------FADEAWAY #44 is a fanzine devoted to science fiction and related fields of interest, and is produced by Robert Jennings, 29 Whiting Rd., Oxford, MA 01540-2035, email [email protected]. Copies are available for a letter of comment, or a print fanzine in trade, or by subscription at a cost of $20.00 for six issues. Letters of comment are much preferred. Any person who has not previously received a copy of this fanzine may receive a sample copy of the current issue for free by sending me your name and address. Publication is bi-monthly. This is the December-January 2014-2015 issue ______THE SPEEDY JOURNEY Regular readers will recall the article that Dwight Decker wrote back in Fadeaway #39 about one of Germany’s oldest science fiction stories, the very first science fiction story to propose an interplanetary trip to one of the Martian Moons. The author, an early German astronomer, believed he had discovered a large moon of Mars, but his evidence was subsequently disproved. At the end of the article Dwight promised to work out a complete translation of the original novel that he would make available at some point in the future. He has recently completed the work. “A Speedy Journey” by Eberhard Christian Kindermann, originally published in 1744, edited and translated by Dwight R. Decker is now available for sale. Interested fans can purchase the 122 page Trade Paperback print version, complete with a long introduction direct from the author at $9.96, or available from Amazon.com at a discount price of $8.06. At the present time no e-book version has been released. Dwight reports he is giving some considerations to expanding into that format, however technical problems preclude an e-book version for the present. The book comes with extensive background information on the life and career of Kindermann, early interplanetary science fiction stories, the state of early astronomy, an overview on some peculiarities in the story itself and a lot of other info and critique that I personally found as interesting (and in some cases, more interesting) than the story itself. This is a nicely produced package with illos both very old and very new sprinkled thruout. It’s an entertaining read that is easily worth the asking price.

A FEW READERS MAY RECOGNIZE that the subject of the feature article farther over in this issue was covered by me some years previously. A much shorter article by me about Bomba appeared in The Boy’s Book Buff #5, back in February 1978. After thirty-six years I thot it might be time to take another look at one of Tarzan’s most successful imitators. I had fun rereading the books, and since the article originally appeared some new information has been unearthed about the Stratemeyer Syndicate, the creator and owner of Bomba, so I was able to provide much more comprehensive background info now than I could with my original article. Even tho the jungles of the world have mostly been explored, and the believability of jungle lords and jungle goddesses has pretty much vanished, many fans still retain a nostalgic interest in both the genre and the mighty heroes who populated what was once a very viable niche in popular fiction. Bomba was one of the most enduring of those.

MEN WITHOUT BONES… The other day I was rummaging thru some boxes of stuff in my eternal quest to sort things out, discard junk, condense down material, list sellable stuff and otherwise try to move things out of this house and make some room, when I came across not one, but two copies of “Men Without Bones”, a collection of fantasy and science fiction stories written by Gerald Kersh, published in paperback by Paperback Library back in 1962. This brought back a lot of memories, including a rather painful one. I bought my copy of this book fresh off the newsstand rack back when it first came out. Fifty cents was a bit more than the normal cover price for a ppbk back then, and as I recall the pickings were slim that week, but even if the racks had been packed with brand new stuff I would have bought this one immediately. I had encountered Gerald Kersh before. In fact I had another paperback collection of his stories, published back in 1958 by Ballantine titled “On an Odd Note”. That one had a thirty-five cents cover price. It was a remarkable collection of very interesting fiction. In particular I remember another very well written story from that a different anthology titled “Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?” I also remember a story titled “The Secret of the Bottle” which I had read in the Saturday Evening Post when it came out in 1958. Many years later I learned that the Bottle story had impressed a lot more people than just me and the editors of the Post. It won the Edgar

2 Award that year from the Mystery Writers of America. So, it wasn’t a difficult decision to invest fifty cents in this new collection, and I was certainly not disappointed by the stories in the book. A few weren’t even fantasy, including a very memorable short-short titled “The Hack” that portrayed one William Shakespeare as a hounded literary hack, forced to turn out play after play as rapidly as possible to satisfy the fickle public and make enuf money to keep himself afloat. I had never thot about it, but a guy who wrote thirty-nine plays one right after the other over a twenty-four year period, all staged rapidly one right after another with each new drama season probably would have regarded himself in exactly that light. Mr. Kersh always had a unique, and sometimes bizarre way at looking at things thru the pages of his short fiction. But that wasn’t the memory that hit me when I turned up these two books. Two books. It sent a little shiver down my spine. Altho I have almost every single SF/fantasy book I ever purchased from those days as part of my permanent collection, I no longer have the original “Men Without Bones” that I had bought back in 1962. Back when I was running my science fiction/comics/game store from 1978 thru 2000 I encountered many people. Some of the customers became regulars, and some of the regulars became friends and stayed regular friends for years and years. A few lasted all the way up to the very end when I finally closed the retail store in 2000 and decided to sell books exclusively by mail order. One customer I remember in connection with “Men Without Bones” was a woman who liked science fiction. She had no interest in comics or games, but she bought books, always paperback, never any hardbacks, and occasionally she would buy one of the science fiction magazines. I tried to stock the science fiction magazines on a regular basis, but it was pretty much a losing battle. Most of the readers in those years had no interest in magazines, only paperback or hardback books. My return rate for those mags was wretched. Sometimes the only copies I sold were the ones I bought myself. But anyway, we talked about science fiction and movies and SF on television, even tho I had precious little time to watch much television then. The subject of Gerald Kersh came up during one visit and she immediately mentioned a book she had bought once, titled “Men Without Bones”. She loved the book but somehow she had lost her copy. I told her I had bought the original paperback when it first came out and went on about how much I enjoyed it. She was also a big fan of Gerald Kersh and we swapped memories of a few favorite stories. She asked if she could borrow my copy. I explained that I couldn’t loan her the copy because a good part of my collection was still back at my parents’ house in Nashville, TN. Every time I went home for a visit I would pack up some boxes of material and bring them back up to Massachusetts with me. If I were flying it would only be a small box or two. If I were driving I could bring a trunk-load of stuff. I told her that as soon as I managed to bring the book up I would loan it to her. But I never seemed to get the copy up. Mainly this was because I was working very long hours and taking almost no vacations of any kind, or trips back to my Nashville home either. Years went by, a bunch of years. She was a regular customer, coming in every couple of weeks to buy books and talk, and every single visit the subject turned to Gerald Kersh and “Men Without Bones”. Then, my father died of complications from lung cancer. It was a sudden death, and I had to fly down for the funeral. Not a pleasant situation, as you can imagine. I did pack up some boxes of books and magazines, but I decided to mail them to myself rather than try to wrangle boxes onto the airplane this go round. I packed up all the Edgar Rice Burroughs books, hardbacks and paper, and a lot of fantasy paperbacks I wanted to look over again, and I specifically dug out the copy of “Men Without Bones”. When I got back the woman came in and I told her the book was on route to me. She was thrilled. I let her know when I expected the boxes to arrive, and I promised I would loan her the book. I had packed it right near the top of box number three. A few days later she came in, and I proudly showed her the paperback. She was delighted. She promised to read the book that very afternoon and have it back to me by Friday afternoon at the very latest. And that was the last time I ever laid eyes on her. She never came back, she never returned the book, she never contacted me again. This was a bitter blow to me. She had been a regular, steady customer for twelve years, someone I had believed was a friend. But the minute she got her hands on that book she decided to steal it and left without a backward glance. Gerald Kersh. He was a monumental talent with some unique problems, and a lot of bad luck, some of his own making. Born in 1911 in England, he was acutely aware that he was Jewish in an era when British anti-

3 Semitism was very prevalent. He started writing at an early age, turning out stories as young as eight years old according to some sources, but he sold very few and held a wide variety of jobs before his first novel was published in 1934, right in the middle of the Depression. This work of fiction, “Jews Without Jehovah”, was mostly factual, mostly autobiographical, and mostly involving family members, who were sometimes cast in an unfavorable light. Some family members reading the book discovered the non-too-subtle reality behind the “fiction” and immediately sued Kersh for libel. The publisher yanked the copies and a trial was narrowly averted. Family tensions remained high for years. Kersh had a short temper. He was a big man and he got into fights easily. In one fight his opponent tried to kill him with a hatchet. Kersh knocked him out with a small table, but not before the man smashed him in the forehead with the hatchet which affected a nerve that produced sporadic sharp pains and kept Kersh awake nights, a condition that lasted fifteen years or more. He had plenty of permanent scars from his many other fights. According to Kersh himself, most of his early works, primarily novels, were almost all factual observations with very little fictional content at all. His third novel, “Night and the City” was a sordid crime noir thriller that received critical acclaim. This novel sold well and was turned into films two separate times. Neither of those films used much of the actual plot from the novel. Kersh got forty- thousand dollars for the film rights. He joked that he was the highest paid writer in the world, since they paid him ten thousand dollars per word for his title, and that was the only part of the book that the studio ever used. Most of his novels deal with crime or seedy backgrounds, and often feature characters involved in occupations exactly like those Kersh experienced while trying to turn his writing into a full time paying occupation. Kersh continued to lead a varied life with many different job experiences, most of them not long lasting. In the late 1930s he also took to writing short stories, which sold well for him. Many of the short stories dealt with weird or fantasy themes. A half dozen of his new novels and short story collections enjoyed sales success. He also wrote newspaper articles and feature pieces on a regular basis for at least seven different journals. During the late 1930s and early 1940s it seemed hardly a week went by without at least one or two Kersh articles or works of fiction being presented on the newsstands. Then WWII came along and he wound up in the Coldstream Guards where he wrote for the Army-Film Unit. Military life apparently did not agree with Kersh. He was listed as a deserter after failing to win an officer promotion, but the details are unclear. He managed to get accredited as an American war correspondent and hopped a plane, arriving in France for the Liberation of Paris. His work was appearing regularly in the British newspapers and was considered some of the most effective war-time propaganda being published, so apparently any little discretions on his part were forgiven. By the time the war ended Kersh was selling short stories as fast as he could write them. He wrote stories whenever he felt the urge, or whenever he was short of spending money, which was often. He liked to dine well and he enjoyed both good company and good alcohol, preferably together. He viewed the post-war tax structure in Britain as unjust and oppressive, so he often didn’t bother to pay his income tax. The Government did not take this oversight kindly so he was whacked with penalties and late charges. Increasingly his better paying markets were in the US. He spent more and more of his time in the States where he cracked the expensive slick magazines like Playboy, Esquire, Collier’s and Saturday Evening Post. In the fifties high living and health problems began to compound. He decided living in North America would be much more advantageous financially, so he moved first to Canada for five years, then to the United States, becoming a citizen in late 1958, after his success with “The Secret of the Bottle”.

4 Unfortunately his financial and health problems continued to snowball. A home he owned burned to the ground with virtually no insurance. His divorce in 1955 from his second wife left him with even more debt and problems. His debt load never seemed to go away or even abate. He was writing as much to hold off his creditors as he was to satisfy his creative urges. Among other medical problems he was diagnosed with emphazima and then a few years later, cancer. He used an oxygen tent, he underwent operations, and he wrote, constantly. He remarried former wife Florence Sochis, and wrote three of the best novels he, or any writer ever turned out. With Kersh’s typical bad luck, the first one, “Fowler’s End”, a crime noir masterpiece with a deeply flawed but charismatic hero, was ignored by most critics because crime and detective stories were not considered chic in 1957 when the novel appeared. “The Implacable Hunter: (1961) was almost a best seller, and turned the critical spotlight back on Kersh. This was a historical novel dealing with Saul, relentless Jewish hunter and persecutor of early Christians who eventually revised his opinion and became better known as St. Paul. Money from the sales of this novel was sorely needed, but rapidly depleted against outstanding debts and brand new medical bills. In 1966 he turned out another Soho crime thriller, “The Angel and the Cuckoo”, a masterful treatment of characters involved in events they think they control, but which in fact, are mostly beyond their ability to influence at all. The work is spell-binding, one of those novels you have to plan for, because once you start reading, it is almost impossible to put the book down until you finish. With more of Kersh’s bad luck, this paperback novel was published by New American Library (Signet Books) when the publisher was undergoing some problems, so this novel and most of their other releases that season hit the stands with no promotional effort and no internal sales push. After this Kersh was still writing as fast as he could, but was also asking his friends for “loans:” to tide him over. His medical expenses were enormous, and there was no medical insurance, since people who write were engaged in one of those occupations that insurance companies will not issue policies to. He died on November 5th, 1968. A final semi science-fictional romantic spy novel titled “Brock” appeared the following year. Gerald Kersh had a champion in the science fiction community, and it was Harlan Ellison. Ellison regarded Kersh was one of the best writers of the twentieth century, and a friend, altho he only knew him thru correspondence. He managed to get Fawcett Books (Gold Medal) to issue a paperback collection of some of Kersh’s more interesting fantasy short stories, edited and published with a glowing introduction by Ellison himself. Titled “Nightshade and Damnations” it was contracted before Kersh’s death and the plan was for the money raised from his anthology to go toward Kersh’s accumulated debts. The book appeared in late 1968 just before Kersh died. Gerald Kersh’s literary legacy sank rapidly after his death. None of his books were reprinted for quite a long time. His stories were well remembered by science fiction and fantasy collectors, but who paid any attention to us back in those days? Even the paperback publishers who were issuing SF on a regular basis never touched his material after he was gone. This may be largely because almost all the science fiction and fantasy he wrote were short stories. Short story collections typically sell far fewer copies than novels. Publishing is a business, and the business is making money. The publishers were clearly not interested in reprinting works from a dead, largely forgotten talent whose main claim to genre fame was his short stories. Today, forty-six years after his death Kersh’s work is making a comeback. Many of his detective and crime stories, particularly the short stories about Karmesin, who is either the world’s greatest, most audacious thief, or the world’s most accomplished liar, have been presented in hardback form by companies such as Crippen & Landru, while most of his Soho crime noir novels have been reissued as well. Fantasy fiction has appeared in hardback from Ashe-Tree Press, including some never before published material. “Nightshade and

