Science Fiction Out of Milwaukee

When you look at the history of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror there are certain cities that stand tall as centers of activity. New York City is the obvious hub of publishing but Chicago was almost equally important as was Los Angeles. The early days of Science Fiction clubs in NYC and areas are part of the history best learned about in books like Sam Moskowitz’s The Immortal Storm: A History of Science Fiction Fandom (1951). Chicago was home to both the original Weird Tales and Ray A. Palmer’s Amazing Stories and Bill Hamling’s Imagination. The “California Group” was actually two groups, first with Kuttner, C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett and later with Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont and Rod Serling. But there was another place that produced a number of interesting and important writers: Milwaukee! Yes, a city best remembered for beer. Several writing groups existed there over the decades and I won’t go into all the variations. (John D. Haefele does so here.) The two most important names were the Milwaukee Fictioneers and Allied Authors. What’s more important than club names was the talent that came out of this sleepier center of fantastic writing. The members included dozens of professional and semi-pro writers of Westerns, mysteries (like Jack Ritchie), Romance and other Pulps. I am not going to look at those writers but focus on the fantastic ones. If you’d like to read the rest, please check out Monster 2: From the Pages of Dark Worlds Quarterly.