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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Norbert Davis’ Ben Shaley

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Norbert Davis’ Ben Shaley

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Gat_DavisDime

“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandlers’ The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

Like many pulpsters, Norbert Davis wrote for several different markets, such as westerns, romance and war stories. But he was at his best in the private eye and mystery field. Davis could write standard hardboiled fare, but he excelled at mixing humor into the genre, and many argue he did it better than anyone else.

Joe ‘Cap’ Shaw, legendary editor of Black Mask, didn’t feel that Davis’ hardboiled humor fit in to the magazine and the writer only managed to break into Black Mask five times between 1932 and 1937.  Davis had success in other markets, however, with eighteen stories seeing print in 1936, for example. And several stories appeared in Black Mask after Shaw departed.

Ben Shaley appeared in the February and April, 1934 issues of Black Mask and represent two of the five Davis stories that Shaw chose to print.

Shaley was a Los Angeles PI introduced in “Red Goose.” I like Davis’ description: ‘Shaley was bonily tall. He had a thin, tanned face with bitterly heavy lines in it. He looked calm; but he looked like he was being calm on purpose – as though he was consciously holding himself in. He had an air of hardboiled confidence.’

The humor that Davis is best known for is pretty much absent from this story, but that proves he could hold his own writing ‘straight’ hardboiled. Though Shaley’s exasperation with the nerdy museum curator, as the detective tries to lay the groundwork for the case is amusing.

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Birthday Reviews: Lloyd Arthur Eshbach’s “The Valley of Titans”

Birthday Reviews: Lloyd Arthur Eshbach’s “The Valley of Titans”

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Cover by Leo Morey
Cover by Leo Morey

Lloyd Arthur Eshbach was born on June 20, 1910 and died on October 29, 2003.

Eshbach founded Fantasy Press in 1946 and ran it for 9 years, publishing nearly fifty books, including titles by Doc Smith, Stanley Weinbaum, Jack Williamson, A.E. van Vogt, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Sprague de Camp, and others.

Eshbach’s novel The Land Beyond the Gate was nominated for the Compton Crook Stephen Tall Memorial Award. In 1988, he received the Milford Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Gallun Award for contributions to science fiction, and the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award. In 1949, he was the pro Guest of Honor at the Cinvention, the 1949 Worldcon in Cincinnati and in 1995, he was the Publisher Guest of Honor at the World Fantasy Convention.

Originally published as by “L.A. Eshbach,” “The Valley of Titans” originally appeared in the March 1931 issue of Amazing Stories, edited by T. O’Conor Sloane. It was Eshbach’s fourth published story. Interestingly, underneath his byline, the magazine touted him as “Author of ‘A Voice from the Ether’,” which wouldn’t appear until the May issue of the magazine. In 1968, Ralph Adris reprinted the story in the March issue of Science Fiction Classics.

“The Valley of Titans” is less a story and more a travelogue. Eshbach’s narrator, James Newton, has been sent to fly over the Himalayas to discover what has happened to several missing airplanes. His own plane is forced down in an horrific storm and he discovers a lost valley high in the mountains. This valley has less in common with the Himalayan Shangri-La (and actually pre-dates Hilton’s novel by two years) and more in common with the Plateau of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World.

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Birthday Reviews: Robert Moore Williams’s “Quest on Io”

Birthday Reviews: Robert Moore Williams’s “Quest on Io”

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Cover by Albert Drake
Cover by Albert Drake

Robert Moore Williams was born on June 19, 1907 and died on May 12, 1977. He published under his own name as well as the pseudonyms Robert Moore, John S. Browning, H.H. Harmon, Russel Storm, and the house name E.K. Jarvis. He may have been best known for his Jongor series.

Moore’s story “Quest on Io” appeared in the Fall 1940 issue of Planet Stories, edited by Malcolm Reiss. The story was never picked up for publication elsewhere, but in 2011, that issue of Planet Stories was reprinted as a trade paperback anthology.

Despite the title of Williams’s “Quest on Io,” there isn’t really a quest. Andy Horn is a navigator who is spending some downtime while his spaceship is being repaired prospecting on Io with his talking Ganymedian honey bear companion, Oscar. The two come under attack from another prospector who believes they are claimjumpers and when Andy confronts the other prospector, he discovers it is a woman, Frieda Dahlem. While the two of them quickly straighten out their differences, it becomes apparent that there are three claimjumpers who are out to kill both of them (plus Oscar) in order to keep their activities secret.

