John Jakes (1932-2023)

Author, Advertising Copywriter
Born March 31, 1932, Chicago, Illinois
Died March 11, 2023, Sarasota, Florida

John Jakes has died. Known for his vastly popular historical novels, the late Mr. Jakes got his start as an author of science fiction and fantasy stories. His first published story was "The Dreaming Trees" in Fantastic Adventures, November 1950. According to Isaac Asimov, the Golden Age of Science Fiction ended in 1950. If that's the measure, then John Jakes just barely slipped in before that age came to an end.

John Jakes could have been in Weird Tales, but he wasn't. By the time "The Unique Magazine" folded, he had had nearly three dozen of his stories published, in Fantastic Adventures, Amazing Stories, Super Science Stories, Planet Stories, Imagination, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Space Science Fiction, Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader, Rocket Stories, and Cosmos Science Fiction and Fantasy. He also wrote Westerns and crime and detective stories. Weird Tales was on its way down in the 1950s, while magazine science fiction was taking off. You could hardly have blamed John Jakes for choosing one over the other. (Or maybe he submitted stories to Weird Tales but was turned down.) He certainly wasn't above writing stories of fantasy. A later phase of his career proved as much.

In the early 1960s, Mr. Jakes began writing stories of a yellow-haired warrior loose in a world of monsters and magic. In his "Prefatory Note" to Brak the Barbarian (1968), he acknowledged writing his Brak stories in the shadow of Robert E. Howard. He did so not out of cupidity, as a letter writer to Fantastic Stories of the Imagination had suggested. "My motive for giving birth to Brak and his parallel universe on an old black Underwood was much simpler," the author explained. "There just are not enough stories of this kind to go around any more; not enough, anyway, to please me." And so he wrote.

Fantastic Stories of Imagination published the first Brak story, "Devils in the Walls," in May 1963. Eight more followed, plus several novels and collections of stories, some of which are variants of the original eight stories. I haven't done a close enough study of the Brak stories to say just how many of them there are, but it looks like there are twelve. Also, we shouldn't forget a Brak comic book story, "Spell of the Dragon," with a script by Dan Adkins and John Jakes and artwork by Adkins, Val Mayerik, and Al Milgrom, published in Marvel Comics' Chamber of Chills #2  in January 1973. That makes thirteen.

I have compiled the following lists from information in The FictionMags Index, the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, and Wikipedia, and by consulting my own collection of Brak books:

Brak Stories by John Jakes:

• "Devils in the Walls" in Fantastic Stories of Imagination (May 1963)
•  "Witch of the Four Winds" in Fantastic Stories of Imagination (serial, Nov.-Dec. 1963)
•  "When the Idols Walked" in Fantastic Stories of Imagination (serial, Aug.-Sept. 1964)
•  "The Girl in the Gem" in Fantastic Stories of Imagination (Jan. 1965)
•  "The Pillars of Chambalor" in Fantastic Stories of Imagination (Mar. 1965)
•  "The Silk of Shaitan" in Fantastic Stories of Imagination (Apr. 1965)
•  "The Mirror of Wizardry" in Worlds of Fantasy, Vol. 1, No. 1, (1968)
•  "Ghoul’s Garden" in Flashing Swords! #2, edited by Lin Carter (1973)
•  "Storm in a Bottle" in Flashing Swords! #4, edited by Lin Carter (1977)

Brak Books by John Jakes:

• Brak the Barbarian (1968), collecting "The Unspeakable Shrine," "Flame Face," "The Courts of the Conjurer" (variant of "The Silk of Shaitan"), "Ghosts of Stone" (variant of "The Pillars of Chambalor"), and "The Barge of Souls"  
• Brak the Barbarian Versus the Sorceress (1969), originally "Witch of the Four Winds"
• Brak the Barbarian Versus the Mark of the Demons (1970)
• When the Idols Walked (1978), originally "When the Idols Walked"
• The Fortunes of Brak (1980), collecting "Devils in the Walls," "Ghoul's Garden," "The Girl in the Gem," "Brak in Chains" (variant of "Storm in a Bottle"), and "The Mirror of Wizardry"

I have stopped before the current age of non-books called "books" began.

John Jakes was born in Chicago; graduated from DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, in 1953; earned his masters degree at Ohio State University; and worked as an advertising copywriter in Dayton, Ohio, before setting off in 1971 to become a full-time author. (His prefaces were dispatched from Kettering, Ohio.) He sold millions of books from the 1970s to the 1990s, and several of his historical novels were adapted to TV miniseries. He lived on Bird Key in Sarasota, Florida, and died in Sarasota on March 11, 2023. Today would have been his ninety-first birthday. We send condolences to his family, wish John Jakes a happy birthday, and say thank you to him for the reading pleasure he has given the world.

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I wrote about John Jakes in my essay "They Should Have Been in Weird Tales," published in The Weird Tales Story, Expanded and Enhanced, edited by Robert Weinberg and Bob McLain (2021).

Fantastic Stories of Imagination, May 1963. Cover story: "Devils in the Walls" by John Jakes. Cover art by Vernon Kramer.

Fantastic Stories of Imagination, January 1965. Cover story: "The Girl in the Gem" by John Jakes. Cover art by Ed Emshwiller. Notice the tentacles in the lower right.

Fantastic Stories of Imagination, March 1965. Cover story: "The Pillars of Chambalor" by John Jakes. Cover art by Gray Morrow.

Brak the Barbarian (1968), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.

Brak the Barbarian Versus the Sorceress (1969), with arresting cover art by Frazetta.

Brak the Barbarian Versus the Mark of the Demons (1970), with cover art by Michael Leonard.

Brak vs. the Sorceress (1977), with cover art by Charles Moll.

Brak vs. the Mark of the Demons (1977), again with cover art by Mr. Moll.

The Fantastic Swordsmen (1967) with a cover story "The Girl in the Gem" by John Jakes and cover art by his friend, Jack Gaughan. Again there are tentacles.

Flashing Swords #2 (1973), with cover art by Frazetta illustrating "Ghoul's Garden" by John Jakes.

Thanks to my correspondent for letting me know about the passing of John Jakes.

Original text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley