This post is brought to you by Strange Adventures by G. W. Thomas. This collection brings together adventure elements with occult detectives, mystery and monsters. You will meet Deputy Sheriff Brett Hope who faces off against the undead in four Weird Westerns. In “The Black Wolf” you get a different version of Dracula from the French Canadien perspective. You also go to the Alps to deal with the hairy guys you see on the cover and finish off with two tales about Sandochis, the Shuswap woman who belongs to the Athenodorians, a group that holds back the darkness that appeared in the companion volume, Strange Detectives.
Otis Adelbert Kline and E. Hoffman Price collaborated on a dozen pieces for the Pulps and fanzines. These range from the non-fantastic Dragoman Saga for Oriental Stories to one segment of the giant round-robin known as Cosmos to novels for the better paying magazines like Argosy. Of course, my favorites are the stories they did for Weird Tales.
And Weird Tales figures in here pretty strongly. Otis Adelbert Kline got his start as a sub-editor under Edwin Baird with the original run of the magazine before Farnsworth Wright took over. Kline has been credited with the policy piece “Why Weird Tales?” from Weird Tales, May-June-July 1924. (It stands today as a good reasoning to write SF/F/H as any.) Both men were friends of Farnsworth Wright, enjoying his lush dinners and a shared love of the foreign and exotic.
Kline and Wright were professional Pulpsters in their own right. Otis
Adelbert Kline is probably best remembered for his Edgar Rice Burroughs knock-offs set on Venus and his Jan of the Jungle. He wrote for many markets but eventually gave up the job for being an agent. He was the man who handled the Robert E. Howard estate after his death. Some suggest he edited “Almuric” before selling it to Wright in 1939.
E. Hoffman Price was well-known in the adventure Pulps. Unlike Robert E. Howard, Price cracked Adventure with his tales of the Far East. He collected Persian rugs. (He also wrote Mysteries and Westerns along with the occasional Science Fiction story.) He was known in Weird Tales for his Pierre D’Artois series until Jules de Grandin drove him off. Price survived to an old age, so along with Hugh B. Cave, became a kind of Pulp historian in the years after the magazines had faded away. One of his claims was he was the only writer to have met Lovecraft, Howard and Clark Ashton Smith (the big three).
The two collaborators started with a swashbuckling adventure story that must have failed to sell at the higher paying adventure markets. It appeared in Weird Tales in 1930. The Sword & Sorcery tales of Conan, perhaps the closest thing to it in WT, were still two years away.
“Thirsty Blades” (Weird Tales, February 1930)
The pair followed up with a series of tales set in exotic lands, something they were both familiar with. These were done for Weird Tales‘ sister magazine Oriental Tales/Magic Carpet. Horror elements weren’t as important as Eastern charm and a kind of sexiness. A dragoman is a hired guide and interpreter.
“The Man Who Limped” (Oriental Stories, October/November 1930)
“The Dragoman’s Revenge” (Oriental Stories, February/March 1931)
“The Dragoman’s Secret” (Oriental Stories, April/May/June 1931)
“The Dragoman’s Slave Girl” (Oriental Stories, Summer 1931) was not written with E. Hoffman Price.
“The Dragoman’s Jest” (Oriental Stories, Winter 1932)
“The Dragoman’s Confession” (Oriental Stories, Summer 1932)
“The Dragoman’s Pilgrimage” (The Magic Carpet, January 1933)
Science Fiction fandom was excited by the idea of a giant round-robin called Cosmos appearing in Fantasy Magazine in 1934. The two wrote the eighth chapter, continuing the meandering tale on Venus. This was their first Science Fiction piece together.
“Cosmos: Volunteers From Venus” (Fantasy Magazine, January 1934)
A single straight Mystery tale by the boys that still has a Weird Menace feel to it.
“The Murder Room” (New Detective, May 1935)
The last two Weird Tales entries combine exotic locales with monsters: Mexico and Burma.
“The Cyclops of Xoatl” (Weird Tales, December 1936)
“Spotted Satan” (Weird Tales, January 1940) For more on this story, go here.
The final collaboration between Ed and Otis was a five part serial for Argosy. This was a market to which Kline sold his Edgar Rice Burroughs knock offs. For more on that, go here. They returned to a Science Fiction theme, which they had not done since Cosmos.
Satans On Saturn (Argosy, November 2-30, 1940)
The two writers remained friends but the collabs ended there. Kline worked his literary agency while Price kept writing for
the best of the Pulps, including Westerns, Detective and Jungle stories. Otis Adelbert Kline died in 1946. Later in the 1970s and 1980s, Ed wrote paperbacks likeĀ The Devil Wives of Li Fong (1979), The Jade Enchantress (1982), and the Operation SF series with Operation Misfit (1980), Operation Longlife (1983), Operation Exile (1986) and Operation Isis (1987).
Conclusion
Collaborating with other writers is a natural activity for writers. Some are even famous for it: Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth, Henry Kuttner and his wife, C. L. Moore, Nat Schachner and Arthur Leo Zagat in the early days. Many have tried it with different results. I have written with Jack Mackenzie (once), and with J. F. Gonzalez (once). Jack and I wrote an Edwardian Mystery tale, while Jesus and I produced “The Man Who Had a Death Wish” (Cthulhu Sex Magazine #23, November 2005) the only other story to feature Brett Hope from Strange Adventures. I mentioned collaborating in The Writer, May 2006 in a piece called “Jump Start Your Creativity”. It can be a wonderful spur if the partner is right.
Sword & Sorcery from RAGE machine Books
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