Robert E. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft: “When they traded the warhorse for a submarine, they ruined the blasted business as far as I’m concerned.”

I heard from Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson’s grand-daughter, Nicki Brown last night. She confirmed that Wheeler-Nicholson was an old horse cavarlyman. He was also in Intelligence in WWI. It made me think of how many cavarlymen becames writers:

Edgar Rice Burroughs, George B. Rodney, E. Hoffmann Price,  Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, Charles Willeford, George Shipway, Winston Churchill, and Ray Hogan. I am probably missing a few.

Horse cavalry was present in the U.S. Army until 1942 when the remnants of the 26th Cavalry Regiment surrendered at Bataan on Luzon in the Philippines. Gen. Marshall had been converting horse cavalry into mechanized units but the orders never reached the Philippine Department. So Col. Clinton A. Pierce led his troops into combat on horseback.  Special Forces troops rode on horseback in Afghanistan in 2001 and who knows, with future weapons like EMP devices, the U.S. Army might have to use horses again.

Crusader fiction is a niche subcategory of the broader historical adventure genre. There was not a lot of it but you did have Harold Lamb, Robert E. Howard, Arthur D. Howden-Smith, Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur and Farnham Bishop, F. V. W. Mason, and Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson all writing it.

Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson (1890-1968) is best remembered as the founder of D.C. Comics. He was also a prominent writer of adventure fiction for pulp magazines.  A WWI veteran with what appears a horse cavalry background, he appeared all of a sudden in the pages of Adventure in 1927. He wrotes stories of Vikings, Crusaders, Cossacks, the Italian Renaissance, and the U.S. Army cavalry.

One series he had featured Alan de Beaufort, a Crusader who ends up riding with Genghis Khan’s Mongols just like Harold Lamb’s Hugh of Taranto.

The first Alan de Beaufort story is “Lances of Tartary” from the pages of All-Fiction, March 1931 issue.  The follow-up story, “Hooves of the Tatar Horde” followed in the same magazine July 1931. All-Fiction died as a magazine not long after. The series carried on in the pages of Thrilling Adventures in “The Scourge of Islam” (Oct. 1932). There is a another Crusader story “Conrad the Cruel” (Thrilling Adventures, June 1933) that might be part of the series.  Wheeler-Nicholson has a fairly fast writing style and is good with the action, not as good as Robert E. Howard but who is?

He later revisted the Crusader in Mongol service with the story “Alamut” (Short Stories, Dec. 25 1947) wherein the Assassins  get their comeuppance.

Wheeler-Nicholson’s descendants have an interest in him as they have a website and even a Facebook page. They ought to cull together some of the more blood and thunder pulp stories and put together a Lulu book. It might be of interest to Robert E. Howard fans and fans of a good historical yarn in general.

Hugh Cave had about 800 stories in the pulps. He continued in the slick magazines after the death of the pulps. Hugh was a pulp generalist having stories in categories such as adventure, weird, spicy, weird menace, detective, and western. He is well remembered for his horror and weird menace stories due to the Carcosa collection Murgunstrumm and the Fedogan & Bremer collection The Corpse Maker. Hugh wrote some fine weird stories. “Cult of the White Ape” (Weird Tales, Feb. 1933) is a favorite of mine.

If you would have asked a pulp reader around 1934, he probably would have described Hugh Cave as an adventure writer. He was a regular in Short Stories, Far East Adventures, and Thrilling Adventures. Titles such as “Hamadryad,” “Lair of the Pythons,” and “Crocodile” certainly give an adventure feel.

Westerns make up a small percentage of the total but Hugh was good enough to break into Western Story Magazine. He also had nine stories in Black Mask, including one sold during the Cap Shaw years.

One of the solitary oddities is “The Desert Host” from Magic Carpet Magazine. It features his barbarian hero, Selaron and adventure in ancient Babylon. Hugh told me that he admired Robert E. Howard’s “muscular style” of writing. He later dedicated the story to me when Black Dog Books reprinted it as a chapbook. “The Desert Host” would make for a good anchor story for The Book of Hugh Cave.  Throw in some Borneo jungle adventure, a weird menace, maybe a western, a hard-boiled detective story, a spicy mystery story and before you know it, you have 250 pages. A cover with jungle adventure would be appropriate.

