Marvin Kaye (1938-2021)

Né Marvin Nathan Katz

Author, Journalist, Editor, Publisher, Anthologist, Teacher, Magician, Actor, Comedian, Playwright, Stage Director

Born March 10, 1938, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Died May 13, 2021, New York, New York

Marvin Kaye died last year. He was the editor of Weird Tales magazine from 2012 to 2019. There were four issues published in that time, Fall 2012 (Elder Gods Issue), Summer 2013 (Fairy Tales Issue), Spring 2014 (Undead Issue), and 2019 (No. 363). There has been just one issue published since then, in 2020 (No. 364), this one under the editorship of Jonathan Maberry. Mr. Kaye was also the editor of six issues--the entire run--of H. P. Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror, from 2004 to 2009.

Marvin Nathan Katz was born on March 10, 1938, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents were Morris Katz (b. March 7, 1902, Joprow, Austria-Hungary; d. ?) and Theresa (Baroski, Barosky, Barowski, or Barowsky) Katz (b. May 30, 1904, Pennsylvania or New Jersey; d. March 16, 1966, Orlando, Florida). Morris Katz served on the Mexican border with the U.S. 13th and 6th Cavalry Regiments in 1917, so either he was a young teenager when he served or his birth year is inaccurate. I wouldn't rule out the former nor the latter. Either or both could be true.

The Katz family were Jewish. Marvin Katz was born in the same month as the Anschluss, in which Nazi Germany took over Austria. I don't know where in the old Austria-Hungary is the city or town of Joprow. Maybe Morris Katz's native place fell under Hitler's reign in the same week that his son was born. By the way, Marvin Katz was also born 360 days after the death of H.P. Lovecraft.

Morris and Theresa Katz were married in 1925 in Philadelphia. They had four children, Dorothy H. (1926-2020), Evelyn S. (1928-2017), Harold D. (1929-2001), and Marvin N. (1938-2021). You can find more about Marvin Kaye's life and career in other places on the Internet. I'll include here that he married Saralee Bransdorf on August 4, 1963, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. They had one daughter, Terry. She survives. We offer her and the whole Kaye family and their friends our condolences.

I don't know whether Marvin Katz ever changed his surname legally to Kaye. And whether it was a legal or literary move, I don't know when the change might have happened. Marvin Kaye's first science fiction or fantasy credits listed in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb) are from 1975. Dozens of essays and other writing and editing credits followed, the last coming in 2019. It looks like Marvin Kaye was the one who originated the moniker "Weird Tales: The Magazine that Never Dies" in an anthology of the same name published in 1988. His wife, Saralee Kaye (1942-2006), was co-editor of that book and several others.

I wrote about Marvin Kaye in August 2015 regarding a then-recent Weird Tales controversy. Click here to read Part One of that series. I may have been a little hard on Marvin Kaye at that time. I may have written about some things beyond my direct knowledge. But then one of the problems then as now with Weird Tales is that there seems to be an effort on the part of the editors and publishers to hide what really goes on with the magazine. My question is Why? It's not like national security is at risk. (Secrecy is usually a pretty good sign of dysfunction in any organization, including in families.) Just tell us, the reading public, what is happening and let us figure out for ourselves how we ought to think about things. Anyway, I hope that I didn't give offense. If I did, I apologize.

Marvin Kaye was certainly multitalented. He had an admirable career, the kind that few men or women born in later decades have been able to attain. We should be thankful to him--and his wife--for bringing so much back from the past and placing it before us so that we might all enjoy it once again. Marvin Nathan (Katz) Kaye died on May 13, 2021, in New York City. He was eighty-three years old.

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We have had another death in our own family. This is one too many. I will continue to write, but this year, which started out so well, has suddenly become one filled with grief for all of us.

Text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

Readings Over Christmas No. 2-The "Lomokome" Papers by Herman Wouk

On the Monday after Christmas we drove all the way to the top of the great state of Indiana. We ate lunch in a local restaurant, visited a local museum, and shopped at a national chain, Half Price Books, the only store that I'm likely to name on this blog. I found a few books, including The "Lomokome" Papers by Herman Wouk (Pocket Books, 1968). I had not known that the late Mr. Wouk (1915-2019) wrote a science fiction story. I was happy to find it, especially considering that it's illustrated. The artist was Harry R. Bennett (1919-2012), a near contemporary of the author.

