Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of "the Scientific Romance" in the Munsey Magazines, 1912-1920 (67 page)

Another reviewer wrote: "The writer has a convincing style worthy of a better cause." It is significant to note that when Tarzan of the Apes first appeared, praise was uniform for his writing ability, enough so to lay open to question the assertions of later critics that he had nothing but imagination.

Receiving no replies to his enthusiastic accounts of publishing success, Burroughs irately wrote on May 22, 1914, that he would sever all relationships with Munsey unless treated in a better fashion.

Metcalf replied May 29, again explaining that the matter was out of his hands and that he had no more influence with the magazine. The same date, Bob Davis wrote a note to Burroughs assuring him that he would answer all questions in a few days.

The last man Davis wanted to antagonize was Burroughs. With the big job of putting ALL-STORY CAVALIER WEEKLY over, he needed him more desperately than ever.

As good as his word, he wrote on June 12 that he would like to have a conference with Burroughs in New York City with the idea of obtaining more Tarzans, lengthening
The Girl from Harris'
, and obtaining sequels to
The Mucker
,
The Mad King
, and
At the Earth's Core
.

Burroughs replied that he was thoroughly sick of writing sequels, but he supposed he was "doomed" to continue to do so and would be glad to meet with Davis.

Burroughs' round-trip fare was paid by the Frank A. Munsey Company from Chicago to New York City, where he arrived Tuesday, June 23, 1914. Burroughs was always much easier to do business with in person than by mail, and Bob Davis was the personification of affability. When Burroughs left he had agreed to do more Tarzans, lengthen
The Girl from Harris'
, and do sequels to
The Mucker
,
The Mad King
, and
At the Earth's Core
.

Shortly after Burroughs arrived home, a handwritten card from Thomas Newell Metcalf dated June 28 was received, imparting the news that he was leaving Munsey. The split, he said, had been brewing for some time. If he made a connection in which Burroughs' services might be useful, he promised to contact him immediately, and expressed his personal confidence that there would be no problems with Bob Davis.

Burroughs replied on July 8, inviting Metcalf to visit him. It is not known whether he ever did, and Metcalf's career after that date has not been determined, though he dropped into the Munsey offices to visit his old co-worker Elliot Balistier as late as 1921, according to the recollections of Seo Margulies then working for the firm's subsidiary rights division, Service For Authors.

What influence, if any, Metcalf had upon the policies of THE ARGOSY during the three or four months he edited it can only be surmised. Probably the most interesting story run during that period was
A Son of the Ages
, by Stanley Waterloo, in May, 1914. It was given to Stanley Waterloo to score a great success with a book called
The Story of Ab
, "A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man," published by Way & Williams, Chicago, in 1897. It was this novel that popularized the theme of the prehistoric man in fiction, though there had been others before, and the very same year H. G. Wells would have serialized
Story of the Stone Age
in THE IDLER for May to September.

The Story of Ab
was reprinted in a deluxe edition with color illustrations in 1905 and read by Jack London. One year later, Jack London's
Before Adam
appeared, containing episodes that were indeed very similar to those of Waterloo's. Following the appearance of the first installment of
Before Adam
in EVERYBODY'S MAGAZINE in 1906, Stanley Waterloo in an interview picked up by the Associated Press protested: "Jack London not only starts out with the same proposition I based my work on, but he employs in some instances practically the same language."

Jack London shot back an angry letter from Glen Ellen, California, on October 20, 1906, in which he excoriated Waterloo for having the temerity to intimate that the prehistoric-man theme was his exclusive property, but then in continuing rage admitted: "Why, I wrote my story as a reply to yours, because yours was unscientific. You crammed the evolution of a thousand generations into one generation—something at which I revolted from the time I first read your story."

London got involved in a running battle with several men on the situation and then finally made the cruel yet damning statement in a letter to B. W. Babcock of December 3, 1906: "Suppose, however, the plagiarism is so eminently great that it outshines the original. Who has any complaint coming?"

Jack London was frequently charged with helping himself to other people's ideas, and actually bought plots from a youthful Sinclair Lewis. The new charge helped publicize Stanley Waterloo further, and the publication of
A Son of the Ages
by THE ARGOSY, which covered the invention of "the first club, the first fire, mining of the first copper," by Scar, a man who is reincarnated many times, was a real coup for the magazine. The version published in THE ARGOSY was condensed at the request of the editor, and Waterloo died before he could mail the manuscript back, though he had finished the revision. The complete text was published in hardcover by Doubleday, Page & Co.

Because of his importance in the popularization of the prehistoric-man story, Stanley Waterloo deserves more consideration by science-fiction circles than he has up to now received. His collection,
The Wolfs Long Howl
, published by Stone in 1899, contains a number of short fantasies.
The Story of Ab
continues to be reprinted as a children's classic, but almost forgotten is
Armageddon
(Rand, McNally & Co., 1898), a novel of the building of a canal across Nicaragua and the supremacy of air power over naval vessels.

It was with the March, 1914, issue that THE ARGOSY had adopted a policy of no more serial stories. "It means a revolution in the publication of fiction magazines," Bob Davis said, "a move ahead of the times; a sudden departure from the serial method which has been followed by fiction magazines since there were fiction magazines. . . . You will enjoy a good story all in your hands at once much better than if you felt it would be six months before you reached the end."

"The Log-Book," the editor's and readers' column in THE ARGOSY, was a true indicator of reader reaction. The reader had for years received with some expression of pleasure the Hawkins stories of an impractical inventor who contrives invention after invention that always ends him in a mishap. Stories in the series which began with
The Hawkins Horsebrake
in 1903 even showed up in the competing THE BLUE BOOK MAGAZINE in 1909. The years rolled along, and the number of Hawkins stories passed twenty-five in THE ARGOSY alone, and the readers' attitude became one of grumbling tolerance. All courtesy evaporated when the May, 1912, issue began a five-part novel titled
The Hawkins Relapse
. This time, Hawkins had invented a yacht that could ride up an island on wheels, and as usual he comes to grief, but not as much grief as the publication of the story was to bring the author.

Though Bob Davis was able to dredge up a few letters that praised the series, to print in the readers' column in the September, 1912, issue, which contained the last installment of the Edgar Franklin serial, he admitted: "I might as well say right here that Hawkins Relapse is the last story about this much-discussed amateur inventor I have in stock, and very probably the last Mr. Franklin will ever write, as he is very busy with other work. Hawkins' foes may rejoice accordingly, and his champions make the most of these final annals."

Davis was not as good as his word, for two more Hawkins short stories did appear, the last,
Hawkins-Heat
, in the July, 1915, issue. The real blame must be given to Matthew White, Jr., one of the original editors of THE ARGOSY, who took over again when Metcalf left and when Davis was occupied with the ALL-STORY CAVALIER WEEKLY. It was in "The Log-Book" for January, 1916, that Matthew White brought down the curtain on the series in reply to a reader's blast by stating: "1 wish to inform the correspondent whose letter appears below that there will be no more Hawkins stories."

"The Log-Book" showed that it was the dislike for the Hawkins series that resulted in the sharp cutdown in science fiction in THE ARGOSY. "I find that there is a greater division of opinion on fantastic stories than in respect to anything else we serve in THE ARGOSY table of contents," Davis said in the April, 1913, THE ARGOSY. "If a reader doesn't like one 'impossible' story, as they have come to be called, he is very apt not to care for any of them. And the reverse is just as true. That is to say, if he likes one of the brand, he will be very much inclined to like them all. Note in the following letter from Guy Z. F., Washington, Indiana, the leaning toward
Hawkins
, whose deeds certainly border on the fantastic." He then followed the letter with another, which he prefaced with the statement: "Here, you see, the boot is on the other leg. R. G. C, of Provo, Utah, doesn't care for the fantastic, hence he knocks
Hawkins
and boosts Terhune, whose specialty is history." The foregoing statements seem to leave little doubt that ALL-STORY CAVALIER WEEKLY was the repository of an inordinate amount of fantasy as a deliberate policy to attract that portion of the readership who liked them, and THE ARGOSY ran much fewer to satisfy the audience that preferred more conventional fiction.

IT WAS the readers' departments of THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE and THE ARGOSY that produced one of the most fascinating sidelights on the literary history of Munsey. H. P. Lovecraft has in recent times won a deserved reputation as one of the great masters of horror and science fiction in American letters. His works, admired by a small but select coterie of devotees, which included August W. Derleth, Donald Wandrei, Frank Belknap Long, Henry Kuttner, Robert Bloch, and innumerable others, has today reached the stage where they are perpetually in print, motion pictures are made from them, and even former detractors come forth with more positive reappraisals.

As prominent a literary commentator as Colin Wilson has become so utterly obsessed by what he has found in Lovecraft's writings that he led off his book
The Strength to Dream
(Houghton Mifflin, 1962) with a discussion of that author. He did not end there, for in continuing his discussions of W. B. Yeats, Oscar Wilde, August Strindberg, Emile Zola, Nathanael West, William Faulkner, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Jean-Paul Sartre, and many others, he evaluated their thinking, methods, and ideas against those of H. P. Lovecraft.

H. P. Lovecraft had been a regular reader of THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE from its very first issue, January, 1905. Since he was born August 20, 1890, he was fourteen years old at the time he first discovered it. The issue in which THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE became ALL-STORY WEEKLY, dated March 7, 1914, carried a letter two thousand words long which is an important and revealing document on the reading background and preferences of an H. P. Lovecraft now twenty-three years of age and a faithful reader of the Munsey pulps for nine continuous years. He said in part: "Having read every number of your magazine since its beginning in January, 1905, I feel in some measure privileged to write a few words of approbation and criticism concerning its contents.

"In the present age of vulgar taste and sordid realism it is a relief to peruse a publication such as THE ALL-STORY, which has ever been and still remains under the influence of the imaginative school of Poe and Verne.

"For such materialistic readers as your North-British correspondent, Mr. G. W. P., of Dundee, there are only too many periodicals containing 'probable' stories; let THE ALL-STORY continue to hold its unique position as purveyor of literature to those whose minds cannot be confined within the narrow circle of probability, or dulled into a positive acceptance of the tedious round of things as they are.

"If, in fact, man is unable to create living beings out of inorganic matter, to hypnotize the beasts of the forests to do his will, to swing from tree to tree with the apes of the African jungle, to restore to life the mummified corpses of the Pharaohs and the Jncas, or to explore the atmosphere of Venus and the deserts of Mars, permit us, at least, in fancy, to witness these miracles, and to satisfy that craving for the unknown, the weird, and the impossible which exists in every active human brain.

"...He who can retain in his older years the untainted mind, the lively imagination, and the artless curiosity of his infancy is rather blessed than cursed; such men as these are our authors, scientists, and inventors.

"At or near the head of your list of writers Edgar Rice Burroughs undoubtedly stands. I have read very few recent novels by others wherein is displayed an equal ingenuity in plot, and verisimilitude in treatment. His only fault seems to be a tendency toward scientific inaccuracy and slight inconsistencies. ...

"In the domain of the weird and bizarre, Lee Robinet has furnished us a masterpiece by writing
The Second Man
. The atmosphere created and sustained throughout the story can be the work only of a gifted and polished artist. Very effective is the author's careful neglect to tell the exact location of his second Eden.

"I strongly hope that you have added Perley Poore Sheehan permanently to your staff, for in him may be recognized an extremely powerful writer. I have seen Mr. Sheehan's work elsewhere, and was especially captivated by a grim short story of his entitled
His Ancestor's Head
.

"I hardly need mention the author of
A Columbus of Space
further than to say that I have read every published work of Garrett P. Serviss, own most of them, and await his further writings with eagerness. ..."

Another important letter of one thousand words in length from H. P. Lovecraft was published in ALL-STORY CAVALIER WEEKLY for August 15, 1914, commenting upon the combination of the two publications.

"Many writers, familiar and unfamiliar, good and bad, come from THE CAVALIER to the readers of THE ALL-STORY. Out of these I trust the best will be permanently retained, and the others gradually eliminated.