The story is essentially a western, although the action has been moved to Io. It feels written for an audience of young boys who know women exist, but think there are gross, only around to get in the way. Andy’s relationship with Frieda is very basic. Frieda appears to be a competent woman until a man is around, whether Andy, who becomes her hero, or the three claimjumpers, who turn her into a puddle of incompetence. Oscar seems to exist in the story purely for comic relief, although the humor misfires repeatedly.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Black Mask — January, 1935

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Black Mask — January, 1935

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BlackMask_January1935

“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandlers’ The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

Joseph ‘Cap’ Shaw was still at the helm of Black Mask in January of 1935, when Raymond Chandler’s “Killer in the Rain” scored the cover. But this issue also included stories by Frederick Nebel, Erle Stanley Gardner, George Harmon Coxe and Roger Torrey. All that for fifteen cents!

“Killer in the Rain” featured Carmady. I’m in the camp that feels all of Chandler’s PIs: Carmady, Ted Carmady, Ted Malvern and John Dalmas were all essentially Philip Marlowe with slight differences. Carmady appeared in six stories – all in Black Mask.

The story was heavily cannibalized for Chandler’s first novel, The Big Sleep. Carmen Dravec became Carmen Sternwood, played memorably by Martha Vickers in the HumphreyBogart film. Two other Carmady stories, “The Curtain” and “Finger Man,” were also used. I think that “Killer in the Rain” is a strong story on its own and is definitely worth reading. I’m tinkering with ideas for a separate post on this story.

Frederick Nebel, whose Tough Dick Donahue (subject of an earlier post in the series) would replace The Continental Op when Dashiell Hammett left the pulps, provided Black Mask readers with the twenty-eighth adventure featuring Captain Steve MacBride of the Richmond City Police and newsman Kennedy of the Free Press. MacBride is a tough, by-the-book cop, while Kennedy is a hard-drinking smart aleck reporter. However, both are committed to justice and cleaning up corrupt Richmond City.

Except for one story (“Hell on Wheels” – Dime Detective), the entire series appeared in Black Mask. The collection has been reprinted in a three-volume series from Altus Press.

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Birthday Reviews: Murray Leinster’s “Pipeline to Pluto”

Birthday Reviews: Murray Leinster’s “Pipeline to Pluto”

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Cover by William Timmins
Cover by William Timmins

Murray Leinster was born William F. Jenkins on June 16, 1896 and died on June 8, 1975.

Murray Leinster was one of many nom de plumes used by William Fitzgerald Jenkins. He won the Liberty Award in 1937 for “A Very Nice Family,” the 1956 Hugo Award for Best Novelette for “Exploration Team,” and a retro-Hugo in 1996 for Best Novelette for “First Contact.” Leinster was the Guest of Honor at the 21st Worldcon in 1963 and in 1969 was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame. In 1995, the Sidewise Award for Alternate History was established, named after Leinster’s story “Sidewise in Time.”

Jenkins holds patent #2727427, issued on December 20, 1955 for an “Apparatus for Production of Light Effects in Composite Photography” and patent 2727429, issued the same day for an “Apparatus for Production of Composite Photographic Effects.”

Leinster first published “Pipeline to Pluto” in the August 1945 issue of Astounding, edited by John W. Campbell, Jr. Ten years later, Groff Conklin included it in his anthology Science Fiction Terror Tales. It appeared in both versions of The Best of Murray Leinster, the British volume edited by Brian Davis and the American volume edited by J.J. Pierce (each book had a completely different table of contents). The story most recently appeared in First Contacts: The Essential Murray Leinster. Over the years, it has been translated into Japanese, Croatian, German, Italian, and Russian.

“Pipeline to Pluto” is a slight story, focusing on Hill’s attempts to get from Earth to Pluto via a system of cargos shuttles. A bruiser, all that Leinster lets the reader know about him is that he has an urgent need to stowaway in the “pipeline” and he has bought another stowaway’s rights to a place. The majority of the action looks at Hill’s attempts to convince Crowder and Moore, who run the smuggling ring, to get him off Earth that evening.

Hill’s pleading and threats to the men are punctuated with exposition in which Leinster explains how the pipeline works. A series of cargo ships, one launched each day from Pluto and one launched from Earth, forming a long line carrying supplies to Pluto and ores mined on Pluto back to the home planet. Leinster not only describes the vessels and how they launch, but eventually describes the impact of being on board the vessels to humans.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Thomas Walsh

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Thomas Walsh

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Gat_WalshDiamonds“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandlers’ The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

Eighteen years after writing his first story, Thomas Walsh’s 1951 debut novel, Nightmare in Manhattan, won an Edgar Award. Twenty-seven years later in 1978, he picked up another Edgar for the short story “Chance After Chance.” That is impressive! Walsh wrote a half-dozen stories for Black Mask in the thirties and his “Best Man” was included by Joseph Shaw in his prestigious Hard-Boiled Omnibus.

“Double Check” appeared in the July, 1933 issue of Black Mask, which also included stories by Raoul Whitfield (Jo Gar), Erle Stanley Gardner (Ken Corning), Frederick Nebel (Tough Dick Donahue) and Carroll John Daly (Race Williams). How’s that for less than a quarter?!

It’s a buddy cop story – except the two men aren’t buddies. Flaherty is well-dressed, small and the smart detective. Mike Martin is big, rough, not the quickest thinker and looks rumpled. It’s brains and brawn.

A banker named Conrad Devine is being threatened, presumably with death, if he doesn’t pay out.

Flaherty constantly pokes at Martin, annoying the bigger man. More than once, Martin’s exasperation with his temporary partner is expressed as “I’m gonna lay you like a rug.”
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With a (Black) Gat: Frederick Nebel’s Donahue

With a (Black) Gat: Frederick Nebel’s Donahue

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BlackMask_August1931(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

Carroll John Daly’s action-packed adventures of Race Williams sold more copies of Black Mask than any other author’s stories. But editor Joe ‘Cap’ Shaw, who was willing to hold his nose and put Williams on the cover, considered the far more literate Dashiell Hammett to be the magazine’s cornerstone.

In January of 1930, the final installment of The Maltese Falcon appeared in Black Mask. A Continental Op story followed in February, then the next three months saw the stories that would become The Glass Key. But at the peak of his pulp abilities, Hammett left the genre. He was interested in the easy money of Hollywood and the better paying ‘slick’ magazines. He bid adieu to Black Mask in November of 1930.

Shaw had lost his best writer. The irreplaceable Hammett had to be replaced. He turned to Frederick Nebel, whose MacBride and Kennedy stories had appeared over a dozen times. That November issue of Black Mask included the thirty-sixth and final Continental Op story, “Death and Company.” It also featured “Rough Justice,” the first tale of Donahue of the Inter-State agency.

After the phenomenal success of The Maltese Falcon, Shaw had urged Hammett to write more stories featuring Sam Spade. Dash wasn’t interested and not only refused, but he shortly thereafter left the magazine forever. Though, he did write three more Spade stories in 1932 for the slicks. Shaw tagged the reliable Nebel to provide Black Mask readers with a tough private eye to replace the immensely popular Continental Op. The writer most certainly did that.

In “Rough Justice,” the Irish New York City PI, a former cop bounced from the force for being too honest, finds himself in sweltering St. Louis. In August of 1931 Donahue would return to the Arch City in “Spare the Rod.” In between, Nebel wrote a three-story serial of connected adventures that appeared in consecutive issues.

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Birthday Reviews: Nictzin Dyalhis’s “Heart of Atlantan”

Birthday Reviews: Nictzin Dyalhis’s “Heart of Atlantan”

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Cover by Ray Quigley
Cover by Ray Quigley

Nictzin Dyalhis was born on June 4, 1873 and died on May 8, 1942.

Dyalhis’s writing career began with the story “Who Keep the Desert Law” in 1922 and saw the publication of fewer than 20 stories over the next 18 years. His first story in Weird Tales, “When the Green Star Waned,” may have been the first use of the word “blaster” for a ray gun. Although L. Sprague de Camp has stated that Nictzin Dyalhis was his birthname and appears on his draft card, people have suggested that he changed the spelling of his last name from Dallas. Dyalhis also appears to have changed the date of his birth as suited him. One of the few members of the science fiction community to have actually met him was Willis Conover, Jr.

“Heart of Atlantan” first appeared in the September 1940 issue of Weird Tales, edited by D. McIlwraith. It remained out of print for 30 years before Lin Carter selected it for his anthology The Magic of Atlantis. In 1976, Peter Haining published a retrospective of Weird Tales and chose the story to represent Dyalhis’s contributions to the magazine. Wildside Press issued several of Dyalhis’s stories, including “Heart of Atlantan” in their e-book The Golden Age of Weird Fiction Megapack: Volume 4 in 2015. The story most recently appears in The Sapphire Goddess, published in 2018 by DMR Books and edited by Dave Ritzlin. “Heart of Atlantan was Dyalhis’s final published story.

Framing techniques in weird fiction were a common device in the early pulp era, an attempt to give some sort of credence to the tale. The events didn’t often happen to the narrator, but to a friend, or were found in a book. In “Heart of Atlantan,” Henri d’Armond describes how he was having a conversation with his friend, Leonard Carman, about the possibility of lost ancient civilizations. Carman is convinced they exist and to prove his point calls a woman, Otilie, to join them. Bent, broken, ugly, and illiterate, Otilie has the ability to serve as a medium, writing messages from a lost race.

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Today’s Bit of Odd Pulp-Related Ephemera

Today’s Bit of Odd Pulp-Related Ephemera

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Astounding Stories of Super-Science Wesso March 1930-small Astounding Stories of Super-Science June 1930-small

A pair of Wesso covers for the Clayton Astounding — March and June, 1930

For today’s bit of odd pulp related ephemera…

Among the material I acquired from the estate of Jack Darrow back in 2001 were his runs of two early fanzines, The Time Traveler and Science Fiction Digest. Mort Weisinger and Julius Schwartz, destined for even bigger things in the worlds of pulp and comic publishing, were involved in both. In a foolish moment of weakness, I let my friend Jerry Weist talk me out of The Time Traveler set. But I think that I’ll get over that one of these days…

I was looking through some of my Science Fiction Digest issues recently for some info a friend wanted on a project he’s doing, and when I opened the March 1933 issue, I discovered that tucked inside was a notice to Darrow that his subscription expired with this issue. On rare occasions I’ve found a notice like that in an issue of a pulp, but hadn’t encountered one in an early fanzine before, so thought I’d post it below.

The following issue, April 1933,contained an article that Weisinger and Schwartz wrote based on their interview of artist Hans Wessolowski, better known as Wesso. Wesso did a lot of work for the Clayton chain of pulps (taking their name from publisher William Clayton), including the covers to Strange Tales and the Clayton issues of Astounding. I’ve seen a few original interior illustrations by Wesso over the years, but as far as I know, none of his original pulp paintings from the Clayton chain still exist.

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Birthday Reviews: Neil R. Jones’s “Hermit of Saturn’s Rings”

Birthday Reviews: Neil R. Jones’s “Hermit of Saturn’s Rings”

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Cover by A. Drake
Cover by A. Drake

Neil R. Jones was born on May 29, 1909 and died on February 15, 1988.

Jones was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame in 1988 at Nolacon II. Jones published more than twenty story in his long-running Professor Jameson series, which were eventually collected in five volumes. A second series, the Durna Rangue stories, were published concurrently with the Jameson tales. Jones may have been the first author to use the word “astronaut” in fiction in his debut story, “The Death’s Head Meteor.”

Malcolm Reiss purchased “Hermit of Saturn’s Rings” for publication in the Fall 1940 issue of Planet Stories. A decade later, Donald A. Wollheim included it in his anthology Flight Into Space. It was selected for inclusion in American Science Fiction #6 in 1952. In 1975, Michael Ashley chose “Hermit of Saturn’s Rings” to represent Neil R. Jones’s career in The History of the Science Fiction Magazine: Volume 2: 1936-1945. It was also translated into German and published in 1957 in Utopia Science Fiction Magazin #6 and again in 1973 in Science-Fiction Stories 21, edited by Walter Spiegl.

The protagonist of Jones’s “Hermit of Saturn’s Rings” is atypical in science fiction. Among the first things Jones reveals about Jasper Jezzan is that he was on the first expedition to Mars, had traveled throughout the explored system, and was now on the first expedition to Saturn. The thing that sets Jezzan apart from so many other characters in science fiction is that when the story begins, he is more than 70 years old.

Shortly after beginning to traverse Saturn’s rings, the ship Jezzan is on finds itself facing a strange white cloud. Jezzan is separated from the rest of the crew and when he rejoins them, he discovers that the white cloud has killed everyone it could get to. Jezzan must learn how to avoid the strange creature that lives in Saturn’s rings and live as a futuristic Robinson Crusoe, making a home for himself first aboard his ship and later inside a hollow rock in Saturn’s rings.

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