Why Weird Tales?

Weird Tales was in trouble during that first year. The magazine that never dies almost did in 1924. Otis Adelbert Kline (1891-1946) stepped in to edit the triple-sized, first anniversary issue, May/June/July 1924. It would be the last issue of the magazine until November 1924, when Farnsworth Wright (1890-1940) took over. Coincidentally, that first-anniversary issue was whole number 13.

The first feature in Weird Tales for May/June/July 1924 was a kind of manifesto entitled "Why Weird Tales?" It was written, anonymously, by Kline. In it, he explained the purposes of publishing the magazine, first, to offer readers stories they wanted but were unlikely to find in other places; second, "to find and publish those stories that will make their writers immortal." H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was not yet known when Kline wrote. Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) was only eighteen and just getting started as a writer. Dozens of now well-known authors had not yet been published in Weird Tales. Hundreds of still nearly unknown writers, the beginning subject of this blog, still awaited discovery.

According to the current Weird Tales website, the first issue of the magazine appeared on newsstands on February 18, 1923. In other words, in about seven weeks Weird Tales will enter its 100th year. "The Unique Magazine" hasn't been continuously in print for these one hundred years. But it still exists and is still known and read. There may be another issue coming in the not very distant future. Otis Adelbert Kline's vision still holds.

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I have posted the complete text of "Why Weird Tales?" on a new page for this blog. See the list of pages at the right. I have transcribed this text from the original, which I found on the website Internet Archive at the following URL:

https://archive.org/details/WeirdTales1924050607ATLPM/page/n1/mode/2up

Any transcription errors are my own.

* * *

Otis Adelbert Kline mentioned many authors in his essay. Following is a list. Names in bold are of those whose work was published in Weird Tales in the period 1923-1974. Click on their names to see my biographies of these authors.

• Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
• Thomas Huxley (1825-1895)
• Homer
• William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
• John Milton (1608-1674)
• Dante (1265-1321)
• Washington Irving (1783-1859)
• Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
• Jules Verne (1828-1905)
• Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
• Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949)
• Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
• H.G. Wells (1866-1946)
• Lord Byron (1788-1824)
• Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
• Tobias Smollett (1721-1771)
• Laurence Sterne (1713-1768)
• The Brontës: Charlotte (1816–1855), Emily (1818–1848), and Anne (1820–1849)
• Wilkie Collins (1824-1889)
• Bram Stoker (1847-1912)
• Richard Marsh (1857-1915)
• Sax Rohmer (1883-1959)
• H. Rider Haggard (1856-1925)
• Robert Hitchens (1864-1950)
• Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951)
• Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
• Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810)
• Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823)
• Dr. Frank Crane (1861-1928)

Kline devoted a good deal of his 2,100-word essay to Poe and Hawthorne, also a full paragraph to Charles Brockden Brown. Brown may have been more well known in the 1920s than he is today. He has been and may even still be a neglected author.

I almost overlooked H.G. Wells' name in "Why Weird Tales?" and was almost ready to make something of that. Even though his name is there, I might still make something of Kline's bare mention of it: Weird Tales does not seem to have followed in Wells' path, for his work was an innovation. Weird Tales came from older things. Even though the magazine published science fiction, especially in the 1940s and '50s under the supervision of Dorothy McIlwraith (1891-1976), its mainstay was the weird tale, a type of fiction that matured into its own subgenre, weird fiction, in the pages of "The Unique Magazine." That's my opinion.

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There are many good points in "Why Weird Tales?" One passage jumped out at me, considering what I have written over the past year about Utopia and Dystopia in Weird Tales. That passage:

The ancient Hebrews used the element of fear in their writings to spur their heroes to superhuman power or to instill a moral truth. The sun stands still in the heavens that Joshua may prevail over his enemies.

I refer here to Jack Williamson's idea that Utopia is in the Greek tradition, while Dystopia is in an older Egyptian-Hebraic tradition. (See "Utopia & Dystopia in Weird Tales-Part Three: Dystopia Before Utopia," here.) I'll have more on that topic and wrap up that series after the new year arrives.

Until then, Happy New Year to everyone everywhere. If 2022 is going to be better than the previous two years, we will all have to make it better. It won't happen on its own.

The cover story of Weird Tales May/June/July 1924 was "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" by Harry Houdini. I don't see a signature here, but this is almost certainly the work of William F. Heitman of Indianapolis. I wanted to show Heitman's work here because it reminds me of the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood are thrown into the pit. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Original text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

100 Years of "The Outsider"

This year is the 100-year anniversary of the composition of "The Outsider" and the 95th anniversary year of its initial publication. H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was of course the author. He wrote "The Outsider" between March and August 1921. He completed his story during the same month in which he turned thirty-one years old. (1)

"The Outsider" was first published in Weird Tales in its issue of April 1926. It has been reprinted again and again in the years since. Some consider it to be Lovecraft's signature story. It headlined The Outsider and Others (1939), the first hardcover collection of Lovecraft's stories. The Outsider and Others was also the first book published by Arkham House of Sauk City, Wisconsin, a firm established specifically for publishing Lovecraft's works. 

There are themes of loneliness, alienation, strangeness, ugliness, and outsidedness in "The Outsider." From the story:

I know that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.

We have probably all felt this way in our lives; Lovecraft's story has great appeal because of that feeling, especially, I think, among teenagers and young adults. Alienation and feelings of outsidedness may in fact be symptomatic of the modern dilemma.

There have of course been other works of twentieth-century alienation. The first that comes to mind is The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942). Feelings of alienation and strangeness are fully human, though, and as old as time: it was Moses who first said, "I have been a  stranger in a strange land." The context and meaning of Moses' words might not be as we would see them today. Yet his statement remains, and it inspired a science fiction author of the twentieth century, Robert A. Heinlein, in the writing of his own novel about feeling as a stranger. (1a) Jim Morrison sang after him: "People are strange/when you're a stranger . . . ."

There is every kind and level of alienation, of feelings of strangeness and outsidedness, from the popular to the philosophical. Marx and Nietzsche also had something to say about alienation. So did Mary Shelley in Frankenstein, which may have been an influence upon Lovecraft in his writing of "The Outsider." I wonder, though: is "The Outsider" a Kaspar Hauser-like story? (2) Maybe in general "The Outsider" has its roots in the nineteenth century, and the story of Kaspar Hauser has a significance that we underestimate. Edgar Allan Poe, perhaps the most powerful influence upon Lovecraft's writing of "The Outsider," was born in the first decade of that century, Lovecraft in the last. So, yes, the roots of the story are literally in the century previous to its composition.

There has been a lot of cancellation in recent years. Margaret Atwood and J.K. Rowling are two in the worlds of fantasy and science fiction who have recently been on the receiving end of efforts at cancellation. They're probably both too big to be cancelled, but then we would have thought the same thing about Beethoven and other Classical composers and Classical music not very long ago. Look what we have now. (3) Powerful people--people who fancy themselves as powerless, as among the oppressed, as victims because believing themselves to be on the lowest rung of the ladder actually places them on the highest--seek to silence outsiders, to silence anyone who disagrees with them, especially to silence women who speak out against their depraved ideologies.

There have been efforts at cancelling H.P. Lovecraft, too, but these seem only halfhearted to me. I have a possible explanation for this: despite any of his perceived offenses, Lovecraft has too much to offer those among us who feel alienated, strange, or on the outside of things; also to materialists, the godless, and unbelievers; to people who hate God because they believe he has failed them; to people who feel that we are mere specks in a great and indifferent Cosmos, that there are great and hostile forces afoot in the universe that would destroy us, that ultimately we ought to be destroyed because we are so loathsome and contemptible. Lovecraft's mother called him ugly. In alienation there is often a sense of self-hatred. A child who is called ugly or stupid or whatever by his mother may also be filled with self-hatred. Those who hate themselves learn to hate humanity, too. They turn their hatred outward because hatred of the self is such an unbearable thing. They often fantasize about destroying humanity. Sometimes they do it, or as much of humanity as they can, like a German pilot flying an airplaneful of people into a mountainside, or an Austrian-German totalitarian monster doing the same thing with his whole nation. Often these men (and women) destroy themselves. You can make a case that Lovecraft destroyed himself, by depriving himself of sustenance. His father should have sustained him. Instead he abandoned his son. His mother should have sustained him. Instead she called him ugly and kept him close, too close for him to have developed in a healthy way. Significantly or not, she died on May 24, 1921, about halfway through her son's composition of "The Outsider." (4, 5)

We can't psychoanalyze Lovecraft, least of all by looking at a work of fiction. Likewise, we can't and shouldn't try to psychoanalyze whole groups of people. People are, after all, individuals and are deserving of compassion as individuals. I'll just say that H.P. Lovecraft's authorship of "The Outsider" and many other stories--his construction of a compelling and to many people such a full and satisfying and comforting fictional universe--may mean that he and they and it will never be cancelled.

Notes
(1) I have just finished (mostly) a series on Otis Adelbert Kline (1891-1946) who also had some success with a story written when he was thirty-one (or so), the serial "The Thing of a Thousand Shapes," published in the first two issues of Weird Tales, March and April 1923.
(1a) Update (Jan. 4, 2022): The first episode of The Book of Boba Fett, released last month, is also called "Stranger in a Strange Land."
(2) I'm not the first to make this association, although I have made it independently of anyone else (i.e., I thought it up before going to look for the idea in other people's work). Bhob Stewart (1937-2014) made the comparison in an undated essay published on line in 2015.
(3) See, for example, "Then They Came for Beethoven" by Daniel Lelchuk, dated September 19, 2020, on the website Quillette, here. Is Mr. Lelchuk the son of American novelist Alan Lelchuk? I read Alan Lelchuk's novel American Mischief (1973) not many years ago. The name and the book have stuck with me.
(4) Ironically, Lovecraft the inward-outsider seems to have turned more outward after his mother died. Perhaps he was released. If it's not too bizarre to use these two words together, maybe only then did Lovecraft blossom.
(5) For a discussion of Lovecraft, his mother, their relationship, and related topics, see "Mommie Dearest: H.P. Lovecraft's Descent into Maternal Madness" by John A. DeLaughter, dated November 14, 2013, on The Lovecraft Ezine, here.

A final note: Like Narcissus, the narrator of "The Outsider" is undone by a mirror. The Lady in C.S. Lewis' Perelandra is almost undone by the same object. The Evil Queen in the story of Snow White is so undone. To look into a mirror--is this a loss of innocence? A gaining of self-awareness? And does a sense of self-awareness lead into irony? Into alienation?

Original text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

The New Weird Tales Story

Pulp Hero Press has released an expanded and enhanced edition of The Weird Tales Story, originally edited by Robert Weinberg and published in 1977. The editor of the new edition is Bob McLain. Essayists include S.T. Joshi, Darrell Schweitzer, Mike Ashley, Rob Roehm, Bobby Derie, Jason Ray Carney, Adrian Cole, Morgan Holmes--and me, Terence E. Hanley. My contributions are the essays "Dorothy McIlwraith" and "They Should Have Been in Weird Tales," both of which have appeared in slightly different form in this blog. One really welcome addition is the text of the first cover story in Weird Tales, "Ooze" by Anthony Rud.

The Weird Tales Story: Expanded and Enhanced (Pulp Hero Press, 2021)

Contents

• Publisher's Note by Bob McLain
• Foreword by Adrian Cole
• Preface to the First Edition by Robert Weinberg
• Introduction: A Real Weird Magazine by Jason Ray Carney
• A Brief History by Robert Weinberg
• Farnsworth Wright by E. Hoffmann Price
• Why Weird Tales? by Otis Adelbert Kline
• The Stories by Robert Weinberg
• Dorothy McIlwraith by Terence E. Hanley
• Ray Bradbury by Darrell Schweitzer
• Mary Elizabeth Counselman by Mike Ashley
• August Derleth by Darrell Schweitzer
• Edmond Hamilton by Mike Ashley
• Robert E. Howard and the Early Weird Tales (1923–1925) by Bobby Derie
• Robert E. Howard and the Later Weird Tales by Rob Roehm
• Henry Kuttner by Adrian Cole
• Frank Belknap Long by Mike Ashley
• H. P. Lovecraft by S. T. Joshi
• C. L. Moore by Mike Ashley
• Seabury Quinn by Darrell Schweitzer
• Clark Ashton Smith by Mike Ashley
• Manley Wade Wellman by Darrell Schweitzer
• A Fellowship of Fear by Mike Ashley
• They Should Have Been Weird Tales by Terence E. Hanley
• Recollections of Weird Tales by Various Authors
• Gothic to Cosmic: Sword-and-Sorcery in Weird Tales by Morgan Holmes
• Cover Art by Robert Weinberg
• Interior Art by Robert Weinberg
• Beginnings and Ends by Robert Weinberg
• Out of the Eyrie by Robert Weinberg
• Competition by Robert Weinberg
• Since 1954: The Magazine That Never Dies by Darrell Schweitzer
• "Ooze" . . . Back to the Beginning by Anthony M. Rud

At 324 pages, the new Weird Tales Story is longer than the original, but its dimensions are reduced to about the size of a standard pulp magazine, 7 by 10 inches. The cover art is by Tom Barber. Interior artists include Alex Nino and Orvy Jundis, plus many of the original artists who illustrated Weird Tales magazine.

Original text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Merry Christmas!

May Your Holiday Dreams

Take Flight!

Merry Christmas from

Tellers of Weird Tales!

Otis Adelbert Kline's Family

E. Hoffman Price described the family of his friend and co-author, Otis Adelbert Kline:

First, "Curley"--Mrs. Kline, smooth and lovely and soft-voiced and gracious, her youthful face seeming ever younger because of that prematurely gray hair; "Jimmie"--Ora Fay, the tiny dainty blond daughter; Elinor, the more robust brunette; and "Buster" Allen the son, colored very much like his father. (1)

"Curley" was Ellen H. (Grove) Kline (1890-1987), a native Illinoian born in the same month as H.P. Lovecraft, August 1890. Otis and Ellen were married sometime in the period 1910-1914. Their three children were:

1. Elinor Marie Kline Reed, also called Marie, (b. Nov. 24, 1914, Ill.; d. Feb. 25, 1999, presumably in Illinois), a musician who majored in pipe organ at the Chicago Conservatory of Music.
2. Allen Paul "Buster" Kline (b. Jan. 28, 1916, Sterling, Ill.; d. Sept. 26, 1999, Escondido, Calif.).
3. Ora Fay "Jimmie" Kline Gunckel Rossini Rozar (b. 1918, Rock Falls, Ill.; d. May 29, 2009, Greenwood, S.C.), a U.S. Navy WAVE during World War II--and an airplane mechanic at that!--and an artist, she received an M.F.A. from the Whitney School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut. When her father died in late 1946, she took over his literary agency and helped run it for a year and a half before passing it on to Oscar Friend.

Ora Rozar is in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb). Here are her credits:

• "Notes" in OAK Leaves #1 (Fall 1970, p. 3), in which she discussed her father's life in Connecticut and his death.
• "Notes" in OAK Leaves #2 (Winter 1970-1971, p. 10), in which she discussed her father's literary agency.
• "Notes" in OAK Leaves #4 (Summer 1971, p. 7), in which she discussed life at home in Chicago.
• "Notes" in OAK Leaves #6 (Winter 1971-1972, p. 2), in which she discussed her father's writing, including stories syndicated in the Toronto Star Weekly.
• "Notes" in OAK Leaves #7 (Spring 1972, p. 12), the text of a letter, dated October 31, 1946, in reply to a letter sent by E. Hoffmann Price. In her reply, Ora, or "Jimmie," gave Price details on her father's death.
• "Notes" OAK Leaves #11 (1975, pp. 12-13), in which she offered photographs of her family.

Ora's "Notes" from issue number two is especially interesting:

     After my father died, I took over the agency for 1 1/2 years. I had an infant daughter, born 2 months after his death and my then husband [2] was being transferred to Texas. It would have been impossible to take the agency with me. We turned over everything to Oscar Friend, including material published and unpublished, records, files, etc. I do not know what all was  there, but I know there was an unpublished Mars novel. Oscar Friend ran the agency under the Otis Kline Associates name, and was to handle all material on behalf of my mother, for future sales of OAK [Otis Adelbert Kline] material. At that time, there was little demand for it. Oscar moved to another place and I suspect disposed of practically all OAK material, records, and files. Later on the space programs, TV science fiction programs, etc., renewed interest in the sf field and consumed fiction too fast. The publishers went back to the older material and published OAK hardcover and paperbacks. As this was going on, Oscar kept asking us to send him books or tear sheets for submission to the publishers on material I know we had already given to him

     He kept asking me for an "unpublished novel" which he insisted I had stored away. He had never returned anything to us except contracts of signatures, royalties, and sometimes, complimentary copies.

     The enclosed photo [which I used in my biography of Kline, here] was taken at the same time as the 3/4 pose used on the MAZA book jacket. I believe it was 1929; there were no more portrait pictures taken of him, only snapshots.

If Oscar Friend did indeed discard or destroy Kline's files, then we can add that to a list of literary disasters that is entirely too long, especially in regards to popular fiction.

There's something else to consider here, for by operating Otis Kline Associates for one and a half years, from 1946 to about 1948, Ora Rozar was in a line of descent of Robert E. Howard's literary agents. She may not have done much, if anything, with what she had from Howard, but there it is anyway.

One more thing: if Otis Adelbert Kline's co-author on "The Secret Kingdom" was indeed Allen S. Kline, then his co-author was his brother and not his then thirteen-year-old son, Allen P. Kline. Hopefully all of that can be corrected soon on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.

I have one more entry on Otis Adelbert Kline. I will use that one to close out the year.

Notes
(1)  From "Otis Adelbert Kline: Two Memoirs" by E. Hoffman Price in OAK Leaves #1 (Winter 1970-1971), page 3.
[2] I believe this was Ora Fay Kline's second husband, last name Rossini. Ora's daughter was born in December 1946. Ora had previously married Ray Herbert Gunckel, Jr. (1916-1980) on April 9, 1939, in Manhattan. In the 1940 census, they were counted together in Branford, Connecticut. Ray Gunckel was the head of a household that included Otis and Ellen Kline. Ray and Ora were divorced in 1944 in Escambia County, Florida. He remarried on February 23, 1945, in Jacksonville, Florida. His new wife was Blanche Pearl Jones, later Oglesby (1924-2021). She died just two months ago. Ora presumably remarried, too, in the period 1944-1946. She was married again, to Josep James Rozar (1923-2008), on June 4, 1966, in Branford, Connecticut. There are still living Kline descendants. Whatever else might be true, I would call that a happy situation.

The Kline family, circa 1938. Left to right: Elinor, Ora, Ellen, and Otis. From OAK Leaves #11, 1975, page 13. Son Allen is not in this picture. Maybe he was the one behind the camera, in which case he should receive credit in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.

Original text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Allen S. Kline (1893-1971)

Otis Adelbert Kline was born on July 1, 1891, in Chicago, Illinois, the older of two sons born to Louis A. Kline (1864-1938) and Ora K. (Sides) Kline (1870-1949). The younger brother, Allen Sides Kline, was born on December 19, 1893, in Rock Falls, Illinois. The two grew up west of Chicago in the area of Rock Falls and Sterling, Illinois.

Allen S. Kline graduated from Brown's Business College of Sterling and from Carthage College of Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he was in the class of 1916 or 1917 and majored in Latin. He worked as a bank clerk and in the insurance industry.

On August 15, 1917, Kline married Wahneta Marie Burner (1895-1924) in Hancock County, Illinois. She was a graduate of Carthage College, too, and had majored in English. She had taught at Bowen High School in Chicago in the year prior to her marriage. Allen Kline served in the U.S. Army during World War I in the judge advocate general's office.

Allen and Wahneta Kline had a son, George Louis Kline, who died just seven years ago, in 2014, at age ninety-five. He was a professor of philosophy and history. Sadly, Wahneta Marie (Burner) Kline died on May 8, 1924, at age twenty-eight. Her end came in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I wonder if she could have had tuberculosis.

Allen S. Kline remarried. His second wife was Martha (Read) Kline. The couple had I think three children.

Allen collaborated with his brother Otis on a single story, a three-part serial called "The Secret Kingdom," published in Amazing Stories in October to December 1929. That's his only credit in either the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb) or The FictionMags Index. Here's a note from ISFDb:

Though mentioned in 'Science-fiction: The Gernsback Years' as being the son of Otis Adelbert Kline, there is no evidence that Otis was ever even married. He did have a brother though, Allen Sides Kline (1893-1971).

I'm not sure why the note says that "there is no evidence that Otis was ever even married." On the contrary, there isn't any evidence that Otis was not married. I'll have more on that in the next part of this series.

Allen S. Kline and his family lived in Boston and Norfolk, Massachusetts. He died on February 9, 1971, in Sanford, Maine. He was seventy-seven years old.

Otis Adelbert Kline & Allen S. Kline's Story in Amazing Stories

• "The Secret Kingdom" (three-part serial, Oct.-Dec. 1929)

Next: Otis Adelbert Kline's Wife & Children.

Allen S. Kline and his future wife, Wahneta M. Burner, in their college yearbook, the Carthage College Crimson Rambler, 1917.

Text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

The Dragoman on the Cover of Oriental Stories

Otis Adelbert Kline wrote or co-wrote seven stories of a character called the Dragoman published in Oriental Stories and The Magic Carpet Magazine. Six of these were his work alone. He wrote a seventh, "The Dragoman's Jest," with his friend and fellow Orientalist E. Hoffman Price. The Dragoman stories are as follows:

• "The Man Who Limped" in Oriental Stories (Oct./Nov. 1930)
• "The Dragoman's Revenge" in Oriental Stories (Feb./Mar. 1931)
• "The Dragoman's Secret" in Oriental Stories (Apr./May/June 1931)
• "The Dragoman's Slave Girl" in Oriental Stories (Summer 1931)
• "The Dragoman's Jest" in Oriental Stories; with E. Hoffman Price (Winter 1932)
• "The Dragoman's Confession" in Oriental Stories (Summer 1932)
• "The Dragoman's Pilgrimage" in The Magic Carpet Magazine (Jan. 1933)

I have never read these stories and don't know anything about them except that the main character is named Hamed the Atar. By the images below, Hamed appears to be young and beardless, possibly a Westerner dressed in Eastern garb.

