Ichabod Lovecraft-Part One

In late September, near the beginning of my five-weeks-and-a-day, I re-read "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving (1820) for the first time in a very long time. Irving's story begins with a long passage meant to introduce setting and to establish a sense of place, more specifically, the sense of a marvelous place where strange, magical, and supernatural events might occur:

     In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic. Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley or rather lap of land among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.

     I recollect that, when a stripling, my first exploit in squirrel-shooting was in a grove of tall walnut-trees that shades one side of the valley. I had wandered into it at noontime, when all nature is peculiarly quiet, and was startled by the roar of my own gun, as it broke the Sabbath stillness around and was prolonged and reverberated by the angry echoes. If ever I should wish for a retreat whither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley.

     From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of SLEEPY HOLLOW, and its rustic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the neighboring country. A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say that the place was bewitched by a High German doctor, during the early days of the settlement; others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his powwows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs, are subject to trances and visions, and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.

Readers of weird fiction might be struck by the similarity of that passage to the following later one:

     When a traveller in north central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean's Corners he comes upon a lonely and curious country. The ground gets higher, and the brier-bordered stone walls press closer and closer against the ruts of the dusty, curving road. The trees of the frequent forest belts seem too large, and the wild weeds, brambles, and grasses attain a luxuriance not often found in settled regions. At the same time the planted fields appear singularly few and barren; while the sparsely scattered houses wear a surprisingly uniform aspect of age, squalor, and dilapidation. Without knowing why, one hesitates to ask directions from the gnarled, solitary figures spied now and then on crumbling doorsteps or on the sloping, rock-strown meadows. Those figures are so silent and furtive that one feels somehow confronted by forbidden things, with which it would be better to have nothing to do. When a rise in the road brings the mountains in view above the deep woods, the feeling of strange uneasiness is increased. The summits are too rounded and symmetrical to give a sense of comfort and naturalness, and sometimes the sky silhouettes with especial clearness the queer circles of tall stone pillars with which most of them are crowned.

     Gorges and ravines of problematical depth intersect the way, and the crude wooden bridges always seem of dubious safety. When the road dips again there are stretches of marshland that one instinctively dislikes, and indeed almost fears at evening when unseen whippoorwills chatter and the fireflies come out in abnormal profusion to dance to the raucous, creepily insistent rhythms of stridently piping bull-frogs. The thin, shining line of the Miskatonic's upper reaches has an oddly serpent-like suggestion as it winds close to the feet of the domed hills among which it rises.

     As the hills draw nearer, one heeds their wooded sides more than their stone-crowned tops. Those sides loom up so darkly and precipitously that one wishes they would keep their distance, but there is no road by which to escape them. Across a covered bridge one sees a small village huddled between the stream and the vertical slope of Round Mountain, and wonders at the cluster of rotting gambrel roofs bespeaking an earlier architectural period than that of the neighbouring region. It is not reassuring to see, on a closer glance, that most of the houses are deserted and falling to ruin, and that the broken-steepled church now harbours the one slovenly mercantile establishment of the hamlet. One dreads to trust the tenebrous tunnel of the bridge, yet there is no way to avoid it. Once across, it is hard to prevent the impression of a faint, malign odour about the village street, as of the massed mould and decay of centuries. It is always a relief to get clear of the place, and to follow the narrow road around the base of the hills and across the level country beyond till it rejoins the Aylesbury pike. Afterward one sometimes learns that one has been through Dunwich.

Those are of course the opening paragraphs of "The Dunwich Horror" by H.P. Lovecraft, first published in the April 1929 issue of Weird Tales.

The mood evoked and the atmosphere described in these two passages are very different from each other, essentially the opposite of each other. A person might like to tarry in Sleepy Hollow, near Tarry Town. That same person probably can't wait to get away from Dunwich. As the author's voice says, "It is always a relief to get clear of the place."

Irving's introduction speaks of "marvellous beliefs," "trances and visions," "strange sights," and "music and voices in the air." Indeed, "[t]he whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions." There are also references to "a High German doctor" and "an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe." These things seem to be about local flavor and the charm of the place. The country in and around Dunwich is entirely different. There isn't any charm there. No decent person would want to sample its flavors.

Like his predecessor, Lovecraft wrote about the marvelous and perhaps supernatural atmosphere of his setting, as well as of things of the past: "Two centuries ago, when talk of witch-blood, Satan-worship, and strange forest presences was not laughed at, it was the custom to give reasons for avoiding the locality." More recently, there are horrors in Dunwich, these drawn out of the historic and even remoter past. Call this the Nathaniel Hawthorne version of the tale of place. Washington Irving seems to have been a happier person and his a happier story. It is, at least, a somewhat lighthearted story. "The Dunwich Horror" is something else entirely.

To be continued . . .

Hugh Rankin's interior illustration for "The Dunwich Horror" in Weird Tales, April 1929. By the way, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" was in Weird Tales, too, in November 1928, or ninety-seven years ago this month.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Pod People Literature

In The Faculty (1998), The Thing (1982), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), and other alien invasion movies, characters begin to ask themselves, Who is an alien and who is still human? The same kinds of questions must have come up among resistance movements during World War II. Who is a spy, a collaborator, an informer, and who is still with us? Paranoia creeps in. Tests of loyalty or identity become necessary.

We find ourselves in the same situation today in terms of our culture. Whether you're a reader or a writer, you have to ask yourself, Which authors have turned to AI and which have not? Which novels, short stories, essays, or other compositions are human and which are not? Everyone is now suspect. You, me, everyone.

I believe there are tests to determine whether something is AI or not. These are of course digital and so subject to being corrupted by AI. AI, after all, wants us to believe that it is human. It was programmed to be that way. The only good and reliable test is the test of time, for if a work was published before AI, then it is human. If after, then it is suspect and may very well be tainted. As much as you might like it, the book you're reading right now may have been created by a pod person.

People who rely on AI to do their thinking and writing for them want to claim that its products are still human because they were prompted, modified, revised, or edited by humans. They might even claim that works created by AI are human because AI is human, or close enough to qualify. There is a materialist or transhumanist bent to beliefs like these. What these machine-people don't realize is that there is and will forever be an unbridgeable gap between the living and non-living worlds, between man and machine. I would sooner trust the humanness of a painting done by an elephant or a novel written by an infinite number of monkeys typing on a infinite number of typewriters than I would a single sentence written by AI.

Again, AI is not the problem. It is people using AI who are the problem. If it isn't already happening, there will be writers who will conceal the fact that they have used AI to write for them. There won't be any Pure Fiction and Literature Act the way there was a Pure Food and Drug Act more than a century ago. You won't be informed about the impurities. Authors, editors, and publishers will not be required to label their products as AI-aided or -generated. Our fiction and literature will instead become adulterated--it already is--and the only surefire way to avoid that adulteration will be to read the works of the past. The good thing is that you don't have to go very far into the past, actually only two or three years, I think, to find works that are one hundred percent human, created in a world free of AI-generation. Beware of anything written since, as it could very well be the work of a robot, alien, or cyborg.

And one more warning: hold onto your books, for if everything ever written is reduced to ones and zeroes and the originals discarded, then the works of the past will almost certainly be altered and adulterated by AI and the people behind it, the result being that there will no longer be a pure human culture.

Copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Stupid People at the Gates

I wrote a few days ago about Artificial Intelligence or AI. I found an article even more dimwitted than the first. This one is called "The AI Jacquerie and Our Cultural Gatekeepers," and it's by Shlomit Beck. I found it on the website American Greatness, dated November 9, 2025. American Greatness is supposed to be a conservative website in which thoughtful people post thoughtful pieces. That didn't work this time around.

There are several offenses in Ms. Beck's piece. To begin: she refers to human beings as "meatware." Maybe she's an atheist or materialist and believes that we are all just animated meat. She definitely gives out a Marxist vibe, referring to the feelings, experiences, and powers of the author as "means of production." She also refers favorably to "the democratization of writing ability" made possible by AI and unfavorably to what she calls "guild authors," presumably the gatekeepers of her title and an allusion to medieval guilds, which were, I think, part of the early middle classes, or what Marx called the bourgeoisie. In other words, they were city-dwellers, or people living inside--and keeping--the gates. Ms. Beck also expresses her desire to throw in her lot with "cultural peasants," an allusion, I guess, to medieval peasants as a kind of proto-proletariat. I guess she imagines that the invisible hand of The Man, like in Undercover Brother (2002), is keeping her down.*

The word jacquerie is in Ms. Beck's title. It refers to an uprising or revolt. She also writes about going over the walls of the city if she's not allowed in through its gates. Again, it sounds like she believes that these (imaginary) gatekeepers--guildsmen--are denying her entry. In short, I think she believes that she is entitled to be read and that well-placed people are keeping that from happening. This is essentially a conspiracy theory. (Let's get Conspiracy Brother in here to explain it all.) What she fails to understand, I think, is that merit is what will gain her entry. Democracy undermines merit. Democracy says that all things are equal, in other words, that all things are equally good. If you want what you write to be read and appreciated, it has to be good. And it has to be good as it issues from the human heart and mind. AI is not going to do that for you. Ms. Beck, who uses AI to think and write for her, seems ready to use it also as like a siege engine around the walls of the city. I'm beginning to think that the ranks of the AI-users are growing. How much longer before they break through the walls and drag all of culture down into the uniform gray sludge of democracy?

Ms. Beck certainly thinks highly of herself, referring to herself as a "scholar," asserting that she is "a pretty sophisticated consumer of literature," listing her credits, which include "about eleven" essays (about eleven essays--imagine!) and co-editorship of a book of essays by "the most important contemporary European author," finally hoping or believing that what she writes--or co-writes with AI--has some kind of merit. She even implies, through some kind of twisted logic, that she's in a category with J.K Rowling, the most successful author of the twenty-first century. If "The AI Jacquerie and Our Cultural Gatekeepers" is any indication at all of the "merits" of Ms. Beck's thinking and writing, I can see why she relies so heavily on AI. The rest of us who don't use AI have nothing to worry about. She is far from nipping at our heels.

And now it occurs to me that Ms. Beck wants two mutually exclusive things, for she wants both democracy and recognition of her supposed merits. She wants to stand with everyone and simultaneously above certain others. Maybe she has never read "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Maybe she has never followed the idea of democracy to its logical conclusions.

The term "meatware" makes me think of a like term, "meat puppet," which seems to have a connection to science fiction, perhaps to The Puppet Masters by Robert A. Heinlein (1951). More offensive--and more dimwitted--than Ms. Beck's referring to us as "meatware" is this proposition: "Like meatware writers, the AI writes from what it has read." No, Ms. Beck, writers do not write from what they read. They write from human experience. Maybe you should try it sometime. You might meet with more success that way.

A final offense, and perhaps the most egregious (and the stupidest) of all:

God made the talented, and now He, through his angels Google, xAi, Anthropic, OpenAI, etc., has made it possible for all of us--talented or not--to express ourselves within the limits of our taste, education, and experience.

That idea is so bad that it's hard to believe that she's even serious about it. Is this supposed to be a parody of what AI-users think? Is it an attempt at some other kind of humor or irony? Or is that a sentence AI wrote for Shlomit Beck, thereby elevating itself heavenward? If Ms. Beck is responsible for that quote--she must be, she put her name to it--and she actually believes what she wrote, then I'm forced to go to a counter-quote by George Orwell: "One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool." (From "Notes on Nationalism," 1945.)

Now I'll go back to the blurb at the beginning of her essay, in which she or her editor writes: 

AI has turned writing from a guarded craft into an open frontier, where creativity depends less on talent than on the courage to create.

Still further offenses. First, writing is not a guarded craft. Anyone can do it. In that way writing truly is democratic, no action needed by pipsqueak revolutionaries. Second, creativity does not depend at all on talent. Anyone, talented or not, can be creative. I would say that creativity is actually a mark of our humanity. (It sounds like Ms. Beck is calling to be read without having the talent to be read.) Finally, it does not take courage to create. That phrase--"courage to create"--is nonsense. Creativity flows naturally out of our nature and existence as human beings. Creation requires only the act of creating. 

I'll conclude by writing that AI is not the threat and not a monster. AI is a thing, and the only real monsters in this world are human. The threat doesn't come from AI. We shouldn't be afraid of it. What we should be wary of--and stand up against--is stupid people and their stupid ideas. (If you're a Marxist and you're using AI to think and write for you, then you should receive a double-prize for stupidity.) We should also realize that stupidity is sometimes only a step away from evil--and is more often a suitable substitute. Stupid people will do what evil wants them to do. Evil sits back, relaxes, and watches the world burn.

-----

*I found the following quote in the online encyclopedia that is not yet written by AI: "The term ["The Man"] is used [. . .] by Peter Fonda's character in the [sic] Wild Angels [1966] in 'We wanna be free to ride our machines without being hassled by The Man'." Remember here the lyric from "For Pete's Sake" by The Monkees, "We gotta be free./We gotta be free." By the way, Diane Ladd, who died earlier this month, was also in The Wild Angels.

The angels of the title are members of a motorcycle gang, in other words human beings. Human beings will forever be infinitely closer to the angels--and God--than any machine. Anyone enamored of AI should remember that. He or she should also remember that certain things are God's alone, and no man or invention of man will ever do them. Below that, certain other things are man's alone, and no machine will ever do them. In that art is a creation of the heart and the mind, it is by definition made only by human beings, in emulation of God, and not at all by machines.

-----

Update (Nov. 14, 2025): I might have found the origin of Shlomit Beck's complaint in an article called "AI Is Driving a New Surge of Sham 'Books' on Amazon," on the website The Author's Guild, dated March 15, 2024. It sounds like that's what she's looking for and what the Guild doesn't want. Anyway, there is this thing and that in the article before the anonymous author gets to this sentence: "We are also lobbying for laws that would require AI-generated text content to be labeled and identifiable as such." I'm not sure how such a thing would work. It could mean an infringement on the rights of freedom of speech and of the press. Besides that, there are too many people who have too much at stake in a Wild West kind of environment for AI for there to be any alternative.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Joy Connection Revisited

It has been a long time since I posted two articles on the same day, but the stuff is coming in so rapidly that I have to do this just to keep up.

Last year I wrote an entry called "Joy Connection," dated September 1, 2024. That entry is partly political. A commenter named Worley wrote:

But postings that aren't well-aligned with that brand [Tellers of Weird Tales] are going to tend to dilute your brand, and may well reduce readership rather than increase it.

I might be a little prickly, but I took that as an attempt to influence what I write about on my blog. Maybe Worley was just expressing his displeasure about a topic he wasn't interested in. If that was so, I guess I should say that I can't satisfy every reader every day. If you hang in there and keep reading, though, hopefully you'll find something you like.

I don't have anything against Worley or any other commenter. I always invite and welcome comments, even when there is disagreement or criticism. Every writer should hear different opinions from his own and should listen to constructive criticism. I would like to thank Worley and everyone else who reads and leaves comments on what I write here.

Receiving comments of any kind is rewarding, although sometimes I have to deal with some pretty unpleasant things, such as an insinuation that I am a Nazi, one that I think came from a friend, who posted his comment anonymously. (See the comments in "The Conservative vs. the Zombie," October 4, 2015.) To be fair to my accuser in that case, I quoted from and referred to ideas by David French, who is supposed to have been a conservative but appears to be something else now. He seems to have gone off the deep end. (And why has he taken such a resemblance to Boss Tweed?) To be fair, too, I can now say that most people on the left side of the political spectrum probably don't identify with monsters depicted in movies and television but instead identify with the human characters. It's only in real life that their sympathies go towards monsters. Not all of them, jeez, but at least a large number of them. We see that every day, for example, in people in the West who carry their flags of red, green, black, and white and who call for the extermination of a whole people.

Anyway, my readership has not been reduced at all. In fact, it has increased really rapidly in the past several months. I'm beginning to think that I can write about anything at all and still receive hundreds, if not thousands, of visits per day. It took fourteen years and four months to reach 2,000,000 visits to my blog. It has taken less than four months to add another third of a million. I don't know how to explain this except to surmise that a large portion of those visits are from AI.

In short, no reduction.

"Joy Connection" has also proved popular, if the number of visits to a blog posting is a measure of popularity. By my count, only four of my entries from 2024 are more popular in terms of the number of visits.

And now, to touch upon a theme from this week . . .

In "Joy Connection," I wrote:  

British veterans of World War II must be wondering why they did what they did and why they even fought their war. What was the point if we were just going to give up everything to totalitarian regimes anyway? 

Now I learn that a British veteran of World War II said pretty much exactly that. His name is Alec Penstone, and he is 100 years old. In an interview on Good Morning Britain on Friday, November 7, 2025, Mr. Penstone said:

"My message is, I can see in my mind's eye those rows and rows of white stones of our friends and everybody else that gave their lives--for what? Our country today, no I'm sorry, the sacrifice wasn't worth the result that it is now. What we fought for was our freedom, we find now it's a darn sight worse than what it was when I fought for it."

It's heartbreaking to hear things like that, even more heartbreaking to realize that what Mr. Penstone said might be true. I would say in solace, though, that their sacrifice must have been worth it, if only for the sake of moments, the innumerable moments in people's lives from 1944 until today in which they have enjoyed the freedom and security won and defended by the men and women who fought the war. Although it's true that freedom is under threat in Mr. Penstone's home country, the beacon of freedom continues to burn in the place where it was first lit, at least in modern times, and that might be enough, for the future of England and of freedom itself.

I only hope we can wake ourselves up from this nightmare.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

1925

The artist Lou Feck was born in 1925, more than one hundred years ago now that November has arrived. I have been writing about Weird Tales in that year. Nineteen twenty-five has been in the back of my mind--and sometimes in the front--during 2025. Then something happened in October that made me think differently about 1925.

I was sitting in a room at the Veterans Administration (VA) clinic last month when I heard the receptionist down the hall ask a man's birthdate. He said, loudly and clearly, "February second, nineteen twenty-five." I got up and stepped into the hallway to have a look. He was seated in a wheelchair. There was some confusion about his name. He knew it. His caregiver didn't. She had been taking care of him for the previous six months and didn't know his real first name, for he goes by his middle name and probably has since before she was born.

We know that people can live to be one hundred years old. Actress June Lockhart, co-star of Lost in Space (1965-1968), who died just three weeks ago, reached that age in June of this year. (I guess her birth month was the source of her Christian name.) But to have that fact come almost right to where you're sitting, to see a centenarian in person, to hear a man tell his birthdate of one hundred years ago--that is something else.

So the man in the wheelchair was alive when Weird Tales of 1925 was on the newsstand. That led me to realize that there are almost certainly people still living who read "The Unique Magazine" in its first incarnation, which began in 1923 and ended in 1954. The youngest of them might be around eighty. The oldest might be the age of the man in the wheelchair. Several years ago I talked to a man who read Western pulps in the 1930s. (He was born in the West and flew bombers during World War II and in Korea. He later became an engineer and a university professor. In retirement, he built a one-seat airplane, no cockpit or canopy, in his large shed. There was a parachute behind the seat. It was not for the pilot but for the whole airplane, should it fail in flight.) But I have never talked to or heard from anyone who read Weird Tales except for the artist Jon Arfstrom (1928-2015), who was also a contributor to the magazine. Is anyone else out there? May I hear from you?

Weird Tales, February 1925, with a cover story, "Whispering Tunnels" by Stephen Bagby (a U.S. Army veteran) and cover art by Andrew Brosnatch. Bagby's story is about the Great War and a postwar search for a missing American soldier. The tunnels are under Fort Vaux, part of the battlefield at Verdun. After losing it to the enemy, the French recaptured Fort Vaux on November 2, 1916, one hundred nine years ago this month. This issue of Weird Tales was dated the same month in which the man in the wheelchair was born. He is a veteran, too, and at age 100 is old enough to have served in World War II.

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

A Lovecraft Sighting

I'm fitting things in as I come across them. I hope you don't mind going back and forth between topics this week.

I have been writing about teenager movies and high school movies, also about H.P. Lovecraft. Now I can write about both in the same entry. This past weekend we watched The DUFF, a teenager/high school movie released in 2015. It's a funny and enjoyable movie that hearkens back to previous movies of this type. It begins with an allusion to The Breakfast Club (1985). The principal reminds me of the character Onyx Blackman in Strangers with Candy (1999-2000). I imagine there are other references and allusions as well.

The title character in The DUFF is a girl named Bianca, played by Mae Whitman. She's a fan of horror movies. Rather than decorate the walls of her bedroom with concert posters and pictures of teen heartthrobs, she has chosen horror movie posters and other horror-related art. There is a poster for Murders in the Rue Morgue, starring Bela Lugosi and released in 1932, hanging above her bed. Above the title, in big, prominent letters, is the name of the original author, Edgar Allan Poe. Far less prominent on her wall is a small portrait drawing of H.P. Lovecraft--Lovecraft as teen heartthrob.

There is product placement in The DUFF. There is also president placement. Look for the names or images of Chester Arthur, James Buchanan, and Millard Fillmore, also for the middle initial of George W. Bush. There may be others. Be on the lookout for them. The Internet doesn't seem to have noticed this yet. Maybe you're seeing it here first.

Art by Karoly Grosz (1897-1952).

P.S. I have in the works a long series on Lovecraft. It begins this week.

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Lou Feck (1925-1981)

For Remembrance Sunday, November 9, and Veterans Day, November 11, 2025

Yesterday I mentioned the artist Lou Feck in regard to his illustrations for The Shepherd by Frederick Forsyth (Bantam Books, 1977). I would like to write about Lou Feck today, for he had an indirect connection to Weird Tales magazine, and I find that there isn't any biography of him on line, or at least as far as I have searched. He was a very good artist, especially good with airplanes and other machines, as well as with architecture. Like all really good artists, though, he was good at handling the human figure. He needed those skills in his work as a cover artist for science fiction and fantasy paperbacks. He did other paperback cover art as well.

Lou Feck's name can be added to the list of Conan cover artists. He also created the cover art for Kull, the Fabulous Warrior King by Robert E. Howard (Bantam Books, 1978). Feck's depictions of airplanes in flight, as well as of airfields, hangars, and other things related to aviation, are excellent. Now I find that he was acquainted with the field of aviation, as he had served in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II. Frederick Forsyth (1938-2025), by the way, also served in the air force, in his case the Royal Air Force, or RAF. He was commissioned three days after his eighteenth birthday and became a pilot a year later. At age nineteen, he was at the time the youngest pilot in the RAF. The late Mr. Forsyth flew the de Havilland Vampire, a graceful-looking, twin-tail, single-engine jet fighter. The pilot in The Shepherd flies the same type of aircraft. Frederick Forsyth died almost exactly one hundred years after Lou Feck's birth.

Louis Edward Feck was born on July 8, 1925, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Vela Bertyl (Edwards) Willett and Louis Fairfax Willett, Sr. The two were married on January 22, 1924, and divorced on or about March 15, 1930. Feck's name at birth was actually Louis Fairfax Willett, Jr. In the U.S. Census of 1930 (April 11), he was enumerated with his divorced mother in Norwood, Ohio. She worked then as an editor at a lithographing company. Three years later, a portrait of Vela Edwards Willett, painted by Glen Tracy (1883-1956), was included in an exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum. So, Lou Feck came from a family connected to the art world.

Vela Willett remarried in 1932. Her new husband was Edward A. Feck. The couple lived in Melrose, Massachusetts, in 1940 and 1950 when the census taker came around. By then they had had a daughter, Rosemary Vela Feck, later Caldwell. The former Louis Fairfax Willett, Jr., was by then going by the name Louis Edward Feck, nicknamed Lou.

Lou Feck studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts  in 1940-1941 and graduated from Melrose High School in 1943. From July 24, 1943, to February 17, 1946, he served in the U.S. Army Air Force. In 1947, he resumed his studies at Vesper George School of Art in Boston. In 1950, he graduated from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.

On June 18, 1950, Feck married Ruth Evangeline Cutkomp in New York City. Born on February 24, 1925, in Columbus City, Iowa, she was an artist, too. She graduated from Rock Island High School, in Rock Island, Illinois, in 1943 and attended the Chicago Art Institute in 1944-1945. From 1945 to 1946, she served in the U.S. Navy. Like her new husband, she graduated from the Pratt Institute in 1950. The young couple lived in Brooklyn and worked in advertising and illustration in New York City. I wonder if they knew John and Elaine Duillo, another husband-and-wife pair of illustrators who had also attended the Pratt Institute.

Lou Feck enjoyed a long and successful career as an artist. You have no doubt seen his work. Rather than list and show his credits here, I'll refer you first to a blog called The Paperback Palette and a long article called "The Fantastic Paperback Cover Art of Lou Feck" by Jeffersen, dated April 10, 2018, here; and second, to a blog called Poplitiko and an entry called "The Secret Work of Lou Feck, Cover Artist Supreme" by Alex Ness, dated August 25, 2025, here. You can also look at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.

Lou Feck died suddenly and unexpectedly on November 4, 1981. He was just fifty-six years old. Ruth E. (Cutkomp) Feck died on May 11, 1990, in Broward County, Florida. Feck was buried at Huntington Rural Cemetery in Suffolk County, New York. His signature appears on his headstone. Next to his is another headstone with the signature of Anita D. Feck. Her dates are given as 1930-2016. Someone named Anita Feck wrote a letter to the science fiction magazine Locus, published in its issue of July 1982 (#258). I don't know what to make of all of that exactly. My best guess is that Anita D. Feck was Lou Feck's wife and widow and that she wrote to inform science fiction fandom of the death of her husband. I don't know anything else about her.

Kull, The Fabulous Warrior King (Bantam Books, 1978), with cover art by Lou Feck. Created by Robert E. Howard, Kull was first in Weird Tales in August 1929 in the novelette "The Shadow Kingdom." As you can see in this and other works by the artist, Feck painted using a dark, neutral or cool palette. Maybe he borrowed the red cape from Frank Frazetta's justly famous cover for Conan (Lancer, 1967).

Conan the Rebel by Poul Anderson (Bantam Books, 1981) with cover art by Lou Feck using his pseudonym Zorin. Someone is supposed to have figured out that Feck used this pseudonym, but the links in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database don't seem to go anywhere. Conan was of course also created by Howard. The character first appeared in Weird Tales in "The Phoenix on the Sword," December 1932.

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley