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.

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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