The word dragoman is new to me, but it's an old word, going back to ancient times, possibly even to the Hittites according to sources cited in Wikipedia. If it goes back to the Hittites, dragoman might be all that we have left from those long-ago people. Atar is also a new word for me. I'm not sure of its meaning. It may mean something like "fire." Anyway, a dragoman is an interpreter, translator, or guide, a sort of go-between in relations between Easterners and Westerners. Kline is supposed to have been fluent in Arabic and to have been well acquainted with individual people and wider cultures from what was then called the Orient. Maybe he fancied himself as a kind of dragoman.

The Dragoman was on the cover of at least three issues of Oriental Stories. I say at least three because a couple of other covers--one for Oriental Stories and one for The Magic Carpet Magazine--are ambiguous. Maybe they're of the Dragoman and maybe they're not. Anyway, these three covers appear below. The first, from Summer 1931, was by Donald von Gelb. The second, from Winter 1932, was by J. Allen St. John. And the third, from Summer 1932, was by Margaret Brundage.

Text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Buccaneers of Venus on the Cover of Weird Tales

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb) lists three books in the Venus series written by Otis Adelbert Kline. These are under the name of the main character, Grandon:

First is The Planet of Peril, which was published in hardback in 1929 and in a six-part serial in Argosy All-Story Weekly from July 20 to August 24, 1929.

Next is The Prince of Peril, which was published in hardback in 1930 and in a six-part serial in Argosy, from August 2 to September 6, 1930.

The last part of the trilogy was entitled "Buccaneers of Venus" for publication in Weird Tales. It appeared as a six-part serial in that magazine from November 1932 to April 1933. "Buccaneers of Venus" was published in book form as The Port of Peril in 1949.

We should note that the coming of the Great Depression intervened between the publication of the first and second books. That might explain the change in the title of Argosy All-Story Weekly to just Argosy. (And what a great title for a story magazine it is.) The early thirties were the worst years of the Depression. That might explain why Kline's Venus books moved from Argosy to the low-rent pages of Weird Tales between 1930 and 1932.

Anyway, like "Tam, Son of the Tiger" before it, "Buccaneers of Venus" was featured on the cover of four issues of Weird Tales. These were done by J. Allen St. John (1872-1957). Curtis C. Senf (1873-1949) had done the four covers for Kline's "Tam, Son of the Tiger." That was another change during those transition years of the early Depression, for Senf slowly gave way to two new cover artists for Weird Tales, J. Allen St. John and Margaret Brundage (1900-1976). Senf's last cover for the magazine was for the issue of September 1932.

"Buccaneers of Venus" was not only a serial but also the final adventure of a series character. As you can see from the information above, Grandon's previous adventures were in a different magazine.

Here are J. Allen St. John's four covers illustrating the story:

Text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Tam, Son of the Tiger on the Cover of Weird Tales

Otis Adelbert Kline wrote two long serials for Weird Tales. "Tam, Son of the Tiger" came first. It was in six parts, from June/July to December 1931. Next came "Buccaneers of Venus." It was also in six parts, but the history of Kline's Venus books is a little more complicated than that of "Tam, Son of the Tiger." I'll have more in the next part of this series.

"Tam, Son of the Tiger" was the cover story of four issues of Weird Tales. To devote so many covers to a single story was unprecedented in the history of the magazine. The only thing that might compare is Harry Houdini's three consecutive cover stories in March through May/June/July 1924, and Seabury Quinn's three consecutive cover stories in March through May 1930. However, those were three different stories from each of those two authors. Otis Adelbert Kline would repeat his feat of four consecutive covers with "Buccaneers of Venus," published more than a year after "Tam, Son of the Tiger."

The title character in Kline's story is Tam Evans, a boy carried off by a white tigress into the jungles of Burma. The story of a child raised by wild animals is as old as time. Romulus and Remus were suckled by a she-wolf. Mowgli was raised by wolves, too. And of course Tarzan is of the apes. But Kline gave his story of a jungle orphan a twist, for "Tam, Son of the Tiger" is also a Lost Worlds story. In this case, the Lost World is underground. Called Irimatri, it is vast, populated by strange people, and inhabited by equally strange creatures. The people of Irimatri are bent on conquering the surface of the earth. And now all of a sudden, this sounds familiar . . .

It sounds like the Shaver Mystery of the 1940s and '50s . . .

And the setting sounds like Fred Crisman's fateful flight from Burma and his encounter with malevolent beings--Richard Shaver's dero--somewhere under the continent of Asia . . . 

So were Richard S. Shaver and Fred Crisman inspired by "Tam, Son of the Tiger"? And can we call "Tam, Son of the Tiger" a kind of Hollow Earth story? Like Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar series? Well, for a very interesting discussion of "Tam, Son of the Tiger," see "Lost Worlds and Jungle Tales of Otis Adelbert Kline," Part 2, by Den Valdron at the website ERBzine, here.

* * *

The cover artist on "Tam, Son of the Tiger" was an old standby, Curtis C. Senf (1873-1949). 

Text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Otis Adelbert Kline-Three Questions

Three questions have come up in my reading and writing about Otis Adelbert Kline:

Question #1: Which came first, Kline or Burroughs?

When I wrote about Maza of the Moon (1930) on November 13, 2021, I wrote:

It seems clear to me that Kline followed Burroughs' successes by writing in each of the older writer's genres and using all of the same kinds of settings: the Moon, Mars, Venus, the jungles of Earth, and so on.

But is that really true? (I use the words book and story here synonymously.)

The Moon

• Edgar Rice Burroughs' first Moon book was The Moon Maid, published in 1923.
• Otis Adelbert Kline's first Moon book was Maza of the Moon, published in 1929-1930.

Mars

• Edgar Rice Burroughs' first Mars book was Under the Moons of Mars, published in 1912.
• Otis Adelbert Kline's first Mars book was The Swordsman of Mars, published in 1930.

Venus

• Edgar Rice Burroughs' first Venus book was Pirates of Venus, published in 1932.
• Otis Adelbert Kline's first Venus book was The Planet of Peril, published in 1929.
• Ralph Milne Farley (1887-1963) beat them both with his first Venus book, The Radio Man, published in Argosy in four parts, June 28 through July 19, 1924.

Jungle Orphan

• Edgar Rice Burroughs' first Jungle Orphan book was Tarzan of the Apes, published in 1912.
• Otis Adelbert Kline's first Jungle Orphan books were Jan of the Jungle (originally "Call of the Savage," published as a six-part serial in Argosy, April 18 to May 23, 1931) and Tam, Son of the Tiger, published in Weird Tales as a six-part serial in June/July to December 1931.

So, it looks like Burroughs was first in every case except for that of Venus, and there, Farley came before Kline.

Question #2: Is there something amiss in Maza of the Moon when it comes to its length?

Again, when I wrote about Maza of the Moon about a month ago, I wrote:

In many places, too, Maza of the Moon isn't a novel so much as a simple plot summary. Some of John W. Campbell's early stories have the same kind of simplistic structure in which vast and myriad events are summarized in mere sentences or paragraphs. I guess you've got to tell your whole story within the confines of a popular magazine no matter how much skimping is involved. 

The skimping in Kline's book seems obvious. Is there an explanation? There is actually. In a letter dated August 9, 1929, Argosy editor Archie H. Bittner (1897-1966) informed Kline that Maza of the Moon was too long and instructed Kline to cut it down from 60,000 words to 40,000 words. (1) Probably every story can use some cutting, but reducing his story by a third must have been a tall order for Kline. It's no wonder that Maza of the Moon turned out the way it did. I wonder if Kline's story still exists in its original form. I doubt that it does, and so we have to make do with the truncated version.

Question #3: Did Otis Adelbert Kline write the longest serials published in Weird Tales?

From its first issue in March 1923 until mid 1941, Weird Tales published serialized stories. Otis Adelbert Kline wrote the first, "The Thing of a Thousand Shapes," which appeared in the issues of March and April 1923. H.P. Lovecraft wrote the last, "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward," which appeared posthumously in May and June 1941. (I'm not counting Lovecraft's series "Herbert West: Reanimator," which was in nonconsecutive issues from March 1942 to November 1943.) Kline had two six-part serials in Weird Tales, "Tam, Son of the Tiger" (June/July through Dec. 1931) and "Buccaneers of Venus" (Nov. 1932 through Apr. 1933). Were there other serials of at least six parts? Well . . .

• "Draconda" by John Martin Leahy was a six-part serial in November 1923 to May-June-July 1924.
• "The Wolf Leader" by Alexandre Dumas was an eight-part "Weird Story Reprint" in August 1931 to March 1932.
• "The Devil's Bride" by Seabury Quinn was a six-part serial in February to July 1932.
• "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley was an eight-part "Weird Story Reprint" in May to December 1932.
• "Golden Blood" by Jack Williamson was a six-part serial in April to September 1933.
• "The Trail of the Cloven Hoof" by Arlton Eadie was a seven-part serial in July to December 1934.

So, no, Otis Adelbert Kline did not write the longest serial in Weird Tales, Arlton Eadie did. But Kline wrote two out of the six longest, for whatever that's worth.

(I will split hairs here: Alexandre Dumas and Mary Shelley did not submit their stories to the magazine, and though they were serialized, they weren't what you would call classic pulp serials. They were in fact nineteenth-century book-length novels or romances cut into parts in order to fit the pulp format.)

Next: More Otis Adelbert Kline

Note

(1) Reprinted in OAK Leaves #6 (Winter 1971-1972), page 3.

The Outlaws of Mars by Otis Adelbert Kline, originally published in Argosy (Nov. 25, 1933-Jan. 6, 1934) and reprinted by Ace Books in 1961 with a cover by an uncredited artist. Note the blurb: "Interplanetary adventure in the best Edgar Rice Burroughs tradition." I haven't read this book, but I can say that Maza of the Moon by Kline is a better book than is "The Moon Maid" by Burroughs. Most of that has to do with Kline's more modern prose style versus Burroughs' archaic Victorian (or pseudo-Victorian) style.

Note, too, the airship on this cover. The artist had the benefit of hindsight, but he or she made his or her airship like those of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century imagination. Call it a meta/retro image. Jabba's sail barge from Return of the Jedi (1983) looks a little like this unknown artist's airship.

Text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Otis Adelbert Kline (1891-1946)

Laborer, Compositor, Pressman, Salesman, Manufacturing Chemist, Advertising Manager, Songwriter, Music Publisher, Silent Movie Scenarist, Writer of Plots for Skits and Revues, Author, Manuscript Reader, Editor, Literary Agent, Outdoorsman, Orientalist
Born July 1, 1891, Chicago, Illinois
Died October 24, 1946, at home, Short Beach, Connecticut

Otis Adelbert Kline was there at the start. He wrote the first serial published in Weird Tales and worked as a reader of manuscripts for Edwin Baird (1886-1954), the first editor of the magazine. (1) Entitled "The Thing of a Thousand Shapes," Kline's serial appeared in the first two issues of Weird Tales, March and April 1923. It was also his first published story. Kline had three more stories in Weird Tales during that first year and two more in the second. Thereafter he was a occasional contributor from 1927 to 1943, twice with one friend, E. Hoffman Price (1898-1988), and once with another, Frank Belknap Long (1901-1994). In that time, too, Kline's writing career outside of "The Unique Magazine" took off. For a time, he was thought of as a rival of Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950). There were even rumors of a feud between the two.

Otis Adelbert Kline was born on July 1, 1891, in Chicago, Illinois. His father was Louis A. Kline (1864-1938), a farmer, druggist, violin salesman, and chemical manufacturer. According to the Find A Grave website entry on him, Kline the elder was also a member of the Knights Templar and a writer "[m]ostly in favor of Prohibition." Kline's mother was Ora K. (Sides) Kline (1870-1949). The couple were married in 1888. Otis Kline grew up on his parents' farm, which was located west of Chicago, in Coloma Township, Whiteside County, Illinois, along with his younger brother Allen Sides Kline (1893-1971). Kline remembered that his father had "quite a large, well-chosen library." Louis Kline was interested in astronomy. When he was a boy, Kline and his father talked about the possibility of life on other planets. Both read H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds when it came out in 1898. "Perhaps the greatest thrill of all," Kline wrote, "was when Dad and I went together to look through the big telescope at Northwestern University. We had splendid views of Jupiter and Saturn but Mars, which we had wanted chiefly to see, was too low in the mists to be clear." Just as well. Mars should probably remain in the mists for every young and aspiring author of fantasy and science fiction. (2)

In his youth, Kline knocked about the country doing various jobs. He got his first notice in the nation's newspapers by writing songs. He started writing stories for publication after his thirtieth birthday. Weird Tales came along at just the right time. That first year, 1923-1924, was rough for the magazine. It nearly foundered. Edwin Baird left as editor at the end of the first year. Kline took over and edited the jumbo-sized first anniversary issue, dated May-June-July 1924, and wrote, anonymously, the editorial "Why Weird Tales?", which has been reprinted again and again since then. By the time the next issue was published in November 1924, Farnsworth Wright was at the helm.

In the early 1920s, Kline provided a lot of wordage to Weird Tales and other pulp magazines. His story "The Phantom Wolfhound" (Weird Tales, June 1923) introduced Dr. Dorp, an occult detective, and one of Kline's many series characters. Dr. Dorp was also in "The Malignant Entity" (Weird Tales, May/June/July 1924) and "The Radio Ghost" (Amazing Stories, Sept. 1927). Kline also wrote stories of detective Byrd Wright, nicknamed The Ferret, for Detective Tales and Flynn's Detective Weekly; Two-Gun Bart Leslie for Weird Tales, Real Detective Tales, and Young People's Weekly; and a non-fiction filler, "Curious Crimes," for Detective Tales in 1923.

The years 1925-1926 were drought years for Kline as far as Weird Tales was concerned. In its first year, the magazine had paid a penny per word. That rate dropped to 1/2 cent per word in Wright's first couple of years as editor. Once the rate returned to one cent per word, in 1926 or 1927, Kline returned, too. He soon became a star writer for the magazine and was paid 1-1/2 cents per word. In 1931, as Kline lay in the hospital, Bill Sprenger, the business manager of Weird Tales, fronted him $500 for his unfinished serial "Tam, Son of the Tiger." Kline recalled: "I never knew anyone to shoot squarer with a person, than that." (3)

In 1930, Weird Tales instituted a companion magazine, Oriental Stories. The title was changed to The Magic Carpet Magazine in 1933 and ceased publication in January 1934. Kline was there at the beginning of those two titles, too. In fact, he was the only author to have a story in each of the first issues of Weird Tales, Oriental Stories, and The Magic Carpet Magazine. Kline and Hoffman were known as Orientalists. Kline is supposed to have spoken fluent Arabic. Oriental Stories/The Magic Carpet Magazine would have been right up his alley. He contributed eight stories to those titles altogether. 

Kline's series character the Dragoman was in Oriental Stories and The Magic Carpet Magazine. There were seven of these, the first being "The Man Who Limped," from the October/November 1930 issue. The last was "The Dragoman's Pilgrimage," from January 1933. Kline's eighth story for that companion magazine to Weird Tales is "The Vengeance of Sa'ik," from December/January 1931.

Otis Kline began selling stories for Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) in 1933 and continued as Howard's agent even after his death in 1936. Kline's agency, Otis Kline Associates, was sold to Oscar J. Friend (1897-1963) after Kline's death. Friend died in 1963 and the agency was dissolved. Only then did Glenn Lord (1931-2011) take over as the literary executor--and champion--of Robert E. Howard. Kline was also an agent for Carl Jacobi (1908-1997), Otto Binder (1911-1974), and Bertrand L. Shurtleff (1897-1967). Binder worked a year for Kline as an assistant in Kline's literary agency in New York City.

Again and again, those who wrote about Otis Adelbert Kline remarked on his tastes for good food, wine, spirits, and tobacco. If he was ever healthy, Kline had become, before aged forty, stricken with ailments. Nonetheless, he was, like E. Hoffman Price, a man of action. Like Price (and Robert A. Heinlein), Kline was a swordsman. He also enjoyed outdoor activities, including fishing, hunting, hiking, boating, swimming, and clamming. He worked mostly as a literary agent beginning in about 1936. In 1936, he moved from Chicago to New York City, then in 1940 to Short Beach, Connecticut. His wife and daughters helped him out in his work. They seem to have been a happy family. Tending over the years towards portliness, Kline suffered a heart attack and a stroke at home and died on October 24, 1946. He was just fifty-five years old. His friend Eric Frank Russell (1905-1978) wrote of him: "A more likeable [sic] individual it would be hard to find. Plump, jovial, generous, he seemed to have hundreds of friends and no enemies." (4)

Otis Adelbert Kline's Essay, Serials, Stories, and Poems in Weird Tales, Oriental Stories, and The Magic Carpet Magazine (All credits listed here are for short stories except where otherwise noted.)

• "The Thing of a Thousand Shapes" in Weird Tales (two-part serial, Mar.-Apr. 1923)
• "The Phantom Wolfhound" in Weird Tales (June 1923)-Dr. Dorp
• "The Corpse on the Third Slab" in Weird Tales (July/Aug. 1923)
• "The Cup of Blood" in Weird Tales (Sept. 1923; reprinted June 1935)
• "The Malignant Entity" in Weird Tales (May/June/July 1924; reprinted in Amazing Stories, June 1926)-Dr. Dorp
• "Why Weird Tales?" in Weird Tales (also attributed to Edwin Baird) (essay; May/June/July 1924)
• "The Phantom Rider" in Weird Tales (Nov. 1924)
• "The Bride of Osiris" in Weird Tales (three-part serial, Aug.-Sept.-Oct. 1927)
• "The Demon of Tlaxpam" in Weird Tales (Jan. 1929)-Two-Gun Bart Leslie
• "But Was It?" in Weird Tales (poem; Sept. 1929)
• "The Bird-People" in Weird Tales (Jan. 1930)
• "Thirsty Blades" with E. Hoffman Price in Weird Tales (Feb. 1930)-Ismeddin
• "The Man Who Limped" in Oriental Stories (Oct./Nov. 1930)-The Dragoman
• "The Vengeance of Sa'ik" in Oriental Stories (Dec. 1930/Jan. 1931)
• "The Dragoman's Revenge" in Oriental Stories (Feb./Mar. 1931)-The Dragoman
• "The Dragoman's Secret" in Oriental Stories (Apr./May/June 1931)-The Dragoman
• "The Dragoman's Slave Girl" in Oriental Stories (Summer 1931)-The Dragoman
• "Tam, Son of the Tiger" in Weird Tales (six-part serial, June/July through Dec. 1931)
• "The Dragoman's Jest" in Oriental Stories; with E. Hoffman Price (Winter 1932)-The Dragoman
• "The Dragoman's Confession" in Oriental Stories (Summer 1932)-The Dragoman
• "The Gallows Tree" in Weird Tales (poem; Feb. 1932)
• "Midnight Madness" in Weird Tales (Apr. 1932)
• "Buccaneers of Venus" in Weird Tales (six-part serial, Nov. 1932 through Apr. 1933)
• "The Dragoman's Pilgrimage" in The Magic Carpet Magazine (Jan. 1933)-The Dragoman
• "Lord of the Lamia" in Weird Tales (three-part serial, Mar.-Apr.-May 1935)
• "The Cyclops of Xoatl" with E. Hoffman Price in Weird Tales (Dec. 1936)-Two-Gun Bart Leslie
• "Spotted Satan" with E. Hoffman Price in Weird Tales (Jan. 1940)
• "Return of the Undead" with Frank Belknap Long in Weird Tales (July 1943)

Further Reading

• The Compleat OAK Leaves: The Official Journal of Otis Adelbert Kline and His Works, edited by David Anthony Kraft (Clayton, GA: Fictioneer Books, 1980).
• Book of the Dead: Friends of Yesteryear: Fictioneers & Others by E. Hoffman Price (Arkham House, 2001).

Notes
(1) Farnsworth Wright (1888-1940) was also one of Baird's readers.
(2) From "Reflections" by Otis Adelbert Kline, in OAK Leaves #11 (1975), pp. 3-4.
(3) Kline, in a letter to Dr. I.M. Howard, April 1, 1941, reprinted in OAK Leaves #1 (Fall 1970), p. 7.
(4) Quoted in "Otis A. Kline Dead," originally in The Fantasy Review, reprinted in OAK Leaves #1 (Fall 1970), p. 12.

Next: Otis Adelbert Kline-Three Questions

Otis Adelbert Kline (1891-1946).

Revised and omissions corrected on December 11, 2021.

Original text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

And Now for Something Completely Different . . .

Not long ago, I wrote about Robert Sheckley and his short science fiction novel The Status Civilization (1960). Now I have reason to write about Sheckley again. That has come about in an unexpected way, by our watching the first part of the documentary The Beatles: Get Back, which is new this season. The scene is Twickenham Film Studios in London. The date is January 8, 1969. The Beatles have been rehearsing for a planned concert. George Harrison arrives in the morning with a snippet of a song he wrote the night before. He talks about his inspiration for the song. The night before, he watched BBC television, first an episode of the science fiction anthology show Out of the Unknown, then a program called Europa--The Titled and the Untitled. That episode of Out of the Unknown is an adaptation of Robert Sheckley's 1959 novel Immortality, Inc.

If you had told me that the Beatles ever wrote and recorded a waltz, I would have been skeptical. But there it is, a waltz in "I Me Mine," written on January 7, 1969, recorded on January 3, 1970, and released on the album Let It Be on May 8, 1970. George was inspired by the waltzing background music in Europa--The Titled and the Untitled. It isn't clear to me how--or whether--he might have been inspired by Immortality, Inc. However, the lyrics of "I Me Mine" have a spiritual meaning. I haven't read Immortality, Inc., but maybe its subject matter led George Harrison down a certain path. I suspect the discord among the members of the group--their clash of egos--also had something to do with Harrison's song. Anyway, if you had told me that the Beatles ever wrote and recorded a song inspired by science fiction, I would have been skeptical of that, too. Other bands did it: the Byrds ("C.T.A. 102," "Mr. Spaceman"), Jimi Hendrix ("Purple Haze," "Third Stone from the Sun"), Jefferson Starship (Blows Against the Empire), and so on. But the Beatles? And then I watched Dick Cavett's interview with George Harrison from 1971, and more than once, the ex-Beatle says, "Big Brother is watching you." So he knew a little about science fiction.

And, yes, Big Brother is watching us.

(George Harrison also mentioned Monty Python's Flying Circus in his interview, thus the title of this entry. It occurs to me that the name of the troupe very faintly echoes the title of a Beatles album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.)

Thanks to Hlafbrot for pointing out the connection between science fiction and the music of Jimi Hendrix.

Copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley