The Death of Alanson Skinner

The December 1925 issue closed out the first full year of Farnsworth Wright's tenure as editor of Weird Tales. It was also the first full year for the magazine itself, with twelve monthly issues published in all. Nineteen twenty-five was also the last full year during which the editorial offices of Weird Tales were based in Indianapolis. The magazine moved to Chicago in late 1926. I have already written about many of the authors who were in that December issue. A couple of others--James Cocks, Douglas Oliver--might prove a challenge.

There was sad news to report in "The Eyrie" that month. Alanson Skinner (1886-1925), who had had a story in the October issue, was reported killed in an automobile accident. That had happened on August 17, 1925, and so Skinner's first story in Weird Tales was published posthumously. I can't say that this was the first tribute to a deceased author to appear in Weird Tales, but it must have been one of the first. I'll reprint it here in it entirety so that we can remember again an author who died a century ago this past summer.

Those of you who read Alanson Skinner's story of Indian witchcraft, Bad Medicine, in the October issue, will be saddened to learn of the author's tragic death in an automobile accident near Tokio, North Dakota, on August 17. The car skidded on a slippery road and crashed over an embankment. A moment later, the Rev. Amos Oneroad, a Sioux Indian, dazed and bruised, crawled from the wreck, calling a name, listening for an answer. Then he struggled manfully, but in vain, to lift the mass of steel and release his dearest friend, who lay pinioned and silent beneath it. At length help was found, the car was raised, but it was too late. Alanson Skinner was dead--Alanson Skinner, sympathetic and appreciative friend of the Indian race, learned student of ancient America, prolific author of scientific works on Indian subjects, lecturer, fiction writer, poet. Gone forever was that wonderful memory, that bubbling humor, that active mind, that radiant, cheerful personality. He was only thirty-nine years old, just getting into his full stride, at the threshold of what promised to be the most brilliant and valuable part of his career. One of his last acts, before he left on the mission that cost him his life, was to send to WEIRD TALES The Tsantsa of Professor Von Rothapfel, an eery [sic] story of a South American Indian tribe that preserves and shrinks the heads of its dead enemies. This story will be published soon.

"Soon" was August 1926, a year after Alanson's death.

Reverend Amos Oneroad (1884-1937) was a Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota, an artist, a public speaker and performer, and a writer, as well as a Presbyterian minister. In 2005, the Minnesota Historical Society Press published his book, co-authored with Alanson Skinner, called Being Dakota: Tales and Traditions of the Sisseton and Wahpeton.

Although winter begins and the sun and the day reach their nadir in December, it is--or should be--a happy month. I wish there could have been happier news in Weird Tales in December 1925. But this was as it will ever be.

From the Trenton, New Jersey, Times, March 23, 1917, page 15.

In this series I have gone month by month through 1925, now a century past. I have left out a lot of writers, but these I can still cover in the future.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

"Teoquitla the Golden" by Ramòn de las Cuevas

One hundred years ago this month, in November 1924, Weird Tales came back. It had been gone for three months by its cover date but closer to six or even seven in actuality. The last issue before the hiatus was the first and only quarterly issue of the magazine, dated May/June/July 1924. There was an overhaul of the magazine, the business behind the magazine, and some of its staff in that time. There was a new editor in November 1924, Farnsworth Wright, and a new cover artist, Andrew Brosnatch (1896-1965). Brosnatch's first cover illustration was for a story called "Teoquitla the Golden" by a pseudonymous author, Ramòn de las Cuevas.

Ramòn de las Cuevas was actually the archaeologist, anthropologist, and museum curator Mark R. Harrington (1882-1971). He is supposed to have taken his nom de plume from the name of a Spanish-American historian. I haven't found a historian by that name, but Harrington mentioned a historian called Las Casas in his story. He was Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566). I wonder if Harrington transmuted las Casas' name to arrive at his own pseudonym. In Spanish, las Casas means "the houses," and las Cuevas, "the caves." And so Ramòn de las Cuevas means "Ramòn of the Caves." Harrington's middle name, by the way, was Raymond.

Caves meant something to Harrington, I think. In his story, he wrote:

     Dr. Branson turned to his new friend, Lewis, who lolled in a deck-chair beside him. "I'll bet," he suggested, "the old Indians used to have great times up in those caves before Brother Columbus butted in!"

     "Yes," agreed his companion, "the Cronistas tell us that the Taino tribes held some of their most important ceremonies in caves."

"Teoquitla the Golden" was Harrington's only story in Weird Tales. I wonder if there was an original in the folk tales, mythologies, or histories--the European Cronistas--of Mesoamerican Indians. If so, he would have been the right person to have come across it.

Set in Mesoamerica, "Teoquitla the Golden" is about an American explorer named Robert Sanderson who discovers a place called Nahuatlan, located "in the Hidden Valley, the last stand of the Aztec nation." The discovery of a hidden or lost valley is a convention in genre fiction. You can call it a trope if you want. Otherwise, "Teoquitla the Golden" is a very unusual story. And I mean very unusual.

I'll cut to the chase: "Teoquitla the Golden" is about the transformation of a man into a woman. This isn't by any of the fake-scientific or pseudo-medical butchery employed today. The transformation is actually carried out with ancient ways and the use of potions--evidently plant-based--blown into the man's body through straws. (Is he a genetically modified organism?) The transformation is gradual. It is also complete. I should add that Sanderson did not like women before his transformation. His weird is that he would become something he once disliked. This idea makes me think of the movie Watermelon Man (1970) starring Godfrey Cambridge and directed by Mario Van Peebles.

I'm surprised that Weird Tales would have printed a story like this one in 1924, but then it was "The Unique Magazine." "Teoquitla the Golden"--the title refers to the man after he has been transformed into a woman--is an unusual and weird story, but it isn't told in a weird or sensationalistic way. The tone is actually pretty even, as you might expect from a man working in a science-based discipline. And the narrative is sympathetic to the man in his transformed state.

