Seekers of Tomorrow (45 page)

Another very early Bloch tale,
The Laughter of a Ghoul,
was a vignette concerning a man waiting for his wife to give birth to a child, only to find the mother dead and the new-born infant a chortling ghoul. This story, which ap-peared in the December, 1934, fantasy fan, was a literary failure, but nevertheless these test efforts of Robert Bloch's showed such definite ability that it was small surprise when in July, 1934, a month after his graduation from high school and two months after he turned 17, he sold a story to weird tales,
The Secret of the Tomb.
A second sale, a real shocker called
The Feast in the Abbey,
was published first. The story appeared in weird tales for January, 1935, and concerned a man who sits down to a feast with some "monks" in an old abbey, to discover in time the main meat course is his brother. Despite the overpowering influence of Lovecraft,
The Feast in the Abbey
was a remarkably effective effort and tied for first place with three other stories in the same issue by Seabury Quinn, Clark Ashton Smith, and Laurence J. Cahill. The reader's department, "The Eyrie," was filled with be-grudgingly favorable comment on Bloch's story, surprising since he had made the political error of venting his spleen on Robert E. Howard's
Conan
in a letter in the November, 1934, weird tales, and the readers were openly out to "get" him. The poorly timed letter had read: "I am awfully tired of poor old Conan the Cluck, who for the past 15 issues has every month slain a new wizard, tackled a new monster, come to a violent and sudden end that was averted (incredi-bly enough!) in just the nick of time and won a new girl friend, each of whose penchants for nudism won for her a place of honor, either on the cover or on the inner illustration. Such has been Conan's history, and from the realms of the Kushites to the lands of Quilenia, from the shores of the Shemites to the palaces of Dyme-Novell-Bolonia, I cry: 'Enough of this brute and his iron-thewed sword-thrusts— may he be sent to Valhalla to cut out paper dolls.' "

It was a close thing, for Howard was writing at his bloody best and his fans were legion, including even Bloch's newly acquired mentor H. P. Lovecraft, who must have taken small pleasure in the incident. Had Farnsworth Wright, editor of weird tales, printed first the story Bloch had sold him,
The Secret in the
Tomb
(which eventually appeared in the May, 1935, issue), there would have been a literary massacre.
The
Secret in the Tomb
was a pathetically weak mood piece of a man who discovers his ancestor is a ghoul. Equally inadequate was
Suicide in the Study
(weird tales, June, 1935), in which a scientist splits his good and evil personalities into two physical bodies and is destroyed in the act. If the tale has any significance, it is that it was the first in which Bloch made the slightest gesture in the direction of scientific explanation for the strange events he relates.

The Howard incident was an important lesson learned early. Rarely again did Bloch ever pervert his brilliant wit to vitriolic ends. Instead, he became a master of the art of making people feel important as he ribbed them, of investing his literary or verbal lampoon with an implied compliment. As a result, his friends were to become legion and his detractors negligible.

During this early period of his writing, Bloch was held completely in thrall by Lovecraft. Virtually nothing of his own showed through. Such popularity as he enjoyed was obtained by basking in the reflection of the master.
The Shambler from the Stars
(weird tales, September, 1935) was not only dedicated to H. P. Lovecraft but made him the central character, who unwisely utters an incantation that draws a monster from the unknown, to break him up like kindling wood and suck the blood from his body. Lovecraft employed a "famous" book as a literary device in his stories,
The Necronomicon;
Clark Ashton Smith was fond of
The Book of Eibon;
and August Derleth coveted the
Cultes des Goules,
so why couldn't Bloch invent his own book? He did:
De Vermis Mysteriis
(Mysteries of the Worm), by Ludvig Prinn, a man allegedly burned at the stake in Brussels as the result of his activities as an alchemist and necromancer.

"Robert Bloch deserves plenty of praise for
Shambler of the Stars.
Now why doesn't Mr. Lovecraft return the compli-ment, and dedicate a story to the author?" suggested reader B. M. Reynolds of North Adams, Mass., in weird tales'
Eyrie
for November, 1935. His suggestion became reality when H. P. Lovecraft wrote
The Haunter of the Dark
(weird tales, December, 1936) as a sequel to
Shambler of the
Stars
and dedicated it to Robert Bloch. In this story he returns the compliment, and Robert "Blake" is killed by a loathsome monstrosity which breaks out of an abandoned church tower in Providence, Rhode Island, under the cover of darkness caused by an electrical breakdown.

A resident of Milwaukee during 1935, Bloch received a write-up in the local papers underscoring his success as a weird-fiction writer. Soon there came an invitation to join a unique literary group called The Milwaukee Fictioneers, some of its members writers working in the fantasy field. The group met once every two weeks, barred all women, and confined its membership to professionals only. It had a rule against reading manuscripts at meetings but worked extreme-ly hard, together, on story plotting. Meetings were held alternately at members' homes and the size of the group rarely exceeded twelve. The result was writing discipline that paid off for all and gave Bloch a feeling of professional acceptance. Among its members was Stanley G. Weinbaum, whose influence on writers who followed was more far-reaching than even that of Lovecraft; Ralph Milne Farley (Senator Roger Sherman Hoar), who had built up a considerable reputation for his "Radio Man" novels in argosy, and Ray-mond A. Palmer, who was to become the editor of amazing stories. Earl Pierce, Jr., a contributor to weird tales, was also a resident of Milwaukee whom Bloch met at the time.

Bloch became a frequent visitor to Weinbaum's home; they had in common a strong interest in James Branch Cabell.

Bloch remembers Weinbaum as a soft-spoken Southerner (originally from Louisville), a good-looking, unassuming man, living quietly and modestly with his wife. Among the "secrets" that Bloch confessed to Weinbaum and other Mil-waukee Fictioneers was the fact that he still yearned to be a comic. His adulation of Lovecraft was light years removed from this ambition, but he recalls, "I did submit gags to F. Chase Taylor, of the then-popular comedy team, Stoopnagle and Budd, whom I admired, and got a couple of small checks. When Roy Atwell, then appearing with Fred Allen, came to town in vaudeville, I appeared on an amateur show at the theater. Atwell was not only interested in my imper-sonation, he also bought the monologue material I used for myself. For a short time I did nitery stints as M. C. or monologist, but the money was poor even by Depression standards, the hours were terrible, and the whole
milieu
seemed seedy and seamy. I wasn't hip enough to thrive at the trade."

The death of Lovecraft on March 15, 1937, affected Robert Bloch much harder than he admitted in his eulogy, which appeared in the June, 1937, weird tales. "Of course there ought to be a memorial volume, with stories chosen by the readers," he wrote. "That's the smallest tribute we can pay." (A few years later August W. Derleth and Donald Wandrei accomplished that objective and the beginning of a new fame for Lovecraft.)

"But there's an end of the world," Bloch continued, "the world of Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, and Abdul Alhazred; the finest world of fantasy I know."

During the past year Bloch's stories in the Lovecraft vein had been growing in effectiveness, predominantly a result of greater care in building the backgrounds of his stories. Their popularity became undeniable, but equally undeniable was the fact that the endings were forced and unbelievable. Sto-ries like
The Druidic Doom, The Faceless God, The Grinning Ghoul, The Opener of the Way, The Dark
Demon,
and
Brood of Bubastis
were cast in the same mold. The author seemed unaware that in the majority of his later writings Lovecraft had abandoned the supernatural in explaining his horrors and had leaned with increasing weight on science. Bloch was actually writing pastiches of early Lovecraft. In this respect he had company. Henry Kuttner, as fervid a Lovecraft enthusiast and imitator as Bloch, had broken into the professional ranks by the same road. They had been correspondents for years, and when Lovecraft died, sensing Bloch's bereavement, Kuttner's mother suggested to Henry that Bloch be invited as a guest to their Beverly Hills home. C. L. Moore was in town visiting at the time, and Bloch was also introduced to another aspiring author who would even-tually make his reputation in fantasy ranks, Fritz Leiber, Jr. They were as curious about Bloch as he was about them, and what they saw was a tall, angular young man, not yet turned 21, with features as sharp as his wit (largely expressed in the science-fiction fan magazines) and rimless glasses that im-parted an intellectual appearance. In person they found Bloch was soft spoken, quiet, almost gentle.

Kuttner was barely getting under way as a writer. Besides weird tales he was selling to thrilling mystery and was evaluating other markets. It would be years before Bloch would seriously try for any magazine other than weird tales, and then only by accident.

On the recommendation of Ralph Milne Farley, Ray Pal-mer had been given the job as editor of amazing stories by Ziff-Davis Publications, a Chicago firm that had purchased the magazine from Teck Publications in the spring of 1938. Palmer was desperately casting about for Chicago-area writ-ers he could shape into a dependable team and he urged Bloch to try his hand at writing science fiction. Bloch's first attempt,
The Secret of the Observatory
in the August, 1938, amazing stories, was a potboiler about a camera that could photograph through walls, but it did force Bloch to write dialogue. Lovecraft couldn't write dialogue, so precious little appeared in any story by writers influenced by him. In his nearly four years of fantasy writing, Bloch proba-bly hadn't written 1,000 words of dialogue in his fantasy, though of course he did some for comedy routines.

In his second attempt at science fiction, Bloch hit the bull's-eye. No one knew it at the time, but Bloch had found the thing he was best at and that would eventually lead to the writing of
Psycho.
Authors had detailed every conceivable aspect of the physical side of space flight, but in
The Strange Flight of Richard
Clayton
in amazing stories for March, 1939, Bloch explored its psychological aspects. A man is sent to Mars in a windowless spaceship on a journey that will take ten years. His instrument board is smashed on take-off so he has no way of estimating distance or duration. Time passes and his hair whitens, his skin shrivels, and he begins to grow old. Finally the ship stops vibrating and he emerges to learn that the ship never left Earth, that he was sealed inside for only one week. New space developments may possibly date the story, but at the time of its appearance it was a masterpiece based on excellent scientific knowledge (atomic energy engines) with a finale that figuratively tore the reader's head off.

It was in the same magazine that Bloch was first able to express a broad note of humor, accomplishing this in
The Man Who Walked Through Mirrors,
a tale that was a spoof of amazing stories' cover slogan of that period: "Every Story Scientifically Accurate."

In science fiction he felt uninhibited, under no obligation to be anything but himself. In weird fiction, the ghost of H. P. Lovecraft bound him in a literary strait jacket that he would be years in completely extricating himself from, though there were a few early indications that this was coming. One was in
Slave
of the Flames
(weird tales, June, 1938), in which he briefly and superbly explored the psychology of a pyro-maniac. Another was in
The Cloak
(unknown, May, 1939), which departed from the Lovecraft style, showing instead heavy dependence on dialogue, a faint implication of humor, and even a note of romance before the traditional horrific denouement.

Branching out into amazing stories, strange stories, unknown, as well as into the mystery-horror magazines, gave Bloch enough income in 1939 to consider marriage seriously. In addition, he was doing political ghost writing, something he would continue through 1941. He met Marion Ruth Holcombe in 1939

and they were married in October, 1940.

As a child she had suffered from tuberculosis of the hip, and symptoms of this began to recur in 1941, forcing Bloch to look around seriously for a steady job and temporarily at least to give up thought of making magazine and free-lance writing his main source of income.

He took a job with the Gustav Marx Advertising Agency as a copywriter in 1942, feeling it was just a temporary expedient, but in 1943 a daughter, Sally Ann, was born and his wife's illness became almost chronic, at one point necessi-tating nine months' treatment in a sanitarium. As a result, Bloch stayed with the Gustav Marx Agency for the next ten years, writing in his spare time.

Despite his problems, he began a series of humorous sto-ries in the Damon Runyon manner for fantastic adven-tures, built around the character of Lefty Feep. Some were science fiction, others fantasy, and still others straight weirdies, but one and all they were the most insane melange of cockeyed humor the fantasy magazines had ever seen. From the first, whose title has since become an American axiom,
Time Wounds
All Heels
(fantastic adventures, April, 1942), through the last, appropriately labeled
The End of Your Rope
(fantastic adventures, July, 1950), the sto-ries were little more than a blend of situation comedy and vaudeville done narrative-style, replete with puns, mixed meta-phors, rhyming phrases, alliteration, phonetic dialogue, and anything else that could be thrown into the pot. This mad-house concoction ran to twenty-two stories, most of them novelette length.