine. A journeym an editor, he had
w orked on all sorts o f magazines, and the hardcore science
fiction readers m ay not have been expecting much from
him But Tremaine w as inspired b y the job. He deliberately
sought science fiction stories that w ere utterly n ew in con­
cept and treatment— he called them “thought variant."
T ypical o f his exciting purchases for the magazine were
R e b ir th b y Thomas Calvert M cClary, a story o f the results
o f universal amnesia; Ancestral V o ic e s b y Nathan
Schachner, in w h ich a man travels back in time, kills an
ancestor, and thereby destroys his o w n future; and
Raym ond G allun’s O ld F a ith fu l, about a “sensitive”
Martian’s doomed attempt to make contact w ith Earth.
Says Gallun, “Sloane at Amazing S to r ie s had rejected it. I
mentioned it in passing to O rlin Tremaine and said that
no editor w o u ld w an t it— it didn’t fo llo w the formulas.
A n d he sent me a note right a w a y telling me about the n ew
'thought variant’ p olicy and that he didn’t w ant to see any
 HUGO GERNSBACK
EDITOR

H G W e lls
J u le s V ern e
Geotirey Hewek ke
COMPANY. NEW YORK. PUBLISH! K
I • FRENCH HUMOR RAOtO IISTENE8S
 WORLDS OF T O M O R R O W 127

Right: Christmas in Ganymede in

th e J a n u a r y '4 2 Startling Stories,
w a s a n e a r ly w o r k b y I s a a c

Asimov w a s a lr e a d y selling
Asimov.
r e g u l a r ly
CHRISTMAS ON
to t h e

Opposite:
p u lp s a t th e a g e o f 2 2 .

A lt h o u g h it w a s n o t
CANYMEE)E
r e a d ily a p p a r e n t what w a s g o in g o n
By ISAAC ASIMOV
in this cover p a i n t i n g b y P a u l, i t w a s

c e r ta in ly amazing. E d ito r / p u b lis h e r

H u g o G e r n s b a c k g a v e h is r a d io

s ta tio n WR N Y a r a th e r gratuitous
plug at the center-top of this cover
fr o m M a r c h 1 9 2 8 .

“ H e re , p u ssy , p u ssy , p u ssy , p u ssy , p u s s y l" urged Jo h n so n h o p e fu lly . “ H e re , F id o l"

The Yuletide Season Brings Turmoil on Jupiter's Moon and III

Will Toward Everybody When Olaf Johnson Gets Sentimental!

formula stories" Published in the Decem ber 19 3 4 A s­ W einbaum w as w id e ly regarded as the most innovative
to u n d in g ,O l d F a it h f u l w as one o f the first stories to present science fiction w riter in the world. But Stanley
a sympathetic alien, not anthropomorphized exactly, but W einbaum ’s career proved to be meteoric, lasting just 15
a thinking and feeling creature. months. In Decem ber 1935, at the age o f 33, he died o f
A nother approach w as taken b y a M ilw aukee w riter throat cancer.
w hose first published story, A M a r tia n O d y sse y (Wonder O ne o f the most memorable o f the “thought-variant”
Stories, July 1934), created a nearly unprecedented sensa­ stories Trem aine bought for Astounding w as T w ilig h t , a
tion in the science fiction community. Stanley plotless, elegiac rumination on the jaded, passive state o f
W einbaum ’s extra-terrestrials w ere truly a lie n aliens, con­ the human race some seven million years in the future. The
ceived w ith ou t any reference to humankind, but so bril­ story w as bylined “Don A. Stuart,” but this w as a pseud­
liantly delineated that entirely imagined life-forms became onym for John W . Campbell, an S-F w riter o f grow in g re­
“real" W einbaum follow ed O d yssey w ith V a lle y o f D r e a m s , pute in the mid-’30s. In 1938, he replaced F. O rlin
and then Wonder Stories lost him to A s t o u n d i n g . By the time Tremaine as the editor o f Astounding Stories, a move that
P a r a s ite P la n e t appeared in the March 19 35 Astounding, w ou ld usher science fiction into its mature and intellectu­
 128 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
ally rigorous golden age.
Born in N ew ark, N e w Jersey, in 19 10 , Cam pbell at­
tended M IT , but failed to graduate due to an in ability to
master a foreign language Even as a w riter and editor, his
prim ary interest w as science, not literature. A lth ough
Campbell-the-writer had been responsible for some o f the
best action-packed space operas, Campbell-the-editor had
no interest in buyin g any more o f these shallow adventure
stories. He made Astounding a vehicle for his vision o f a
technological, philosophical, iconoclastic, and idea-ob­
sessed science fiction. Cam pbell consciously tried to take
his magazine out o f the pulp orbit. W ith the March 1938
issue, he changed the title to A s to u n d in g S c ie n c e - F ic tio n ,
dropping “Stories,” a w ord supposedly stigm atised b y
pulpy associations. He w ou ld eventually get rid o f“garish”
cover art in favor o f more “mature” illustrations. More criti­
cal w as his determination to make A s t o u n d i n g off-limits to
the journeym en professionals w h o supplied materials to
all the other pulp magazines. Instead, Cam pbell filled the
m agazines pages w ith the w o rk o f n e w w riters w h o had
a serious understanding o f technology and hard science.
A m ong Cam pbell’s discoveries w ere such S-F luminaries
as Isaac A sim ov, Robert Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, L.
Sprague de Camp, A. E. van Vogt, A rthur C. Clarke, and
many more.
Cam pbell encouraged w riters— n ew and estab­
lished— w ith an enthusiasm that bordered on the fanati­
cal. “He w as a superb and provocative teacher o f science
and o f fiction,” w rote Theodore Sturgeon “He w ou ld re­
turn a story because it turned upon the fission o f light
metals or a compound o f argon, and w ou ld explain to you
in five or six or seven single-spaced pages w h y this was
not possible— and give yo u something w h ich w ou ld re­
ally w ork, and w h ich in some cases, as w ith our nuclear
energy technology, ultim ately did.”
O ne o f the few pulp “pros” w h o made the grade w ith
Cam pbell w as L. Ron Hubbard. H ubbard had been a
highly successful author o f W estern and adventure fiction
from the age o f 20. He w as a w ell-kn ow n figure in the N e w
York pulp com m unity in the late ’30s— w ell-kn ow n but
not necessarily well-loved. Some o f his fello w w riters
found him to be an egomaniac and a liar. “It w as part o f his
character," says Jack W illiamson. “He w as a liar but a cre­
ative and successful one. W h en one lie w as exposed, he
could invent another one right away.” A fast and skilled
writet', Hubbard, along w ith A rth ur J. Burks, w as sum­
moned to the Street & Smith headquarters for a meeting
w ith the “top brass.” A ccordin g to Hubbard, he and Burks,
tw o o f the pulps’ top-line professionals— “either o f our
names w o u ld send the circulation rates skyrocketing"—
w ere asked to contribute science fiction stories to A s t o u n d ­
in g . Initially ignorant o f the genre, Hubbard q u ick ly be­
came one o f the stars o f both A s to u n d in g and its compan­
ion fantasy magazine, U nknow n.
In the late AOs, after a decade o f w ritin g often brilliant
science fiction and fantasy, H ubbard came up w ith some­
thing different— a treatise for a brand-new form o f men­
tal-health therapy he called “Dianetics,” and he convinced
Cam pbell to publish it in Astounding. Cam pbell became,
for a time, a convert to H ubbard’s “mental health m ove­
ment” after Dianetic therapy relieved him o f a chronic si­
nus condition T he A sto u n d m g editor joined the board o f
directors o f the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation
established in Elizabeth, N ew Jersey. Eventually,
H ubbard’s movement developed into the C hurch o f
Scientology, w ith tens o f thousands o f follow ers and esti­
mated assets o f $ 1 billion, and the one-time hack w riter o f
Foreign Legion and co w b o y stories became a figure o f in­
ternational notoriety— certainly the only pulp w riter to be
the subject o f a biography w ith the subtitle M e s s ia h or
M adm an? Sam M oskow itg, the ca p o d i tu tti o f science fic­
tion historians, tells o f the time in 19 4 7 w hen L. Ron spoke
to a gathering o f the Eastern Science Fiction Association:
H u b b a r d sp oke ... I d o n 't r e c a ll h is e x a c t w o r d s , b u t , in
e ffe c t, h e to ld u s th a t w r it in g s c ie n c e f ic t io n fo r a p e n n y a
w o r d w a s n o w a y t o m a k e a l i v i n g . I f y o u r e a l l y w a n t to
m a k e a m i l l i o n , h e s a i d t h e q u i c k e s t w a y is t o s t a r t y o u r
o w n r e lig io n .
W h ile A s to u n d in g cornered the market in adult, intel­
lectual science fiction, other magazines thrived w ith offer­
ings o f more juven ile or fanciful S-F— rocketships, ray
guns, and bug-eyed monsters (know n affectionately as
BEMs) aplenty. The late 1930s w ere the boom years for
science-fiction periodicals. In ’37, there w ere just three
magazines specialising in science fiction. By 1939, that
number had quadrupled. N ed Pines, w ith editorial ch ief
Leo Margulies, had taken over Gernsback’s W o n d e r S to r ie s
and changed the title— not unexpectedly— to T h r illin g
W o n d e r S to r ie s . O ther Standard Publications S-F pulps fol-
Opposite; C o n te n ts p a g e, Startling Stories, January 1942.
 •* THE BEST IN S C I E N T I F I C T I O N *

V o l. 7 , N o . I_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ C O N T E N T S _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ J a n u a r y , 1942

A C o m p le te B o o k -L e n g th S c i e n t i f ic t io n Novel

DEVILS
PLANET
By MANLY
WADE WELLMAN
F r e s h fr o m E a r th , Y o u n g D i llo n S t o v e r is
P lu n g e d in to a M y s t e r y on M a r s ! T o u r P u -
lam b ar, th e M a r tia n P le a s u r e C i t y , w ith t h is
I n t r e p i d E a r th m a n as Y o u r G u i d e .................. 15

O th e r U n u su a l S to r ie s

CHRISTM AS O N G A N Y M E D E ........................................ Isaac Asimov 83

The Yuletide S e a s o n Brings Turmoil on Jupiter’s Moon
THE FITZG ERA LD C O N T R A C T IO N Dr. Miles J. Breuer 94
An Outstanding Classic from Scientihction’s Hall of Fame
G EA R S FOR N EM ESIS.......................................... Raymond Z. Gallun 106
There Was Only One Way to Save the Day for the Trail Blazer's Passengers

S p e c ia l F e a tu re s

THE ETHER VIBRATES............................. Announcements and Letters 10

THRILLS IN S C IE N C E ......................................................Oscar J. Friend 78
S C IEN C E QUESTION B O X ....................................Answers to Queries 93
REVIEW O F FAN PU B LIC A TIO N S............................. Sergeant Saturn 126
C o v e r P a in tin g b y R u d o lp h B elarski— Illu s tra tin g D E V I L 'S P L A N E T
STARTLING ST O R IES, published every other month by B ettor Publications, In c., N. L. Pines, President, at 4800 D lrer-
M-y Ave (Tilenso, 111 Kdltorlal and executive offices, 10 E ast 40th S t.. New York, N. Y. Entered as second class
&TV,*ml f r 2P‘, 103Kv at thV 0H| ? nlco ,lt Chicago, Illinois, under the act of March 8. 1870. Copyright 1041, by
L*n ™ J . i .rR l0l“ ' 1,,c- , YraTly (iPplt:a * 1!l ; forcl*n * nrt Canadian postage oxtra. Manuscripts wOl not to
returned H ide* accomijanled by self-addressed stamtwd enrelopo and are Rubtnlltotl at tho author’* risk. Names of all
h uacd'Tt j'»Ca coincidence*11*1 *CI" ' llcl on *irttcles » r« fictitious. I f a namo of any living person or oxlstlug institution
?h!!im,,li0no T , ®*zlno* : Thrilling Wonder Stories, Captain Future. Popular W eitern, Thrilling Mystery, Thrilling Woitern.
Thrilling Dotrctlve. Thrilling Adventures. Thrilling Love, The Phantom Detective, Tho Amerloan Eagle, RAF Aces Skv
Fighters. I npular Dotective. Thrilling Ranch Stories, Thrilling Sports, Popular Sports Maoazlnc, Range Rider* Western
L u i l d ni ! w?‘ G.*M#" P eUci ,v#' OatKtlve Novel* Magazine’ Black Bock DelVcflve Ro^ular Lo^ :
, asked Rider Western, Rio Kid Western, Air War, The Masked Detective, Exciting Detective, Excitlna Western E x e lt.
Ing Lovo, Popular Football, Thrilling Football. Exciting Football and West. PRINTED IN THE U. S a
 MHflgUBP

T o p : T h i s is s u e o f Thrilling Wonder
Stories, f r o m t h e t a il e n d o f t h e p u l p

era (A u g u s t 1g 4g ), c o n ta in e d stories
b y p a s t a n d f u t u r e m a ste r s o f s c ie n c e

fic tio n . J o h n D . M a c D o n a ld , a

d a b b le r in S F , w o u ld achieoe f a m e in

th e c r im e g e n r e .

A bove: Planet Stories s p e c ia liz e d in

s p a c e o p e r a a n d in te r p la n e ta r y

a d v e n tu r e .

Right: Ray B radbury in Los

Angeles, 1940.
 WORLDS OF T O M O R R O W 131

low ed— S t a r t l i n g S to r ie s , featuring a full-length novel per T h e C o m p a n y d ic k s w e r e g oo d . T h e y w e r e p le n t y g oo d .

issue (there w as virtually no book publication o f n e w sci­
H u g h S ta r k e b eg a n to t h i n k m a y b e t h i s t i m e h e w a s n 't
ence fiction in this period), and C a p ta in F u tu r e , the first S-
g o in g to g e t a w a y w it h it.
F hero pulp. The juven ile but h igh ly entertaining adven­
tures o f the Captain w ere w ritten b y Edmond “W o rld
H is s m a ll s tr in g y b o d y h u n c h e d o v e r t h e c o n tr o l b a n k ,
Saver” Hamilton, nickname derived from his penchant for
saving entire planets in each o f his stories. W h en C a p ta in n u r s in g t h e la s t o u n c e o f p o w e r o u t o f t h e K a llm a n . T h e

F u tu r e made its first appearance w ith a Fall 19 3 9 cover hot night sky o f Venus f l e d p a s t t h e p o r t s in t a t t e r e d v e ils
date, Hamilton w as one o f the big names in science fiction, o f in d ig o . S t a r k e w a s n 't s u r e w h e r e h e w a s a n y m o r e .
still a youn g man but a ranking veteran in the field, his
V e n u s w a s a fr o n tie r p la n e t, a n d s till mostly a b ig X ,
Interstellar Patrol series i n W e ir d T a le s havin g done much
e x c e p t to t h e Venutians— w h o w e r e n ’t sending out any
to popularise the genre back in the 1920s. Captain Fu­
ture— real name C urt N ew to n — w as a kin d o f 21st-cen­ maps.
tury Doc Savage, w ith colorful sidekicks and exotic gad­
Brackett’s hard-boiled w ritin g caught the eye o f pro­
gets, chasing evil super-villains back and forth across the
ducer-director H ow ard H awks, and he hired her to w ork
solar system.
on a screen adaptation o f Chandler’s The Big S le e p . Her
Other n ew titles to appear in that booming 1938—
collaborator on the script w as W illiam Faulkner. T he w ife
1939 period included Red Circle’s spiced-up M a r v e l S c ie n c e
o f Edm und Hamilton, Brackett in the years ahead divided
S to r ie s , Fiction House’s P la n e t S to r ie s , Blue Ribbon’s S c i e n c e
her time betw een w ritin g science fiction and fantasy n ov­
Fiction and Future Fiction. In 1940, Fictioneers (the budget
els and screenplays, most o f them for H aw ks (Rio B ravo,
division o f Popular) w eighed in w ith Astonishing S t o r i e s and
H a ta r i, E l D o r a d o , etc.). Her last film w o rk before she died
S u p e r S c ie n c e Stories, w h ile H-K Publications’ Comet S to r ie s
in 19 7 7 w as the script for George Lucas’ The E m p ir e
marked the return o f F. O rlin Tremaine to S-F editing. The
S tr ik e s B a ck .
latter magazine didn’t last long,Tremaine quitting in the face
Born in 1920, R ay Bradbury made his first pulp sale,
o f the company’s shifty business practices.
P e n d u lu m , t o S u p e r S c ie n c e Stories in 19 4 l.In the pages o f
P la n e t S to r ie s w as devoted exclu sively to stories o f
P la n e t S to r ie s , he began to develop his characteristic themes
interplanetary adventure. It became the regular home for
and poetic prose style. P la n e t published such early
the w o rk o f tw o o f the best non-“hard” science fiction w rit­
Bradbury classics as Morgue Ship and L a z a r u s , C o m e F o rth ,
ers, Leigh Brackett and R ay Bradbury. Most o f Brackett’s
and in the Summer 1946 issue, The Million Year Picnic,
stories w ere exuberant sword-and-sorcery swashbucklers,
the first o f the stories that w o u ld make up the acclaimed
influenced b y Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert H ow ard, and
and h igh ly successful collection The Martian C h r o n ic le s .
C. L. Moore. She set them on familiar planets but these w ere
Bradbury, unlike so many o f the science-obsessed S-F w rit­
fantasy locales, w ith ou t atmospheric or geographic reali­
ers, expressed a rueful, anti-technology view p o in t in his
ties. T he editors at P la n e t didn’t care m uch about such
story o f an ordinary fam ily that has fled to Mars just be­
things. One time they found they had put a Brackett story,
fore Earth’s inevitable self-destruction:
The Dragon Q ueen of Venus, in the same issue w ith another
Venutian piece. Some q uick copy-editing saved the day, S c i e n c e r a n to o f a r a h e a d o f us too quickly, a n d th e p e o p le

turning Brackett’s story into The D r a g o n Q u e e n o f J u p ite r . got lost in a m e c h a n ic a l w ild e r n e s s , lik e c h ild r e n making
Unfortunately, it w as sloppily edited and not all the origi­
o v e r p r e t t y t h in g s , g a d g e ts , h e lic o p te r s , r o c k e ts , e m p h a s is
nal Martian references w ere removed, m aking the pub­
in g t h e w r o n g ite m s, e m p h a s iz in g m a c h in e s in s te a d o f h o w
lished story appear to be happening on tw o planets sim ul­
taneously. to r u n t h e m a c h in e s . W a r s got b ig g e r a n d bigger and

Brackett also w rote tough private detective novels and f in a lly k ille d E a r t h . . . th a t w a y o f life p r o v e d w r o n g a n d
some o f her science fiction echoes this hard-boiled style, as s tr a n g le d it s e lf w it h its ow n hands . . .
in the Raym ond Chandler—like opening paragraphs o f
L o r e le i o f t h e Mist (P l a n e t S to r ie s , Summer 1946): Before he began selling his w o rk to professional pub­
lications, Bradbury had been a science fiction fan and an
132 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S

L e f t : ‘ S c i e n c e f i c t i o n ’ in t h e p u l p s

c o v e r e d e v e r y th in g fr o m “ h a r d

Beings of the Ooze s c ie n c e ' a n d s p e c u la tiv e stories to

‘ sp a ce o p e r a ’ a d v e n tu r e s a n d

in t e r p la n e t a r y fa n ta s ie s .
B) JO H N M . T A Y I-O R

O p p o s ite : Leigh B r a c k e t t , c ir c a

!9 3 9 -

Scream ing, th e y g lo w e d with a p h osp h o teico n f blue llgh tl

Spence B urkly d orcd to e n ter th e fo rbid d en c ity o f th e o n cie n t fro g m e n -

dared to d e s e c ra te th e sacred groun d o f M o u n t D u k a i! From o u t o f th e
past com es th e a w fu l v e n g e o n c e o f a ra ce lo n g d ead — on u n s p e a k ­
a b le doom to th o se w ho w ould bold ly d isrega rd th e C u rse !

acquaintance o f many established w riters in the field, and devoted readers, but only science fiction inspired such an
for a time he published his o w n amateur S-F magazine. In all-consuming passion. Pulp hack Frank G ruber’s nasty
this, he w as representative o f a phenomenon that w as claim that he could pick out a science fiction fan in a crow d
unique in the history o f commercial publishing, the close (it mostly in volved the presence o f eyeglasses and buck
interrelationship between the readers and the w riters o f teeth) w as an exaggeration, but there is no doubt that the
science fiction. From the beginning, the genre inspired S-F fans w ere a breed apart.
cultlike devotion from its fans, and their numbers in­ M any readers o f A m a z in g and succeeding magazines
creased w ith the arrival o f each n ew magazine and land­ became science fiction writers, and Gernsback further
mark story Gernsback had started it all b y encouraging closed the gap betw een professional and amateur when, in
netw orking among readers, printing full names and ad­ 1933, he hired 17-year-old Charles Hornig, publisher o f
dresses in Amazing’s letter-to-the-editor pages. Fan clubs the mimeographed F a n ta sy F a n , to be editor o f W onder

and organisations, such as the Science Fiction League and S to r ie s . T w enty-year-old fan and science fiction activist
the feuding Futurian Society and N e w Fandom, prolifer­ Mort W eisinger w as hired b y Leo Margulies as editor o f
ated in the 1930s, and on July 2, 1939, hundreds o f fans Standard’s S-F titles, T h r illin g Wonder, S ta r tlin g , C a p t a in
met in N e w York for a historic gathering, the First W orld F u tu r e . W h en Ziff-D avis bought A m a z in g S to r ie s from
Science Fiction Convention. Other pulp genres had their T eck Publications (and fired 8 6 -year-old editor T. O ’Conor
 WORLDS
Sloane), they handed the editorial post to another active
fan, Raymond A. Palmer, w h o had once w ritten a pri^e-
w in n in g essay on the topic “W h at I H ave Done to Spread
Science Fiction,’’
Hunchbacked and the siz,e o f a child as a result o f be­
ing hit b y a truck w hen he w as seven, Palmer had a hard
shell and a sardonic v ie w o f humanity. He exploited sci­
ence fiction's lunatic fringe w ith a series o f “non-fiction”
stories kn ow n collectively as T h e S h a v e r M y stery .
ard S. Shaver w as a Pennsylvania w elder and long-time
science fiction fan w h o began sending long, crackpot let­
ters to the Amazing editors. Beginning w ith I R em em ber
L e m u r ia in the June 1945 issue, Shaver w arned the w orld
o f a race o f malevolent creatures livin g in caverns beneath
the Earth, using their occult powers to turn human beings
into degenerate zom bies kn ow n as “deros" Palmer empha­
sised that this w as a true story and expected to drum up a
little excitement, but L e m u r ia sparked a phenomenon. Not
only did many o f Amazing’s readers believe Shaver's sto­
ries, many sent in breathless accounts o f their o w n encoun­
ters w ith the same cavern-dw elling monster race and v i­
OF T O M O R R O W 133
cious dero legions. Amazing became the house organ for
occult conspiracy theorists, mental patients, and other dis­
tinctive fans. W h ile circulation w as boosted b y the erupt­
ing controversy, the coherent S-F fans w ere alienated or
repulsed. M any thought the concept o f a prehuman race o f
evil gods w aiting to grab pow er on Earth w as suspiciously
similar to the fictional Cthulhu Mythos o f H. P. Lovecraft.
Palmer’s m otive in all this w as pretty clear— he had also
Rich­ endorsed the veracity o f a geriatric hoaxer w h o claimed
to be a 1 20-year-old Jesse James. But Richard Shaver w as a
true believer, genuinely disturbed. Shortly before his death
in 1975, long after the controversy had faded, Shaver
w rote to science fiction historian M ike A sh ley that “ S-F
fans never seemed to get the point because o f mind-con­
trol from dero sources, I believe ... the fans only saw the
stim and the sex orgy and the sensationalism in the Am az­
ing magazine set-up, never w hat I w anted them to see and
absorb... the nature o f evil and h o w to do something about
it w ith magnetic control devices w h ich alter the flo w o f
thought into a better pattern than the ‘norm’ ...”
N 1944, some U.S. m ilitary intelligence agents burst
I into the office o f
D e a d lin e
A s t o u n d in g S c ie n c e - F ic tio n
John Campbell. T h e y carried w ith them a copy o f the story
b y C leve Cartmill, published in the March issue,,
editor
and demanded to kn o w the source for atomic energy “se­
crets" revealed in the story. Cam pbell patriotically ex­
plained that, far from indicating a leak at the Manhattan
Project, the ideas in the story belonged to a t r a d it io n of sci­
entific prophecy practiced in the science fiction pulps
since their inception. The encounter w ou ld prove to be il­
lustrative o f the greater attention and respect science fic­
tion w ou ld receive in the post-war w orld.
In the 20 years betw een the first issue o f A m a z in g S to ­
nes and the end o f W orld W ar II, science fiction had come
a long w ay, steadily increasing in size, quality, and impact.
For those first 20 years, the pulps alone had supported this
growth. Science fiction in book form, in the slick maga­
zines, on the radio, or in the movies w as virtually nonex­
istent. T he w ar— w ith its rockets, high-tech genocide,
atomic bombs, the revealed potential for total global de­
struction— w ou ld change this situation, provoking w id e ­
spread interest in the literature o f technological and socio­
logical speculation. Science fiction w ou ld thereafter reach
a mass audience beyond the far-sighted readership o f the
pulps, an audience eager to comprehend its fragile and dan­
gerous future
 B a tts ms ncau siowty an a
shook
his fee
sighed. Jerking his mind back t o
Ibusiness, he darted to the bureau,
“ Nailii
slipped the ca r key, the license folder
from t
Iand the moncy-c ram m ed pocketbook
Bates
into his pockets.
I hate
A t any m om ent M abel o r Bessie
is busi
might wake up. Irene might recover
grinnec
her senses and pound on the bath­
would
room floor.
guns c
M oving swiftly, silently, the de­
Detect!
tective cased to the side o f the bed doorkn
and slipped the autom atic from
Bessie’s pillow. H is own forty-five I t * * * * * *

automatic was jam m ed into his co at R \

pocket. H e left the bed, started
across the floor, and Irene cam e to
[life in the bathroom , banged on the
floor.
Bessie and M abel shot erect in
[the bed, M abel staring a t him with
green, sleep-dulled eyes. T h e big
|blonde took one look a t the gun in
jhis hand, then clawed frantically
[through the bed covers, hunting her
: automatic. •,
‘*! ve got it, Bessie, darling,”
•« r-i

said grimly. “ Irene’s locked

iroom and her banging

f; J ■

rr.-i

W fk d

, '
t, backed tow ard the
ig three escaped pri
he A tlanta pen w ill gn
Agency some n ifty pul
to turn you in, but bv
less and pleasure is—
I. “ W ell, the three o
► have killed me event
ir no guns, so— ” P
ve H ubert Bates grasps
ob behind him.

e s e r v e y o u r c o p j Final Issue
THE END OF A N ERA

I t is i n t h e v e r y n a t u r e o f e p h e m e r a l l i t e r a t u r e t h a t t h e

Jollywood p e o p le w ill w e a r y o f it in time, that th e y w ill d e m a n d a n e w

th in g , a t le a s t in a p p e a r a n c e i f n o t in s u b s t a n c e .

— M a ry N o el

cD e t e £ liv i
S T H E 1940S B E G A N , no one could have guessed

A that the pulps w ere dying. Indeed, it w as not until

TODAY!
the follow ing decade that the last rites w ou ld be performed.
But b y 1940, the seeds o f destruction w ere in place O n ly five
years before, original-material comic books had been only an
idea in the mind o f pulp-adventure-writer Major Malcolm
W heeler-Nicholson By the early’40s, the combined monthly
sales o f comic books w as in the tens of millions. T w o titles
alone — A c t i o n C o m ic s and S u p e r m a n — sold over tw o million
copies per month. By the end o f the war, the circulation o f
comic books w as four times that o f the pulps. A n d it w as late

A b o v e : F r e d e r ic k F a u s t, b e tte r k n o w n a s M a x B r a n d , in th e