Herman Wouk wrote a preface to the paperback edition of his story. It's dated May 27, 1967, his fifty-second birthday. He wrote that he was inspired to try his hand at science fiction by reading Marjorie Hope Nicolson's "charming book" Voyages to the Moon (1948). "The moon trip can be a romantic adventure, a social satire, or a utopian sermon," Wouk wrote. "Mine is a mixture of these." The "Lomokome" Papers has a good deal in common with The Moon Maid (1925) by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Maza of the Moon (1929-1930) by Otis Adelbert Kline, including a crashdown on the Moon's surface, the captivity of the lunanaut, an examination of lunar society, and accounts of war among the people of Earth's lone natural satellite.

The word Lomokome deserves explanation. According to the author, it's a Hebrew word meaning "Utopia" or "Nowhere." So we have another utopian/dystopian work, as well as another utopian/dystopian work about the Moon and its necessarily alien society, one that may be uncomfortably close to our own. The "Lomokome" Papers is self-consciously in the tradition of the fantastic voyages of literature dating from ancient times to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Many of these are satires, as is Wouk's short novel, the narrator of which is Lt. Daniel More Butler, USN, his name self-consciously derived from the names Daniel Defoe, Thomas More, and Samuel Butler. What Lt. Butler discovers on the Moon is a solution to the murderous destruction of warfare. What he finds, we would not like.

The "Lomokome" Papers was written in 1949 and apparently first published in Collier's in its issue of February 17, 1956. Again, Wouk wrote his preface on May 27, 1967. According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb), the paperback edition was published in March 1968. My edition, with Harry Bennett's cover as shown below, is dated May 1968. It has since been published in Italian- and German-language editions. The timing of all of this is worth knowing, for The "Lomokome" Papers, in its proposed solution to the problem of war, is very much like the Star Trek episode "A Taste of Armageddon," written by Gene L. Coon and broadcast on February 23, 1967. Rather, it's the other way around. I have a feeling that if you look closely enough, you will find the roots or inspiration for many, if not most, Star Trek episodes in the magazine and book science fiction of the 1940s, '50s, and early '60s.

Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

Readings Over Christmas No. 1-Mention My Name in Atlantis by John Jakes

I read a lot last year. Book No. 51 was Mention My Name in Atlantis by John Jakes (Daw Books, 1972). Mr. Jakes' book is a kind of mock epic. The lead character and narrator is a Falstaffian figure called Hoptor the Vintner. His sometimes sidekick is Conax the Chimerical, king of a land of barbarians. Mention My Name in Atlantis is also a satire and a parody, including of the typical heroic fantasy hero and pulp writing in general. Here is an illustrative passage:

     "Pox on your map-makers!" screamed Conax. "Can I help it if those feeble-eyed fops are ignorant? I'd invite them to visit, but the thin-blooded villains would surely freeze their privates the minute they crossed the borders of my noble northern nation!"

     "He has florid rhetoric," observed General Pytho. "Rather like the purple phrasing of the tellers of adventure tales, who swap their narratives for a tenth of a zeb a word in the scroll mart." (p. 52)

The story is set in Atlantis and explains what happened to that now sunken continent. In addition to Atlantis, there are other Fortean subjects, namely ancient astronauts, alien abductions, and flying saucers, which are initially interpreted as omens of disaster. (Disaster comes.) All are made continuous with heroic fantasy, a development that seems sure to have irritated purists of both Forteana and Howardiana (if there is such a word). That seems fine to me.

The cover of Mention My Name in Atlantis is by H.J. Bruck (1921-1995), a German-born artist. Bruck included at least two Frazetta swipes in his composition:

Here are the originals:

Look closely. You'll find them. Look closer still and you may find more.

Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

Three New Pages

Happy New Year and best wishes to everyone for a better, healthier, and more prosperous 2022.

I have added three new pages to Tellers of Weird Tales. They are:

• Why Weird Tales?-The entire text of the essay, written anonymously by Otis Adelbert Kline and appearing in Weird Tales for May/June/July 1924.

• Weird Tales Editors, Publishers, & Staff-A list of names with links to other places on this blog.

• Other Artists, Authors, & Editors-Another list of names with links.

The second and third of these pages are works in progress. I'll update them as I can. These and other pages are listed on the right. Click on them or the titles above for links.

Thanks to all who read and comment on my blog. This is a much better place with your participation. I invite new readers, researchers, and commenters to come and stay.

Text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley