Today, April 7, 2016, marks the 101st birthday of author Henry Kuttner.

I was going to read and review one of Kuttner’s longer works and had chosen The Fairy Chessmen.  That review will come in a few days.  I’m not quite halfway through it and won’t be able to finish it before tomorrow.

Since Robert Bloch’s birthday was a few days ago, I though I would share a few photos of Kuttner and Bloch.  Bloch and Kuttner were friends and collaborated on a few short stories.  Those stories were “The Black Kiss“, “The Grip of Death“, and “The Grab Bag“.

The photo on the left shows Bloch in the wheelchair and Kuttner behind him.  From what I remember reading about this photo years ago (I don’t recall where; Bloch’s autobiography perhaps?), the wheelchair belonged to Bloch’s mother.  The guys were just goofing around with it.  The picture would have been taken in Milwaukee, which was where Bloch was living at the time.  In the 1930s, Milwaukee had an active group of science fiction and fantasy writers.  After Bloch, the most significant of these was probably Stanley G. Weinbaum, who only wrote for a year and a half before his untimely death due to lung cancer at the age of 33.  I’m going to be reading some of his work and posting about it later in the year (I hope.)  (Yes, I know Ray Palmer was part of that group, but I mean significant in a positive way.)

The photo on the left, which I think was taken at the same time as the one above shows (l. to r.) Bloch’s friend Harold Gauer, Bloch, C. L. Moore, and Kuttner.  They’re standing in front of the apartment building where Bloch’s parents lived.  This picture is probably taken in 1940 or later after Kuttner and Moore were married.

Many of the early pulp writers, particularly those associated with Weird Tales, Astounding Stories, and other fantastic pulps were a tight-knit bunch.  I’m thankful we have some photos of them together.