1 9 4 0 s.
136 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S
in 1938 that a man named Robert DeGrafFand three execu­
tives from the publishing firm o f Simon & Schuster test-
marketed a two-thousand-copy softcover, “pocket-siz;ed”
edition o f Pearl Buck’s T h e G ood Earth. W ith copies placed
at random in stores in m idtow n Manhattan, the edition w as
a near sellout on the first day. Pocket Books, the first A m eri­
can com pany to publish paperback books on a large scale,
w as officially launched in 1939 w ith the release o f ten
titles, each printed in an edition o f ten thousand copies. By
the mid-’40s, dozens o f companies had entered the paper­
back field, and editions o f one million w ere not uncommon.
Paperbacks as a format had been given a huge boost b y the
coming o f war. T h e y w ere popular w ith the troops over­
seas, and fam ily members w ere encouraged to send the
conveniently packaged books to the relatives in uniforms.
Pocket Books even set up a Prisoner-of-War Service just for
people w h o w anted to send books to captured Americans.
The Red Cross and various other do-gooders organised
drives for the purchase o f paperback books for soldiers. N o
such groups w ere likely to encourage the sending o f “sor­
did” pulp magazines. By the end o f the w ar, a large number
o f Americans had become used to b u yin g and reading soft-
cover books. In post-war America, paperbacks, along w ith
comic books, w ou ld be grabbing much o f the newsstand
space that had previously belonged to the pulps. A n d then
there w as television— in its infancy,-of course, in the early
AOs, but b y the end o f the decade, w ell on its w a y to chang­
ing America's habits forever.
T he w ar w as a m ixed blessing for the publishers o f
pulp magazines. A n x ie ty on the home front meant an in ­
creased demand for escape reading, but market expansion
w as curtailed b y restricted resources. “W e sold e v e ry ­
thing w e put out,” H enry Steeger o f Popular recalls. “The
percentages for most o f our titles w ere the highest they
had ever been. W e could have sold even more but it w as
im possible to get more paper because o f the war.” The
w artim e paper restrictions w o u ld do more than just put
a cap on overall circulation. Pulp publishers responded
to the shortage b y canceling all o f the marginal magazines
so as to give more o f their paper allotment to the proven
moneymakers. T h is meant the end for the q u irky, fringe-
appeal titles that had giv e the pulps o f the 1920s and
1 930s so much o f their dazzle and crackpot charm. A n d
few er magazines meant, o f course, few er stories w o u ld be
bought and few er w riters w o u ld be needed to w rite
them T he colorful subspecies kn o w n as Pulp W riter w as
on its w a y tow ard extinction.
face and lay still with the knife driven
up to its very hilt. She had been slain
accidentally by one of her own brutal
allies.
Monty took advantage of these few
tense seconds to reclaim his automatic
from the floor. He swung its muzzle
toward the man who had thrown the
knife.
"You see what you’ve done,” he
said harshly. "Make another move
and I’ll fire.”
The man stayed still now, cowed by
the threat in Monty Wills’ voice and
by the sight of that unwavering gun.
Monty flung a question at the girl. He
felt he had a right to now.
"What’s it all about?” he said.
The girl was staring at the dead
woman with fascinated eyes. Then
words came to her pale lips.
“ It’s terrible, but she deserved it.
She would have stood by and seen us
both murdered if there had been no
other way. She was like that always
— full of greed and brutality. Those
M any o f the notables had already moved on. Lovecraft,
Robert H ow ard, and Talbot M un dy w ere dead. Dashiell
Hammett, Erie Stanley Gardner, Raym ond Chandler, and
Cornell W oolrich w ere successful and acclaimed novelists.
Fred N ebel and others had “graduated" to the slicks, w here
they earned ten and tw e n ty times the w ord rate at the
pulps. Q uite a number o f pulp w riters— Horace M cCoy,
Steve Fisher, Leigh Brackett, Borden Chase, Richard Sale,
Frank G ruber— found more remunerative w o rk as screen­
w riters in H ollyw ood. Robert Leslie Bellem, the man o f a
thousand pseudonym s and kin g o f the Spicys, became a
television writer, scripting numerous series including The
F .B .I . and Superman. Jack W illiam son took a lengthy leave
o f absence from w ritin g and became a un iversity profes­
sor, teaching one o f the first academic courses in the art of
science fiction. N orvell Page, the man w h o used to dress
up like his avenging character, The Spider, w en t into m ys­
terious governm ent w o rk in W ashington. A rthur Burks,
the pulps’ legendary “speed merchant,” author o f thousands
 FINAL
o f pulp stories o f all sorts, finally got tired o f w riting. He
disappeared from N e w York, and his pulp pals lost track
o f him. O ne evening m any years later, an old pro and
former friend o f Burks named Ryerson Johnson ran into
him in Chicago. T he ex-Marine, ex—pulp hack w as n o w a
spiritualist called “Professor" Burks and g iv in g psychic
“life readings" for a substantial fee. Under his breath, he
asked Johnson not to give him aw ay, for old time’s sake. A
lot o f w riters w hose bylines had meant something once
sim ply faded from the scene, never to be heard from again.
And'there w ere w riters w h o had done good w o rk in the
pulps, made names for themselves, and then burnt out or
lost their touch. The publishers stopped b u yin g from Fred
Maclsaac, a one-time very popular and successful contribu­
tor to countless magazines, and one day in his Chelsea
Hotel room he killed him self Norbert Davis, h ig h ly tal­
ented contributor to B la c k M a s k , Argosy, D im e D e te c tiv e ,
and others, had a similar streak o f bad luck and despair and
took his o w n life; he w as 40 years old.
A s W orld W a r II raged, a curious thing occurred. T w o
men w h o w ere both w ell along in years and had little or
no experience w ith w ar or w ith w ar reporting pulled the
necessary strings and got themselves accredited as combat
correspondents. T h e y w ere Frederick Faust, better kn ow n
as M ax Brand, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, tw o men w ho,
more than any others, w ere responsible for setting the stan­
dards for excitement and color in popular fiction in this
century. It w as as if in old age, the tw o famous w riters had
finally determined to experience firsthand the adventure
and danger they had w ritten about for so m any years.
Burroughs came home from his adventure and died o f a
heart condition at the age o f 7 5. Faust, the “titan o f popular
literature," w as assigned to cover the Italian campaign. A c ­
com panying a platoon o f infantrymen into battle against
an enem y stronghold, facing a heavy artillery barrage,
Faust w as hit in the chest w ith shell fragments and died
on the battlefield.
In the post-war years, the pulps declined steadily in
sales and in quality. By the end o f the decade, nearly all the
remaining publications w ere detective, science fiction, or
Western. N e w titles in these categories w ere still appear­
ing but w ith ou t impact or distinction. Forces w ith in and
w ith ou t w ere plotting the pulps’ destruction. O ne o f the
major periodical distributors decided it did not w an t to
handle any more o f the cheap fiction magazines. Street &
Smith decided to fold all o f its pulps w ith the exception o f
A s to u n d in g , w h ich continued in digest form. Thin gs hap­
ISSUE 137
pened slo w ly and then all at once. Detective story w riter
Richard Dem ing once told o f a visit he made to N e w York
in late 1950, pickin g up assignments from a half-doz;en
different pulp editors. A month later all six w ere out o f jobs
and their magazines w ere out o f business.“W e tried to hold
on," says H enry Steeger,“and thought the conditions might
change. But b y 19 5 4 it w as all over. T he readers had gone
on to other things. T h e y looked at the pulps as something
from the ‘old days,’ y ou know?"
The w riters mostly had m ixed feelings about the pass­
ing o f the pulps. M any felt that those days w ere best for­
gotten. T h e y had outgrow n the pulps, gone on to more
mature w ork. The pulps seemed like a youthful indiscre­
tion. Some w riters could only remember the hard work,
the endless days hunched over the Remington, pounding
w ords onto paper until the clanging o f the metal keys w as
ringing in the ears. But there had been good w ork, too, and
the camaraderie, and the creative challenge. M ixed feelings.
“I had gotten a w a y from the pulps and w as w ritin g for the
slicks and w ritin g books," says Hugh Cave. “A n d I didn’t
really think about the pulps anymore But I kept copies o f
every pulp in w h ich I had stories printed, hundreds o f
them. I kept them stow ed a w a y in boxes in the garden
house because there w asn’t any room in m y office. A n d one
day the garden house caught fire and the boxes w ith all
m y stories burned. I lost all traces o f m y w o rk from that
period in m y life. G one up in smoke. A n d that w as w hat
happened to the pulps. N o bo d y cared about them, they
w eren’t reprinted, they w ere a totally dead thing. It w as as
if that w hole era had never happened”
A n d so the pulps died. A huge, unprecedented out­
pouring o f stories— good, bad, terrible, and brilliant— had
disappeared, q u ick ly forgotten. Copies o f older pulps, in­
cluding the most popular titles, w ere already scarce even
in the early ’50s. T he cheaply made magazines carried a
gene o f self-destruction— they disintegrated after a time
under normal conditions— and, an yw ay, most had been
throw n a w a y a w ee k or tw o after their purchase. Gone up
in sm oke It w as as it had been intended.
“W e just tried to entertain people," said H enry Steeger,
w hose Popular Publications had been the liveliest and
busiest pulp house o f them all, “to make them forget their
troubles for a w h ile ... to get lost for an hour in a good story
or two. That w as all w e w ere tryin g to do . . . But, you
know , in those days, the Depression, terrible conditions, a
lot o f people w ere dow n, and to give people some good sto­
ries to read w as not such a bad thing. . . ."
fT- was some time later when I said: pression that Mrs. Sanston suspected
1“Okay, baby. Now you know I'm your her husband of being in love with Miss
fiend. Maybe you’ll answer ,a couple Calvert. Of course I wasn’t iurc. Now
questions, huh?”
[ “Such as what I1” she asked me.
! I said: "Well, for one thing, how long
lad Billy Sanston been intimate with

She went white

and damned if she
didn’t faint.

our mistress, Kitty Calvert? How long

Khad he been coming to visit her?"
“A—a long time. Almost a year.
jN-now let me go, please— !”
"Not yet. Tell me something else. Did
[Kitty know Billy’s wife?"
"Y-yes. Just slightly. They weren’t
od friends. .Sometimes I got the im-
please let me get away— before the police
come!”
Outside, in the distance, I heard
sirens moaning. I said: “Sure, kiddo.
Put on a coat to cover yourself. Then
scram out the window.”
She got a coat and I held it for, her.
 139

m any more boxed caches o f “virgin" editions in attics and

Appendix basements— Grandpa’s forgotten collections o f Doc Savage

or G-8 a n d H is B a ttle A c e s . W h en pulps are found these

days in vintage magazine stores or flea markets they tend
C O L L E C T IN G PU LPS to be the less-collectable w estern and romance titles, or
copies from the v e ry tail end o f the pulp era, and in poor
condition, selling for an average o f $ 1 to $5. More select
A safe— if unscientific— guess w o u ld be that only
material is often found for sale in specialty bookstores de­
a tin y fraction o f one percent o f all the pulps ever pub­
voted to science fiction, mysteries, or comic books. Such a
lished still exist in any form today. The number o f these
store might offer a high-priced ($ 50 or more), one-of-a-kind
in very good or better condition is even smaller. For the
item featuring a story b y a popular or collected author—
various reasons cited elsewhere in this volume, the pulps
Raym ond Chandler or Cornell W oolrich in D im e D e te c ­
w ere never intended to outlast the dates on their front co v­
tiv e , L. Ron Hubbard in A s to u n d in g , and so forth. W h ile
ers. T heir ephemeral nature consigned the m ajority to the
these shops may put a fair price on truly scarce items, they
trash can, and unstable physical ingredients eliminated
tend to overprice m any o f the less valuable magazines.
most o f the rest. In their o w n day, the lo w ly pulp maga­
T he best selection and fairest prices for pulps are
zines w ere not likely to be collected b y any conventional
found am ong those dealers w h o sp ecialize in this genre.
archive, and b y the time libraries and universities w ok e
Most p ulp dealers are them selves dedicated collectors
up to the literary and historical importance o f certain pulp
and fans. T h e y regu larly b u y from one another for their
titles, such as B la c k M a s k and W e ir d T a le s , it w as already
o w n collections and so have a vested interest in a v o id ­
too late. Even the narrow ly specialized academic collec­
ing p rice gouging.
tions, like the B l a c k M a sk file at U C L A , remain incomplete.
T he value o f a particular pulp depends, as w ith any
The survival o f pulps in good condition is in large part due
collectable, on a variety of factors. Certain titles continue to
to the enthusiasm and care o f the private collectors.
be much in demand, including the most legendary pulps
Because o f the pulps’ relative scarcity, they have
such as B la c k M a s k , W e ir d T a le s , and the major science fic­
never attracted the kin d o f mass, frenzied attention visited
tion titles, Astounding and A m a z i n g S to r ie s . The so-called
upon comic books, baseball cards, and other twentieth-cen­
“hero pulps” have perhaps the greatest number o f serious
tury Am erican artifacts. W h ile certain golden age comic
collectors. T h e Shadow and D oc Savage are the traditional
books have sold for upw ards o f $20,000 in recent years,
favorites, and G-8 and T h e S p id e r have their rabid adher­
the scarcest or most-sought-after pulps have seldom traded
ents, but all hero pulps are collected and valuable. Am ong
hands for more than three figures. T he pulps have re­
pulpophiles, there is a great demand for esoterica, those titles
mained m ercifully free o f the “corrupting", price-raising
and categories peculiar— in every sense— to the pulps alone.
influence o f price guides and auction houses, and free o f
High prices are paid for prime examples o f the “w eird men­
the mirthless speculators w h o lock their paper treasures
ace" subgenre o f the 1930s, featured in D im e M y ster y , T e r ­
a w a y in bank vaults, k n o w in g more about price than
r o r T a le s , H o r r o r S to r ie s , and a number o f other titles offer­
about value. T he typical pulp collector is a reader and
ing outrageous crimes and painful punishments. Similarly
dreamer, not an investor.
“outre” and in demand are the notorious “Spicys” w ith their
It is still not difficult to start a pulp collection, but
voluptuous cover girls and titillating prose. A lso highly
one must k n o w w here to look. T he days w h en stacks o f
sought-after are the pulp obscurities and oddities, one-shots
medium condition pulps filled a back shelf at every used
or short-lived titles w hose strange specificity o f subject
book and magazine store, and sold for a dime apiece, are
matter tends to make the ja w drop, such as Z e p p e l i n S to r ie s ,
over. N early all such copies have been scooped up b y col­
O z a r k S to r ie s , U n d e r w o r ld Romances, or Dr. Y e n S in .
lectors or dealers, or have crumbled into oblivion on the
The value o f a particular co p y o f any pulp is further
shelf A n d time is increasingly against the odds o f finding
affected b y the content. A n issue featuring a story b y the
most collected authors— Burroughs, Lovecraft, Chandler,
Hammett, and another couple dozen others— can double
Opposite: S e e n h e r e , a n in te r io r illu s tr a tio n fo r o n e o f R . L .
to sextuple the price o f that magazine. Some people col­
B e lle m ’ s m a n y Spicy Adventure s to r ie s .
140 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S

lect the w orks o f a particular cover artist, such as

Baumhofer, Roz,en, or Tinsley, and notable cover art w ill
raise the selling price.
Condition, particularly in the case o f the poorly
manufactured pulp, is a crucial factor in pricing. The
brightest intact covers, and whitest, least brittle pages com­
mand the highest prices w ith in a category. M any pulps
had their covers removed long ago b y used-magagine deal­
ers, and these “reading copies” are sold for a fraction o f the
price o f an intact copy. Most dealers and collectors n ow
tend to keep all pulps in special plastic bags and a w a y from
light and moisture, hoping to forestall any further deterio­
ration o f the venerable magazines.
W h ile any information about prices is subject to
change, an idea o f the current range may be o f interest.
Generally, an average generic pulp from the 1930s, w ith
no outstanding cover art or contributor, can be found for
$ 5 to $ 10. Better examples o f the same m ay sell for around
$20. The hotly collected titles are available for anyw here
from $30 to several hundred dollars for important and
mint condition copies. S p ic y D e t e c t iv e , H o r r o r S to r ie s , and
other esoterica begin in the $50 range and go up from there.
A s in any field o f collecting, the value o f an item depends
on how much someone is w illin g to pay for it. If someone
has a copy of, say, V i c e S q u a d D e te c tiv e , and someone else
cannot live w ithout it, the sky is the limit.
More information about pulp collecting, and deal­
ers in pulp magazines, can be found in the fo llo w in g pub­
lications: Pulp R e v ie w , 4704 Colonel E w ell Court, U p ­
per Marlboro, MD 20772; E ch oes, 504 East M orris St,
S eym ou r.T X 76380; G o ld e n P e r ils , 5 M illiken Mills Rd,
Scarboro, ME 04074; and Pulp Vault, 6942 N. Oleander
A v e , Chicago, IL 60631. T he greatest gathering o f pulps
and pulp fans and dealers is at Pulpcon, a small, amiable,
annual convention held each summer, usually in Dayton,
O hio (write to Pulpcon, Box 1332, Dayton, O H 454 0 1
for information).
 141

Carr, N ick T h e Flying Spy. Mercer Island, W A: Starmont

Acknowledgments House, 1989.

Chapdelaine, Perry A , ed. T h e J o h n W . Campbell L e tte r s.

Franklin,TN: A C Projects, 1985.
I am v e ry grateful to the fo llo w in g individuals for
their generous contributions to the material in this b ook Clarke, Arthur C. A s t o u n d i n g D ay s. N ew York Bantam,
1989.
Richard Sale, H ugh Cave, Lawrence Treat, Robert Bloch,
Jack W illiam son, Jack Scott, FritT; Leiber, Mrs. Charles Corydon,Bent and L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. L. Ron H u b b a r d :
Madman? N ew Y ork Lyle Stuart, 1987.
M e s s ia h or
Spain Verral, Theodore Roscoe, John Kobler, Jean Francis
W ebb, W illiam Cam pbell Gault, Mrs. Lester Dent, Davis, Norbert. T h e A d v e n t u r e s of M ax Latin. N ew York
H ow ard Browne, Raymond Z. Gallun, T edd Thom ey, the Mysterious Press, 1988.

late Bruno Fischer, and the late H enry Steeger. De Camp, L. Sprague, Catherine Crook de Camp, and Jane
For editorial assistance I w ish to thank Terri Hardin, Whittington Griffin. D a r k V a l l e y D e s t i n y . N ew York:
Bluejay Books, 1983.
Dean Server, and A rlene Hellerman. Thanks also to the
Mysterious Bookshop, N e w Y o r k Cellar Stories, Provi­ Easton, Robert. Max B r a n d : T h e B i g Westerner. Norman,
OK: University o f Oklahoma Press, 1970.
dence, Rhode Island; Science Fiction Bookshop, N e w Y o rk
Donato’s Fine Books, Las Vegas, Nevada; T L C Custom Labs, Ellis, Peter Berresford. T h e L a s t A d v e n t u r e r : T h e L i f e o f
T a l b o t M u n d y . W est Kingston, RI: Donald Grant, 1984
N e w Y o rk Duggal Color Projects, N e w Y o rk Collectable
Books, Upper Marlboro, Maryland. Farmer, Philip Jose. Doc S a v a g e : H i s A p o c a l y p t i c L if e . N e w
York Doubleday, 197 3
For photographs and archival research m y thanks also
to the follow in g individuals and establishments: Glenn Gallun, Raymond Z. Starclimber. San Bernardino, CA: Borgo
Press, 1991.
Lord; George M cW horter, U n iversity o f Louisville L i­
brary, Kentucky; Teresa Salazar, Special Collection, U ni­ Goodstone, Tony, ed. T h e P u lp s . N ew York Chelsea House,
versity o f A rizona, Tuscon; O ctavio Olvera, U n iversity 1970.

Research Library,U CLA , Los Angeles;Jennifer Lee, Brown Goulart, Ron, ed. The H a r d h o i l e d Dicks. Los Angeles:
University, Rhode Island; M ary J W alker, Eastern N e w Sherbourne Press, 1965
M exico University, Portales, N e w Mexico; Diane Boucher Goulart, Ron. Cheap T h r ills . N ew York: Arlington House,
Ayotte, W estern Historical Manuscript Collection, U n i­ 1972.
versity o f Missouri, Colum bia, Missouri; Carolyn Davis, Goulart, Ron. The D im e D e te c tiv e s . N ew York Mysterious
George Arents Research Library, Syracuse U niversity, Press, 1988.
N e w York; Manuscript Department, L illy Library, Indiana Grant, Donald M Talbot M u n d y : Messenger of Destiny. West
University, Bloomington, Indiana; U n iversity o f C alifor­ Kingston, R l Donald Grant, 1983
nia, Berkeley; Roy Campbell, Colum bia University; N e w Gruber, Frank The P u lp Jungle. Los Angeles: Sherbourne
York Public Library, Rare Manuscripts Collection. Press, 1967.
A n d a final thank you to Robert and Elizabeth Server. Holdstock Robert, ed. E n c y c l o p e d i a o f S c ie n c e Fiction. N ew
York Octopus Books, 1978.

Hubbard, L. Ron. B a t t l e f i e l d Earth. Los Angeles: Bridge,

1982.
Bibliography Hutchison, Don, ed. The Super F ed s. Mercer Island, W A:
Starmont House, 1988.

Jacobi, Carl. E a s t o f S a m a r in d a . Bowling Green, OH: Popular

BOOKS: Press, 1989.

Bleiler, Richard. The A n n o t a t e d I n d e x to t h e T h r ill B ook. Johnson, Diane. Dashiell H a m m e tt: A Li/e. N ew York:
Mercer Island, W A: Starmont House, 1991 Random House, 1983.

Cain, Paul (introduction by David Bowman). Fast O ne. Jones, Robert Kenneth. The S h u d d e r P u lp s . W est Linn, OR:
Berkeley, C A: Black Lizard, 1987. FAX, 1975.

Cannaday, Marilyn B i g g e r T h a n L if e . Bowling Green, OH: Laymon, Richard. S h a d o w M an. N ew York Harcourt Brace
Popular Press, 1990. Jovanovich, 1981.
142 D A N G E R I S MY B U S I N E S S

Lord, Glenn. T h e L ast C e lt West Kingston, R1 Donald Nevins, Francis M C o r n e l l Woolrich: F i r s t Y o u D r e a m ,

Grant, 1976. T h e n Y o u Did N ew York Mysterious Press, 1988.

Lovecraft, H. P. T h e D o o m T h a t C a m e to S a r n a t h and Other Noel, Mary. Villains G a lo r e . N ew York Macmillan, 1954.

N ew York Ballantine Books, 1971.
S to r ie s .
Nolan, W illiam F, ed. T h e B la c k M a s k B oys. N ew York
MacShane, Frank, ed. S e l e c t e d L e t t e r s o f R a y m o n d C h a n d le r . W illiam Morrow, 1985.
N ew York Columbia University Press, 1981.
Parente, Audrey. Pulp M a n 's O d y s s e y . Mercer Island, W A:
Moskowitz;, Sam. E x p l o r e r s o f th e I n fin ite . Cleveland, OH: Starmont House, 1988.
W orld Publishing, 1963.
Perelman, S. J. T h e Most o f S . ] . P e r e lm a n . N ew York Simon
Murray, Will. The D u e n d e H i s t o r y o f t h e S h a d o w M a g a z in e . and Schuster, 1958.
Greenwood, MA: Odyssey, 1980.
Price, E. Hoffman. F a r L a n d s O th e r D ay s. Chapel Hill, NC:
Carcosa, 1975.

Pron^ini, Bill. G u n In C h eek . N ew York: Coward McCann &

Geoghegan, 1982.

Robbins, Leanard A. T h e P u l p M a g a z i n e In d ex . Mercer

Island, W A: Starmont House, 1989.

Roscoe, Theodore. T o u g h e s t in th e Legion. Mercer Island,

C n t l Nothin* to
Oporata! Guarantoatfl
W A: Starmont House, 1989.
Reoalvnd radio and H
work* tin* . . .
Sampson, Robert. Yesterday's Faces. Bowling Green, OH:
. . . Ana wall plaaaad Popular Press, 1984.
w ith It Inavarr rcapact.
I r•command tha l i t t l e
Giant to any proepao- Sampson, Robert. D e a d l y E x c ite m e n ts . Bowling Green, OH:
tivn nurohaaar wtio
w lnhaaloat nuch a little Popular Press, 1989.
radio for paraonal o re.
Coat nothing to operate.
, . . K a ra triad It and Shaw, Joseph T , ed. The H a r d - B o i l e d Omnibus. N ew York
It work* *plaodfc!.

SEND NO MONEY!
Racatved Mldwat Radio
—I am pUaawT Ktodly
Simon and Schuster, 1946.
yoa! CornbiDM p*rfortn*nc« ami eoonurny. G«t room mall two morn . . . *
tod ay. T a y pooOnan on arrival <®ljr and poatar* (Latter* an Ffl*>. Smith, Clark Ashton. The B l a c k B o o k o f C la r k Ashton Smith.
L I T T L k 6*1Af,i + “ilA '6‘r 6 PC O 3 0 5 9 Uncotn A v*.. 0 # p t. 6401, Chicago Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1979.
For M O R E P A Y L e ai r n 0 m Smith, R Dixon. Lost in the Rentharpian Hills.Bowling
R A F T I ISJ h
N Green, OH: Popular Press, 1985.
Ut . AT-HOME FROM AN ( N C I NIEEII IR •
Traylor, James L,ed. Hollywood T r o u b le s h o o t e r : W . T.
Get ready for B ETTER PAY prosperity. I'll train you by tnai
B a ll a r d 's B i l l L e n n o x S t o r ie s . Popular Press, 1985.

l on Practical Drafting until IN POSITION, drawiaj BETTEH

fA T m o , All tool. Urd labia fuml«h«l to yoo. W rlu toC.r for n t u HOOK
CNOINEER DOBE Dir. 4175 Ubortyvltl*, llllnoli Traylor, James L, ed. Dime Detective
MD: Pulp Collector Press, 1986.
In d ex. N ew Carrollton,

GIANT
FROGS
Start at Home! Market Waiting!
Ujw small pond to begin. Expand
Wagner, Karl Edward, ed. Echoes
1989.
o f V a l o r II. N ew York: Tor,

with the Increase. Easy to ship. WE Weinberg, Robert. The W e ir d T a le s S to r y . West Linn, O R
BUY1 Otlmirmarkota waltlux also. Urt FAX, 1977.
I the facta on our unusual offer nowl
Men &. Women atarting In every state.
See what others already doing. Send Williamson, Jack W o n d e r ’ s Child: My L i f e in S c i e n c e
for Illustrated free frog book today I
AMERICAN FROG CANNING CO.. F i c t io n . N ew York: Bluejay Books, 1984.
Dept. (I0 B .E ), New Orleans, La.

P E R IO D IC A L S :

POPULAR Various Issues: The A r m c h a i r D e t e c t i v e (New York); The

P u l p Collector (Upper Marlboro, Maryland); Pulp Vault

DETECTIVE
(Chicago); Mystery Scene (Cedar Rapids, Iowa).

Particularly noteworthy are the articles and interviews—

printed in an array o f fanzines and small press publica­
tions— by pulp historians N ick Carr, Bernard Drew, Link
NOW I Q C STANDS Hullar, Sam Moskcwit^, W ill Murray, Albert T o n ik and
Robert Weinberg.
 143

Brandt, C .A , 118 1 4 ,3 1 ,7 4 ,7 5 ,1 0 5 ,
Index
D im e D e te c tiv e , G i n g e r S t o r ie s , 8 5

B r e e z y S t o r ie s , 8 3 ,8 7 137 G la s s K e y , T h e , 6 7

B r id e W o r e B la c k , T h e , 114 D im e M y stery , 3 1 , 7 6 , 1 0 4 ,1 0 5 ,1 0 6 , Glenister.Jack, 30