If you read Karl Edward Wagner’s Bran Mak Morn pastiche, Legion From the Shadows and then read Cave’s “Murgunstrumm,” you will notice similarity.

Pulp Con 1995: Hugh Cave and Morgan Holmes

REH to HPL:  “And in Germany the steel helmets are goose-stepping. The nations are heaping up the coals and stirring the fire; the pot’s simmering and when it explodes, the whole world is going rock [sic].”

Today, the author of Descending from the Clouds, Col. Spencer Wurst showed me some memorabilia from WWII including some badges, medals, citations etc including the certificate for the Bronze Star and French Legion of Honor. If you are a fan of Stephen Ambrose’s Band of Brothers, I would suggest reading this book. Spencer Wurst joined the local 112th Infantry Regiment in the Pennsylvania National Guard in 1940 at age 15. He transferred to the paratroopers in 1942 getting tired of training new recruits as part of bringing units to authorized strength. Descending from the Clouds is a first hand account of parachute drops by the 82nd Airborne at Salerno, Normandy, Holland, the Battle of the Bulge. Remember the scene from The Longest Day of the burning church with paratroopers dropping in? The author was just outside of the town. Or the river assault by the 504th Parachute Regiment on the north side of a bridge in A Bridge Too Far? The author was with the 505th assaulting the south end of the bridge. The book is an eyewitness account of an army desperately trying to expand and re-arm while war had already erupted in Europe. The teaching of illiterate farm boys from Georgia and Alabama brought north to Ft. Indiantown Gap in Pennsylvania how to read so they could learn the army manuals. The training in new weapons that came on line like the bazooka and M-1 rifle. The book is filled with lots of little details. The book is also eminently readable. People like General Gavin, first a regimental and later divisional commander of the 82nd have taken on a near mythic quality. Spencer Wurst talks about Gen. Gavin showing up at all hours wearing bandoliers of ammuntion.

If you mention the 101st Airborne, Col. Wurst says “They are pretty good for a new unit.”

The word has spread today that Frank Frazetta has died at age 82.  Apparently, he had another stroke yesterday and hung on until today. To call him a giant is an understatement.  I am not sure there ever would have been a paperback sword and sorcery boom if it hadn’t been for Frank Frazetta. When you look at most 1960s science fiction paperbacks, the covers are pretty lame. Not those done by Frazetta. Like Howard’s prose, they leaped out and grabbed you.

I think the very first paperback that I ever owned with a Frazetta cover was an early 1970s Ace paperback edition of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Carson of Venus. Frank Frazetta was a part of the popular culture of the time along with Aerosmith albums, polyester shirts (admit it, you had at least one), VW bugs, and black lights. I can remember seeing Frazetta posters for sale at the Spencer Gifts in the newly opened Millcreek Mall in Erie, PA around 1975.  I can remember copies of Vampirella, Eerie, and Creepy magazines being circulated in class and on the school bus in fifth grade. I know I saw some with Frazetta covers at the time.

I have a Frazetta print framed and hung in my office at work. The man has been a part of my life and yours.

Frazetta’s paintings captured the over the top nature of sword and sorcery.

Frederick Faust created a new pseudonym for his historical swashbucklers- George Challis in 1934. The Challis name was first trotted out for “The Naked Blade,” in the pages of Argosy Feb. 10, 1934 to March 17, 1934. “The Naked Blade” is a tale of piracy in the West Indies just when Henry Morgan was arriving. The story starts right off with the Spaniards condemning Ivor Kildare as the pirate captain, Captain Tranquillo. Kildare is thrown into a 17th Century version of the Arena in Porto Bello. I don’t know if the Spaniards ever did such a thing but it does make for a great scene. Kildare escapes with aid of a merchant and joins up with the buccaneers.  Kildare is a fast talking good natured rogue who is a good a schemer as he is with the sword. The novel is a quick read.

Lancer Books reprinted the novel under Faust’s original name in 1967 when the same company was bringing Conan and Robert E. Howard to the masses. The book can be found at abebooks/bookfinder/Alibris etc easily enough. There is also a hardback from 1938. Faust wrote another novel featuring Ivor Kildare in “The Dew of Heaven” (Argosy, Sept. 7-Oct. 12, 1935). That novel has never been reprinted. The Challis name proved to be popular as Faust followed up with the Tizzo stories, “The Golden Knight” (a novel about King Richard the Lion Heart), “The American” (French Revolution), and “The Smoking Land” (lost race novel with Elizabethan era English). Faust also had another pirate novel “Clovelly,” under the “Max Brand” name in 1924. There are some other historicals from early in his career before he settled in as a western writer such as “The Sword Lover” (Argosy 1917), “The Double Crown” (as “John Frederick,” Argosy 1918) among others. I was recently talking about the Faust swashbucklers with a friend of mine who opined that the paperbacks should have used the “Max Brand” byline instead of “George Challis” in the case of the Ace paperbacks featuring Tizzo and the Lancer paperback using Faust original name. Using Max Brand might have increased sales and created more interest. Faust is a smooth writer and the action flows in his fiction often interspersed with some poetic snatches of prose. I for one would like to read his other swashbucklers that have never been reprinted.

A great quote by Faust: “All that can save fiction is enormous verve, a real sweep, plus richness of character, blood that can be seen shining through.”

Posted by Paul Herman on the Conan Forum:

Forthcoming from Edwin Mellen Press

More than Human: The Evolutionary Heroes of Robert E. Howard

A critical work by Justin Everett, Ph.D. and Deirdre Pettipiece, Ph.D.

Abstract:

Known best for the sword and sorcery stories he produced for the pulp fiction magazines of the 1930s, Robert E. Howard created a huge body of work that consisted of “around 3.5 million words” (Robert E. Howard Foundation, The Last of the Trunk), most of which focused on the creation of fantastic heroes of a depth and breadth unmatched by any writer before or since. Conan, King Kull, Solomon Kane and other complex characters populate civilizations Howard constructed and reconstructed in a wide-array of alternative worlds governed by competing principles of combat, survival, loyalty, and revenge. Tracing these heroes and the texts they occupy over the course of Howard’s interactions with evolutionary theories of human origin and behavior, Everett and Pettipiece reveal his dynamic and often conflicted engagement with ideas that changed the world. Howard’s interaction with the ideas of Darwin, Spencer, Freud and others who articulated fundamental principles of human behavior and social organization can be seen not only in the developing identities of his heroes, but also in the critical discussions he undertook with H.P. Lovecraft and other contemporaries. His intellectual engagement with some of the most important theories and philosophies of the 19th and 20th centuries demonstrates that Howard and his body of work are sufficiently representative of important themes and tropes to recognize him as part of the American canon. This volume therefore addresses the gap in the critical discussion of American literary production of the first half of the 20th century by presenting Howard and his heroes and the evolution they both undertook over the course of his active career.

Brief Table of Contents:

Preface
Forward by Terence McVicker
Introduction: Why American Literary Studies Need Robert E. Howard
Chapter One: Early Influences and the Little Blue Books
Chapter Two: Engaging with Ideas: What Howard Read and Its Impact on Howard’s Emerging Philosophy
Chapter Three: Sex and Sinews: Sexual Selection, Secondary Sex Characteristics and Howard
Chapter Four: Howard’s Men and Women and Their Potential Sources in Literature and Life
Chapter Five: Isolation and Community, Civilization and Barbarism: Binary Forces in Howard’s fiction
Chapter Six: Conclusions and Continuing Questions

Approx. 350 pps, approx. $150.00 hardback

Expected late 2010. I’d add, these two will be presenting on a panel at Howard Days. I’ve corresponded with these two several times, very serious REH fans, and serious academics, they have been promoting REH out there on the academic circuit. So I am looking forward to this book.

If we were to put together a series of books of pulp generalists based on the same idea as The Book of Robert E. Howard, Edgar Hoffman Price (1898-1988) would rank high on the list. Price was the only person to meet H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith in person. He was one of the solid second string that gave some depth to Weird Tales. Price also became a formidable pulp fictioneer in his own right. He sold around 500 stories to various magazines before calling it quits at the end of the pulp era.  In addition to weirds, he wrote lots of detective/crime, spicy, weird menace, westerns, historical, adventure, spy, and a few science fiction stories. If we were to put together a paperback book called The Book of E. Hoffmann Price with a page count of around 250 pages, it might be tough to decide what would make the grade.  I always thought a mid-1970s Jeff Jones painting of a Saracen warrior with raised scimitar and harem girl in the scene would be a perfect cover for a Price collection. I would include “Wolves of Kerak,” a Crusader story from the December 1938 issue of Golden Fleece. The story reads like a long lost Cormac FitzGeoffrey tale. Price knew how to fence and he knew how to write a sword fight. When he wanted to, Price was one of the best action writers around. I would throw in a Pawang Ali story. Pawang Ali is a half Arab-half Malay detective in Singapore whose reports always end with “suspect died resisting arrest.” There are six Pawang Ali stories to choose from the pages of Clues Detective Stories from 1935 and 1936. Jim Kane is an American guerrilla in the Philippines for seven stories in Adventure in the 1940s. The Japanese Army was dealt with extreme prejudice in this series. Matalaa the White Savage is a sort of South Pacific Tarzan written for Red Star Adventures in four novellas.

“One Step From Hell” (Argosy, Aug. 5, 1939) is a story of soldiering in the “Carabao Army” in the Phillipines and one of Price’s all time best. “Saladin’s Throne Rug” from Weird Tales is a haunting story about Oriental rug collecting. Pierre D’Artois is a French master fencer who battles cults and devil worship in a series of stories. “The Peacock’s Shadow” is a good entry.

Price was especially good as an adventure writer. Just about anything from Argosy is going to be worth reading. He was a regular for Short Stories in the 1940s and most of those are not too bad either. I can’t say anything about the other detective stories from Private Detective as I have not read them.  One or two top detective stories and westerns could be found to round out a collection. I would not recommend his science fiction. No one really needs to read “When in Doubt, Mutate!” from Science Fiction Quarterly. His “Exile of Venus” from Planet Stories is not unlike his “Operation” series of paperbacks from the 1980s but exhibits Price out of his best element.

If you are fortunate, you might be able to find a copy of the Carcosa Press collection Far Lands, Other Days which gives a fair cross section of Price’s weird, weird-menace, spicy, and adventure fiction. Price probably could have gotten a paperback  of his pulp fiction in print in the 70s with the revival of Lovecraft and Howard. Instead he started writing new paperbacks for Del Rey and did not want his old fiction competing with his new.  I find this a strange attitude but to each his own.

Price was known to many of the later writers. By accounts he was a great talker with many a tale to tell. Jack Williamson is in awe of Price in his autobiography (Wonder’s Child) and even named the main character from the novel Golden Blood (Price Durand) after E. Hoffmann Price.

Robert E. Howard had introduced the wild Celt Crusader in the form of Cormac FitzGeoffrey in “Hawks of Outremer” in the pages of Oriental Stories for the April/May/June 1931 issue. More Celts in the Middle East followed in “The Sowers of the Thunder” and “The Lord of Samarcand” through 1932.

Robert E. Howard couldn’t have all the fun and Harold Lamb followed suit in 1933 with his character- Nial O’ Gordon, a Scot raised in the Middle East.  O’ Gordon’s first adventure was “The Golden Horde,” a two part serial in the May 15 and June 1933 issues of Adventure. Lamb was at the end of his career in the pulps as he was now writing books and writing for slick magazines such as Collier’s.

Nial O’ Gordon is late of the Crusader states of Palestine and Syria. “The Golden Horde” opens with his arrival in the Black Sea port of Tana, now held by the Mongols. He becomes involved in skulduggery including a Moslem uprising/coup, a conniving Circassian slave girl, and a large emerald. Lamb is at the peak of his writing powers with a good plot and excellent action.

Nial O’ Gordon returns in “The Keeper of the Gate” (Adventure, August 1936). O’ Gordon is traveling to Cathay when he discovers one of the Khan’s messengers has been murdered. Accused of the deed, he is on the run while trying to bring down Gutchluk Khan “the Wizard King” who perpetrated the foul deed. The story is similar to both “People of the Black Circle” and “The Daughter of Erlik Khan.” If you like those two stories, you will like “The Keeper of the Gate.” This proved to be Lamb’s last story for Adventure. The pulps simply could not compete against Hollywood screenplays, slick magazines, and historical biographies. Lamb did go out on a high note. I have a suspicion that Lamb was aware of Robert E. Howard’s  Crusader stories.  I also would not be surprised that Lamb had read a Conan and El Borak story or two. I had to track these stories down in the original pulp appearances almost 20 years ago. You can read them in the recently published Swords From the West, a book I highly recommend. It is the best single author collection I have read in probably five years.