Drury Dubose Sharp (1886-1960) is remembered for one story “The Eternal Man”, his second he sold. It appeared in Science Wonder Stories, August 1929. He wrote a poor sequel for Gernsback, who put it in Wonder Stories Quarterly, Summer 1930. No one remembers the second story. “The Eternal Man” has been reprinted in magazines like Startling Stories (January 1939) and Famous Science Fiction (Fall 1968), then in anthologies like Groff Conklin’s A Treasury of Science Fiction (1948) and Mike Ashley’s The History of the Science Fiction Magazine Part 1 1926-1935 (1974). “The Eternal Man” and “The Eternal Man Revives” were combined in a reprint in Wonder Story Annual, May 1950. Like the rock’n’roller who gets stuck singing the same song over and over for his whole career, Sharp wrote twenty-one other pieces, some even worthy of attention. Did anyone care?
“The Goddess of the Painted Priests” (Weird Tales, April 1929)
“The Eternal Man” (Science Wonder Stories, August 1929)
“In the Toils of the Black Kiva” (Weird Tales, October 1929)
“Thirty Miles Down” (Science Fiction Series #14, 1930)
“The Day of the Beast” (Science Wonder Stories, May 1930) (Reprinted in Startling Stories, Fall 1944) The giant spider is a classic theme in Pulp fiction.
“The Eternal Man Revives” (Wonder Stories Quarterly, Summer 1930) Sharp was one of the authors who created a robot scenario for Hugo Gernback’s Pulps.
“Three Worlds to Conquer” (Wonder Stories Quarterly, Winter 1931)
“The Satellite of Doom” (Wonder Stories, January 1931)
“The Messenger From Space” (Wonder Stories, January 1933)
“At Bay in the Void” (Wonder Stories, February 1933)
“The Captive in the Crater” (Wonder Stories, June 1933)
“Higher Jurisdiction” (Wonder Stories, December 1934)
“Doomed by the Planetoid” (Astounding Stories, May 1936)
“The Indesinent Stykal” (Astounding Stories, June 1937)
“Faster Than Light” (Marvel Science Stories, February 1939)
“The Lodestone Core” (Astonishing Stories, August 1940)
“Substitute For War” (Marvel Stories, November 1940)
“The Girl From Venus” (Marvel Stories, April 1941)
“Death on the Siderite” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, February 1942)
“Pillage of the Space-Marine” (Captain Future, Spring 1943) I thought this might be the first use of the word “space-marine” but that was Bob Olson eleven years earlier with “Captain Brink of the Space Marines”.
“Children of the Gods” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1943)
“Juju Trail” (Jungle Stories, Winter 1944)
“The Eternal Man” and “The Eternal Man Revives” were combined in a reprint in Wonder Story Annual, May 1950.
In the end Sharp wrote for most of the classic editors (not T. O’Conor Sloane or John W. Campbell) including Farnsworth Wright, Hugo Gernsback, F. Orlin Tremaine, Robert O. Erisman, Fredrick Pohl and W. Scott Peacock.
It is obvious D. D. Sharp never made a living at writing. After 1933, he basically wrote a story a year. He is not unusual in this, as most early SF writers either had day jobs or wrote Westerns or detective stories to pay the bills. Even giants like Asimov were biochemists or non-fiction writers. That D. D. Sharp is remembered at all is a feat. Who recalls F. E. Hardart, William L. Bade, Frank Brueckel Jr, J. Schlossal, Francis M. Deegan, D. S. Halacy, Milton Kaltesky and a whole host of other writers who produced SF but never a hit? Their fate is even worse than Sharp’s. The oblivion of flaking brown Pulp…
