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