Category Archives: birthday

Bea Mahaffey at 98

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Eric Frank Russell and Bea Mahaffey. Photo by Norman Shorrock.

Bea Mahaffey was born on August 24, 1926.  She passes away in 1987.  Ms. Mahaffey was active in early fandom and was an assistant editor for Ray Palmer after he left Amazing Stories to from Clark Publications.

I realize it may come as a shock to some people that there were female editors in the early 50s.   They seem to think women didn’t become involved in science fiction and fantasy and smash The Patriarchy until [insert arbitrary recent date here].  I spoke to that issue in this post. Not that it did a lot of good.  Some people just don’t listen.  Not regular readers of this blog, of course.  They’re on top of things.

Mahaffey worked with Palmer on Other Worlds, where she is credited as being the person who actually purchased Eric Frank Russell’s classic story “Dear Devil”.  If she had done nothing else in the field, she should be remembered for this.  Mahaffey is also credited as being co-editor with Palmer on Science Stories, Universe Science Fiction, and Mystic Magazine.  Financial considerations forced Palmer to end her employment in 1956.

Bea Mahaffey was quite popular with the male fans of the day.  Legend has it that both male and female attendance at fan gatherings increased when she was there.  The men attended to keep an eye on Bea, and their wives attended to keep an eye on them.  That may or may not be true, but I’m inclined to think it is to at least some extent.  Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg got in trouble a few years ago when they wrote favorably about Bea Mahaffey’s looks in the SFWA Bulletin.  Personally, I think beauty and achievement should be recognized.

In conclusion, Bea Mahaffey had a impact on the field of the fantastic.

Ray Bradbury at 98

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On this date in 1920, August 22, Ray Bradbury was born.  He was one of the greatest writers of the fantastic of the last 100 years.

I came to Bradbury early.  He was one of the first adult writers I read.  When I was in 5th grade, we had a guest in my reading class one day.  The man was there to read us a Bradbury story.  He described Bradbury as a science fiction writer but  then went on to tell us that what he was going to read wasn’t science fiction.  He read “The Screaming Woman” to us.  Continue reading →

Happy Birthday, Farnsworth

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Farnsworth Wright, legendary editor of Weird Tales, was born on this date, July 29, in the long-ago year of 1888.  He died in 1940.

We last discussed Mr. Wright a few weeks ago in my post on who was the greatest editor of the 20th Century.  I think it’s a toss-up between Wright and Don Wolheim.

What isn’t up for debate is that Wright published some of the greatest writers of the fantastic in his magazines during his tenure as editor:  H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, C. L. Moore, Henry S. Whitehead, Henry Kuttner, Manley Wade Wellman, Robert Bloch, Seabury Quinn.

Just to name a few.

Granted some, like Kuttner and Bloch, went on to fame for later, more mature work.  But Wright recognized something about their writing and published it.

So if today or tonight you happen to read something published in Weird Tales while Wright was the editor, raise your glass to his memory and his legacy.

Bill Crider’s Birthday

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Bill Crider at the 2017 WFC in San Antonio. That’s Joe Lansdale on the left.

Bill Crider was born on this day, July 28, in 1941, in Mexia, Texas (pronounced Me-hay-a).  He passed away from cancer earlier this year on February 12.

While I certainly didn’t know Bill, he was one of my favorite people to hang out with at conventions.  I first encountered him about 19 years ago, when he was the featured guest of a writing conference at the university where I was a visiting faculty.  We didn’t meet at the time.  I snuck over between classes and heard him speak.

We did meet a year or two later.  I don’t recall if it was at Armadillocon or Aggiecon.  Bill made his mark in the mystery field, but he was a fan of fantasy and science fiction and would dabble in those fields from time to time, as well as attending a number of Texas conventions.  He was knowledgeable about the history of genre fiction and pop culture.  Talking to him or reading his blog was always an education.

As you can tell from the photo above, I got to visit with him one last time this past November.  It was one of the highlights of the convention. He is sorely missed.

Three Weird Birthdays: Benson, Dunsany, and Coye

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Today (July 24) marks the birth of three practitioners of the weird tale: authors E. F. Benson (1867) and Lord Dunsany (1878) and artist Lee Brown Coye (1907).

E. F. Benson

During his lifetime, Benson was probably best known for his novels of upper middle class British life.  The best known of these were the Mapp and Lucia novels, which have been adapted for television.

Benson’s legacy, though, was with his supernatural tales.  Ash-Tree Press collected all his known ghost and spook stories in the early 2000s.  Those editions are nice.  They’re also expensive and out of print AFAIK.  Fortunately Wordsworth has collected all the stories in an inexpensive edition.

I first encountered Benson when I was around ten, give or take a year.  My grandparents had a farm in rural Mississippi, and we would stay there in the summers.  One day I was poking through the bookcase and found a battered paperback copy of a ghost story anthology.  It had probably belonged to my uncle, as my grandparents didn’t read that kind of thing.  The book contained the Benson story “Caterpillars”.  I became an instant fan.  Other Benson stories that have stuck with me have been “Mrs. Amworth” and “The Room in the Tower”.

Lord Dunsany

Lord Dunsany needs little introduction.  His work was greatly admired by H. P. Lovecraft.  In fact, much of Lovecraft’s early work is written in a style similar to Dunsany’s.

Dunsany was primarily a writer of short stories, many of them only a page or two in length.  One of his recurring characters was Jorkens.  The Jorkens stories fall into what is primarily a British type of story, commonly called the club story.  This is when a group of men (sorry, ladies, these stories were at the height of their popularity when men’s clubs were part of British upper crest society) sit around their club and tell tall tales.  P. G. Wodehouse wrote some of these.

The difference between the standard club story and that practiced by Dunsany is that the core of the story involves something fantastic.  Other examples include Gavan’s Bar by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt and Tales From the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke.

Lee Brown Coye was an artist.  I first became acquainted with his work when I snagged a copy Hugh B. Cave’s Murgunstrumm, published by Carcosa Press.  Lately I’ve been reading the reprint of Manly Wade Wellman’s Worse Things Waiting, originally published by Carcosa.  It was Lee Brown Coye who gave Karl Edward Wagner the idea that became his classic horror story “Sticks”.  Here are some examples of his work.

Henry Kuttner at 103

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On this date, April 7, in 1915, Henry Kuttner entered the world. He left it far too soon.

Posts commemorating Kuttner’s birthday have been pretty standard around here for a number of years.  I’m not going to try to come up with something brilliant and original to say.  I’m too snowed under with the day job.  But I have been thinking about what to write, mostly while I was driving to Portales yesterday for the Jack Williamson Lectureship. (It was awesome! I’ll write about it, I promise.)

Kuttner seems to be getting some attention these days.  At least I keep coming across mentions of his name in various places.

A few years ago I started a series of posts on Kuttner’s works that haven’t been reprinted, at least not in book form.  I’m going to revise that series, which like many of my projects has gotten buried by Real Life obligations.

Later this year, namely when the semester ends in about six weeks, I’m going to try to read some of those stories and tell you about them.  Kuttner wrote what at the time were considered novels, at least in the pulps.  Today they would be considered novellas. Because of their length, most weren’t reprinted.  As we saw with “A God Named Kroo“, many were just as good, if not better, than what made it into books.

I don’t know what I’m going to start with, but it will be something most of you probably haven’t read before.  Stay tuned.

Robert Bloch at 101

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Today, April 5, is Robert Bloch’s birthday.  He was born in 1917.  For those of you who are poor at math, not sure what day/year it is, or didn’t read the title of the post, that would make him 101 today if he were still alive.

Bloch was one of the most influential writers of horror, crime, and science fiction of the last century. He wrote a number of novels, the most famous being Psycho.  And while the Hitchcock film is deservedly considered a classic, you should give the book a try if you haven’t read it. There are some differences. Bloch’s written sequels have nothing to do with the film sequels.

In my mind, though, Bloch was better as a short story writer.  The reason I think that may be in part because I’ve a fondness for short fiction.  He started writing for Weird Tales when he was just 17, IIRC.  While is early stuff is pretty rough around the edges, it was no worse that what Farnsworth Wright was buying at the time, and soon became better than much of the stuff by authors long forgotten. Bloch was an earlier correspondent of Lovecraft.  Much of his early work was lovecraftian pastiche. He soon developed his own voice and went on to write some great horror and dark fantasy fiction, such as “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper”, “The Man Who Collected Poe”, and the Hugo Award winning “The Hell-Bound Train”. If Bloch had any faults, it was that he couldn’t stand Robert E. Howard’s Conan.  (That’s a pretty big fault, if you ask me, but Bloch’s body of work is sufficiently good that I’m willing to overlook it.)

Over the last few years I’ve gotten into the habit of blogging about an author’s work on their birthday.  At the moment, I’m swamped with the day job and slowly going under.  That’s why it’s been like a ghost town around here lately.  I’ve either not had the time to write (blog posts or fiction) or not had the energy when I had the time.  So, no, I’m not dead.  (Sorry to disappoint some of you.)  I’ve just been dealing with Real Life.

I’m hoping to read something short this evening.  If so, I’ll try to post about it here once I get this mountain of exams graded.  I hope to do that, but I may not be able to pull it off.

But don’t let that stop you from raising a glass is Robert Bloch’s memory and celebrating his work by reading a short story or two.