In Science Fiction, it was quite acceptable to write prolifically and sell stories under a number of nom de plums. This was a practical necessity for some, when three or four stories appeared in the same issue. Robert Silverberg talks about his early days when he pumped out low-quality material:
Hamling’s letter followed a month or so later. What he wanted was short, punchy stories with strong conflicts, lots of color and action, and straightforward resolutions. And he made a very explicit offer: the Garrett-Silverberg team was invited to deliver 50,000 words of fiction a month, all lengths from short-shorts up to 7500 words or so, and we would be paid $500 for each monthly package. (Other Spaces, Other Times, 2009).
Best of all, nothing was rejected. The editors didn’t even bother to read them. Silverberg wrote as Calvin M. Knox, Gordon Aghill, Ralph Burke, Richard Greer, Leonard G. Spenser, David Gordon, Hall Thornton, Robert Arnette, Warren Kastel, T. D. Bethlen, Eric Rodman, Richard F. Watson, Dan Malcolm, Webber Martin, George Osborne, Dirk Clinton, Alex Merrimen and Robert Randall (collaborating with Randall Garrett). Occasionally he appeared as Randall Garrett. He published under house names such as Ivar Jorgensen, Gerald Vance, Alexander Blade, S. M. Tenneshaw, Clyde Mitchell and E. K. Jarvis. Whenever he appeared in a prestige magazine, Star Science Fiction, Galaxy or Fantasy & Science Fiction, he was always Robert Silverberg. By the 1960s, he gave up the fast-paced pseudonymous career for something more artful.
Randall Garrett, his partner-in-crime, shared some of these pseudonyms but also wrote under Janet Argo, Sam Argo, Grandall Barretton, Randell Garrett, David Gordon, Jonathan Blake Mac Kenzie, Darrell T. Langart, Seaton McKettrig, and Mark Phillips.
Another author who began with several pseudonyms but later strove for quality was Harlan Ellison. He appeared as Ellis Hart, Lee Archer, Nalrah Nosille, Wallace Edmonson, Pat Roeder, and under the same house names as Silverberg: E. K. Jarvis, Ivar Jorgensen and Clyde Mitchell. Harlan was famous or another pseudonym, Cordwainer Bird, a name he later used in Hollywood for any script that was mangled by producers and he didn’t want to be associated with.
Howard Browne talks about working under Ray A. Palmer in “A Profit Without Honor” (Amazing Stories, May 1984):
During the Z-D years, every member of the Fiction Group staff, except for Lila Shaffer, wrote reams of copy for the magazine. With, at times, six monthly periodicals to bring out, many running better than 200 pages, it took the combined efforts of stable and staff to fill them. The rate per word was the same for both; “house names” were used as bylines; at times several stories by the same staff writer, under different pseudonyms, appeared in the same issue.
This wasn’t about quality. As Browne’s title implies, it was about profit.
Probably the first man to pull off this massive pseudonym-storm was John Russell Fearn. He started using multiply names in the 1930s. He was Dennis Clive (5), Frank Jones (1), John Cotton (3), Polton Cross (25), Thornton Ayre (30), Vargo Stratton (21), Volstad Gridban (5) and as well as being Ephraim Winiki (4), Dom Passante (3), K. Thomas, Mark Denholm, Astron del Martia, Hugo Blayn, Paul Lorraine, Griff, Conrad G. Holt, Geoffrey Armstrong, Herbert Lloyd, Spike Gordon and Lawrence F. Rose. t least 33 stories appeared under his real name. He wrote many novels as well. As Earl Titan he wrote 2 Edgar Rice Burroughs knock-offs.
Milton Lesser who became more famous as Mystery writer, Stephen Marlowe, wrote dozens and dozens of stories under the names Adam Chase (14), C. H. Thames (25), Darius John Granger (16), Stephen Marlowe (10) Stephen Wilder (4) and at least 83 under his own name. He only appeared under a house name once. Despite being super-prolific, virtually none of his stories are remembered. Marlowe is best known today as a writer of historical biographies.
So I guess the real question here is why would a writer chose to go down this path? Greed is too simple an answer. The just-barely shaving Robert Silverberg saw it as a road to independence. He wasn’t old enough to vote but he was living in New York, writing SF and not westerns, and developing his ability. At some point, he knew he had to move on from the slap-dash stuff to better SF, and he did.
In John Russell Fearn’s case back in 1938, when he was at least two or three of the best SF writer around, it was a matter of survival. He could produce large amounts of text for a small amount of possible markets. If he wasn’t more than one of those writers he would have starved. Writers like Isaac Asimov, Clifford D. Simak and Alfred Bester could take their time as they made their living doing other things. Asimov was a scientist, Simak a newspaper man and Bester wrote comics then television.
Milton Lesser, like Silverberg, was in the 1950s, when Science Fiction expanded its titles many times over. Lester Del Rey writes in The World of Science Fiction (1979):
Some of the boom between 1950 and 1955 — or perhaps even later–was real. There was certainly room for quality competition to Astounding, and both Galaxy and F&SF were logical additions to the field.
But a lot of such an increase in the magazines was a symptom of the sickness of the general pulp field. It was, in many ways, a phony boom, and it could not last. Also, while it lasted, it probably tended to abort the normal development that science fiction might have experienced in the magazine field. There was room for at least three quality magazines and perhaps four or five others that were wisely chosen to find individual places in the general (and less sophisticated) adventure-science fiction market. There was no room for 36 magazines, even good ones– which many of these were not. Opportunistic publishers had learned nothing from the collapse of their other markets; they used the same technique in printing science fiction that had destroyed other magazines.
Not to put too fine point on that, Lesser, Silverberg, Garrett and the other hacks didn’t need to be good, just fast and dependable.
Robert Moore Williams begs another point of view. He wrote 166 stories and 25 novel but used a pseudonym or house name only a dozen times, usually Russell Storm. His Jongor novels are fondly remembered by ERB fans and his story “Robots Return” is a considered a minor classic. He sold to the same markets as these others. Was a pile of pen names necessary? Not for Williams. As far as I can discover, he had no day job.