5 Damnations” has been reprinted, and so have many of the other collections of his best short stories by other publishers. The trend continues as a whole new generation discovers this remarkable talent. “Men Without Bones” is among those books that have been reprinted. Ironically, after the unpleasant incident with the customer I had regarded as a friend, I turned up copies of that book, and the “Nightshade” volume in collections I bought. In the following years I turned up not just one copy, but multiple copies of those titles. I could have sold her a copy of the book for a dollar, the price I was charging for hard to get, out of print SF/fantasy paperbacks. I flipped thru and read some of the stories in one of the copies I unearthed today. All of them hold up very well. There are no clunkers in this collection, and there are some extremely strong pieces here, including the title story, “Men Without Bones”, and “The Dancing Doll”. All these stories are excellent. One of the oddities I noticed is that most of the stories had been retitled for this collection, including “The Secret of the Bottle” which turns up here as “The Oxoxocoo Bottle”. Many writers are extremely picky, even jealous about their story titles. Some are willing to fight to the death to preserve the titles they put on their stories and scorn editors who decide to change them. Gerald Kersh was not one of those authors. In fact many of his stories were submitted to editors with no title at all, or sometimes a short note with a list of five or eight or ten different titles that he thot “might be usable for this tale.” Perhaps changing almost every title in this collection was a ploy to suck in readers who might be familiar with Kersh’s work, implying that there were a lot of fresh new stories in the book they might not have read before. If so, any alert reader who checked the publishing credits (which I always did) would have immediately noticed the changes. No matter, all these stories appeared in magazines, so a reader who liked Kersh’s work would probably have been happy to get the stories in convenient book form anyway. And by the way, if you would care to read “Men Without Bones” you can buy a brand new Trade Paperback print copy for $14.99, or a mass market paperback copy for about nine dollars. Or you could download it as an e-book to your kindle compatible tablet computer or any electronic reading device you favor from Amazon.com for the price of $1.99. I urge you to do so. The book is still excellent reading even after all these years. I never got over what happened when I loaned my copy out. This woman was willing to blow off a twelve year friendship for a paperback book. It taught me never to loan out my books to anybody ever again. From then to now I have never loaned out a book or a comic or a tape or anything else in my personal collection to anybody. It proved that the world is not a nice place and even people who appear to be nice may not be.

6 BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY

by

Robert Jennings

In 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs sold what was to become his most famous and certainly his most influential story to All- Story Magazine. It was a novel titled “Tarzan of the Apes”, and the editor ran it complete, all in one lump rather than breaking it down into serial parts. That October 1912 issue sported an exceptional cover by Clinton Pettee showed the hero, Tarzan, armed only with a knife engaged in a battle to the death with an African lion. With the publication of this one story the world of popular literature, indeed, the face of American culture, would never be the same again. So overwhelming was reader response to Tarzan that Burroughs and his hero found themselves in immediate demand. His stories soon found their way into other pulp magazines, and even big circulation slicks such as Cosmopolitan. Hardback publication of this, and the sequels to this story sold rapidly, and went into a seemingly endless series of reprints as the popularity of the character continued to grow. I don’t know if Tarzan was a completely original idea Burroughs dreamed up himself, or whether he was influenced by other jungle men lurking in the previous pages of literature. In 1904 William Henry Hudson had published “Green Mansions”, a story about a girl is the South American jungles who speaks a strange bird language, seeks to protect the animals of the forest from the Indian tribes, and knows nothing of modern civilization. A century earlier Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote about natural humans, who, if they were raised away from civilization’s corrupting influence, would be pure and natural, both physically and morally superior to modern humans. Rudyard Kipling introduced Mowgli, a feral boy raised by wolves in “The Jungle Book”, published in 1893. It really doesn’t matter whether Burroughs was directly influenced by any of these stories, or by anything else. Burroughs’ creation was so dynamic, so well written and so enthused with Burroughs’ sense of breathless adventure that Tarzan became unique. So unique in fact, that for a time the idea of imitators seemed unlikely. Of course that didn’t last too long. Whenever someone creates a wildly successful product, imitators are invariably waiting in the background. It was a few years before imitation was deemed possible, but by the 1920s, the pulps were turning out their own different versions of the fabulous Tarzan character. Many of these plot-luck plagiarisms were set in the distant past, before the dawn of civilization, while others were propelled into the distant future, after the collapse of civilization. Many sprang forth from the mystic lore of legendary mythical lands complete with lost civilizations and lost races dropped into remote and unexplored parts of the globe. A few transferred completely off the face of Planet Earth entirely. Most of these penny-a-word jungle jumpers have since been relegated to well deserved obscurity. One of the earliest, and undoubtedly one of the most successful of all the Tarzan imitators came from the field of juvenile literature. Edward Stratemeyer, a prolific author of a great many boy’s books, and the owner of the Stratemeyer Syndicate fiction factory that turned out dozens of series books each year aimed at the

7 booming juvenile adventure market, reasoned that the primary appeal of Tarzan was to the pulp magazine crowd, adults and older teenagers mostly. With their intertwining plots and involved background descriptions, most of the Tarzan books might be too complex for the average juvenile series book reader. But that didn’t mean that the market Burroughs had created with Tarzan couldn’t be altered, slightly, so that it would attract younger readers. No indeed; all that was needed was a little constructive redirection, some careful planning, and with the right marketing, a jungle series starring a young wild boy might prove to be popular with the grammar school set. Edward Stretemeyer was an enormously prolific writer on his own, but he had also developed a formula for creating successful juvenile series books without him having to personally write each one. He would create a concept for a group of books, pre-sell the concept to an established book publisher, then either write them himself, or more commonly, he would outline the stories and have a ghost writer flesh out a short novel from his outline. The syndicate would then lease the book series to the publisher. The publisher would sign a contract to issue the volumes for a set fee or a percentage deal (the exact details could vary), using book plates provided and owned by the Syndicate. New books could be added to each series if the publisher felt sales warranted it. If a publisher felt a series had run its course, the Syndicate retrieved the plates, and could then offer the books to a different publisher. Successful series such as the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew could run for many years with the same publisher and new titles added to the series once or twice a year. Short run series that didn’t meet the publisher’s expectations might still be leased to discount publishers who aimed at the variety and dime store markets with cheaper editions. Of course Stratemeyer must have reasoned some strategic changes would have to be made if he wanted a successful competitor to Tarzan. Genuine feral children, abandoned infants actually raised in the wild by animals were rare but not unknown. Arguably the oldest and best known feral children were Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome. Unfortunately real life feral children do not grow up to establish mighty empires, or swing thru the tress like Tarzan. Generally they run around on all fours, growl and hunt like real animals, and develop with no knowledge that they are different Edward Stratemeyer from the beasts around them or know anything beyond the wilderness they grew up in. Feral children taken from the wilds have enormous difficulty adapting to the ways of human civilization and often die a few years after taken from their wild habitat.

8 So Stratemeyer must have figured that while the concept of a human baby raised to superb manhood by wild animals might be very romantic, it would hardly seem reasonable, even to a youngster. Besides that. Burroughs had already staked the claim on the concept and might view imitators that poached too closely on his territory as legal violations of his creation. Disagreeable law suits might result if there were too many obvious similarities in either background or the personalities between the hero he proposed to create and Tarzan himself. Stratemeyer changed the location first; dropping Bomba into the middle of the Amazonian rain forest, and had his white jungle hero initially raised by other human beings, but beset by circumstances that forced him to live in the wilds as a savage. He added a few other unique Stratemeyer touches, and launched the series with bright hopes. The series was contracted to Cupples & Leon, who were reliable publishers of many series the Stratemeyer syndicate had created. Two books were issued at once, “breeders”, as they were termed, coming off the presses in late 1926. A third book was rapidly added in early 1927. The author was listed as “Roy Rockwood”, a long standing Stratemeyer house name used primarily for science fiction and ultra-fantastic volumes. Success was almost instant. The first three books sold very well, and a new series of three books was planned after the initial trio of titles went back for their second print run. The reader’s first introduction to our new hero was revealed in “Bomba the Jungle Boy; or, The Old Naturalist’s Secret”. Bomba is described as “a striking figure…he was nothing more than a boy fourteen years at most, of a little above the average height of that age, compact and muscular. He had brown eyes and brown wavy hair and the whitest of teeth. His skin was darkly tanned by exposure to the sun.” This was certainly a reasonable and realistic description of the young hero. However, after several additional books filled with perilous adventures, we find that the strenuous life Stratemeyer created for Bomba has definitely left its mark on him. He was still “a striking figure”, only now we learn that “his lithe form suggested the power and suppleness of a panther. Although but a boy in years, his muscles, rippling in arms and legs and shoulders, betokened remarkable strength. His skin was as browned as that of an Indian, but his hair and eyes and features betrayed his white origin. His face was fairly chiseled and showed inherited breeding. His brown eyes were keen and piercing and wavy brown hair covered a splendidly developed head.” It would seem that while we weren’t looking Bomba has evolved into a young superman, a theory the books did nothing to dispel. Still later on in the series the author was fond of using such phrases to describe Bomba as “a boy so superbly developed as that of a young Greek god” when describing his appearance. Rippling muscles and all, we immediately learn that Bomba’s life, while exciting and adventurous on the surface, has not been an easy one. There is great personal tragedy dogging his footsteps. It develops that Bomba was raised in the heartland of the Amazon jungles by a kindly old biologist named Cody Casson. Casson was regarded as a wizard by the native jungle tribes, who gave him a fairly wide berth. He was kind and compassionate, but withdrawn. One day while out hunting together, an anaconda attacked Bomba and would have killed him had not Casson fired his rifle. Unfortunately the rifle exploded in the old man’s hands, and while fragments of metal struck the snake, driving it away and freeing Bomba, other fragments also struck Casson in the head. Bomba carried him back to their little cabin and nursed Casson back to health. But the damage was done. Casson lived from that day forward in a dazed fashion, unable to remember the past, barely even to function at times. The task of feeding, protecting and finding shelter for the pair fell to young Bomba. It seems that Cody Casson had fallen into his poor mental condition before he could tell Bomba about his real parents and his background. Many times Bomba wondered about how he came to be in the jungle, and Casson tried desperately to remember, but the haze over his mind could not be lifted. Occasionally he would utter the words “Bartow” and “Laura”, but that was all. It was very frustrating for the young boy, who felt a bitter loneliness, fighting for his daily existence in the heart of the cruel jungle, cut off from other human contact except for the occasional and often warlike intrusions of the local natives. It was certainly an interesting, if tragic background painted for our hero. Readers were instantly involved in the web of circumstances surrounding his life, circumstances that generated immediate sympathy. Unfortunately that was about the only good thing that could be said for this first volume. The typical Stratemeyer emphasis on action, additional action, and still more action to keep things moving along were emphasized to such an extent in this first volume that the reader is exposed to a series of events that borders on the ludicrous. The story as outlined in this first adventure could almost be a parody of all

9 the boys’ series books ever written. Bomba stumbles thru the jungle with no idea or plan of what he should be doing, nothing that even faintly resembles a structured plotline, and everywhere he turns he finds unceasing life threatening menace. You would hardly believe the problems poor Bomba encountered in this initial episode. His life isn’t worth the proverbial plugged peso. We read along as Bomba is attacked by a swarm of vicious alligators, which he manages to elude by skill, cunning, and raw strength. But just as he is about to disengage himself, he manages to fall pray to a marauding anaconda snake which decides to squeeze him to jelly right on the spot. Luckily Bomba manages to kill the coiled menace by skill, cunning, and raw strength, but after escaping this hideous death, he is suddenly faced with that relentless terror of the jungle, a ferocious jaguar looking for a light mid-day brunch about Bomba’s size. Bomba of course manages to escape by the quick use of his skill, cunning, and raw strength, only to fall pray to the raging forces of nature as a tropical storm and a flash flood threaten to end his life midway thru the very first volume. Luckily however, Bomba can rely on skill, cunning and raw strength in this time of crisis, so he manages to escape alive, only to fall into the next chapter with yet another disaster roaring down on him. Disaster is a pretty good description of the whole book. Bomba runs from one horrible danger to the next and the background story goes nowhere at all. Faced with these perils it is amazing that any human beings, either the Indians living in the region, or bright young jungle boys managed to survive at all. Also rather unsetting is the writer’s obvious lack of knowledge about the jungle of its inhabitants. The incredibly aggressive and malicious nature of the animals, all of whom seem intent on killing Bomba, might be excusable as part of the local color, but other scenes are not. For example, in one chapter Bomba comes across two white men who are hunting rubber. After impressing the pair with his skill, cunning, and raw strength, Bomba discovers that their camp is about to be attacked by large masses of jaguars. Let’s just think about that for a moment. Jaguars are solitary hunters with well defined territories, but according to the Strateymeyer Syndicate, these particular jaguars are actually herd animals who have the intelligence and tactical skills to plan a mass attack on two human interlopers in their territory, and actually surround the camp, waiting until the opportune moment to rush in all together and slaughter the humans. Thanks goodness Bomba is present! This mere lad, with the “strength and statue of a young Greek god”, has discovered this vile feline plot. Little did this tribe of Amazonian predators take into account Bomba’s prowess. To protect the camp from the upcoming attack Bomba taps a certain tree and spreads a circle of the sticky sap around the perimeter of the camp. The white men are understandably a little curious about how this help matters. Bomba explains: “The jaguars step on it. The leaves stick to their feet. The try to shake them off. But the leaves stick. Then they try to rub them off with their heads. The leaves stick to their heads. The gum gets in their eyes. It is bitter. It makes them blind. They get frightened. They cannot see where they are going. They forget all about the white men and the meat. They cry. They run. That is all.” Purists will note that Bomba delivered this idiotic dialog with a perfectly straight face.

10 Why any self respecting jaguar wouldn’t just jump over the circle of sticky sap is of course not explained. Apparently the sap does not a dry out either, because hours later when the jaguars decide to attack, many of them actually step into this trap and are mired by the gooey stuff. At this point you might be strongly temped to throw this book directly into the trash can and forget you ever heard of Bomba the Jungle Boy or his ridiculous escapades. Indeed, I can remember vividly as a kid that many of my school friends who had the opportunity to read this first book experienced exactly this reaction, and they steadfastly refused to read any of the other Bomba books, despite comments from friends that the other volumes were considerably better. Of course, any reader who managed to muddle thru the mass jaguar attack also had to reckon with the next menace; a vampire bat attack, or the swarm of murderous vultures that followed, plus a myriad of other ridiculous nonsense that seemed designed to alienate even the most dedicated readers. It’s obvious that Stratemeyer had some second thots about the matter also. Either he cleaned up his story outlines or else he picked a new ghost writer, because the other volumes showed an immediate and clearly noticeable improvement in both writing style and plot lines. For all its shortcomings the first volume did establish most of the basics for the series. Bomba is shown to be resourceful and brave, and, of course, supremely gifted with skill, cunning, and raw strength, lots of it. His background is established, and we learn something about his environment as well as the weapons and tools he uses to survive. His costume is described thruout the series as consisting of “rude, home-made sandals, and around his body was wrapped a bit of native cloth, with a small puma skin—the skin of Geluk, the puma, who had tried to eat the friendly parrots, Kiki and Woowoo. Bomba had caught him in the attempt, and killed him with an arrow.” Later on in the series his costume would become more definite and would consist of “a tunic, sandals, and a puma skin slung over his breast.” Either one of these costumes is rather difficult to imagine, especially since the artists for these books never bothered paying even the slightest attention to these descriptions. The stamp on the front covers of the C&L volumes show a boy clad in a one piece rough fur costume that covers him from crotch to the top of his chest and is looped over the right shoulder. The dust jackets reinforce the image in full glorious color, with the inside plates settled for the same concept. Cloth loin cloths, tunics or the rest never came into focus for most of the readers. In the 1930s, after the series moved to Africa, the standard frocov illo showed Bomba wearing a leopard skin, carrying a spear and apparently leaping over a hippo who is gazing up with mouth wide open. So far as weapons went, Bomba was armed with the basic tools of the jungle. “A pouch at his belt contained arrows, and a bow was held in his left hand. Thrust in his belt was a machete, a long knife with a razor edge that has more than once saved his life in hand to hand combat.” No mention was ever made of a sheath for this wicked blade. Why the razor sharp edges of the machete didn’t slice his belt in two, or cut his legs to ribbons as he walked was also never explained. Bomba was past master in the use of both machete and the bow. The machete, mostly intended for clearing the underbrush as he walked, was also excellent as a short sword and as an elongated throwing dagger. I’ve never heard of anybody throwing a machete with any degree of accuracy, but that didn’t seem to bother Bomba. Hardly a book goes by without his hurling the blade with astonishing accuracy at would-be animal or human attackers. His skill with the bow and arrow is no less remarkable. He is able to cut thru the stem holding a bundle of bananas, or drive an arrow thru the eye and into the brain of a charging alligator three hundred yards away. Robin Hood and Jim Bowie have nothing on our boy Bomba. His other weapons in the early stories, besides, of course, skill, cunning and raw strength, consisted of a five chambered pistol, a present

11 from the white rubber hunters introduced in volume one, which Bomba treasured for four or five volumes before it got lost in the jungle. It was a moderately useful weapon for close range fighting, but the impression one always gets is that the pistol was primarily a symbol of Bomba’s unity with the white people from outside the jungle, rather than a truly useful artifact. Later on he also picked up a rifle, which he managed to use with some skill, but the rifle, an excellent adaptable weapon, apparently smacked too much of the wonders of civilization, something that tended to separate him from his primitive setting, so it vanished into the background with no particular explanation, bobbing up from time to time in odd places in odd situations. Bomba also came equipped with some abilities and ideas inherited directly from the Tarzan character, chief among these being an ability to communicate with animals. In the first ten books of the series, the ones forming Bomba’s initial South American adventures, this ability was not well developed, altho he had occasionally success with it. To quote here from “Bomba at the Giant Cataract”— The monkey uttered sounds that would have been unintelligible to many, but that Bomba knew were meant to express sympathy. The boy had an almost uncanny power over animals, and had many friends among the less savage denizens of the jungle, such as the monkeys and parrots. He talked to them and they chattered back at him, and they had arrived at a point where they could understand each other in simple things. Tone and gesture helped to interpret the words and sounds, and each knew intuitively whether the other was sad or glad and they shared emotions in common. After the stories left South America and moved to Africa the ability to communicate with animals increased dramatically, altho generally speaking communication was carried on only with members of the simian family. By this point the writer seemed to concede the idea of a separate universal animal language which was as versatile and as explicit as human speech, a language which Bomba spoke fluently. Interestingly enuf, whereas in the Tarzan stories all the animals have specific generic names and separate animal languages, in the Bomba books there is a nearly universal animal language, yet the only animals with specific names are those who are special friends of the jungle boy. It is noted that because of long association and Bomba’s kind nature, he had managed to befriend some of the animals of the jungle, notably Kiki and Woowoo the parrots, and Dodo the giant monkey. Possibly the oddest of Bomba’s jungle friends, and sometimes the most exasperating from the viewpoint of the story plot, was Polulu the giant puma. Polulu was considerably larger, smarter and meaner than any of the other pumas in the jungle. Bomba and Polulu had become fast friends when Bomba found him trapped beneath a fallen tree with a broken leg. Bomba has brought him food and water and doctored him up, then removed the tree. They had become lifelong friends ever since. Polulu managed to save Bomba’s life at least once every single story in the first ten books of the series. It was considered an iron clad necessity to get that damn puma out of the underbrush and into the spotlight at least one chapter in each book. Stratemeyer and the ghost writer apparently felt only minimal obligation to the great beast because after one obviously superficial episode whereby Polulu knocked off some marauding jaguar, or giant snake, or something similar, Bomba sent him back into the jungle and continued along as tho nothing had ever happened. A real plot innovation would have taken place if Bomba had adopted Polulu as his regular sidekick and traveling companion. But he didn’t, so it was up to the pulp magazines and comic books with heroes such as Ka-Zar to make the giant feline partner a stereotype of jungle adventure. If the plot and action of that first volume served no real purpose, the other two volumes of the breeder set did. Apparently Statemeyer sensed the problems with that first book keenly, because immediately after book one Bomba sets out on a prolonged and exciting quest to learn his true identity and if possible, to discover his real parents. The motivating force behind this great search is unfortunately based more on racism than on the longings for love and family. The code word here is white. Bomba is a white boy. Bomba therefore is more intelligent, learns faster, is more curious, and is capable of a wider range of emotional feelings than the natives. As a white person Bomba is portrayed as superior to those around him, and “the call of the blood” as the books put it, demand that he seek a better life away from the jungle. To quote from the series again: “…Bomba was

12 lonely, restless and unhappy. He knew he was out of place in the jungle. He was different from the natives. His white blood and instincts called him elsewhere. He was in a turmoil of longing for he knew not what.” Elsewhere in the books the writer speaks of the natives as having closed, brutal, materialistic minds, “Their souls were asleep, unable to appreciate the beauty of the scene.” Bomba’s mind on the other hand is supposed to be “awake”. At times this sort of garbage is laid on pretty thick. But what else could we expect? These books were written in the late 1920s and early 1930s when racism was dominant in the country. The search for information about his parents leads Bomba on a very long and twisted trail. About ten books worth, as a matter of fact. The problem solving is agonizingly slow, not just for Bomba, but also for the readers who are deeply involved in Bomba’s desperate longings and are just as frustrated as our young hero after each new volume comes to a close with only inches of progress being made toward the final goal. One can almost picture a sort of sullen resentment on the part of young readers as they plunk down their fifty cent pieces for the next number in the series, hoping that this time Stratemeyer would play it straight with them. However Stratemeyer clearly knew a good gimmick when he had one. Other series books in his stable have been known to stretch out the core back story premise of a series all the way thru to the final book with nothing ever being finally resolved. Fortunately for dedicated Bomba readers, except for the first couple of books, the long winding trail proved to be worth the effort. Bomba travels in a very violent world, but most of his adventures are well motivated and the writing on

13 this series is considerably better than on many of the other Styratemeyer Syndicate titles. The background is filled with a sort of primitive sense of wonder. Bomba stumbles across lost cities, strange majestic ruins, exploding volcanoes, mysterious caverns, strange monsters, wild-eyed madmen, and a series of sinister villains far beyond the depths of depravity one usually associates with juvenile series books. Part of the enormous appeal of the books is the way the stories are developed and fleshed out (volume #1 excepted). In the first book Bomba has only himself and doddering old Cody Casson to rely on. He had momentary troubles with a tribe of headhunters, but his enemies are mostly the perils of the jungle. As the series develops Bomba picks up friends along the way. We meet Pipina the jungle squaw who looks after Casson while Bomba is out on his great search. We are introduced to fearless old chief Hondura and Lodo, his second in command, along with other members of the peaceful Araos tribe where Bomba comes to make his home, and little Pirah, Hondura’s daughter who almost becomes a sister to Bomba. Even his enemies take on personality and depth as we come to know and dread the appearance of Nascanora and his half crazed brother, along with the crafty medicine man Ruspak and others of the ferocious tribe of headhunters who stalk the jungle paths. Standing out in this cast of background characters is Gibo, Bomba’s faithful traveling companion. Bomba rescued Gibo from the raging flood waters after an earthquake destroyed Jaguar Island in book #4. Gibo became Bomba’s friend and servant from that day forward, following the jungle boy around, somewhat reluctantly, thru more than a dozen books filled to the brim with danger and imminent death as the turn of a page. Altho the books liked to say that Gibo was a brave and fearless warrior except when faced with the supernatural, the actual stories don’t bear this out very well. Gibo comes across as a first rate wet blanket, a shrinking violet type who surrenders their fate to the hands of the gods at least two or three times each chapter. He fights well when he has to, but against the kinds of extraordinary menaces and problems that Bomba regularly encounters his vaunted courage does not hold up well at all. In many ways Gibo becomes a plot extender, playing the part reserved in later years for the juvenile sidekicks of some super powered comic book heroes, namely, he got into a lot of trouble, was regularly captured by the enemy and had to be rescued. He also had to be constantly urged along when Bomba could have made much faster progress dealing with the problem of the moment without him around. Things really moved fast in your typical Bomba book. It’s no wonder that many kids raised on Bomba found Tarzan tame and dull later on. Stratemeyer’s well known weakness for natural disasters as well as convoluted animal menaces reached full bloom in the structure of these adventures. The ghost writer of the series used strong descriptive skills to merge reckless danger against a backdrop of near pathos to turn these tales into something head and shoulders above the general run of series novels, altho it should also be noticed that the ghost writer occasionally threw in a sentence so convoluted that you wonder how it could have slipped past even elemental editing. It is a debatable question as to how long the series could have strung out the story of Bomba and his mysterious lost past. Sales on the series must have been good. The copyright dates show that the first two books were published in 1926, followed by two more in 1927. In 1928, however, only one volume came out, “Terror Trail”, and it is near the end of this particular story that many of Bomba’s questions about his origins and how he came to be in the middle of a South American jungle are finally answered. But it is not the final solution, not by a long shot, and in 1929 two more volumes keep readers worried and uncertain, until in 1930 the mystery was finally unraveled in two additional books. With hardly a dry eye in the crowd, readers witnessed the joyful reunion of our young champion with the parents he had long since given up as dead and gone. It was certainly a spectacular finish. The exact authorship of these volumes has never been clearly determined, but credit is generally given to John Duffield, a book store owner who was also a professional author. Duffield turned out over a hundred fifteen novels for the Statemeyer Syndicate beginning around 1922 when he ghost wrote the Radio Boys series from Statemeyer’s outlines. He had already written most of the Don Sturdy series by the time Bomba came along. He was recognized as being a fast and reliable author who could follow the outline, but interject personality and background into the stories as well. It is also unclear how stringent Stratemeyer was about outlines and author creativity. According to some sources, including Leslie McFarland, who wrote most of the Hardy Boys and many of the X-Bar-X books, Stratemyer was open to suggestions, and didn’t particularly mind if a ghost wanted to create a new book on his

14 own, so long as the volume didn’t violate the basic premises established for each series. With hundreds of books and dozens of difference series in the balance Stratemeyer probably appreciated all the help he could get. In the 1920s ghost writers received about a hundred dollars per book, a good rate of pay for an author working to flesh out a short novel from a pre-established chapter by chapter plot outline. Stratemeyer died in 1930 at age sixty-seven, leaving the Syndicate business in disarray. His will specified that much of his considerable estate was to be allocated to the various ghost writers who had helped make his business a success. His two daughters Harriet Stratemeyer Adams and Edna Stratemeyer Squier inherited the business and for a time were anxious to sell it. However the nation was mired in the Depression, and no serious buyers came forward so they decided to continue the business themselves using the same ghost writers who had worked with their father. Most of the ghost writers were loyal, especially during the Depression when markets for written material were sparse. A dozen years later Edna remarried and sold her share to Harriet Adams, who continued to run the business alone. It was subsequently revealed that Ms Adams concentrated on business management and left most of the writing chores, often including the story plots, characters and even the titles to her stable of writers. It seems likely that from 1931 onward that Duffield plotted and wrote most if not all of the Bomba books on his own. The series completed its initial back story with volume ten published in 1930 and it is likely that Stratemeyer considered the Bomba saga at an end. A run of ten books to a boy’s series was considered very good and the entire adventure was wrapped up neatly with “Bomba and the Lost Explorers”, the tenth volume, All the loose ends are neatly tied up, Bomba’s long quest is answered, even the power of the savage headhunters is broken and their chief killed in battle. It was neat and complete. Except that despite the perils of the Great Depression, the Bomba books continued to sell well. Perhaps it was the continuing national attention on Tarzan, but for whatever reason younger readers focused on Bomba, their own jungle hero, a boy their own age who had adventures they could understand and appreciate. Cupples and Leon let it be know that they wanted more Bomba novels. This must have come as both an unexpected and a pleasant surprise for the Syndicate, now headed by Stratemeyer’s daughters. However it was perfectly obvious that the logical conclusion of the Bomba saga was finished. So in 1931 two more volumes were added to the series, only now Bomba transferred his activities from Brazil to an unspecified part of the African continent. The next group of ten adventures were written by John Duffield between 1931 and 1938. C&L did not ask for any additional titles after that, presumably satisfied with the sustained sales from the list they had. John Duffield died in 1946 at age 87 in West Hartford, CT. The 11th volume, “Bomba In a Strange Land” is naturally a bit of a disappointment after the riveting climax in the tenth book. In order to give our hero some new motivation to tramp around unknown and dangerous foreign jungles, Bomba’s father conveniently disappears in the wilds of Africa and is presumed lost or dead. Bomba must go and search for him, and he pretty much goes it alone. After ten previous books in which a detailed background of supporting characters and locations has been developed, this new turn of events finds our hero accompanied only by faithful Gabo and a few loyal Zulu warriors, most of whom do not have speaking parts. Also disheartening was a sudden change of viewpoint. Bomba’s goal thru the first ten books had been to unearth his origins and somehow escape the dangers of the jungle. Now, we are told, things have changed— The river was narrow, and at times the canoe passed so close to the banks that the branches of trees brushed Bomba’s face

15 and head. It was as thought the jungle, in a friendly mood, bent down to caress him. His jungle! Bomba knew then that this is where he belonged. The jungle had put its mark on him. He would never be completely happy anyplace else, as long as he lived! Compare this idea of the friendly jungle home with its primeval call with the stark emotions expressed in an earlier volume--- He spoke to himself half aloud; I am not as well off as the beasts and reptiles of the jungle. They live together and have plenty of their own kind. They do not hunt and live along as I do. The monkeys gather in flocks, the wild peccaries hunt in droves. Even the big cats, the hungry jaguars have their com- panions. Why am I, Bomba, always alone? I do not belong in the jungle, which is the only place I know. And I cannot go to the wonderful world where Frank and the other boys and other people live and slap each other on the back. Where do I belong? Where is there a place for me? But nothing answered that desolate cry that came from the very depths of the boy’s heart. By the twelfth volume, “..Among the Pigmies”, the writing had picked up a lot of the initial slack created by the jump to an entirely new continent. New characters are introduced to build up a different but still vivid background. A tribe of pigmies ally themselves briefly with our hero, and Wafi, a giant Zulu warrior is added to the permanent party as another faithful follower. Wafi provides interplay and light comedy with Gabo. The remaining books in the series will prove to be as diverse and exciting as the first ten volumes were, but for me the best of the series will always be the first ten books, omitting volume #1, of course. The enduring popularity of the series with young readers seemed assured. Two new volumes were produced during 1932, then one new book a year came out thru 1938, rounding out the series to twenty books all total, a very solid run for a boy’s book series. Cupples & Leon kept the entire series in continuous reprint for many years. It is not know how well the books sold after WWII came along, but the War produced government rationing of book paper, and there were other problems for the company. Cupples & Leon was a publishing company founded in 1902 that had an enormous impact on the world of juvenile series books and also on comic books. Partners Victor Cupples and Arthur T. Leon had worked previously for other New York publishing companies, and they noticed that juvenile books aimed particularly at boys were steady sellers priced anywhere from a dollar and a half, down to cheap paper covered thick dime novel reprints that sold for fifteen cents. They decided that if they could create a hardback book that was thick, looked impressive, featured solid bindings, offered good full color dust jacket illustrations, and appeared to be a top quality volume, yet sold for only fifty cents retail, that they could carve out a solid chunk of the juvenile book business. They were wildly successful with this policy. Aligning themselves with Edward Stratemeyer early on they were soon publishing series books about aviation, boy scouting, exploration and sports. They backed this up with quality reprints of fairy tales and mythology using full color interior plates. Their impressive catalog normally cost a dime, but was given out free to any youngster who filled out one of their coupons and sent his name along with the names and addresses of nine other friends. All ten names on the list received a copy of their handsome illustrated catalog, updated periodically, which proved to be quite addictive. Within five years most of the other publishing houses were trying to match their publishing success in the series book market. Meanwhile the firm launched an impressive series of comic strip reprint books. Printed on thick pulp grade paper with cardboard covers, each volume was roughly 10x10” in size, sold for a quarter and featured about fifty-two black and white interior pages of reprints from a popular comic strip of the day. Especially popular strip titles could run thru multiple volumes, at least 18 in the case of Mutt and Jeff, 26 different books devoted to Jiggs & Maggie, and a dozen for the Katzenjammer Kids. The size changed in the mid 1920s to accommodate continuity strips such as Little Orphan Annie. In another fortuitous move characteristic of the company, they decided to get out of the comic strip reprint business in 1934, just as the first modern style comic book, Famous Funnies, was being introduced.

16 The 1930s were difficult for many publishing firms, but C&L seemed to survive just fine. The health of the partners began to decline about the time WWII started. Victor Cupples died in 1941, Arthur Leon died in 1943. Then Leon’s wife Louise died in 1948. The company continued, but the driving force was gone. The company continued on into the early fifties, with the remains of the company being sold to Pratt & Munk in 1956. But there were more chapters in the saga of Bomba the Jungle Boy. In 1947 Monogram Pictures decided to bring out a series of Bomba motion pictures. The question nobody has been able to answer is why. It may simply have been an idea on the part of a movie executive inspired by the continuing success of the Tarzan films. My opinion is that Harriet Adams deliberately sought out this option. She had been instrumental in trying to turn some of the Syndicate characters into radio shows, and she had also tried to get newspaper comic strips and even comic books devoted to some of their characters, especially Tom Swift. Whatever the reason it was a shot in the arm for the Bomba book series. Monogram Pictures was one of Hollywood’s enduring poverty row studios. Their policy was to shoot movies fast and cheap. Toward that end they hired accomplished character actors and for the leads they sought out rising young stars on the way up or established stars who, for whatever reason, happened to be on their way down. Films were shot in two weeks or less, usually less. The budgets were small, the sets were limited, and editing was often done by the director, who knew what he wanted before he even started filming. In the case of Bomba the studio hired Johnny Sheffield who had played the part of Boy in the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies as the lead. Sheffield had been born in 1931, the son of prominent theater and film actor Reginald Sheffield. He had become an accomplished child actor in 1938 playing a strong role in the popular play “On Borrowed Time” both in California and on Broadway. In 1939 MGM decided to create the role of ‘Boy’ for the Tarzan films. Sheffield auditioned for the part even tho he could not swim, and swimming was essential to the script that was being prepared. In later interviews Sheffield related that Johnny Weissmuller took an immediate fatherly interest in him and worked with him to not only teach him how to swim, but how to make the film acting go smoothly. In 1943 the Tarzan film franchise moved from MGM over to RKO. Sheffield and Weissmuller went with the new studio. By 1948 Sheffield was clearly too old for the role of ‘Boy’. He had appeared in other films, but his role in eight Tarzan flicks was what he was identified with. When Monogram decided to do a series of Bomba films they offered the lead to Sheffield, reasoning that despite his age he could play the part and movie fans would remember his association with Tarzan.

17 The first Bomba film, “Bomba the Jungle Boy” appeared in 1949. The direction was done by Ford Bebee, an accomplished Hollywood veteran of the business who knew what he wanted, got along well with both the acting and production staff, and most importantly, knew how to bring movies in under budget, something Monogram was acutely interested in. Twelve different Bomba films were made between 1949 and 1955. Clearly, except for perhaps the first couple, nobody seeing those movies could consider Bomba to be a jungle “boy”. Altho it would be nice if I could say some kind things about these movies, most of them are very routine flicks with a lot of action, not many members in the cast, and a thin plot line. Bomba speaks in the same kind of monosyllables Johnny Weissmmuller made popular with his Tarzan role. The stories are very forgettable, but they were aimed at juvenile audiences, the same kids who were watching Saturday afternoon double features with a serial chapter every week, so they made money for Monogram. They were so successful that the studio kept churning out a couple of Bomba movies every year right up until the middle 1950s. They might have continued on beyond 1955 except by that time television was wrecking havoc with local theaters, and the venerable Saturday afternoon kiddie matinee was a rapidly vanishing beast. Today the Bomba movies have a certain limited historical nostalgia to film buffs, but, as an interesting oddball bit of info, I am informed they are great favorites for many males of the gay persuasion because of the lead actor Johnny Sheffield. Sheffield appears in all those films wearing the same abbreviated loin cloth he wore as Boy in the Tarzan pictures, and he has a nice physique which makes him visually appealing. A film collecting friend told me that pressure by gay collectors was what inspired the studios to actually release those things on VHS tape back in the 1990s and, presumably, to reissue them on DVD last year. What the films did do was revive interest in the Bomba hardback books. Cupples & Leon was in sharp decline, so in 1953 Grosset & Dunlap stepped up and signed a new contract with the Stratemeyer Syndicate to reissue the first ten of the volumes under their banner. All ten of the books were issued in one block printing package, using the original plates, but not the illustrations. Physically the G&D books appear to be considerably thinner than the C&L titles, but this is because they used a better quality book paper than C&L had. G&D added illustrated end papers, a nifty scene of Bomba hurling his machete thru the body of a charging jaguar. This same scene in miniature is stamped on the front cover of each book as well. On the minus side, all interior illustration plates were eliminated, altho I doubt that many new readers would have even noticed. For most of the series C&L has used two standard color pictures of Bomba on their front cover art, with the title of each book being changed, but the stock illustrations of Bomba looking out at the reader remaining the same thru most of the twenty books. G&D decided to invest in brand new cover artwork for the series, so every one of their volumes has a new, distinctive cover painting as dust jacket artwork, a welcome change. G&D continued to produce those books for many years. They were aided by both the continued success of the Bomba movies, and the Stratemeyer Syndicate which tried, unsuccessfully, to turn some of their long running characters turned into television shows after Monogram decided to stop doing the Bomba movies. A Bomba TV pilot was shot in 1955 or early 1956. Johnny Sheffield’s father Roger Sheffield produced, directed, and partially edited a pilot titled “Bantu, The Zebra Boy”. Johnny Sheffield played the lead. Bantu has a pet zebra named Zulu who displays great

18 intelligence. A potential merchandising gimmick, a ‘Bantu Good Luck Bracelet’ was included as part of the story plot. Bantu turned the bracelet over when he is determined to undertake some feat for good, then turns it back over when the mission is completed. Almost all the pilot was shot on outdoor locations around Los Angeles. The story is juvenile fare but the acting and production were good, certainly equal to many other independent TV features of the period, but for whatever reason the series was not picked up. Fans who are curious can see a grainy copy of the pilot on YouTube, or can buy a much better copy from many sellers of classic TV programs. Meanwhile Bomba entered a new phase of his publishing career when eight of his first books were issued by Clover Books, a division of McLoughlin Brothers of New York, which was by that time a new division of Grosset & Dunlap. McLoughlin Brothers had been one of the oldest book companies in the United States, originally specializing in children’s games and chap books. Their book division products were aimed primarily at the very young child, with beautifully illustrated picture books their particular specialty. In the 1930s as a direct result of the Depression their games division was sold to Milton Bradley. A couple of decades later, in 1954, the remains of the company was sold to Grosset & Dunlap. G&D decided to issue the first eight Bomba books in cheap Clover Books editions aimed at the dime store trade. These editions were printed on thin grade pulp paper, and featured flimsy board covers with glossy full color illos and no dust jackets. With a cover price of forty-nine cents, these volumes were clearly meant to be competition for the long running series of Whitman cello-wrapped juvenile books sold for many years in dime and variety stores. This run of Bomba only covered the first eight books. Why the other two volumes that would have completed the first story arc and given the readers a happy ending were never issued is not known. The Clover editions proved to be very popular where they were carried, and it would be fair to say that exposure to those Clover Book editions started a good many youngsters in the boy’s book hobby. But, toward the end of the 1960s the Bomba books were fading away. The G&D quality hardbacks were in their final print runs, and even the Clover editions were no longer being widely distributed. But it wasn’t the end for Bomba even then. DC Comics decided to pick up the character for an ongoing comic book beginning in 1967, based on the rumor that a Bomba television series was in the works. A local New York television station had edited down the Bomba movies to create a package of 13 hour-long “Zim Bomba” TV episodes which they claimed they were also going to syndicate. Perhaps this was the inspiration for DC’s interest. The comic book stories were primary by George Kashdan with inside art by Jack Sparling. The stories were varied, and the background shifted, as the company tried to get a grip on a jungle based hero during a period when the great super-hero revival was taking place in the world of comic books. The Marvel style of heroes with human characterization and back stories was very much in style, so efforts were made to present pathos and sympathetic personality problem for Bomba, while he still dealt with comic book style menaces. This was not particularly successful. The series lasted seven issues, exactly one year. The failure of the rumored Bomba television series to actually materialize didn’t help matters. Some of these stories were recycled with the name of Bomba changed to Simba where they ran as backups in the Tarzan comic book when DC licensed that character in 1972. And then, in the 1970s, possibly inspired by the success of the Tarzan television series or the continued rumor that Bomba might yet get his own syndicated television series, Grosset & Dunlap reissued the first eight Bomba books in nylon bound hardback form. The binding was cheaper, and the books featured a brand new full color illo on the front of each volume that was deliberately less lurid than any of their previous editions. This

19 series appeared in the late 1970s and featured erratic distribution. At this same time both G&D and Pocket Books were experimenting with less expensive trade paperback editions of their more popular juvenile series books, but I am unsure if Bomba ever appeared in that format. I have never seen any myself. For those interested many of the Bomba books are available on the internet where they can be read on-line or downloaded free to whatever electronic reading device you prefer. Copies of the actual hardback books are abundant, with prices ranging from relatively cheap to fairly expensive for copies in excellent condition with the original dust jackets. Altho it is fun to reread the Bomba stories today, the fact is that Bomba, like most of the juvenile series books of the past, is severely limited by his backdrop and even by the time frame in which he was published. Jungle heroes, lost races, primitive uncivilized tribes and prehistoric monsters were the stuff of fantasy thrillers for quite a long time, but as the twentieth century advanced, the believability of these background gimmicks faded steadily. There may be some remote parts of the world not yet fully explored by modern humans, but if so they are very remote, and very limited indeed. The venerable genre of jungle thrillers is gone forever. Tarzan remains in print primarily because of the strength of Burroughs’ writing and the ingenuity of his story plots. Almost all of his imitators have vanished, and they have not been particularly missed or mourned either. A few left over ruminants, such as Ka-Zar continue to skirt the pages of some comic books, but even these are a rare and vanishing breed. The world has become civilized. There may be some lost corners of this planet that are unexplored and unknown, but it is a foregone conclusion that there will be no jungle lords, male or female populating those nooks. The jungle lord was an unsustainable myth even when Burroughs wrote his first Tarzan novel in 1912. The primitive human masters of those jungle regions are part of a fantasy realm that no one can accept any more. The jungle is gone. The jungle lords are gone. Their stories remain, but not the aura of quasi-believability they once exuded. Bomba the Jungle Boy, one of the most successful of the Tarzan imitators is also gone. I can recommend most of these books as good fun reading. They provide fast moving adventures that are generally well written, peopled with generally interesting characters. It was fun returning to the world of Bomba the Jungle Boy, but he and his world are a unique, vanished anomaly. The jungle is gone, and these days only the nostalgia remains.

20

READER

REACTION

Ray Nelson; 333 Ramona Ave.; El Cerriyo, CA 94530

You and I, amongst others, seem to be members of an interest group not exactly focused on fantasy and science fiction; as witness the book reviews in your “Book Bender” column. IBM? A Feifer graphic novel!? A biography of a television star? Nothing about science fiction or even “related fields of interest”? And the letter column deals with the possible death of the comic book, not just the science fiction comic book. I say we are part of a different fandom, a fandom focused on the popular arts of the 20th century, a fandom without a name. Shall we call ourselves “retros”? Or “Pops”? I nominate 20th century foxes” or “Foxes” for short. The old fandom had its propeller beanie. We need something I can draw. I think I draw a pretty good fox. Maybe wearing a snap-brim fedora. OK?

///I personally have a long standing interest in popular culture, mainly printed popular culture, from dime novel days to the present. That includes dime novels & story papers, juvenile series books, movie serials, pulp magazines, comics, folk music, OTRadio, fantasy war gaming, and some TV. This may seem like a broad range of material, and it is. I envy those folks who have a single hobby, the guys who only collect US silver dollars, or old milk bottles, or matchbox cars, or baseball cards or whatever. They don’t have to worry about their

21 houses overflowing with Stuff. They can refine and concentrate on the history of the one thing they are interested in, and upgrading the condition of their material. Unfortunately my interests are wide, including my first love, science fiction/fantasy. The fanzine covers subjects closely related to SF/fantasy. Comic books certainly fall into that category. Most fans who came into the hobby from 1960 onward are at some level large or small, also comic fans. Comics clearly fall into the SF/fantasy category, since the subject matter covered, from talking ducks, humans with magical super powers, friendly ghosts, and magical monsters, etc etc clearly comprise the bulk of the comics that have ever been produced. I suppose Archie and his pals don’t fall into that category, but I don’t read Archie, and I don’t anticipate ever printing an article about Archie either. I plead guilty for including a review of the IBM book, but I felt it would be of interest to readers. Feifer’s graphic novel, and the biography of Joan Davis, the Radio & movie & TV star falls into the ‘closely related’ field. I wouldn’t even feel guilty if I went farther afield, except I’m not sure how much the readers might be interested in a write-up about Tiger Dick, the first series dime novel hero written by an African American author, say. I probably would also hesitate about running an article on Black Star, the masked mega-monster and secret Napoleon of crime as chronicled by Johnston McCulley (more famous for creating Zorro) in the pages of Detective Story Magazine. On the other hand, one of the things I find fairly depressing is that a lot of the fanzines I encounter these days don’t touch on science fiction/fantasy at all. We get long vacation trip reports, comments about the Civil War, local history, trains, photography, local parties, how to make better home brewed beer, things their cats did recently, and a myriad of topics that have nothing to do with what is supposed to be the core of SF fandom. I would certainly be in favor of gathering like-minded souls together and further developing 20th Century Foxes Fandom. I’m definitely a 20Foxite, but how many other people would there be in this broad range of interest? I fear trying to reach the core group would be difficult. People today are too focused on video games and celebrity gossip to get involved in such a group that has such a sweeping historic focus. However, I’m willing to give it a try. Maybe some readers in the next issue of Fadeaway might have some ideas on the subject.///

Dale Speirs; Box 6830; Calgary, Alberta 2TP 2E7 CANADA

Enjoyed reading the latest issue of your zine. Your review of the Joan Davis book was interesting. I have been looking for free mp3s of her radio shows without much luck. Her voice was very distinctive and recognizable. Also unusual was her character being a businesswoman, at a time when Dumb Dora acts like Gracie Allen were the standard. Your comments on page 24 about how the press (the media did not exist then) made fun of science fiction fans have prompted me to post issues #23 and #24 of my zine Opuntia in the archives of www.efanzines.com and www.fanac.org

22 Those issues have considerable Canfanhistory about the Torcons. The 1948 Toronto Worldcon got a horrible gosh-wow review in the July 5 Globe And Mail on page 15, which I reprinted in Opuntia #23 for the unbelieving. Fortunately the 1973 Torcon got a better review. The gosh-wow review you mentioned was in either Time or Life. I read it but didn't make a photocopy since I leave American fanhistory to others better qualified. Today the comic cons still get gosh-wow reviews in the media (the press is almost extinct) but they deserve them.

I only attend the literary cons, which are small and enjoyable, not a mob scene where people stand in line for three hours to pay $25 for the autograph of a minor actor. Calgary Comic Expo had 65,000 paying sci-fi fans in 2014 and took over most of the Stampede grounds. Calgary's readercon When Words Collide had 550 members in a medium-size hotel, and we had lots of fun without the lineups.

///The lack of Joan Davis radio shows in general circulation is frustrating. My belief is that many, perhaps most of her radio material is hidden away somewhere. She owned the last two radio series she starred in, so I am positive that she kept transcription discs of those shows stored away. There is always the chance that the sponsor copies have been tossed out over the years. That’s what happened to other programs, and to most network copies as well, but I just have a feeling Ms Davis would have kept her own material in case an opportunity came along to reissue them for profit in later years. Where they might be now is the big mystery. I would like to locate that elusive newsmag write-up of a major SF worldcon. I looked for it without success, but the story of the article has been circulating in the hobby for decades now. Fans today don’t realize how lucky they are that SF/fantasy has been widely accepted as part of the international media scene. Back when I was getting into the hobby people routinely scoffed at science fiction and anybody who read that crazy junk. The occasional successful novel, movie or TV show was dismissed as an anomaly. I remember literally grinding my teeth in the Nashville public library as a guy asked about checking out a copy of Nevile Shute’s “On the Beach”. “It’s not really science fiction,” he said, “it’s about real people.” Thank goodness I had my

23 electrograph scrambler disguise working, otherwise he might have seen me in my true form as the giant, eight armed, green skinned skeletal Venusian monster with five eye stalks.///

WILLIAM BREIDING | PO BOX 961 | DELLSLOW, WV |26508 | OCTOBER 1ST 2014

I have been remiss in my loccing duties. The last three issues’ lead pieces–The Black Cat, propeller beanies, and E.E. “Doc” Smith–were fascinating. I had heard of The Black Cat magazine all of my life– being a fan, and interested in the pulp era–but had never been lucky enough to see an issue. I’d not the faintest it was so eccentric, atypical, and elegant. The cover reproductions make it seem very art deco. Would have expected to see such fannishness as the historical essay on prop beanies in Trapdoor, yes, Fadeaway, no! Hats off to Rich Dengrove for this fun and beautifully researched piece. Regardless of the prop beanie’s Origins Story there’s no argument that Ray Nelson has been the prime perpetrator of this icon of self-conscious nerddom. I’ve considered the purchase of a prop beanie over the years, particularly during my active period of fine high-fannish foolishness back in the 1970s, when I was cranking the magic duplicator with enthusiastic frequence and fondness, and Greg Stafford (founder of game company, Chaosium) and I were inventing our own mythologies, sweating over mimeos in brilliant effortlessness. I frequently feel as though I am a fake fan where our beloved literature of ideas is concerned. Case in point: Doc Smith. Never read. Never likely to, now that I am fast approaching 60. I’d not thought of Sourdough Jackson for thirty years–since I stopped regularly going to conventions. His little ditty on E.E. Smith was a welcome read for this fake fan who gets a nauseous stomach reading Heinlein. Only one comment to make re: Reader Reaction in the 43rd issue. Rich Dengrove is reveling in a bunch of liberal idealistic baloney if he thinks that the “wealthy” received ideological “punishment” by accepting a government bailout–he’s giving far too much credit of conscious. They took the bailout because they could, and did not feel hangdog about having their supposed ideology undermined. They could care less and are already–as you point out, Robert–winding up towards another financial crisis. Wake up Rich! A follow-up on my comment about Clifford D. Simak’s Cosmic Engineers. After I wrote about being unable to scare up a copy I went to visit with my 93 year old mother. She has a massive library of all genres, as well as the literary mainstream. By coincidence she had been going through her collection and pulled out a (much battered) Gnome Press edition of Cosmic Engineers to ask if I might like it. I could not believe this. My mother was married to Seattle fan Dale C. Donaldson back in the 70s (he died of lung cancer four years into their marriage, alas). But this book was not from his collection. It was a discard from Cal State Polytechnic at San Luis Obispo, California, and then owned by a John Wagner, who dated it 3/29/62. My mom lived in Morro Bay, California in the 1980s and found this at the Morro Bay Library, where she worked until her retirement. I love stuff like this. Hope your dental work is completed. Keep the faith!

///Some Doc Smith stories read better than others. I generally enjoy his Lensmen stories, the reworked versions that appeared in hardback and have since migrated to paperback. My problem is his style of writing, which is often clunky, and his often obtuse method of handling human beings or human emotions. On the other hand I think Sourdough Jackson hit the nail right on the head when he said the primary appeal of his fiction is his plot handling and the ingenious ways he twists the stories around to keep the reader involved. That said there is a lot of Doc Smith I can’t read thru at all, and some that I did read that I sort of wish I hadn’t bothered with in the first place. Amazing consequence that you were able to turn up a hardback copy of “Cosmic Engineers”, right at home, as it were. Just another reason Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction!!! (cue the echo effect…) John Wagner is a name that strikes a vague cord in my memory, but I can’t seem to pull up the details. I remember Dale C. Donaldson for his Moonbroth mag. I had couple of issues way back when that I thot presented some pretty fair fantasy fiction. I have no idea where my copies might be now.///

Jefferson P. Swycaffer; PO Box 15373; San Diego, CA 92175

Fadeaway #43 was, as ever, a joy to read. I don't understand the cover picture; I like it, but I don't understand it. It has a lovely "Chinese" feel to it, with formations somewhat like those gnarled and weathered pinnacles found in parts of China.

24 Dan Carroll's back cover was a joy. I always love his Burroughs-inspired combat scenes. Huge happy laughs at Brad Foster's "The Smirk of Sarcaso." Y'know, there's a villain I'd actually be a little afraid of. He'd have the power to make me lose my temper... I love Robert Cepeda's cartoon about taking one's medicine after a hot bath. That's an oldie, but definitely a goody! Interesting article on E.E. "Doc" Smith. Smith, alas, isn't for me. I know people who love his stuff. One friend of mine did a wowser Lensman costume, and the Lens, itself, was a thing of beauty. Flashing leds under a molten-plastic crystal. Very effective. But I just can't read the stuff. My uncle left me his sf collection, which included a signed first edition of the Lensman books. I gave 'em to my friend. It's nice to know they're in the hands of someone who appreciates them. re The Decline and Fall of IBM, I worked for IBM for a year, as an outsourcing deal. I kept my regular job for the company I'd started with; we just were all managed through IBM. The experiment was a horrid failure. IBM had *nothing* to offer. We employees did well out of it, having gotten pay raises during that year. When we reverted to our old company, the bastards tried to take away our raises, but we were kind of forceful in rejecting that idea. Damn stupid waste of time. Rich Dengrove makes an interesting point re the Fu Manchu novels: they're so over-the-top in some ways, they seem like parody or satire, rather than action-adventure. President Fu Manchu was astonishing for its arrant ignorance of the U.S. election process. Was Sax Rohmer actually that ignorant, or did he just not care? Or was it deliberately funny? Personally, I think he was trying to tell a serious story, and just didn't have the skill. He was too lazy to do real research. His laziness also shows in the repetition of motifs: secret passages, deadly creatures used as weapons of assassination, etc. I love these books...but, sometimes, I'm damned if I can figure why! re Commander Cody and old time TV sci-fi, is anyone reading "Satellite Sam," the comic book by Matt Fraction and Howard Chaykin? It's about a small TV station doing a live-broadcast sci-fi show, and all the (remarkable!) problems involved. Very naughty, and funny in a dry, sad kind of way. (Drunkenness, blackmail, racial issues, gay issues, etc., back in the unforgiving 1950s.) Milt Stevens said, "I don't know about you, but I still say goshwowboyohboy on occasions." Heh! I love to drop "Gollywompers" now and then. I also still say Groovy! re special effects, I *love* to learn how they're done! It doesn't impede my ability to suspend disbelief one iota. My mother, bless her, took me backstage once at a local community theater, to show me how drama is done. She didn't want me to think that TV was real, so she gave me a clear understanding of what actors do. Personally, I think this is something every parent should do for every child, and early on in life. The illusion of the theater is a wonderful thing, but it should be *known* as an illusion. Knowing the truth about TV is not all that different from knowing the truth about Nigerian Princes with money they need to have converted: knowledge is prophylactic! It keeps people from catching you...

///I have a hard time reading a lot of Doc Smith’s stories because his writing is so clunky and his handling of human emotions seems extremely wooden. I do like the Lensmen books, but most of his other material turns me off because the writing style is so crude. I think Jackson hit the nail on the head when he said the primary appeal of Smith’s writing is the plots and the unexpected twists and turns he gives to the plots to keep readers involved. Sweeping imagination with stories painted on a grand scale is a definite asset for somebody writing science fiction. There are still plenty of new readers who get swept up in his adventures so I think he is going to continue to be an important force in the genre for the foreseeable future. The problem I see with IBM and their stratified internal caste system is the same problem many businesses have. When there is an imaginative, forceful, imaginative leader in a company things get done. When the driving wheel retires or takes his enthusiasm elsewhere, the caste system sets in and the big company begins to clog up, unable to come up with the fast-footed concepts and business innovations needed to stay on top. This seems to be the pattern for a lot of modern business corps, and almost always things shift to a money and power grab by the executive inner circle who care about salaries, stock options, and huge bonuses and not about keeping the company agile or even profitable for the future. I think that so far as Sax Rohmer goes, very often he was writing very fast in order to make some money, so he didn’t bother with basic research, and tended to reuse old conventions that has had proved useful previously. He was frequently in debt, always being hounded for money and always willing to spend more than he made, which meant he was always ready to write a new book if a publisher or a magazine expressed interest in it. I am firmly convinced this is the main reason he kept Fu Manchu around long past the time when the series could have and should have been ended. After WWII he tried using the same plots with Sumuru, the female master villain who wanted to conquer the world and remake it in her image. He was on firmer ground with Sumuru than Fu Manchu, at least in my opinion, since males have always been fascinated by the concept of the female super criminal master mind

25 (even if almost all women think the concept is ludicrous), but the actual story plots were too tired and pedestrian to make any solid impact on the literary scene. When you write almost solely for money, you often do not produce your best work, and in Rohmer’s case his later stuff seemed to me to be only slightly above repetitious hackwork.///

Milt Stevens; 6325 Keystone St.; Simi Valley, CA 93063

Before reading Fadeaway #43, I hadn’t encountered the name “Sourdough Jackson” in a fair number of years. I notice the article was a reprint from Dasfax. As it happens, I’ve read Galactic Patrol within the last year. I originally read the Skylark and Lensman series in the early seventies. I re- read Galactic Patrol because it was up for a Retro Hugo and because John Hertz was discussing it at Westercon. The nominees for the Retro Hugo were an extremely mixed bag. Galactic Patrol, That Hideous Strength, and Sword in the Stone are in three different genres. Galactic Patrol had the greatest effect on the science fiction field. However, I would have to admit that Sword in the Stone (the winner) was a better piece of writing. The people at IBM should be thankful that they survived after making the biggest management blunder of the 20th century. IBM failed to realize that everyone on earth was going to want a personal computer and maybe several. I recall the time when IBM was using its sheer bulk to crush competitors. A competitor would develop a new product. IBM would immediately announce they were developing the same thing. A large part of the market would await the IBM version of the product. This stopped working when people noticed the IBM version of the product never appeared. I remember when I bought a couple of issues of Playboy for the sole purpose of reading Jules Feifer’s Harry the Rat with Women. I must have done that when I was in college. Feifer had a tremendous vogue at the time. I don’t tell non- fans that I have bought issues of Playboy for the fiction unless I want to convince them that I am strange. I remember that I watched “I Married Joan” on television although I don’t remember the content at this late date. I remember that Jim Backus played her husband. I would see him in all sorts of productions over many years. TCM ran a Joan Davis movie in the recent past. The title was “Hold That Coed,” and it was about a small college where a coed was the star football player. A college which was in that situation should probably accept that football was not their game.

///Hey, I used to pick up issues of Playboy when they ran the “Little Annie Fannie” comic strip. Back in ye olden days Playboy ran a lot of good fiction and articles, along with great cartoons, but you could get pic of nearly naked young women from a lot of different magazines, some more explicit than others. I never had any problem telling people why I purchased the occasional issue of the mag. But then, people already knew I was a science fiction and comics fan, so they weren’t too surprised at my selective buying habits. Most of the movies in which Joan Davis starred with broad farces, whole connection with reality was tenuous, at best. Some of them work better than others, but I always thot her radio and television work were generally better than the movies. I think this is because she had creative control of the radio and television programs, but not a whole lot of input on most of those movies.///

Ray Palm; Boxholder; PO Box 2; Plattsburgh, NY 12901- 0002

Writingwise I haven't been too motivated lately but I should comment on Fadeaway #42 and #43 before issue #44 shows up in my mailbox. "Rocketsuits And Aliens" (#42) - You mentioned the control knobs on Commando Cody's rocket suit: Up/Down, Fast/Slow, and On/Off. But would that give the operator enuf control? What about Right/Left? Or a series of buttons that execute an automatic aerobatic 26 maneuver when pressed: Barrel Roll, Inside Loop, Zoom Climb. And there could be a Pink Floyd button that sets the controls to the heart of the sun. "Virgil Samm's Saga" by Sourdough Jackson (#43) - Not mentioned in the article but there is a debate among comic book/SF fans about whether or not the Silver Age Green Lantern and the Green Lantern Corps were inspired by E.E. "Doc" Smith's lensmen stories. Writer Mike W. Barr in his mini-series, Tales of the Green Lantern Corps, named two members of the GLC Arisia and Eddore to pay respect to the lensmen saga. Also, I heard Doc with his PhD could create a mean donut. Both Fadeaway #42 and #43 featured informative and lively discussion with the Reader Reaction department. Someone might wonder why so many pages are devoted to LOCs but it's good stuff. I wish my zine had such an active reader response section. So have you been following any of the comic book industry news? I find it's more entertaining than most of the comics being produced. Jack Kirby's family finally won against Marvel/Disney and now The King will get the credit he deserves. Unfortunately freelancers who were in the same position as Kirby still don't have a definite legal case to stand on when trying to win their rights back. I wonder how the Supreme Court would've ruled on this particular copyright issue. Our copyright system is a gigantic mess. The ones who usually come out ahead are the IP lawyers. Also, Marvel is stopping publication of the Fantastic Four comic supposedly as a message to 20th Century Fox that it's not happy with how the studio has screwed up the FF with the live action movies. It's said Marvel is putting the title on hiatus because it doesn't want to provide any promo for the next Fox FF film. Over at Warner it's rumored the decree is no humor allowed in any of the DC superhero movies. Gotta be dark, dark, dark. As I mentioned before I read both the dead tree and photon versions of Fadeaway. What I like about the online version is the color which, of course, is cost prohibitive with a paper zine. Since you're using a one column format it's easy to read on my Android table if I turn it to the horizontal position. So if you find the expense being too much please don't hesitate to drop me from the postal list. Just me know beforehand. Did you get a tablet yet? I've been downloading scanned copies of old comic books that are in the public domain and I don't have a problem reading them even with my 7 inch tablet. But then again a friend refuses to read comics on a screen. Your mileage may vary.

///Obviously the three control knobs on Commando Cody’s suit would have been completely inadequate for flying anywhere with that back mounted rocket pack. Even as a dumb little kid I figured that out immediately. It was just one of a vast number of inconsistencies and downright scientific flaws in the serial. You had to buy a lot of implausible and scientifically impossible hokum to appreciate the adventure, which we did because the flying suit looked so nifty and the adventure features science fiction thrills. It could certainly have been done a lot better, and done better for very little or even no extra money, but as I mentioned in the article, the aim was to get those serials made as fast as humanly possible to hit the theaters and capitalize on what Republic believed was a temporary fad. I don’t think there would be much debate at all concerning the Green Lantern corps. Clearly the entire comic series was heavily influenced by the Doc Smith Lensmen stories. Considering that the editor was lifelong science fiction fan Julius Schwartz and many of the adventures were written by science fiction writer John Broome. The parallels between the Lensmen series and the GL Corps seems obvious to me. I’m glad the Kirby estate will get something out of their long and expensive lawsuit. My opinion is that had the case gone to the Supreme Court they would have ruled very narrowly, that special material and characters created under the old work-for-hire situation would have prevailed, so long as those creations stayed within their original formats. However, when the creations springboarded into different venues with broader audiences and profit potential, I believe they would have ruled that creators had a specific, but separate justifiably legitimate case which could be initiated as a new legal action. I’m pretty sure that’s what Disney and all the other companies sitting on top of options to turn assorted older literary creations were afraid of. If that specific litigation went thru the court systems they could lose, and lose most of their potentially profitable media projects. I have not heard about the FanFour going on hiatus. This seems to me like a case of chopping off your nose to spite your face. Generally speaking comic character movies have almost no impact on the comic book sales. This decision will not affect the box office for the FF movie; it will sink or swim on the merits of its plot and acting. All this decision will do is to cut into Marvel’s production profits and frustrate long time readers. To me that’s a lose-lose situation.///

Bill Plott; 190 Crestview Circle, Montevallo, AL 35115

At long last the oft-promised letter of comment on Fadeaway. I shall not endeavor to catch up on all three recent issues, just the last two.

27 #42: Rich Dengrove's piece on the origin of the propeller beanie was fun and informative. I concluded, after digesting all of his research and evidentiary materiel, that the notion of Ray Nelson inventing the cap was far-fetched. However, he is certainly to be credited with introducing it to fandom, thus spinning off an iconic status for that silly little headpiece. Then, along comes Ray in #43 with supportive material. He didn't invent the prop beanie per se but he constructed one that launched its presence in fandom. Fun stuff, fascinating stuff. I well remember finding a battered beanie in the consuite at 1960 Pittcon. I cherished the acquisition and kept it for many years, although I suspect it was later thrown out (probably with my baseball cards and comics) after I left home. When I decided to go to DeepSouthCon50 to catch up with old friend and Fan Guest of Honor David Hulan, I went on line and bought a beanie. I had no idea if it was still an item of fannish identification, but I figured a few people would get it. They did but I think I can safely say I had the only beanie in Huntsville that weekend. Folks were wearing far more bizarre attire, a testament to the mainstreaming of our hobby and our community. I wish the magazine or newspaper advertisements for beanies were dated. I'm guessing they are late '40s or early '50s. A search of comic book and juvenile magazine advertising from the early '40s might yield more information, getting us closer to the year of origin. Following up on the declared holiday discussion, I recall from my days in the newspaper business, the plethora of National This Day or National That Week. It was difficult to make excited proponents of those events understand why this wasn't really "news." All you accomplished was to make them sad or angry when you said gently, "There are so many of these proclamations these days that we just can't possibly cover them all." I always felt a little resentment at the contrivance of rolling George and Abe into Presidents' Day. But then, l later found some of those three-day weekends to be quite enjoyable. One of the few silly ones I embraced was Talk Like a Pirate Day (Sept. 19). My youngest daughter and I had some fun with that. I forgot about it this year but I suspect the toddler grandson we're raising will still be enough of a Jake and the Neverland Pirates fan for us to enjoy it next September. In my hurry to catch up I have not yet finished the Rocket suits article, but I look forward to doing so. It appears to have all of your usual meticulous research across a broad scope of popular media. Finally, on the meaning of life...I have nothing cogent to add but I recall fondly a locally brewed beer called The Meaning of Life Pensive Ale. Alas, one of the partners in the enterprise apparently squandered the resources and the little brewery's lifespan was regrettably short. #43: Very good article by Sourdough Jackson on Doc Smith's work. I'm sure I read some of his writings back in my previous fannish incarnation, but I never got into the Lensman series. Still, I appreciate the package that Jackson put together. Also, very fine piece you did on actress Joan Davis. I had forgotten all about the I Married Joan television show. Alexis Gilliland's account of the bedbug battle is absolutely horrifying. What a nightmare. We have been through a couple of sieges of head lice -- always a possibility when you have children in school -- but that protracted corrective process is nothing compared to the bedbug problem. Regarding your effort to modernize written English and Craig Shutt's reference to the Chicago Tribune campaign, I presented a paper at the Sport Literature Convention back in the '80s on a similar Chicago newspaper campaign. I don't have the material handy but the newspaper did a survey of its readers to see if they preferred sports stories written in a pedantic, matter-of-fact style or in a more colorful, slang and jargon style. Colorful writing won out, as I recall. I need to find that paper and run it in my apazine sometime. Regarding Craig's comments on how each new development -- radio, TV, etc -- forecasts doom for others, I am reminded of the record industry. A friend of mine has gone to the major record show in Birmingham every year, denoting the graying of the vendors and attendees and seriously diminished crowds. Yet, many artists issue limited vinyl versions of their new albums today and decent turntables are available at affordable prices. It makes me wonder if there are serious collectors among the young folk who dominate conventions these days with their interest in gaming, cosplay, etc.? I believe there will always be a small core of collectors involved in any hobby, but I don't get the feeling that the many young people are drawn to collecting today, not just SF but hobbies in general. Ah, the long misplaced #41 just surfaced on my desk .I shall set it near the top of the stack to remind me that I never got around to reading most of it, particularly your piece on The Black Cat magazine. No promise, but perhaps delayed comments later.

///Propeller beanies as stylist convention wear may be making a come back. At least other letter writers have reported an increase in sightings in recent months. The wholesale ad came from a late 1948 trade paper. I thot I dated it, but apparently not. It does indicate that the beanie fad for youngsters was already in full swing by the late 1940s.

28 As noted before, since I’ve worked most of my life in the retail biz, holidays, except for the Big 4 (July 4, Thanksgiving, Xmas, and New Year’s Day), were pretty much meaningless to me. I worked all the time. As a

self employed guy selling books/games/comics thru the mail I still work all the time, including, at least some of the Big 4 holidays too. But I sure don’t put in as many hours now as I did back then. Lots of people have equated good beer with at least part of the true Meaning Of Life. One of Benjamin Franklin’s most famous quotes is that beer was proof that God existed and wanted us humans to be happy. As I have said, it is extremely difficult to get rid of technology once it has been developed. On the other hand, Edison cylinder machines, despite superior sound, have vanished completely, and so have linotype machines, wire recorders, and steam locomotives. They have been replaced by technology perceived to be easier to use and in other ways more effective. In the literary areas, dime novels, story papers, pulp magazines, movie serials, radio drama/comedy are gone and they aren’t going to come back. I think people still collect things with passion and dedication, but I don’t think they are prepared to invest the time or space in the kinds of collections that take up enormous volumes of space. People move more often these days than they did in the past. It’s easier to keep books, magazines, and comics on a computer than it us to move half a ton of paper to the next house or apartment. I know people who collect movies on flash drives instead of film or tape, people who have thousands of hours of OTRadio or music on a thumb drive, freeing them of having to shelve zillions of record albums or reels of tape, and people who have all their family photo albums and historic letters/papers on CDs. Times are changing, and people are making use of the new technology to replace the bulk and preservation problems associated with many kinds of collecting. I don’t know anybody who has a virtual stamp or coin collection, but I know two people who gave up on collecting sports gum cards and just hold the images in their computers. These people are collecting for the joy of the material, not for any perceived “value” their collections might have.

29 I think as more and more people become used to reading from tablet computers that sales of printed books as well as color comics are going to decline even more sharply. As I mentioned before, so long as the comic companies continue to insist that the price of electronic pixels is exactly the same as a printed comic then most people will buy the print comic. When (not if, when) the price of electronic comics comes down to realistic levels (a buck or two, in my estimation), then sales of print comics will plummet. Sales on print hardback and paperback books are already suffering due to the increasing popularity of e-books. The hard fact is that most people only want to read a book once, maybe twice, in their lifetime. That being the case, most people will much prefer to pay $9.99 or less for an e-book, rather than invest $25.00+ for the new hardback ‘best seller’.///

Vernon Maulsby, AY4429, Box 244, Graterford, PA 19426

A friend of mine in Kearney, ME who had a similar book problem (mold), found that freeze drying the paperbacks now only dealt with the problem, but the smell as well. He picked this up, if memory serves, from bookseller Mike Richardson, of Ravensdale, WA, who had saved a great many books this way, and then sold them to others. I just wanted to share this with the readers of your fanzine in hopes it will help others. I truly enjoyed the piece on “Doc” Smith. I have been trying for two decades now to actually read these books. I have tried the inter library loan system, but I discovered that libraries, which I had once thought of as safe places to find books, are often nothing of the kind. Not only could I not find the “lensmen” novels, but most of the works of Jules Verne were also unavailable. If one wants something other than the three best known—“Center of the Earth”, “Twenty-Thousand Leagues”, or “Around the World in 80 Days”, one is out of luck. When I asked for “The Clipper of the Clouds” they acted like I was nuts, and sent me a copy of “The Mysterious Island”. I wonder what other famous writers and their works are disappearing from library shelves? To test the notion, I then tried H.G. Wells, only to find that even a classic like “When the Sleeper Wakes” was unknown to the Librarian. I then tried Heinlein, to learn that most of his YA novels were not kept on the shelves. I would like to ask if anyone else out there has noticed this slow disappearance of old favorites from their local library shelves? Why bring this up? We’re all aware of how much decent music got “lost” when vinyl was replaced by cassette tapes, and even more when CDs replaced tapes. My query: is the same sort of thing now happening to books? I’d really be interested in hearing what you or anyone else things about this, keeping in mind that the second hand book stores we all used to rely on to fill holes in our collections are disappearing fast. Loved the piece on Joan Davis. It was all news to me. I also had to agree with the statement Sourdough Jackson made about the cobbling together job Asimov did with his robot and Foundation books. The result took great concepts and hurt them both. I’d ask reader thoughts on the ‘authorized’ sequels done in the Foundation series after his demise. I also wonder who the first author was to try the “multiverse” gimmick. I tend to think that, just like Van Wyck Mason, the creator of the Captain North mysteries, Sax Rohmer’s own personal attitudes were so far out there, that more sane individuals will always think he was “putting them on” with his work. I suppose that’s better than looking at his work while zeroing in on his rabid xenophobia. It might divert from the reading enjoyment.

///The freezer method is a good way to treat books that might have infestations of insects, but I never had much luck with it getting rid of mold. On the other hand I try not to ever buy books or collections that are moldy, insect/mouse gnawed or have other serious problems. The problem with libraries is that they have limited amounts of space to devote to their inventory. New material is coming along all the time, so invariably older material, or material that never gets checked out, is pulled from the shelves to make room for the newer volumes. In addition, in previous issues of the zine, it was noted that a massive effort to digitally record every book published in the English language is well underway out in California, bankrolled by a local state zillionaire. Libraries are encouraged to send any books they do not want out to him. He has several warehouses full of books, and a full staff scanning them into computers round the clock. Presumably the libraries that donate volumes will get some kind of link or discount to the data base when and if it is ever completed. Even more interesting to me is the fact that once the books have been scanned, they are crated up and then shipped over to China, with the Chinese government paying all shipping expenses. Presumably all those books are also being scanned into Chinese data bases and perhaps even translated into the Chinese language, altho thus far the Chinese government has declined to say exactly what they are doing with all those volumes.

30 You raise an interesting question about multiverses. I have never even considered who might have been the first writers to fiddle around with the concept. Perhaps some of the fanzine’s readers can supply a few names and examples.///

George Phillies; 48 Hancock Hill Dr.; Worcester, MA 01609

As always, Fadeaway presents excellent news an interesting historical material on science fiction. My sympathies of the excellent news was not accompanied by comfortable medical results for you. I hope that by the time your next issue appears the situation will be far more satisfactory. The description of the Skylark and Lensman series was particularly interesting. I fear that the author's description of the weaknesses in the “Triplanetary” and later novels is well taken. EE Smith for the most part did not give us particularly strong female characters, even considering the period in which he was writing. Yes, Clarissa Kinnison and her four daughters were something of an exception, but they were meant to be truly exceptional people. I would somewhat disagree with the author’s conclusion that civilization will fade into the long peace. The very last page of the Children volume refers to a crisis that civilization is facing. By implication there was to be another book. Alternatively, one might propose that the author carefully left the space open for another volume should he choose to write one. The peculiar Vortex Blasters is sort of in the same universe, but internal evidence implies that it is set someplace around book 4 or book 5. The internal references in that book to levels of Lensman are not consistent with the rest of the canon. Supposedly, Smith indicated to John Campbell that he had the next novel plotted out, and that core parts of it should have been self-evident from the first six volumes, but parts of the content would not be publishable under current conditions. I gather that the author’s widow and daughter made a very careful search for signs of the manuscript, but nothing was forthcoming. There were several later novels based on the other second-level Lensmen, by other authors, but these authors do not appear to have had any particular insight into a true sequel. I have seen some rather lurid speculation, and some fanfiction that did not so much ignore canon is trample it into the ground, but if Smith did indeed have plans for another novel we shall have to wait meeting him in the next plane of existence to find out what it was. I do have notes for a novel that will certainly not be titled The Eddorian Lensman, though the protagonist might be said to of been inspired by the concept. He has worked out a very long time ago that his own culture has completely been distorted by an attachment to bondage and sadism, while the opposing culture in its supreme species are capital-grade misogynists who cannot cope other than very slightly with the existence of species that advance by sexual reproduction. However, intelligent beings are capable of rational choices. Not all beings all the time, or all choices all the time, but the interest of the hypothetical novel’s plot is that one of the supremely evil creatures rejects his species tendencies, and has worked to create a counter civilization based on the idea that all rational beings to some extent are capable of contributing to the advance of his counter civilization. He also differs from Mentor in that he is aware of genetic engineering as an alternative to planned breeding programs, and is therefore as able as the other side to turn out third level Lensmen. We perhaps get some impressions of being on the home planet of the supremely evil people, who so far as I could tell in the original novel were disembodied minds at this late date, with some examination of what was happening as the good guys wiped out the last slave species of the bad guys and prepared to smite thoroughly the planet of the supremely evil people. As a minor aside, there is a plot loophole: while it is true that material weapons could not hurt an Eddorian, by turning their home planetary star cluster into incandescent plasma the Eddorians would have been separated from their atomic driven screens against third level thought, not to mention their industrial resources to produce more of the same. Without those mechanical screens, they would’ve been mincemeat for the children and probably also for the Arisians. Another plot loophole, perhaps, is that while Kinnison might work out what his children were up to, it is extremely well known that mothers are far more effective at this. Of course, as her son observes, Clarissa Kinnison had by far the most stable mind of any member of a lesser species, and might have been perfectly able to survive finding out what was actually going on. Finally, EE Smith did in part anticipate the cybernetics revolution. When the Grand Fleet formed its cone of battle, and when the Eddorian atomic thought screens were neutralized, robotic spaceships were deployed. The lead elements of the cone of battle were robotic maulers, because attrition was assumed to be close to 100% for them. The spaceships that dropped out of hyper to take out the atomically driven screens against third level thought were also robotic. The Patrol did have a single immensely powerful computer, GOMEAC iirc, for really difficult calculations. In contrast,

31 when David Weber’s Grand Alliance needs to force a wormhole entrance, it must send through human-controlled spaceships and take human casualties.

///I think you are right in your suspicion that Smith left room open for additional novels in the Lensmen series. He was conscious that quite a lot of fans enjoyed the series and probably anticipated creating a new spin-off series set in the even more remote distant future to deal with some brand new menace, altho I have no idea how he could have topped the basic premise of the Lensmen series that the entire future of civilization life was engaged in an eons long epic battle for supremacy against the forces of alien evil opposed to the very concept of civilization. Altho if somebody had fed him a few springboard ideas and promised a publishing venue I’m sure he would have tried. Unfortunately by the early 1960s Fantasy Press, his steady book publisher, was bankrupt. The stories in “The Vortex Blaster” book were published in the early 1940s, adventures taking place in the Lensmen universe, but not directly connected with the ongoing saga. Some of these work better than others, but I don’t know if they were ever intended to launch a branch new inter-connected series of epics. I tend to doubt it, considering that Smith had not even completed the Lensmen series when those short stories were appearing in the SF mags of the period.///

Murray Moore; 1065 Henley Rd.; Mississiauga, ONT L4Y 1C8

Ralph Rayburn Phillips, whose art adorns the cover of FADEAWAY 43, I recognize as the name of an early fan, 1940s I am guessing. From paragraphs by Sourdough Jackson, these character names: Lyman Cleveland, Frederick Rodebush, Nels Bergenholm, Conway Costigan, Virgil Samms. I wonder if R.A. Lafferty read Doc Smith? Lafferty gave his characters outstanding extraordinary names. Perhaps the upcoming Lafferty biography will contain this information. Checking my bookshelves I see that I have read more Clark Ashton Smith and more Cordwainer Smith than I have read Doc Smith. “Triplanetary” is the only Doc Smith on the shelf, and I only know I have read it because I kept the copy that I read. The Lens of Civilization “has other potential properties, but these are unknown to most Lensmen”. Thus the Lens of Civilization is ancestor to most electronic devices available to us, stuffed with programs of varying usefulness. Seeing the Gaiman blurb on the cover of Feiffer's Kill My Mother led me to wonder, is Gaiman the author who gives most blurb? I searched "blurb neil gaiman" and read a blog post by Gaiman written in 2001 in which he remarks "Most of them probably don't do a thing." I bought the first in the Spenser series by the late Robert Parker because of a blurb on it by John D. MacDonald. See funny fictional blurbs at therumpus.net. Fact check. The JDM blurb --"Freshness, humor, taste and tension!"-- is on the cover of “God Save The Child”, the second Spenser novel. I might have been encouraged to buy the first Spenser novel, “The Godwulf Manuscript”, because of the bacover blurb by George V. Higgins, providing I had begun reading Higgins, which I suspect I had not, then, Higgins being a valued discovery, but later than Robert B. Parker.

32 Terrific letter by Marc Schirmeister; could have been an article.

///Ralph Rayburn Phillips was a long time fan and artist who lived most of his life in Portland, Oregon. He was a devoted fan of Lovecraft and Weird Tales magazine. He made his living generally as a commercial artist, but had lots of art published in fanzines, including my fanzines back in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He died in 1974 at the age of 79. I have many pieces of his art, some of it originally run in my zines from way back then, and some that have never been printed anywhere yet. I’ll be presenting more of those pieces in future issues of the fanzine. I dunno that giving characters unusual names or extraordinarily complex names necessarily is an influence of Doc Smith’s works. Other writers have deliberately used different or unusual names in their stories long before Smith ever started to write. I believe Zane Gray deliberately gave his characters odd or unusual names because he was so sick of all the Jacks, Janes, Roberts, Susans etc etc in the popular fiction of his day. I’m not sure if Gaiman holds the current record for writing the most book blurbs and fawning prefaces for new novels/graphic novels but he comes close. There are so many new books out being endorsed by Neil Gaiman that you wonder how he found the time to actually read all that material. Maybe he is one of those Evelyn Woods speed reading course graduates.///

Dave Szurek; 505 North F--#829; Aberdeen, WA

I loved the Commando Cody piece in #42, being an old Commando Cody buff myself. I can’t help but admit it’s strictly nostalgia value for my own youth tho. When I managed to see some of the same Cody stuff as an adult, I’ve been amazed at the fact that I once went so hairy about material I now consider utter shit. The feature version of “Zombies of the Stratosphere”: “Satan’s Satellites” (which I saw in black and white on late night TV twenty-five years ago) is on my list of least watchable movies ever made. Something gives me a hunch I’d react just as negatively, maybe more so, to the serial if I had seen it beyond my tenth year of life. I never dreamt that in addition to the TV show, those half hour Commando Cody episodes we’d see at Saturday matinees as late as 1960 were originally intended as serial chapters. I thought of them as true blue “short subjects”. As I remember, they each had a beginning, a middle, and an end, and were self-contained. Even as a kid tho, I often wondered about all those gangsters co-operating at the drop of a hat with aliens plotting to somehow not just conquer us, but intent on destroying the earth itself. Did it not occur to them that it would mean their demise as well? Were they too stupid to figure out something that obvious? Dengrove’s propeller beanie history was classic, altho I have to admit, I’ve never worn one of those things.

33 I used to hear as a little kid that Joan David had grown up in Detroit; that, in fact, she had been traced to the same high school as my mother (different graduation years, of course). Ma never claimed to have met her. Whether the story was true or just another localized urban myth I honestly don’t know. Even at the time I had no memory of seeing the newspaper article everybody talked about and I know there’s always been a lot of crap talk on the street. Probably started with the birth of language. The kids of today, some of them anyway, will probably go thru their entire lives unaware that such a thing as a comic book ever existed. I believe that there are no doubt mobs of grown folk under thirty, some under forty, who have never seen a comic book. And yes, I have to admit that my own interest in science fiction began as an interest in ‘monster movies’, which further morphed into those weird mixtures of science fiction and horror. I didn’t start any more highbrow than that.

///I think you are correct that there are plenty of people who have never read a comic book in their lives and don’t care about the things at all. I remember a situation a few years ago when I was in the comic shop run by my friend Roger Anderson during the Free Comic Book Day/week promotion. A Mom with an almost teen-aged son and a girl about nine years old came in. She was looking for used movie DVDs or something. Roger pushed the two big boxes full of free sample comic issues over and asked the kids if they wanted to try out a few comic books---all for free. He had also salted the mix with a lot of back issue comics he hoped would interest prospective readers. Both of those kids turned him down. The boy said he had read some comics and didn’t like them. The girl had never even seen a comic book before, but she thot reading anything was stupid. If FREE won’t even attract new readers, what hope does the whole industry have?///

Rich Dengrove; 2651 Arlington Dr. #302; Alexandria, VA 22306

I read Fadeaway #43. While I have always wished to cut down on my comments, they increase by leaps and bounds. However, I rarely have marked as much of a publication for comment as Fadeaway #43. I guess Fadeaway #43 deserves some award for that. The golden hook? The bronze gab? And what convention would present that award? Certainly not Worldcon. They present too many rockets already. I first have to comment on your editorial, which discusses your dental problems. I have no such problems anymore. The reason is simple: I have no teeth. One tooth after another started cracking in 2006 and my dentist and prosthodontist urged me to get dentures. There are problems with my dentures which click into implants, but not pain. Neither, since I paid the exorbitant sum for them, is cost. Maintenance costs one-tenth what teeth did, at least during those last years of pain and breakage. As well as protecting me from negative consequences, having dentures grants me an added boon: women, at least older women, like my dentures. The dental sculpturer did a good job. Once you have a good thing, you stick to it. That is what ‘Sourdough Jackson’ infers that E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith did in his Lensman series. He found three crowd pleasers and pockmarked his novels with them. For one thing, he found the public liked science fiction that figured out the ramifications of a future of invention and of interstellar travel. Not only did he pockmark his work with such ramifications; he found the public loved conspiracy theories, both good and bad, as long as they have nothing to do with real conspiracies. In addition, he found the public loved gosh wow science. It didn’t have to be actual science; in fact, pseudo-science would do even better. For instance, telepathy is a reader magnet. I think I will comment on Smith’s first pathway to nuclear fission, Iron-56. I found it was ordinary iron, and the end product of radioactive decay not its father. I have to say that one person, however, thought that Smith might have had in mind a reversal of usual processes. How or why those processes could have been reversed, my informant never said. E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith has been known among the fan cognoscenti. I imagine Joan Davis was just known to us now elderly viewers of her TV show. You Bob say that she had no time for actors and writers who didn’t understand the show. On the other hand, I heard that nothing was good enough for one person who did, Abe Burrows. In fact, she once had him come out and take a bow. She wasn’t the only one who liked him either. He was later known for his Abe Burrows Songbook and being one of the writers for the musical How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. Now we come to the letters. Let us start with myself, who, by coincidence, wrote the first letter. I have always admitted that the bankers, mortgages and housing contractors never got justice. None went to jail. The problem, according to the New York Times, was that the staff used for prosecuting had dwindled down during the Bush administration; and political gridlock has prevented their numbers from being replenished. http://tinyurl.com/k36uu6r.

34 In addition to the Financial Meltdown’s causes, another practice farther afield should be made illegal: info dumps to pad novels. We shall always have them with us. I remember reading Heinlein’s Farnham’s Freehold, and skimming fifty pages on the art of camping. That Heinlein’s editors let him get away with I guess was because Heinlein was too big to be edited. However, even near the end [of his life], he needed an editor more than a heart specialist. On the other hand, some novels are just the opposite: they are good reads but devoid of facts. You started with my example, The Da Vinci Code. Then you sidetracked on how two movies, Armistad and The Gangs of New York, had precious little to do with history. I can add another novel, Speaks the Nightbird by Robert McCammon. It is a great read. However, it features hypnosis in 1700, a century and a half before anyone conceived of the concept. In addition, it has an urban New York City with criminal gangs of youth then too. While one of the largest cities in the colonies, New York counted only 5,000 people then. There were several other historically dubious claims as well. Why read a novel, though, when you can sport a propeller beanie? Don’t answer that question. Instead, answer this one. You asserted that the propeller beanie could have been inspired by the autogiro as well as the helicopter. Nonsense. Like the helicopter, the propeller beanie is characterized by a propeller on top. It is true the autogiro had both a propeller in front and on top. However, the propeller in front characterized it more; and made it closely resemble an airplane. Nonetheless, I have to admit that I, the jury of one, am out on whether the helicopter had anything to do with the propeller beanie. In short, I may only be a little less skeptical than you about the inspiration for the propeller beanie. Skepticism about scientific claims vs. belief is another thing entirely. Are people more likely to be believers now? You claim No. I claim Yes with a proviso. Actually, I suspect people are more aware of the findings of science now than in past decades. However, in the areas that stick into the craw of traditional skeptics, I suspect there are more believers now because the media is friendlier than in 1960 to such beliefs as astrology, psychic phenomena and flying saucers. I imagine the cycle of economic systems goes back farther than that between skeptics and believers. I am not as certain that people necessarily had economic reasons for erecting them. Some habits of people persist even though there are actual economic disincentives for such behavior. For instance, war destroyed the Mayans. For another instance, take the US. In general, Americans claim to be rugged individualists; however, a lot of the economy is based on cooperation, like the internet and the highway system. Who knows, despite ourselves, we may end up with employee owned companies. As opposed to adding to my article on propeller beanies, like Jefferson, Murray Moore expands on it. He actually wore the late Howard DeVore’s 25 foot propeller beanie. Which, I was recently convinced, was not 25 feet. Howard exaggerated and I just accepted it. However, as Murray says, you still have to have good shoulders to wear it. John Purcell has a completely different take on propeller beanies than either I or Murray. He feels strongly that I should have included John Hertz’s propeller beanie, which is covered with buttons. I thought about it, but I just wished to

35 give technological advances in beanie engineering. Of course, I stretch the meaning of technological advance, just not that far. For instance, Ray Nelson’s claim that a Chinese businessman made a beanie where the propeller did not spin. I think that’s an advance backward. While Ray Nelson said that, in one of his articles, his letter here said things more earth shattering about propeller beanies than Jefferson Swycaffer, Murray Moore or John Purcell. He claims that the movie Flying Down to Rio (1933) has a dance production that includes propeller beanies. If I want to research propeller beanies further, I will have to check that out. On the other hand, the flying man on the cover of Amazing Stories need not be included in a revised article. He did not use anything resembling a propeller beanie for flight. By the way, that issue was published August 1928. Propeller beanies are not the only thing of interest in Fadeaway, there are also comics. For instance, Bob, you mention to Craig Shutt that you believe the independent comics will replace stodgy DC and Marvel. I would be more optimistic if I knew why the independent comics sank below the waves in the ‘90s. Did problems with distribution have something to do with it? That would not be a problem in this age of e-comics if the independents could find a decent format and medium. However, while we temporarily alighted on the subject comics, we will next return to propeller beanies. Marc Schirmeister believes that there is example of one in a 1934 cartoon “The Great Experiment” about a character called Scrappy. It is on YouTube, http://tinyurl.com/nnrx6ay. I watched it, and, yes, in the cartoon’s 1990, people fly by means of a hat that looks very much like a propeller beanie. Probably should save that info in case I decide to do further research. Thus, it is a propeller beanie forerunner, no matter the merits of this cartoon. While I agree with Marc that Scrappy and the people of the future wore a propeller beanie, I disagree with Vernon Maulsby that e-comics and e-comic reprints will destroy comic collecting. If anything, old comics will cost more. In comic collecting, I thought the idea was to collect an authentic copy of the product. Certainly, reprints right now don’t make any inroads against the real McCoy. The authentic old comics will remain, grow rarer with the years, and ultimately grow rarer as paper issues give up the ghost. However, while I disagree with Vernon on the coming of e-comics, I have to thank him for praising my propeller crown. Also, other letter writers disagree with me. David B. Williams does. He believes I should have mentioned other flying hats. Certainly Mercury had a flying hat, one with wings. All I can plead is lack of space. I bet it would be possible to write whole volumes on the propeller beanie and its ramifications. However, I aimed at a short article. I also aimed to limit my research. Will it stay limited? That’s a question. So far I have dealt with some great letters discussing propeller beanies, I received the best comment from Sheryl Birkhead as far as I am concerned. She said she just plain likes propeller beanies. A woman after my own heart! Sheryl’s comment marks the end. A lot of interesting things on propeller beanies. Also, on “Doc” Smith and Joan Davis. And on economic systems and on dime novels. Also, I hope I didn’t answer so many comment hooks your readers aren’t either totally sick or confused by my missive.

///I’m not so sure “Doc” Smith consciously attempted to do all of those things with his fiction. I believe he had a basic idea of what he wanted to do, which was to create a series of stories with the good guys, and his human heroes, battling it out over eons with the bad guys thru a series of dynamic conflicts and battles. I don’t think he was particularly worried about conspiracy theories, or even if his science made any sense. A lot of it doesn’t. When the plot became convoluted, he invented new machines and new physics to make them more workable. The fact that he was able to keep all this going and in balance with not only what had gone before but also what was happening in that particular story says a lot about his plot writing abilities. But as the article pointed out, without the cohesive assistance of Lloyd Eshbach, most of those stories would be wildly scattered and not unified into the sweeping epic that finally emerged. Smith was acutely aware that a lot of his prose was inferior to the material almost all the other writers were turning out, so he was open to suggestions from editors and readers on how to make his stories more workable. Eshbach turned out to be absolutely the best editor he could have encountered, and with his help those stories became the multi-book epic that readers still find fascinating reading after all these years. Uh, I believe I said that the independent comic companies were more likely to lead the advance into the digital comic biz vs the print market than the established major corporations. The reason there was a huge implosion of independent comic publishers in the 1990s is primarily because of market glut. There were way too many comic book titles being produced by everybody, big companies, small companies, far more titles than the market could possibly support. Customers reacted by cutting back their buying, stores had to react by cutting back their orders, and many over-extended stores went bankrupt, followed by many small and independent comic book publishers. A lot of comic book readers left the hobby. Comic book cover prices were higher than the perceived value being delivered, so many potential new customers did not come into the hobby. In addition, by that point, there were few places except comic book shops where somebody could buy a comic book. Most comic stores are not and never have been kiddie

36 friendly, so youngsters at the ages when they traditionally began reading and collecting comics were essentially discouraged from getting into comics by the high cover prices and the scarcity of places to buy them. You are right that older printed comics will continue to grow rarer as the years pass, but I am far from certain that they will sell, at any price. The reality is that most comic collectors, very much like science fiction fans, just want to read the stories. Reprints of rare comics in affordable hardback or trade paperback format do cut into the sales of back issues, and will continue to do so, particularly for expensive back issue. While there is a market for certain expensive back issue comics, I am far from certain that this is a genuine, sustainable niche of the hobby. Many of these expensive goodies have been purchased by speculators as hedges against inflation and as an “investment”. The problem with collectibles as “investments” is that there has to be somebody else who will buy the item for more than the first speculator paid for it. I am sure I am repeating myself here, but other fields have gone thru the boom and bust cycles of “collectable” materials, only to see the entire “market” collapse as the number of collectors genuinely interested in the rare material dwindles sharply. The fields of dime novels, sheet music, posters, 16mm films, sports gum cards, and pulp magazines come to mind immediately. Some rarities don’t age well---think early science fiction magazines as an excellent example; and that directly affects their collectability. There are thousands of back issue comics being offered for sale at prices below the so-called Overstreet price guide book value that are not selling, and may never sell. Sure, a key issue like Action Comics #1 or Marvel Mystery #1 goes for big bucks, but there are hundreds of thousands of back issue comics that will never be worth much money at all, many of them can not even be sold for the price of a current new comic book. In theory e-comics, and e-books presented in pixel form have a longer life than print comics. Paper naturally degrades over the years. As long as copies are floating around in pixel form somewhere the electronic versions can endure in perfect shape forever. I don’t want to speculate on what might happen if the ultimate master is destroyed, but with copies around it would probably be much easier to reproduce a new master from an electronic copy than it would to physically recreate a copy of a Guttenberg Bible, say.///

Lloyd Penney; `706-24 Eva Rd.; Etobicoke, ONT M9C 2B2 CANADA

It’s been a very long time since I’ve read Smith’s Lensman series, and I am not even sure if I have read it at all. I do remember thinking that it was a perhaps quaint, and definitely dated, but the suspension of disbelieve and the knowledge that it was an honoured part of the early science fiction made it easy to read and enjoy. Perhaps it’s time for a return to Arisia, and relive those high adventures. For those who enjoy seeing Andy Hooper in a fez…recently Yvonne and I found a sutler (military supplier, I believe), who sells military headwear going back a century or so, and he now sells fezzes. And now Yvonne and I have a fez each. Hope to find suitable tassels for them. For the old Star Trek fan in me…the picture on page 15, with Joan Davis; is that Stanley Adams? At some point Yvonne and I are going to have to go thru out stuff, and there’s a lot of it, and make hard decisions on what to keep and what to turf. It’s so easy to say that it’s just stuff, but we are silly humans, and we invest so much emotional attachment to this stuff, and at our age, we’ve accumulated 30 years of stuff. We’ve gone thru several clean- outs, and made a few bucks off some of them, but there is always more to sort, inventory, save, or possibly throw out or put up for sale.

///Nope, the guy with Joan Davis is Andy Devine.///

OUR ESTEEMED ART STAFF & WHERE THEIR WORK MAY BE FOUND HEREIN:

Dan Carroll---Page 1 Robert Cepeda---22, 28, 32 John Cody---13, 36 Brad W. Foster---Page 34 Alexis Gilliland---24, 26 Ray Nelson--- Page 21 Marc Schirmeister---Page 6 Steve Stiles---page 21

37 clip art from the internet---25, 27, 29, 29, 30, 31, 33

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