Brown, Fredric, 76 115 Golden Fleece, 11
Abdullah, Achmed, 51 Browne, Howard, 133 D im e W e s te r n , 57 Goldsmith, Harold, 31
Ace G - M a n S to r ie s , 7 3
Burks, Arthur J, 11, 1 4 ,3 6 ,1 1 3 , D oc S avage, 2 2 ,9 1 ,9 5 ,9 9 ,1 0 1 ,1 0 3 Green Ice, 69
A c e H ig h D e te c tiv e , 7 0
1 2 8 .1 3 6 .1 3 7 Doctor Death, 2 9 ,1 0 3 Gregory, Dane, 7 6
Ace High, 11 Burroughs, Edgar Rice, 1 5 ,23,24, Donenfeld, Harry, 8 6 ,8 9 Grey, Zane, 57
Ace Magazines, 30 3 6 .4 3 .5 1 .9 9 .1 1 8 .1 2 1 .1 3 7 Donovan, Laurence, 95 Gruber, Frank, 132, 136
A c e M y stery , 108 Butler, John K, 69 Doubleday, 22 Gun Molls, 1 0,73
A c e W estern , 57 By me, Jack, 14 Dr. Yen Sin, 103 H-K Publications, 131
Action D e te c tiv e , 7 0
Cain, Paul, 70 Dunsany, Lord, 38,4 1 Hamilton, Edmond, 131
A c t io n S to r ie s , 11 ,3 0 Campbell,John, 14,46, 127, 128 Dusty Ayres, 102 Hammett, Dashiell, 13, 1 5 ,6 1 ,6 2 ,
A d v en tu re, 1 0 ,1 1 ,1 3 ,2 2 ,3 1 ,5 0 ,5 1 , C a n d id D etec tiv e, 7 0 Dwyer, Bernard, 41 6 5 ,6 7 ,6 8 ,6 9 ,7 0 ,1 3 6
52,5*4,55,59 Capone, Al, 13,73 Dyalhis, Nictz,in, 36 Harte, Bret, 57
A i r S to r ie s , 3 0 ,5 6 Captain Future, 3 1 ,1 3 1 Eddy, C. M, 34 Hatari, 131
A ir W o n d er Stories, 1 2 2 ,1 2 3 Cartmill, Cleve, 133 E e r ie Stories, 30, 108 Hawks, Howard, 131
Alger, Horatio, Jr, 19 67 El Dorado, 131
C a s e o f th e V e lv e t C la w s , T h e , Haycox, Ernest, 59
A l l S t a r D e t e c t iv e S to r ie s , 7 0
Cave, Hugh, 1 1 ,1 3 ,4 6 ,8 6 ,8 7 ,1 1 3 , Ellsworth, Fanny, 7 0 ,7 6 Heinlein, Robert, 15,47, 128
All-Story, 2 0 ,2 2 ,2 3 ,2 4 Empey, Arthur G, 102 Henneberger, Jacob Clark, 34
137
A m a z in g S to r ie s , 1 1 8 ,1 2 1 ,1 3 2 ,1 3 3 Chambers, Robert W , 41 131
E m p ir e S tr ik e s B a c k , T h e , Hersey, Harold, 3 0 ,3 1 ,3 3
A rg o sy , 1 1 ,1 3 ,1 7 ,1 8 ,1 9 ,2 0 ,2 2 , Champion, D. L, 95 Ernst, Paul, 113 H ir e d G u n s, 2 6
2 4 .2 7 .3 1 .5 0 .5 9 .1 3 7 Chandler, Raymond, 15, 61,62, 68, F a c e in t h e A b y s s , T h e , 2 6 Hoffman, Arthur S, 2 2 ,5 2 ,5 5
Armer, Frank, 86 7 0 ,1 3 1 ,1 3 6 Fairgrieve, Amita, 80 Hogan, Robert J, 101
Ashley, Mike, 133 Chariot, Harry, 91 F a r E a st A d v en tu res, 5 6 H o lly w o o d D etec tiv e, 8 9
Asimov, Isaac, 128 Chase, Borden, 1 3 ,1 3 6 F a r e w e ll, M y L o v ely , 7 0 Hoover, J. Edgar, 7 3
A s t o u n d in g S to r ie s , 1 0 ,1 4 ,2 2 ,3 0 , Clarke, Arthur C, 1 1 8 ,1 2 8 Farley, Ralph Milne, 46 Hornig, Charles, 132
1 2 3 ^ 1 2 5 ,1 2 7 ,1 2 8 ,1 3 1 ,1 3 3 ,1 3 7 Clayton Publicatons, 14,46 Fast One, 70 H o r r o r S t o r ie s , 3 1 , 106, 114
Babcock, Dwight, 73 Clayton, W illiam, 29 Faulkner, William, 131 Houdini, Harry, 38
Baird, Edwin, 34 ,3 8 Clues, 3 0 ,7 0 Faust, Frederick (a.ka Max Brand), Howard, Robert E, 1 5 ,3 8 ,4 1 ,4 3 ,
Ballard, W .T , 69 Coblentz* Stanton, 121 1 1 ,1 3 ,1 6 ,1 7 ,2 6 ,2 9 ,5 1 ,5 9 ,1 3 7 , 4 5 ,4 6 ,8 7
Barrett, William, 74 ,7 5 Cobum, Walt, 5 4 ,5 5 ,5 9 135 Howitt,John, 102
Bates, Harry, 1 2 3 ,125 Cody, W illiam Frederick, 19 Fawcett Publications, 30 Hubbard, L. Ron, 47, 128
B a ttle A ces, 31 ,5 6 College Humor, 34 Feds, The, 73 Hughes, Howard, 7 3
B a t t l e S to r ie s , 30 C o m e t S t o r ie s , 131 Feldman, Anatole, 95 Ingerman, Charles, 14
Bayley, Donovan, 34 Cooper, Gary, 102 Fiction House, 1 4 ,1 3 1 Ingraham, Joseph Holt, 19
Bedford-Jones, H, 34 ,5 1 Counselman, Mary Elizabeth, 36 1 0 ,3 0 ,5 6 ,5 8
F i g h t S t o r ie s , Jacobi, Carl, 50,5 1
Bellem, Robert Leslie, 89, 136 C o u r t r o o m S t o r ie s , 10 ,3 0 ,3 1 Finley, Virgil, 36 Jacobson, Edith and Ejler, 76
B est D e te c tiv e , 7 0
C o w b o y S to ries, 30 ,5 7 F i r e F ig h t e r s , 3 0 James, Francis, 111
Bester, Alfred, 47 Cox, William, 59 Fischer,Bruno, 13,109, 111, 113, Johnson, Ryerson, 137
Better Publications, 102 Coxe, George Harmon, 74 115 Jorgensen, Nels Leroy, 67
Big Book Western, 57 Culture Publications, 1 4 ,8 6 ,8 9 Fisher, Steve, 7 6 ,8 7 ,1 3 6 Judson, Edward Zane Carroll (a.lca.
B ig S le e p , T h e , 7 0 , 131 C u p id 's D ia r y , 2 9 ,80 F o r e i g n L e g io n A d v e n t u r e s , 5 6 Ned Buntline), 19
Bill Barnes Air Adventurer, 102, D a in C u r s e , T h e , 6 7 F r e n c h N i g h t L if e , 8 5 J u n g l e S t o r ie s , 10,5 6
103 Daly, Carroll John, 6 1 ,6 2 ,6 5 ,6 7 ,6 8 F r e n c h S c a n d a ls, 8 5 Karloff, Boris, 70
B la c k A c es, 7 0
Davis, Frederick C, 102 Friel, Arthur 0 , 5 2 Keene, Day, 7 6
B la c k C a t, T h e , 7 0
Davis Norbert, 7 6 ,1 3 7 F r o n tie r Stories, 5 7 Kelley, Thomas, 36
B la c k M a sk , 1 4 ,3 1 ,6 1 ,6 2 ,6 5 ,6 6 , Davis, Robert H, 22, 26 G - 8 a n d H is B a t t le A c e s , 101 Kelly, Jack, 30
6 7 .6 8 .6 9 .7 0 .7 3 .7 6 .9 5 .1 3 7 D a y t h e E a r t h S t o o d S t i ll , T h e , 125 G-Men, 73 Kline, Otis Adelbert, 36,5 1
Blackburn, Thomas, 59 de Camp, L. Sprague, 128 Gallun, Raymond Z, 121, 1 2 3 ,1 2 5 Kobler,John, 76
Blackwell, Frank, 9 2 ,9 4 in a 69 31
D ea th B o w l, G a n g W o r ld , Kofoed, J. C, 34
Blakeslee, Frederick, 101 DeGraff, Robert, 136 G a n g s t e r S t o r ie s , 7 3 Kuttner, Henry, 3 7 ,5 0 ,8 7
Blassingame, Lurton, 87 Delacorte, George, Jr, 29 Gardner, Erie Stanley, 1 5 ,6 5 ,6 7 L’Amour, Louis, 15
Bloch, Robert, 3 8 ,4 1 ,4 6 Dell Publishing, 13, 2 9 ,9 6 Gault, W illiam Campbell, 7 6 ,8 3 ,8 5 LaCurto, James, 9 1 ,9 2
B lu e B ook, 2 4 ,5 0 ,5 1 Dent, Lester, 1 5 ,9 6 ,9 7 ,9 8 ,9 9 ,1 0 1 G a y L ov e, 10 Lamb, Harold, 4 3 ,5 2
Bodin, Ed, 14 Derleth, August, 4 1 ,4 7 G a y P a r is ie n n e , 8 5 , 8 6 Lariat, 57
Bosworth, Allan R, 56 D e te c tiv e Action S t o r ie s , 31 Gernsback, Hugo, 118, 121, 122, LaSpina, Greye, 34
Bowen, Robert Sidney, 102 D e te c tiv e Fiction Weekly, 1 4 ,7 4 ,7 6 1 2 3 ,1 2 5 ,1 2 8 ,1 3 2 L e a d in g Western, 10
Brackett, Leigh, 1 3 1 ,1 3 6 D e t e c t i v e S t o r y , 2 2 , 9 1 ,9 2 G h o s t S t o r ie s , 3 3 , 4 6 Leiber, Fritz* 4 6 ,5 6
Bradbury, Ray, 1 5 ,4 3 ,1 3 1 D e te c tiv e T a le s , 7 3 , 7 6 Gibson, Walter, 1 3 ,9 2 ,9 4 ,9 5 ,9 6 Leinster, Murray, 34
144

Lewis, Sinclair, 52 N ick e l W estern , 5 7 R etu rn o f T a r z a n , The, 24 S p e e d S to ries, 30

Lone Eagle, The, 102 N ot T oo N arrow , N ot T oo D eep, 7 4 R io B r a v o , 131 S p ic y A d v e n t u r e , 86
L o v e S to ry , 8 0 Nowlan, Philip Francis, 121 Robbins, Tod, 34 S p ic y D e te c tiv e , 9, 1 0 ,7 9 ,8 2 ,8 6 ,8 7 ,
Lovecraft, H. P, 1 5 ,3 8 ,4 1 ,4 7 ,8 7 , Olmstead, Harry, 59 R o m a n tic D e te c tiv e , 10 89
1 3 3 ,1 3 6 O p era to r # 5 ,3 1 ,9 5 ,1 0 2 ,1 0 3 Romantic Range, 8 0 S p ic y Mystery, 86, 108
Lucas, George, 131 O r ie n t a l S to ries, 1 0 ,4 6 ,4 7 Roscoe, Theodore, 5 0,51 S p ic y Western, 8 6
Lucky Stories, 30 O z a r k S t o r ie s , 10 Rousseau, Victor, 123 Spider, The, 3 1 ,9 9
Lugosi, Bela, 70 Packard, Frank L, 2 4 ,9 4 Roz;en, George, 94 Spillane, Mickey, 65
MacDonald, John D, 76 Page, Norvell, 8 7 ,9 9 ,1 0 1 ,1 3 6 Roz;en, Jerome, 94 Sport S to ry , 19
Macfadden Publicatons, 46 Palmer, Raymond A, 133 Sabatini, Rafael, 5 4 ,7 0 Sprenger, Bill, 45
Macfadden, Bernarr, 122 P a r is N i g h t s , 8 5 Sale, Richard, 1 2 ,1 3 ,1 4 ,1 5 ,7 4 , 136 St.John, J. Allen, 3 6 ,4 5
Machen, Arthur, 41 Parisian Life, 85 Sampson, Robert, 24 Standard Publications, 1 4 ,3 1 ,9 5
Maclssac, Bred, 7 4 ,1 3 7 Paul, Frank R, 118 S c a r face, 7 3 S t a r t lin g D e t e c t iv e A d v e n t u r e s , 3 0

MacLean, Charles Agnew, 57 Perelman, S .J,8 6 Scarlet Adventuress, 85 Startling M y stery , 108
M a g ic C a r p e t , 46 Pete Rice, 57 Schachner, Nat, 1 1 0 ,1 2 5 S t a r t lin g S to ries, 31, 128
M a lte s e F a lc o n , T h e , 67 P h a n to m D e te c tiv e , T h e , 3 1 ,9 5 Science Fiction, 131 Steeger, Henry, 14, 1 5 ,3 1 ,7 4 , 101,
Margulies, Leo, 3 1 ,7 3 ,9 5 , 128, 132 Phantom Lady, 114 S c i e n c e W o n d e r S t o r i e s , 1 2 2 , 123 1 0 2 .1 0 6 .1 3 6 .1 3 7
M a r t ia n C h r o n ic le s , T h e , 131 Pillar Mountain, 26 S c i e n t i f i c D e t e c t i v e M o n t h ly , 122 S t r a n g e D e t e c t iv e M y steries, 108
Martinsen, Richard, 96 Pines, Ned L, 31 S c o t l a n d Y a r d , 2 9 , 96 S t r a n g e S u ic id es , 30
M a r v e l S c i e n c e S to r ie s , 131 P la n e t S to ries, 131 Scott, Jack, 45 S tr a n g e T a le s , 3 0 ,4 0
McClary, Thomas Calvert, 125 Pluck and Luck, 22 Scott, R T .M , 99 Street & Smith, 1 3 ,2 0 ,2 2 ,3 1 ,6 0 ,
McCoy, Horace, 69,70, 136 Pocket Books, 136 Secret Agent X, 30 9 1 .9 5 .1 3 7
McCulley, Johnston, 2 4 ,5 1 ,9 4 P ock et L ov e, 10 Senarens, Luis, 118 Sturgeon, Theodore, 4 7 ,1 2 8
M e d ic a l H o r r o r Stories, 30 Poe, Edgar Allan, 1 8 ,3 4 ,3 8 ,4 1 S h a d o w , T h e , 2 2 , 9 2 , 9 4 ,9 5 ,1 0 3 Super Detectioe, 6 0 ,6 1
Mencken, H L, 67 P o p u la r L ov e, 8 0 Shaver, Richard S, 133 S u perm an , 135
Merritt, Abraham, 2 6 ,3 6 ,4 6 ,1 1 8 P o p u l a r M a g a z in e , T h e , 2 0 ,2 2 ,3 4 Shaw, Joseph, 1 4 ,6 8 ,6 9 ,7 0 Suter,J. Paul, 75
Moon Pool, The, 26 Popular Publications, 13, 14, 31,80, Shea,J. Vernon, 41 Sutton, George, 65
Moore, C. L, 3 7 ,4 6 ,1 3 1 9 9 ,1 0 1 ,1 0 2 ,1 0 5 ,1 1 3 ,1 3 6 ,1 3 7 S h ip o f I s h t a r , T h e , 26 S w e e t h e a r t S to ries, 8 0

Moskowitz* Sam, 128 Price, E. Hoffmann, 36 ,4 1 , 50 ,8 7 Short Stories, 2 2 ,5 0 ,5 1 ,5 9 Symes Edith, 31

Mulfrod, Clarence, 59 P r iv a te D e t e c t iv e S to ries, 7 3 Short, Luke, 5 1 ,5 9 T a r z a n o f th e A p e s , 2 3

Mundy, Talbot, 4 3 ,5 5 ,5 6 ,1 3 6 Public Enemy, 2 9 ,7 3 Simpson, Robert, 22 Teck Publications, 132

Munro, H. Warner, 36 Quinn^Seabury, 3 6 ,4 6 Sinister S to ries, 108 Ten D e te c tiv e A c es, 3 0 , 7 3

Munsey, Frank A, 1 3 ,1 7 ,2 0 R A F Aces, 10 S k y B ir d s , 56 Terence X. O’Leary’s W ar Birds,

Mysterious W u Fang, 103 R a i l r o a d S t o r ie s , 1 0 ,2 2 ,2 8 ,2 9 S k y F ig h t e r s , 56 102
Nanovic, John, 9 5 ,9 6 Ralston, Henry, 9 2 ,9 5 S k y R id e r s , 96 Terrill, Rogers, 7 6 ,1 0 6 ,1 1 3
Nathan, George Jean, 67 R a n ch R om an ces, 1 0 ,30 Sloane, T. O’Conor, 1 1 8 ,1 3 2 T error Tales, 3 1 ,1 0 6
Nebel, Frederick, 6 7 ,6 9 ,1 3 6 Rangeland Love, 80 Smith, Clark Ashton, 3 8 ,4 1 ,4 2 ,4 3 T h in Man, T h e, 6 7

Nevins, Francis M, 114 R a p id F ir e Action Stories, 57 Smith, E.E, 1 2 1 ,1 2 3 T h r ill B ook, T h e , 3 3 ,3 4 ,4 6

New Love, 80 Real Love, 80 Smith, Ormond, 8 0 T h r illin g A d v e n tu r e , 24,3 1
New Story M a g a z in e , 2 4 R e a r W in d o w , 114 S o u th S e a s Stories, 56 T h r illin g D etec tiv e, 3 1 , 7 3

Nick Carter, 22 R ed H a rv est, 67 T h r illin g L ov e, 3 1 ,8 0

T h r illin g Mystery, 31, 108, 114
T h r illin g R a n c h S to ries, 3 1 , 8 0

NEW— DIFFERENT— W a s it a n in s a n e f a c u l t y m e m ­ T h r illin g Western, 31

b er, a m o n e y -m a d to w n s m a n ,
THRILLING! o r t h a t g h a s t l y f ig m e n t o f t h e
T h r illin g Wonder Stones, 3 1 ,1 1 6
A M agazin e of T h r ills o f t h e J u n g le , 56
B iz a r re . E x c itin g to m b — th e D e a th M a id e n —
D etective M yatcriea w h o c a s t a c lo a k o f h o r r o r Tinsley, Frank, 102
o v e r p e a c e fu l C a r r o l to n C o l­
R ead W H EN TH E D E A T H -B A T le g e , a n d s e n t B o b H o w l a n d , w r a c k e d A
Tinsley, Theodore, 74
^ F L I E S , b y N o r v o ll W . P a g e , T H E w i t h p a in a n d d e s p a ir , t o t h e s i n - i n f e s t e d Tompkins, Walker, 59
M IR A C L E M URDER CASE, by o r g y w h e r e h e f o u n d h is b e s t f r i e n d s
Top Notch, 1 5 ,2 0 ,2 2
G e o r g e A r m in S h a f le l, a n d th e m oBt w ere
n o v e l o f m y s t e r y A c tio n b y A r t h u r Torrey, Roger, 13,6 9
Leo Z a g a t, W a y n e R o g ers, Paul M ATES F O R TIIE M U R D ER GIRLS
Trail, Armitage, 73
E r n s t a n d N o rb c rt D a v is l Don*t Miss This Eerie , Fascinating
Treat, Lawrence, 14,7 5
N ovelette by JOHN H. K N O X

Horror
Tremaine, F.Orl in, 1 2 5 ,1 3 1
101 S T R A N G E ® T r ip le X , 30

niTicnvE m trme&g
True L ov e, 8 0

Tuttle, W .C , 5 2 ,5 9
T w ic e a M o n th L ov e,

Ulmer, Edgar, 7 0
31

First Issue Out Now Ten Cents Oct.-Nov, Issue — O ut S ept. 10th!
U n c a n n y T a le s , 108
L e e Server is an avid collector o f pulp
magazines and other pop-culture paraphernalia
A graduate o f N e w York U niversity Film School,
he has written numerous articles and several
books, including Screenwriter: Words Become
Pictures. He lives in Brooklyn, N e w York

B o o k design by
Tom Morgan at Blue Design

Printed in Hong Kong.

“ D a n g e r Is M y B u s in e s s is pure gold. It is so
much fun to read! Lee Server’s enthusiasm
is well-matched to a w ritin g style so w itty
and a know ledge o f the subject so w ide-
ranging that D a n g e r Is M y B u s in e s s is a total
page-turner, as involvin g as any o f the maga­
zines he’s opened for us"
— D o n a l d E. W e s t l a k e
(a u t h o r o f H u m a n s )

“If you w ish to learn about the development o f hard-boiled w riting, give your days and nights to
D a n g e r Is M y Business by Lee Server T his is surely the definitive study."
— R o b e r t B. P a r k e r (a u t h o r o f t h e
BEST-SELLING SPENSER DETECTIVE SERIES)

“Lee Server is m y kind o f historian— picky, opinionated, eccentric, colorful Like his previous
classic, S c r e e n w r ite r , Mr. Server’s Danger Is M y B u s in e s s puts a perfect spin on the subject."

— B a r r y G if f o r d ( a u t h o r of W ild a t H eart)

“Danger Is M y B u s in e s s is a fascinating, w itty, and evocative history o f the

lurid/innocent w orld o f Am erican pulp magazines. A great read!"

—A n drew B e r g m a n ( W r it e r -D ir e c t o r
o f H o n e y m o o n in V e g a s )

“The pulps may have crumbled, but the writers, artists, editors, and publishers
w h o filled their pages are lovin gly preserved in Lee Server’s account o f the
fabulous magazines w hich once entertained America.”

— R o b e r t B l o c h (a u t h o r of Psy c h o )

Danger Is M y B u s in e s s is a fascinating, in-depth look at the most outrageous literary phenomenon

o f all time: the pulp magazines. Dazz;lingly illustrated, Danger Is M y B u s in e s s documents the
birth o f American pop fiction, from horror and science-fiction to mysteries, Westerns, and
romance— genres that have n ow permeated virtually every form o f mass media
in America. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and ISBN □ - a i i f i - O l l S - S

Ray Bradbury all got their start w ritin g for the pulps, and, although these publi­
cations have long disappeared from newsstands, their legacy is captured here in
these colorful pages.
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