This post is brought to you by the Swords of Fire 4, now out at last. Like the three previous collections, this one features four longer Sword & Sorcery adventures with the longest being “The Dragon God”, a Sirtago & Poet tale set in a country much like Japan. This is by Jack Mackenzie, of course. There is also the next adventure of Bradik the Slayer by M. D. Jackson, “The Star of Kanshalsus”. One of the other two tales is a new Arthan the Bear Man story, “The Twilight War” featuring an army of mercenaries versus giant spiders. And to round out the quartet, “Between the Dragon and His Wrath” by Will Parker. For the previous anthologies, go here.
When we think of the Pulp magazine Blue Book we may recall the glorious illustrations but we don’t always remember it was a place to find Science Fiction and Fantasy fiction. When Worlds Collide (1933), the colossal novel by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie was serialized in Blue Book. Several Tarzan and other Edgar Rice Burroughs novels as well as Guy Endore’s “The Day of the Dragon” also appeared there. And eight years before John W. Campbell would put his stamp on Fantasy with Unknown, there was a series of very Unknown-like Fantasy tales by Betram Atkey. They have been called “Unnatural Nature/The Misguided Nature” series by some. Most would have found a place easily in Campbell’s SF-styled Fantasy magazine.
Bertram Atkey was a prolific UK writer with a long-running series of Mystery novels with a thief character named Smiler Bunn. He wrote some Science Fiction and Horror with an UFO abduction story in 1912, “The Strange Case of Alan Moraine” (The Grand Magazine, September 1912). It even has a romance with a Space Queen. Before the Unnatural Nature set, he had a long running series in Blue Book about Hobart Honey, a Harold Shea type character who travels back in time for humorous effect. Unnatural Nature started in The Red Magazine in 1916 but was reprinted and continued in Blue Book.
Most of these stories are illustrated by Margery Stocking (1888-1993). She was a much sought after ad and magazine illustrator. She was the first woman to receive the Beaux Arts Medal from the Yale School of Architecture. Her style her is both realistic but also charming. Blue Book was a family magazine and art of this sort was entertaining for any age. The other artist was Frank Hoban (1870-1943), of Tarzan fame. Hoban drew elephants for the Tarzan serials but here he gets to be a little more cartoony and have some fun. Blue Book used color highlights to make their illustrations pop, as you will see here.
“The Outlawed Centaur” (Blue Book, September 1931) Listen to it here.
“Lord of the Wild Asses ” (The Red Magazine,May 15 1919, reprinted in The Blue Book Magazine, October 1931)
“The Nose of Napoo” (The Red Magazine, August 22 1919, reprinted in Blue Book, November 1931)
“The Golden Goat” ( The Red Magazine, July 11 1919, reprinted in The Blue Book Magazine, December 1931)
“Fintale the Merman” ( The Red Magazine, September 19 1919, reprinted in Blue Book, January 1932)
“The Call of the Wildwater” (The Red Magazine November 1918, reprinted in Blue Book, March 1932)
“The Last of the Dinosaurs” (The Red Magazine May 1 1919, reprinted in Blue Book, April 1932)
Conclusion
Was it Fantasy stories like these that inspired John W. Campbell? Certainly they didn’t hurt, along with serials and stories from the soft weeklies like Argosy. Before 1923 and the appearance of Weird Tales, there were no magazines dedicated to Fantasy & Horror. By 1939, Campbell felt there was an audience and fans were ready for the mythology-busting antics of Harold Shea, the slightly more logical Conans of Norvell W. Page’s Wan Tengri and Jack Williamson’s The Reign of Wizardry, along with the cock-eyed tales of Robert Bloch, L. Ron Hubbard, Cleve Cartmill and host of others who presented fairy tales for modern times. Campbell’s version of Fantasy was much closer to Science Fiction, with rules of magic making the impossible at least understandable. This legacy of “reasonable Fantasy” continued in the later novels of L. Sprague de Camp’s Novaria, Christopher Stasheff’s Warlock books and the Manna tales of Larry Niven, all of which can be enjoyed as Fantasy but with a strong sense that Magic is just Science misunderstood. It’s not my preferred mode of entertainment but it has been a strong seller among SF fans (who so often are also Fantasy & Horror fans).
Sword & Sorcery from RAGE machine Books
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