Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of "the Scientific Romance" in the Munsey Magazines, 1912-1920 (78 page)

Davis had been sweating to get an Edgar Rice Burroughs adventure, but when
Under the Red Flag
was submitted to him, he rejected it. Burroughs demanded an explanation, and Davis replied on September 17, 1919, "The Pharisees would raise hell with any magazine that resorted to fiction designed to point out obvious truths." The novel, dealing with the occupation of the earth by the Moon Men, was intended to show what life would be like under a communist state.

What Davis didn't know was that Burroughs was having serious trouble at THE BLUE BOOK MAGAZINE and THE RED BOOK MAGAZINE. Ray Long had left to take the position as editor of COSMOPOLITAN that would make him one of the most exalted and highest-paid editors in the world. Karl Harriman, who had been shoved out of THE RED BOOK MAGAZINE when Long was brought in, was now recalled to his old position. Burroughs had been working on his old agreement with Long to produce a series of Tarzan shorts, initially twelve, then cut to ten. Burroughs produced the first six, which ran monthly in THE RED BOOK MAGAZINE from March through August, and was paid a total of $2,750 for the group. Tarzan spent a lot of his time fighting "krauts" in this set of stories, so vindictively, in fact, that the Germans never forgave Burroughs or Tarzan. He also conclusively killed off his wife, Jane, in the pages of THE RED BOOK MAGAZINE. Aside from that, he was writing at the very top of his form and placing Tarzan in some of the most memorable situations. He submitted
Under the Red Flag
to Harriman on August 16, 1919, and before he had received a reply had sent the last of the Tarzan stories asked for under his original agreement with Ray Long, a short novel called
Tarzan and the Valley of Luna
. Harriman rejected
Under the Red Flag
on August 27, 1919, and then on September 19 rejected
Tarzan and the Valley of Luna
under the pretext that he couldn't publish it for eight months.

Burroughs had also attempted to sell Ray Long at COSMOPOLITAN, but having ascended to that high post, Long appeared to have lost all further interest in Tarzan and scientific romances. It now seemed that in placing Tarzan in THE RED BOOK MAGAZINE Burroughs had reached his high-water mark as far as periodicals were concerned. With the unreceptive Harriman, there was nothing more for him at THE BLUE BOOK MAGAZINE or THE RED BOOK MAGAZINE at least for the time being. Bob Davis and ALL-STORY WEEKLY were now his best hope.

When Davis was offered
Tarzan and the Valley of Luna
, he could scarcely believe his good fortune. Unaware that Burroughs was fresh out of markets, he permitted himself to be held to his old offer of three thousand dollars for a new Tarzan, in this case only fifty thousand words long. The novel was a good one and was broken into five installments, March 20-April 17, 1920. Burroughs changed his mind about killing off Tarzan's wife, and when THE RED BOOK MAGAZINE shorts and
Tarzan and the Valley of Luna
went into hardcover under the title of
Tarzan the Untamed
(A. C. McClurg, 1920), he rewrote the early portion to make her death inconclusive. An unknown civilization and city in the depths of Africa called Kuja was the home base for a good portion of the novel, making it close to science fiction of the lost-race variety.

"It is surely a work of supererogation, like gilding refined gold, painting the lily, or throwing perfume on the violet to write an introduction of any great length to a story by Edgar Rice Burroughs," Davis raved about the Tarzan novel, the first he had bought in many years, it meant his star quarterback was back on an all-star team. There were others who were delighted to see Burroughs back. In the readers' department of the May 15 issue there was a letter enthusiastic about Burroughs and science fiction which was signed O. A. K., undoubtedly a youthful Otis Adelbert Kline, who would in later years make his reputation by imitating Burroughs in
Planet of Peril
and
Prince of Peril
. Another letter in the same issue was asking for issues of ALL-STORY MAGAZINE with the first installment of
Under the Moons of Mars
and
Tarzan of the Apes
. It was Martin B. Gardner, who would from 1936 to 1963 write ten books about Bantan of the Islands, a direct pastiche of Tarzan.

The pages of both THE ARGOSY and ALL-STORY WEEKLY had been dropping since 1918, though the ten-cent price remained the same. ALL-STORY WEEKLY had been raised to 192 pages early in 1918 to match THE ARGOSY; then both magazines dropped to 176 with the issues of November 16, 1918. The two magazines simultaneously fell to 160 pages with the December 13, 1919, issues. With the issues of March 27, 1920, there was a simultaneous reduction to 144 pages.

Normally this would be a sure sign of magazine weakness, but during World War I a severe paper shortage had developed. After the war, paper prices rocketed month by month. Printers' strikes increased the cost of production, seemingly endlessly.

Without exception, all the competitors of THE ARGOSY and ALL-STORY WEEKLY had raised their prices. ADVENTURE, THE BLUE BOOK MAGAZINE, THE POPULAR MAGAZINE, and PEOPLES FAVORITE MAGAZINE were 192 pages for twenty cents; SHORT STORIES was 176 pages for twenty cents; and TOP-NOTCH MAGAZINE was fifteen cents for 192 pages. The last, appealing to a teen-age clientele, was probably afraid to raise the price too high. THE ARGOSY and ALL-STORY WEEKLY were gaining circulation at the expense of the entire adventure field, for only they were still ten cents, but the profit margin was growing smaller.

"The cost of producing and marketing magazines is three times that of a few years ago," Frank A. Munsey opened in one of his famed blue-paper inserts in the July 17, 1920, issues of both magazines. "Mostly magazines have met this increased cost by a heavy advance in the selling price, while we have clung to the ten-cent price for ALL-STORY WEEKLY and THE ARGOSY in spite of the always mounting costs. But the last advance in the price of print paper (the fourth advance within a year) so increased the cost of production that it became a question of advancing the selling price ... or overcoming the added cost in some other way. . . . Through a consolidation of ALL-STORY WEEKLY and THE ARGOSY, we can save all the cost of stories in one magazine, all the cost of the editorial force, all the cost of typesetting, all the cost of making electrotype plates, and many other minor costs—an aggregate sufficiently large to enable us to go on a while longer at the old popular price of ten cents a copy, perhaps to go on permanently at ten cents—we hope so."

The new title would be argosy all-story weekly, beginning with the July 24, 1920, issue. The readers' departments of both magazines, "Heart to Heart Talks" in ALL-STORY WEEKLY and "The Log-Book" in THE ARGOSY, had been discontinued in advance of the merger, the last running in the July 3 issues, and they would not be resumed. The first issue of the new ARGOSY ALL-STORY WEEKLY had 224 pages to accommodate the serials from both magazines. As the serials concluded, the pages dropped to 192, 176, 160, and finally stabilized at 144 by the year's end, and the price remained the same.

The placing of the name "Argosy" before "All-Story," if it were not sentiment on the part of Frank A. Munsey, since THE ARGOSY reached its one-thousandth number with the March 6, 1920, issue, must have indicated that it was the stronger of the two titles at the time of the combination. There had been little to choose between the two magazines, which had been similar in price and policy. ALL-STORY WEEKLY featured at the time of the combination almost three times as much wordage in fantastic stories, but THE ARGOSY had been increasing the quantity fast, and they were good ones. The major difference was in the cover art. THE ARGOSY was without question one of the most attractive and effective magazines on the stands; the cover painting was neatly framed with a checkerboard border, and the color was excellent. A large percentage of the covers featured women, but they were in action situations—a woman on the deck of a submarine rising from the waves, a woman clinging to a girder of a skyscraper, a woman casting a spear from the deck of a space ship, a woman directing a gang of men building a railroad, and on and on. Such covers attracted both men and women and gave the impression of romantic adventure.

ALL-STORY WEEKLY ran close to one-third of its covers as portraits of a pretty woman's face or a special hair-do, the type of thing seen only on women's magazines. There were also some very good fantastic covers, but the quantity of portraits gave it the indelible stamp of a love-story magazine, lacking the artistic sophistication of THE ARGOSY in blending its cover appeal to both a male and a female audience. Despite this, both magazines must have gained substantially in circulation as the only general all-fiction pulps selling for ten cents during 1919 and 1920. Frank Luther Mott, in
A History of American Magazines
, Volume 4, cites a figure of five hundred thousand as the circulation of ARGOSY ALL-STORY WEEKLY in 1920 at the time of the merger, and then also states: "Its distribution in the twenties held at about four hundred thousand." This seems high, but at the time ARGOSY ALL-STORY WEEKLY was a
family
magazine, it remained during most of the twenties the only ten-cent general-fiction magazine, and had a very high entertainment quotient.

The method of the combination, carrying the serials of both by adding pages, was such that it is doubtful that a single nonduplicating reader was lost from either magazine. Certainly the science-fiction lovers were in no mood to leave, with an eight-part novel by A. Merritt,
The Metal Monster
, told by the narrator of
The Moon Pool
, beginning in the August 7, 1920, issue. This 102,000-word
tour de force
, for which Merritt received one thousand dollars, is certainly one of the most remarkable works of science fiction ever written. In the mountains of Turkestan, two Americans are brought face to face with the invasion of a metallic entity from space who, if unchecked, will master the world. It controls metallic objects, which it patterns into geometric designs, and all are but units of one massive organism. In this novel Merritt rises to supreme heights of emotion and poetry as he balances an interplay between humans and cold, unfeeling alienity. His final revision, for reprint in the August, 1941, FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES, gave the novel a unified philosophical note, beginning with the lines:

Immediately before the merger, Bob Davis had purchased a collaboration between Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint, both of whom resided near San Jose, California, titled
The Blind Spot
. Its ninety-eight thousand words had been mailed in and paid for in three segments; the first received a check of three hundred dollars on April 4, 1920, the second a payment of five hundred dollars on June 20, and the final one two hundred dollars on June 23, for a total of one thousand dollars. It would be held for publication almost a year, when it would appear in six installments, May 14-June 18, 1921, and it would be enshrined as a landmark among scientific romances. A strange man emerges from either another dimension or a parallel world and carries back with him a scientist, and then is followed back by other would-be rescuers who learn that the "Blind Spot" is an opening between two worlds. While there is action in that other world, the story is essentially slow-moving, banking on mystery to hold reader attention. It is a mixture of very poor and very good writing, the good most often supplied by Austin Hall and the poor by Homer Eon Flint, and highly praised in its time.

Davis was also negotiating with Burroughs for more Tarzan stories and succeeded in getting
Tarzan the Terrible
, probably the best single story in that series, with the possible exception of
Tarzan of the Apes
. Burroughs got three thousand dollars for one hundred thousand words (apparently he was being paid a flat rate for a novel, regardless of its length) of Tarzan traveling into the unusual civilization of Pal-ul-don, somewhere in Africa, where there exist two human races with tails, some specimens as strong physically as Tarzan himself. Like many of the other Tarzan stories, this is true science fiction, replete with imaginative creatures and unknown civilizations.

It seemed like old times, with Bob Davis and Edgar Rice Burroughs on the same team and a great future in view, when suddenly the roof fell in. A query by Burroughs to Bob Davis was answered by Elliot Bales-tier. Balestier had written scores of stories for the Munsey magazines, including a few fantasies, over the past ten years, and had the distinction of being the brother-in-law of Rudyard Kipling, who had married Bales-tier's sister.

"Mr. Davis is no longer with us," the letter, dated December 7, 1920, stated. "He has gone in business for himself with a group of well-known authors whose work he is handling. His address is 229 West 42nd Street, New York City."

It was stunning. When Frank A. Munsey said he would save on staff by combining the two magazines, no one dreamed that Bob Davis would be the one to go, though logically it wouldn't be Matthew White, Jr., who had been editing THE ARGOSY through all of its ramifications since December, 1886, except for a period when he was sent to Europe by Frank A. Munsey, and his duties assumed by Bob Davis.

Other people involved with the Munsey magazines say that Davis resigned as a result of deep disagreements with other members of the Munsey editorial staff, chief among them R. H. Titlierington, veteran of MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE. Davis had been handling subsidiary rights for writers as part of a Munsey policy and was well versed in the functions of a literary agent, so his move in that direction made sense.