The online Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has an entry on what it calls "Transgender SF," SF indicating science fiction. Science fiction is of course supposed to be based in science--real science and not fake. Science is right there in the name of the genre after all. Transgenderism, though, is not scientific. There is no science in it. In fact it's antiscientific, as well as pseudoscientific. Its true nature is political. In fact, transgenderism is a political belief system that is totalitarian in all of its intensity, scope, and ambitions. If you doubt that, just speak those words and wait for the blowback from people who want you not only to shut up, but who also want to force you to accept, embrace, and internalize their belief system. If you transgress, you must grovel in apology. You must be humiliated into speaking lies as the truth. And if you hold to the truth, you must be silenced, shouted down, banned, canceled, ostracized, and even fined or imprisoned. Dissent simply cannot be tolerated. Once you have spoken the truth, it won't take long for them to lash out. They are likely to be exceedingly vicious in doing it. Don't falter, though. Stand up for yourself, and tell it like it is. In this, it's helpful to have knowledge of the totalitarian principle, possibly first articulated in genre fiction: "Everything not forbidden is compulsory." This is how they think. You must agree with them. And if you won't on your own, you must be made to agree. This is what they have planned for you. So remember: to be forewarned is to be forearmed against their certain assaults.

As for the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, it has obviously been ideologically captured, the evidence of that being, if nothing else, its use of the phrase "gender reassignment surgery," which is an atrocious euphemism for the mutilation and removal of breasts and genitalia: healthy and normally functioning tissues and organs, removed from healthy and normally functioning human bodies, including--and seemingly as an especial target--the bodies of children. And here I thought the first command of medicine is to do no harm.

I hesitated to write about "Teoquitla the Golden." I don't like to fuel people's delusions and ideological insanity. I also don't want to point the way to a work of art that will no doubt be used for propagandistic--i.e., anti-art--purposes. But this blog is about Weird Tales, its authors, artists, stories, and poems, and so I feel an obligation to do it. This is also an anniversary, the 100-year anniversary of what very well could have been the first sex-switch in the history of pulp fiction. And "Teoquitla the Golden" is actually a good and interesting story. But if you read it, you should set aside your twenty-first-century self and attempt to read it in the mindset of a person from one hundred years ago. Forget politics. Forget insanity. Remember art and literature and their purposes.

Weird Tales, November 1924. Cover story: "Teoquitla the Golden" by Ramòn de las Cuevas. Cover art by Andrew Brosnatch. Considering the subject matter of the story, you could take Brosnatch's last name as an obscene pun. Try not to.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Zahrah E. Preble (1880-1934)

Née Ethel L. Preble
Singer, Dancer, Music Teacher, Camp Counselor, Playground Director, Author, Public Speaker & Performer
Born August 17, 1880, Berkeley, California
Died April 27, 1934, South Pasadena Sanatorium, South Pasadena, California

Zahrah Ethel Preble was born on August 17, 1880, in Berkeley, California, to Charles Sumner Preble (1855-1939), a civil engineer and former surveyor-general of Nevada, and Ella Melana (Thompson) Preble (1851-1929) of Ohio. Zahrah appears to have been an assumed name. In the U.S. census of 1900, a twenty-year-old Zahrah was enumerated as Ethel L. Preble. Ethel L. Preble graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. A mezzo-soprano singer, she studied under Lydia Sturtevant (1876-1938). 

Zahrah E. Preble taught music in the public schools of Escondido, California. She was also a camp counselor with the Camp Fire Girls in California. From January to November 1921 or after, she was a playground director with the Bureau of Clubs and Playgrounds in the Panama Canal Zone. Zahrah interpreted the song and dance of American Indians, including the Zuni tribe of the American Southwest, for children and adults. Her lifelong interests seem to have been music, dance, childhood education, and American Indian culture. She was a member of the Casa de Adobe committee and Los Fiesteros de la Calle Olvera in Pasadena or South Pasadena, California.

Zahrah wrote her first letter to Weird Tales from New York City. It was published in the issue of July/August 1923. By the time her second letter was published in September 1923, she was on expedition with her future husband in the American Southwest. Here is the complete text of her letters as they were published, with introductory comments by the editor, Edwin Baird:

Letter to "The Eyrie," July/August 1923, page 91:

We recently had something to say on this page about the amazing similarity of stories written by dissimilar people, and Miss Zahrah E. Preble, 12 West Seventy-seventh Street, New York read those remarks and sent us a neat solution of the mystery:

"Dear Mr. Baird: I was particularly interested in what you had to say about the sameness of the manuscripts you have to read.

     "Perhaps this will offer at least a partial explanation. All the stories are attempting to portray a mysterious or weird happening. Did you ever think about the tone of voice people invariably use when they begin to tell you about such things? It immediately takes on a quality which indicates the abnormal theme they are going to give you. That tone of voice unconsciously colors the very words which are used, whether written or spoken, and so we find diverse stories told to achieve the same effect will he told in the same tone quality.

   "Another reason is that the human brain will respond to repetition of ideas just so many times before becoming half-hypnotized. After singing through a dozen songs, no matter how different they may be, I find that my sense of hearing is so drugged by sound that the freshness of perception is worn off, and so the songs all appear alike. Also, when typing for several hours in succession, the sound of the machine drugs my senses, and I find it hard to follow the sense of the words I am copying., although I try to keep alert, so as to make alterations as I copy.

   "This may help you to solve the problem. Anyway, I have enjoyed WEIRD TALES, and as I have taken them in small doses, with sufficient intervals between, they strike fresh each time, so are more enjoyable."

I understand what Zahrah Preble was trying to say, and she makes some good points. Nonetheless, I think that a lack of imagination is the best explanation for the sameness of stories, themes, language, and concepts in the early Weird Tales.

Letter to "The Eyrie," September 1923, page 79:

Among these letters that we mention is one from Zahrah B. Preble of New York City, who recently joined the Hendricks-Hodge [sic] Archeological Expedition that journeyed to New Mexico for the purpose of digging into the prehistoric customs of an ancient people. Miss Preble is now with the expedition at Zuni, New Mexico, and from there she writes us thus:

     "My dear Mr. Baird: I am convinced that the Zunis are adepts at rain making. The sky had been cloudless until the old priests started to the Sacred Lake, 60 miles away. Then faint wisps began to form into clouds. But no rain fell until day before yesterday, when the rain priests from Zuni came out to the sacred spring in Ojo Caliente, and met the returning pilgrims from the Sacred Lake. Here we were allowed to witness a most wonderfully impressive and reverent ceremony. I think we are perhaps the only white people, with the exception of Frank Hamilton Cushing and Mrs. Matilda Stevenson, who have ever been allowed to see this part of the ceremony. But our camp was given not only that privilege, but the one of taking motion pictures of it, so that the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, would have the record. Before we left the mountain ride the rain was falling in torrents. [Boldface type added.]

     "Yesterday the ceremony was augmented by the more spectacular and better-known 'Rain Dance,' in Zuni. It is a beautiful and solemn performance. Rain fell last night in copious quantities. Today it is raining as I write this, and the music of the waters is drumming on my tent fly. I say that the Zunis are great rain makers, and that Faith is the keynote of their ability!

     "So far, I have been too busy absorbing new sights and sounds to do much writing, but, if the wind does not blow too hard each day, I hope to accomplish something before long.

     "There is an interesting historical tale of the murder of Father Latrado, right in front of the old Spanish Mission church, in 1670, which is one of the most picturesque parts of the Hawikuh ruins. Perhaps I can reconstruct that scene sufficiently weirdly to make a good yarn for you. I will keep it in mind."

The implication here is that Zahrah had written to Baird before and would continue to write to him, also that this letter at least, as published, was only an excerpt from a longer letter left unpublished. If correspondence like this was in the papers that Leo Margulies kept in his garage and that he ended up destroying because they became infested with insects, then we have just one more reason to withhold from him our forgiveness. What a terribly irresponsible thing to have done.

By the way, the expedition was actually called the Hendrick-Hodge expedition, but I haven't been able to find out who was Hendrick. Hodge was Frederick Webb Hodge, Zahrah's future husband. Frank Hamilton Cushing (1857-1900) was an American anthropologist and ethnologist who lived among the Zuni people. Matilda Coxe (Evans) Stevenson (1849-1915) was an American ethnologist, geologist, and explorer who also lived among and studied the Zunis.

* * *

Tall and aristocratic in her appearance, Zahrah had blue eyes and brown hair. She was one of four girls. Her sister Amy Elizabeth Preble married Waldo Edgar Dodge on January 11, 1913. Zahrah married a man with a rhyming surname, archaeologist, ethnologist, and author Frederick Webb Hodge (1864-1956), on September 2, 1927, in Bexar County, Texas. At his wife's death in 1934, he was director of the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles. Mark R. Harrington (1882-1971), Bruce Bryan (1906-2004), and Johns Harrington (1918-1992), who also wrote for Weird Tales, were also at the Southwest Museum. Johns Harrington's middle name was Heye, presumably for George Gustav Heye (1874-1957), who, despite his very teutonic name, was a native-born American, as well as an archaeologist, collector, and founder of the Museum of the American Indian in New York City. At one time, he had the largest private collection of American Indian artifacts in the world. There is an extant photograph of him and his wife with Hodge and a number of Zuni men.

Zahrah Preble wrote a children's book called Tomar of Siba: The Story of a Gabrielino Indian Boy of Southern California (1933). It was illustrated by her sister, Donna Louise Preble (1882-1979). She had planned to write more, but death intervened. Zahrah's husband handed her notes over to Donna, telling her that she was the one to finish her sister's work. The result was Yamino-Kwiti, Boy Runner of Siba by Donna Preble (1940), which I believe was reprinted as Yamino-Kwiti: A Story of Indian Life in the Los Angeles Area.

Zahrah E. Preble wrote magazine and newspaper articles, including the following:

• "Jottings from the Pacific Coast" in The Oil Miller (Jan. 1921)
• "Burbanking Your Child" in The Juvenile (June 1923)
• "Child Culture's Oldest Cradle" in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (June 24, 1923)
• "Simple Camp Cookery" in American Cookery (1923) 
• "Catching Motion on the Wing" in Complete Novel Magazine (Nov. 1925)
• "Eight Lives for a Horse" in Fawcett’s Triple-X Magazine #21 (Feb. 1926)
• "The Art of Indian Women" in The Forecast (June 1929)
• Articles on Indian life and culture for Compton's Cyclopedia

This is by no means a comprehensive list. Thanks to the FictionMags Index for the two pulp magazine credits.

Zahrah Ethel Preble Dodge died on April 27, 1934, at South Pasadena Sanatorium, South Pasadena, California. She was just fifty-three years old.

Zahrah E. Preble's Letters in "The Eyrie"
July/August 1923
September 1923

Further Reading
"Zahrah Hodge, Museum Head's Wife, Mourned" in the Pasadena (California) Post, April 28, 1934, page 4.

Zahrah E. Preble (1880-1934), in a passport photograph from 1921.

Original text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley

"The Eyrie," July/August 1923

Letter writers in the July/August 1923 issue of Weird Tales magazine:

• Ernest Hollenbeck (1846-1935) of Davison, Michigan, who told about writing a story called "A Cruel Mystery" on his seventy-seventh birthday, finishing it in the anniversary of the hour of his birth. He submitted it to the editor of Weird Tales, Edwin Baird, but it was never published and is now presumably lost forever.

• Eleanor Gause (1911-1980), then age eleven, having been born on October 15, 1911. "Imagine an eleven-year-old girl reading stories like yours!" she wrote.

• Richard Jenkins (1908-1982), age fourteen, of North Catasauqua, Pennsylvania.

• Jack Bohn, presumably John A. Bohn (1911-1986), age eleven, a student at Alexander Hamilton High School, Oakland, California. John A. Bohn was later an accomplished attorney.

• A.L. Mattison of Dallas, Texas, who wrote a very long letter, possibly the longest to date printed in "The Eyrie," ironically about the excessive length and verbosity of stories in popular fiction.

• Abe Yochelson, possibly Abraham, later Albert, Yochelson (1907-1966), who gave his age as seventeen, of Chicago, Illinois, and who also read Hugo Gernsback's magazine Science and Invention "for its stories of the end of the world."

• Mrs. Walter Jackowiec, presumably Valdivia (Szymczyk) Jackowiec (1902-1969), also of Chicago, who got so scared by reading Weird Tales that in the night she cuddled up to her husband in their bed. Good husband.

• Henry W. Whitehill (1879-1960) of Oakland, California, who later had a story called "The Case of the Russian Stevedore" in Weird Tales, December 1924.

• Weird Tales Fan, Jr., of Houghton, Michigan.

• Charles Pracht (1867?-1934?) of Springfield, Missouri.

• W. C. Young of Wilmington, Delaware.

• John Richards of Niagara Falls, New York.

• H. M. of New York, New York, who remarked upon the similarity of "The Devil Plant" by Lyle Wilson Holden (H.M. called it "The Devil Tree") in the issue of May 1923 to "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe. (An excellent observation.) H.M. also pointed out that "that tree appeared long ago in a Strand Magazine story." I wish we knew which one.

• One of the Bunch, who wrote from a place unknown.

• Agnes E. Burchard of Los Angeles, California, who asked that Weird Tales reprint "The Upper Berth" by F. Marion Crawford. (She couldn't remember his name.) I assume this was Agnes Elizabeth Burchard (1892-?), a teacher born in Great Neck, Long Island, and educated at Bryn Mawr College.

• Mrs. Frances Miller of Cleveland, Ohio.

• Miss Zahrah E. Preble of New York, New York. Zahrah Ethel Preble Hodge (1880-1934) was a singer and dancer specializing in the cultures of American Indians, including the Zuni tribe of the American Southwest. She was the wife of archaeologist, ethnologist, and author Frederick Webb Hodge (1864-1956). Zahrah E. Preble also had a letter in "The Eyrie" in September 1923. I will have more on her in the next entry.

As you can see, Weird Tales appealed to women and children. Maybe the stereotype of the young male fan came later, especially in regards to science fiction and comic books.

An illustration by Roy Crane for "Child Culture's Oldest Cradle" by Zahrah E. Preble  in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 24, 1923, whole page number 95. Roy Crane (1901-1977) was then a young cartoonist, Texas-born but living in New York City. Less than a year after this illustration was published, his comic strip Wash Tubbs began in syndication. Crane added Captain Easy to the cast of his strip in 1929. Easy is the character we remember from one of the great adventure strips and from one of our greatest cartoonists. Crane later created the newspaper comic strip Buz Sawyer.

Original text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Earl Peirce, Jr. (1917-1983)-Part Five

In Washington, D.C.

By July 1937, when he wrote to Weird Tales about the death and legacy of H.P. Lovecraft, Earl Peirce, Jr., was living in Washington, D.C., with his family. His father had been appointed to a position there with the U.S. Forest Service. Earl Peirce, Sr., would spend the rest of his forestry career in the nation's capital, retiring in 1951 after more than forty years on the job.

"The Death Mask" may have been the last story that Earl Peirce, Jr., sent to Weird Tales from his Milwaukee home. It was published in the issue of April 1937. "The Homicidal Diary" followed in October 1937. Nearly a whole year went by before Peirce had his next story in "The Unique Magazine." Written with Bruce Bryan, "The White Rat" was published in September 1938.

Born in Washington, D.C., Leslie Bruce Bryan (1906-2004) was an archaeologist and anthropologist known for his work in the American Southwest and on the Channel Islands. He worked at the County Museum of Natural History, Science, and Art (now the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History) and the Southwest Museum of Los Angeles, not only as a man in the field but also as a curator and a staff writer for The Masterkey, the magazine of the Southwest Museum. Between 1932 and 1939, he wrote or co-wrote five stories published in Weird Tales and its sister title, Oriental Stories. During the same period, he had twelve letters printed in weird fiction magazines.

Bryan's first collaborator in weird fiction was Dudley S. Corlett (ca. 1880-1946), with whom he wrote "The Dancer of Quena," published in Oriental Stories in Spring 1932. Born in England, Corlett lived in southern California for many years. Like Bryan, he worked in scientific or semi-scientific fields, in his case, botany and tropical agriculture.

Bruce Bryan returned to his native city during the early or mid 1930s. He married his second wife, Mary Katherine Fahrenwald, in Washington, D.C., in November 1936. In 1940, he registered for the draft while living there, and like Earl Peirce, Jr., he called himself a writer. During the previous decade, Bryan had had stories not only in weird fiction magazines but also in Argosy, as well as in Western, crime, mystery, and detective titles. Bryan returned to California in the 1940s.

While living in Washington, D.C., Bryan became a member of a Weird Tales fan club. Fan and letter writer Julius Hopkins led the group. Other members included Everil Worrell (1893-1969) and Seabury Quinn (1889-1969). Earl Peirce, Jr., joined, too. Unfortunately, I don't have any details on him except that he was a member and that he co-wrote a story with Bruce Bryan.

After collaborating with Bryan, Earl Peirce had just two more stories in Weird Tales, "The Stroke of Twelve" (June/July 1939) and "Portrait of a Bride" (Jan. 1940). He followed up with "Legacy of the Dead" in Terror Tales (July 1940) and "The Shadow of Nirvana" in Strange Stories (Feb. 1941). Although Peirce had other stories in the pulp magazines of the 1940s, these were his last in the weird fiction titles.

On April 16, 1940, Earl Peirce, Jr., was counted in the U.S. census in Washington, D.C. He was with his family at 3738 Huntington Street, N.W. If the house at that address now is the same as in 1940, then it was a pretty fine one. Later that year, on October 16, 1940, Peirce filled out his draft card, giving his employer as the General Federation of Women's Clubs. On May 7, 1941, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. (His younger brother Dudley Beach Peirce enlisted the same day.) On December 26, 1941, less than three weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Earl Peirce, Jr., married Gloria Hallett Grimm (1922-1999), also in Washington, D.C. The world had suddenly become a very serious place.

I don't think it was mere coincidence that Peirce's writing for the pulps went on pause in 1941. Military service, marriage, and world war have ways of interrupting a person's plans. He had just one story published during the war and only three more after that. His last came in October 1949, just thirteen years after his first.

To be continued . . .

Earl Peirce's fifth story in Weird Tales was "The White Rat," cowritten with Bruce Bryan and published in the September 1938 issue. "The White Rat" is set in Norway. It begins as a club story, but the middle and end take place in a remote northern location. Despite the weird-fiction or gothic-romance elements of separation and isolation, "The White Rat" actually approaches science fiction. I guess we can call it a weird science story.

If there is weird science, there should probably be a weird--or mad--scientist, and there is in this story. There is also a tale told of a medical doctor with psychopathic or sociopathic proclivities. We have seen characters like that before. They're also with us in the real world.

"The White Rat" has similarities to Frankenstein. It's sort of a Frankenstein's monster of a story, too. There are elements not only of Mary Shelley's seminal gothic romance/proto-science fiction novel but also of stories by H.P. Lovecraft, including "The White Ape" (Weird Tales, Apr. 1924), "The Whisperer in Darkness" (Weird Tales, Aug. 1931), "The Dunwich Horror" (Weird Tales, Apr. 1929), and "Cool Air" (Tales of Magic and Mystery, Mar. 1928). The story was written before Watson and Crick found out about DNA, so maybe we can forgive some of its fumbling about genetics. There are, however, suggestions of Lamarckian evolution or Lysenkoism in its pages. I'm pretty sure that both would have been discredited by the time Peirce and Bryan wrote their story. Finally, the weird fiction or science fiction trope of the body frozen in a block of ice and waiting to be revivified is central to the plot. In that, "The White Rat" anticipated Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943), The Thing from Another World (1951), and the Minnesota Iceman hoax of the 1960s. There is also something of The Fly (1958) in it, another film from the future.

The illustration above is the work of Virgil Finlay. It appears as a heading to the story. In combination with the first few pages of the story, it gives away part of the plot and part of the surprise. Before long, we've got it all figured out pretty well. Only the details are missing until the end. The issue in which "The White Rat" appeared was an all-star issue with stories and poems by Seabury Quinn, Algernon Blackwood, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, H.P. Lovecraft, Edmond Hamilton, Clark Ashton Smith, Manly Wade Wellman, and Paul Ernst. That was pretty good company for young Earl Peirce, Jr.

Thanks to Randal A. Everts for information on Julius Hopkins' fan club.
Text and captions copyright 2020, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Bruce Bryan (1906-2004)

Leslie Bruce Bryan
Author, Editor, Archaeologist, Anthropologist
Born January 16, 1906, Washington, D.C.
Died September 16, 2004, North Hollywood, California

Dudley S. Corlett's collaborator on the story "The Dancer of Quena" (Oriental Stories, Spring 1932) was another adopted Angeleno, writer, archaeologist, and anthropologist Bruce Bryan. Born Leslie Bruce Bryan on January 16, 1906, he was a native of Washington, D.C. His father was Paul M. Bryan, a government worker. His mother was Ethel (Hughes) Bryan. In 1947, Bruce Bryan earned himself some notoriety by throwing his mother out of their North Hollywood home, on Mother's Day no less. I'm not sure how that all turned out, but Bruce R. Bryan, son of Bruce Bryan, also evicted that day, later died in an automobile accident. You can read about the whole mess on the blog 1947project: The original Los Angeles time travel blog, here. Bruce Bryan was first married to Charlotta R. Bryan, maiden name unknown. His second wife was (Mary) Katherine Fahrenwald, whom he wed on November 25, 1936, in Washington, D.C. Bruce R. Bryan, the son, was Charlotta's child, not Katherine's. That might have made the eviction a little easier on the boy, but hardly by much, I imagine.

Despite his successes as a writer, Bruce Bryan was known as an archaeologist and anthropologist. He started in his career as the first staff archaeologist with the County Museum of Natural History, Science, and Art (now the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History) in 1926. In that capacity, he carried out investigations on San Nicolas Island, one of the Channel Islands, in October-December 1926. Soon after that, he went to the Southwest Museum of Los Angeles, where he eventually became archaeological curator. In the 1930 census, he listed his occupation as staff writer for a trade magazine. That may have been for the magazine of the museum, called The Masterkey. Bryan was also editor of that magazine at some point. Further expeditions followed his first, to Carpinteria in about 1930 and to the Dragoon Mountains of southeastern Arizona in 1932. Bryan left the museum to return to Washington, D.C., and to work in public service. He was once again with the Southwest Museum from 1959 until his retirement in 1983. He carried out further archaeological explorations of San Nicolas Island in 1958 and 1960.

Bruce Bryan had a respectable career as a writer for popular magazines and newspapers. He had five stories in Oriental Stories and Weird Tales, plus a dozen letters in those two titles and in Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror and The Magic Carpet Magazine. All were printed in the period 1932 to 1939. Like his collaborator Dudley S. Corlett, Bryan wrote about movies for Art and Archaeology. His article "Movie Realism and Archaeological Fact" was published in that magazine in the October issue of 1924. I have also found a story, "Shakespeare Said It!", in Parade of Youth for June 26, 1938, and mention of an unpublished book called The Archaeology of San Nicolas Island. In 1970, Bryan published a version of his research in the book Archaeological Explorations on San Nicolas Island. Readers of children's literature will remember San Nicolas Island as the setting for Scott O'Dell's wonderfully good novel Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960).

After a very long life and career, L. Bruce Brian died on September 16, 2004, in North Hollywood, California, at age ninety-eight.

Bruce Bryan's Stories in Oriental Stories and Weird Tales

"The Dancer of Quena," with Dudley S. Corlett, in Oriental Stories (Spring, 1932) 

"The Ho-Ho Kam Horror" in Weird Tales (Sept. 1937)

"The White Rat," with Earl Peirce, Jr., in Weird Tales (Sept. 1938) 

"The Sitter in the Mound" in Weird Tales (June/July 1939)

"Return from Death" in Weird Tales (Aug. 1939)

Bruce Bryan's Letters to Weird Fiction Magazines

Oriental Stories, Spring 1932

Oriental Stories, Summer 1932

Oriental Stories, Winter 1932

Weird Tales, Feb. 1932

Weird Tales, Apr. 1932

Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, Oct. 1932

The Magic Carpet Magazine, Apr. 1933

The Magic Carpet Magazine, Jan. 1934

Weird Tales, Nov. 1936

Weird Tales, Feb. 1937

Weird Tales, July 1937

Weird Tales, Oct. 1937

Further Reading

"History of Archaeological Research," Natural History Museum, here. 

Obituary of Bruce Bryan, here.

From the Los Angeles Times, October 14, 1969, part II, page 1. In the same crime, the burglars made off with poison darts. That sounds like the beginnings of a weird tale . . . 

Happy Mother's Day to All Moms!

(Including Mrs. Bryan)

Text copyright 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Louis B. Capron (1891-1971)

Author, Poet, Merchant, Photographer, Anthropologist

Born July 26, 1891, Menands, Colonie, New York

Died December 16, 1971, West Palm Beach, Florida

Louis Bishop Capron was born on July 26, 1891, in the village of Menands within the town of Colonie, adjacent to Albany, New York. Capron moved to Oneonta, New York, at an early age and became interested in the history of American Indians. At Yale University he studied chemistry, anthropology, and archaeology and participated in the Yale-Andover Archaeological Survey of the Connecticut River Valley. Graduating in 1913, Capron--like his father before him--became a merchant. In 1925, he moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, where he worked for the Palm Beach Mercantile Company until his retirement in 1952.

From 1915 to 1920, Louis B. Capron contributed poems, stories, and vignettes to The Argosy, Breezy Stories, Munsey's, The Saturday Evening Post, The Smart Set, and St. Nicholas. His lone contribution to Weird Tales was the short story "The Soul That Waited" from June 1925.

Louis B. Capron was considered an expert on the Seminole Indians and was a member of historic and anthropological societies, including the American Anthropological Association. Once in Florida, he acquainted himself with the Seminole people and wrote the text of a pamphlet, "The Medicine Bundle of the Florida Seminole and the Green Corn Dance," for the Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnography, published in 1953. His article "Florida's 'Wild' Indians: The Seminole" appeared in National Geographic in December 1956. 

In addition to being an author of verse, short fiction, and non-fiction, Louis Capron wrote children's novels, including Golden Arrowhead (1948), White Moccasins (1955), The Blue Witch (1957), and The Red War Pole (1963). The color-coded titles remind me of those of another Florida author, John D. MacDonald.

Capron died at home in West Palm Beach, Florida, on December 16, 1971, at age eighty.

Louis B. Capron's Story in Weird Tales

"The Soul That Waited" (July 1925)

Further Reading

Louis Bishop Capron's papers are at the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida.

Text copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Before the Golden Age-P. Schuyler Miller

P. Schuyler Miller

Technical Writer, Author, Reviewer, Amateur Archaeologist

Born February 21, 1912, Troy, New York

Died October 13, 1974, Blennerhasset Island, West Virginia

Peter Schuyler Miller was born on February 21, 1912, in Troy, New York, into an old New York family. He was descended from Colonel Philip Peter Schuyler (1736-1808), defender of Fort Schoharie, New York, during the Revolutionary War. The colonel's father was Captain Peter Schuyler, Jr. (1698-1779), builder of a frontier fort called Irondequoit. Going back even further, Peter Schuyler was the son of Colonel Peter F. Schuyler (1657-1724), colonial governor of New York and first mayor of Albany. In 1709, Schuyler took the five Iroquois Sachems to London (one died on the way), where they met Queen Anne and sat for portraits in her court.

Peter Schuyler Miller's father was Philip Schuyler Miller (1873-1936), a historian and a research chemist at the General Electric Company. As a child, Peter lived in Schaghticoke and Scotia, New York. He held a lifelong interest in archaeology and the Iroquois Indians. He was a member of the New York State Archaeological Association and advocated for historical preservation and conservation of natural resources in several letters to the New York Times. Like his father, Miller was a chemist by training. He received his master's degree in chemistry from Union College in Schenectady, New York. Also like his father, he worked for General Electric as a technical writer. From 1952 until his untimely death, Miller was a technical writer with the Fisher Scientific Company in Pittsburgh.

P. Schuyler Miller's first published science fiction was a story called "The Red Plague" for Wonder Stories, July 1930. Like so many science fiction writers of the Golden Age and before, he was a published author before he was out of his teens. Miller wrote science fiction during the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. He was also a bibliographer of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, and in collaboration with others drew a map of Conan's world. Miller is most well known for his hundreds of reviews for Astounding Science Fiction and its successor, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, written between 1945 and his death. In the process of reviewing science fiction, Miller amassed a large collection of works, now located at the Carnegie Museums in Pittsburgh. The University of Kansas Libraries also have a collection of Miller's science fiction-related material.

The story of P. Schuyler Miller's death is an unusual one. An amateur historian and archaeologist, he was on a trip to West Virginia to study prehistoric sites, one or more of which were related to the "Fort Ancient Civilization," when he died suddenly on Blennerhassett Island, located next to Parkersburg, West Virginia (and within an hour's drive of where I write this). I don't know the circumstances of his death. The Internet again shows itself to be woefully inadequate. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction is silent on the matter. In any case, I would like to mention a minor and meaningless connection: In traveling from Pittsburgh (presumably) to Blennerhassett Island, P. Schuyler Miller more or less retraced the route Aaron Burr took in 1805 as he went about his alleged scheming against the United States. In 1946, the Aaron Burr Association was founded "[t]o keep alive the memory of Colonel Aaron Burr as a student, a soldier, a lawyer, a politician, a patron of the arts, an educator, a banker, and as a husband and father" and "to secure for him the honor and respect which are due him as one of the leading figures of his age." The director of that association for a time was Nathan Schachner, who, like P. Schuyler Miller, was a science fiction writer and a contributor to Weird Tales.

P. Schuyler Miller's Stories in Weird Tales

"Spawn" (Aug. 1939)

"John Cawder's Wife" (May 1943)

"Plane and Fancy" (July 1944)

"Ship-in-a-Bottle" (Jan. 1945)

"Ghost" (July 1946)

P. Schuyler Miller wrote five stories for Weird Tales. His second, "John Cawder's Wife," was the cover story for the May 1943 issue. Believe it or not, the cover art was by Margaret Brundage. I wonder if the Schuyler and Miller families would have had a portrait gallery like this one in their own home. It seems only natural that a man like Miller would have written about a line of descent.

Miller wasn't a particularly prolific author of fiction, but he had his share of cover stories such as this one for "Old Man Mulligan" in Astounding Science-Fiction, December 1940. The art is by Rogers.

Here's another cover story, "Genus Homo," for Super Science Novels, March 1941. Miller often worked with other authors. His collaborator here was L. Sprague de Camp. The artist was Leo Morey.

Yesterday I wrote about Lloyd Arthur Eshbach and his Fantasy Press. Here's another title from that publisher, The Titan by P. Schuyler Miller (1952), with cover art by Hannes Bok.

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

The Statue from Outer Space

Very often, the real world is essentially weird. Sometimes, too, it aligns with weirdness in fiction. If I were to tell you of a statue made from a material originating in outer space, carved by an unknown artist in an unknown time and place, and depicting an unknown figure, would I be describing fact or fiction? Or maybe both?

The figure . . . was between seven and eight inches in height, and of exquisitely artistic workmanship . . . . Its vast, awesome, and incalculable age was unmistakable . . . .

[O]f unknown age [and] carved from a rare class of space rocks known as ataxite meteorites . . . . the statue is about 9.5 inches tall and weighs about 23 pounds.

The first passage describes the statuette of Cthulhu from "The Call of Cthulhu." The second describes a recently identified "space Buddha," a statue studied by German scientists and supposedly described in an online journal called Meteoritics & Planetary Science. (My brief attempt to find the journal turned up nothing.) You can read more in the original Yahoo "news" story, "Nazi-Acquired Buddha Statue Came from Space" by Stephanie Pappas, here.

Update (October 25, 2012): An update from Yahoo "news" on the statue from outer space questions its supposed antiquity. It turns out the statue may actually be a twentieth century artifact--still carved from a meteorite, but still perhaps no older than your grandmother. You can read more in the article "'Space Buddha' Statue May Be a Fake" by Stephanie Pappas, here.

Text and captions copyright 2012, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Dorothy McIlwraith (1891-1976)-Part 2

Part 2-Life and Work

Dorothy Stevens McIlwraith
Editor

Born October 14, 1891, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Died August 23, 1976, Orangeville, Ontario, Canada

Dorothy Stevens McIlwraith was born on October 14, 1891, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Her family, which had originated in Ayr, Scotland, was prosperous and brimming with accomplished people. Her grandfather, Thomas McIlwraith I (1824-1903), emigrated from his homeland to Canada in 1853, settling in Hamilton and becoming a coal merchant. His avocation, however, was ornithology. McIlwraith's younger brother Andrew McIlwraith I (1831-1891), also a businessman, studied the natural world and had a special interest in butterflies. Thomas McIlwraith's daughter, Jean Newton McIlwraith (1859-1938), was known as an author of historical romances and non-fiction for children. Educated at Ladies' College in Hamilton, Ontario, and through correspondence by Queen Margaret College, Glasgow University, Scotland, she worked as a reader and editor in New York from 1902 until 1919. Her employer for all or most of that time was Doubleday, Page and Company, based in Garden City, Long Island. (1) Jean retired to Canada in 1922, but not before being replaced by another McIlwraith at Doubleday.

Dorothy McIlwraith graduated from McGill University in Montreal in 1914 and moved to the United States at Christmastime, 1917. Following in her aunt's footsteps, she became a reader and editor for Doubleday, Page and Company. Described as five feet, three inches tall, with a fair complexion, brown hair, and brown eyes, she would eventually run two magazines published by her company. During her decades-long stay in this country, she lived in Manhattan and Melville, Long Island, and traveled many times to Canada and her ancestral homeland of Scotland. On one of those trips, she traveled aboard the S.S. Transylvania, a fitting conveyance for a later editor of weird fiction. I might also mention her name. The surname McIlwraith refers to a "brindled lad," but it includes the Scottish word wraith, which means ghost, also fitting. Dorothy's middle name, Stevens, was the unmarried name of her mother, Mary Stevens. Dorothy's father was Thomas Forsyth McIlwraith, a coal merchant like his father before him.

Short Stories magazine began publishing in 1890 as a literary magazine, but not long after being purchased by Doubleday, Short Stories became a "quality pulp magazine" in 1910. Harry E. Maule (1886-1971) assumed the post as editor in 1912 and guided the magazine through more than a decade of Western, detective, and adventure stories. Roy De S. Horn took over for Maule in the year the stock market crashed. Maule returned to the editorship from 1932 to 1936, when his long-serving assistant, Dorothy McIlwraith, became full editor of Short Stories. During her first full year at the post, in December 1937, Short Stories, Inc., purchased the magazine. Dorothy remained and would soon have added duties with her new employer.

Between 1924 and 1938, Weird Tales was published by the Popular Fiction Company with editorial offices first in Indianapolis, then in Chicago. The editor during that time was the much admired Farnsworth Wright (1888-1940). Short Stories, Inc., purchased Weird Tales in November 1938, and moved its offices to New York City. By then in failing health, Wright went with the magazine with which he is so closely associated. Dorothy McIlwraith was assigned by her publisher to assist Wright at the end of 1939. With the May 1940 issue, she took over full editorship of Weird Tales. Although readers had nothing against her, they were entirely for Farnsworth Wright. They could not have known of course that he would be in his grave before the year was out.

The 1940s were another decade of change for Weird Tales. Authors and artists came and went. August Derleth and Robert Bloch remained two of the few standbys. Ray Bradbury and others took the place of the departed. There were fewer serials, and "The Eyrie" wasn't as chatty as it used to be. Perhaps in compensation, the magazine instituted a Weird Tales Club, with names and locations of members printed in its pages. Page counts dropped, from 128 pages to 112 pages in 1943 and to 96 pages in 1944. To read a description of the magazine during this time, you get the idea that decay had set in. Dorothy McIlwraith may not get much of the blame for that, but she may be considered guilty by association.

As editor, Dorothy was assisted by Henry Aveline Perkins (to September 1942) and Lamont Buchanan (from September 1942 to September 1949). Perkins had previously worked in comic books. An Internet search reveals little more about him. That fact would make him a good candidate for a future blog entry. Lamont Buchanan is another story. I have written about him already and still have more to write. In fact, it may be time for an overhaul of what we know and believe about him and the author known as Allison V. Harding. In any case, Dorothy McIlwraith and Lamont Buchanan, both of Scottish descent, may have felt some kind of kinship despite the years separating them.

I'll give credit where it is due before bringing this all to a close. Dorothy McIlwraith nurtured the careers of many beginning artists and writers, Ray Bradbury especially. She also helped launch the career of Frank Kelly Freas with his first cover for Weird Tales, a portrayal of a piping god Pan (Nov. 1950). According to several websites, she also helped create the character John Thunstone in stories authored by Manly Wade Wellman. None of that was enough, however. In September 1953, Weird Tales succumbed to a trend and became a digest-sized magazine. That lasted for a year. In September 1954, Weird Tales gave up the ghost. Short Stories continued, but without Dorothy McIlwraith. She left in the same month Weird Tales came to an end (2) but continued to work in New York until 1964. Some years before she had purchased a farmhouse in Melville, Ontario, a town by the same name as her hometown in the United States. She retired to that farmhouse in 1964 and lived out her remaining years in the province of her birth. Dorothy Stevens McIlwraith died on August 23, 1976, in Orangeville, Ontario, Canada. She was eighty-four years old. (3)

Notes

(1) Jean Newton McIlwraith's books: The Making of Mary (1895) as by Jean Forsyth; A Book about Shakespeare (1898); The Span o'Life: A Tale of Louisbourg and Quebec (1899) with William McLennan;  Canada (1899); A Book about Longfellow (1900); The Curious Career of Roderick Campbell (1901) illustrated by Frank Schoonover; Sir Frederick Haldimand (1904), for the Makers of Canada series; A Diana of Quebec (1912); The Little Admiral (1924); Kinsmen at War (1927); and the libretto for the comic opera Ptarmigan (1895).

(2) Short Stories did not survive the decade and came to an end in August 1959. The associate editor at the time was Frank Belknap Long, previously a contributor to Weird Tales.
(3) You can read more about the family of Dorothy McIlwraith in the work of Dr. Eva-Marie Kröller at the University of British Columbia, who is working on a biography. I should add that Dorothy McIlwraith's brother, Thomas McIlwraith, was an anthropologist. I wonder if he ever studied the cult of Cthulhu.

Weird Tales for May 1940, the first issue for which Dorothy McIlwraith received credit as editor. The cover art was by Hannes Bok.

Frank Kelly Freas' first cover for Weird Tales, November 1950. 

And the final issue of Weird Tales, September 1954, with recycled cover art by Virgil Finlay, originally from the August 1939 issue of the magazine.

Thanks to Dr. Eva-Marie Kröller, Prof. Thomas F. McIlwraith, and Randal A. Everts for corrections and further information.
Text and captions copyright 2012, 2023 Terence E. Hanley