If you missed the last one…
1921 began with the same pattern as the previous year, with small stories getting illustrations while the big ones got covers only. Because of this, Tarzan the Terrible had to wait for book publication to get images. The same is true of The Blind Spot by Homer Eon Flint and Austin Hall. The policy changed by October so ERB’s The Efficiency Expert has pictures!
“The Time Professor” by Ray Cummings (January 8, 1921)Â This was Tubby Maguire’s third appearance in the series. Cummings used Tubby as a foil to poke fun at famous SF authors, like Verne and Wells, and their ideas. Some of the stories appeared in Gernsback’s Science and Invention.
Tarzan the Terrible by Edgar Rice Burroughs (February 12-March 26, 1921) appeared as a serial in seven parts. It was the eighth Tarzan book. Argosy provided only one image, the cover to the first installment. When the serial appeared in book form it got a cover and illos by ERB’s favorite artist, J. Allen St. John. This novel is a favorite with Tarzan looking for his wife, Jane, lost in the last book. Tarzan the Untamed. He finds her in Pal-U-Don, where dinosaurs still exist and men have tails. Thanks to ERBzine for illos.
“The Spirit Photograph” by Ray Cummings (February 12, 1921)
“The Wrath of Amen-Ra” by William Holloway (March 12, 1921) was reprinted in Fantastic Novels Magazine, January 1949
“Catalepsy” by J. U. Giesy (March 19, 1921)
“The Curious Case of Norton Hoorne” by Ray Cummings (April 2, 1921) was reprinted in Avon Fantasy Reader No. 13, 1950
“The Red Dust” by Murray Leinster (April 2, 1921) was reprinted in Amazing Stories, January 1927, Tales of Wonder, #9, December 1939, Super Science and Fantastic Stories, February 1945 and Fantastic Novels Magazine, May 1949 It was the second in the Forgotten Planet series. In this second installment, Burl and his folk have to escape a deadly red pollen produced by the gigantic flora of the Mad Planet.
“The Lost City of Gold” by George C. Shedd (April 9, 1921)
Jason, Son of Jason by J. U. Giesy (April 16-May 21, 1921) was serialized in six parts. This novel was the third and last in the Palos trilogy, an Edgar Rice Burroughs clone similar to John Carter. Reprinted in Fantastic Novels Magazine, May 1948
“Eyes of the Dead” by George Gilbert (April 16, 1921)
“The Curative Fear” by Charles B. Stilson (April 23, 1921)
“Moon Madness” by Ray Cummings (April 23, 1921) Another Tubby Maguire story.
“The Gravity Professor” by Ray Cummings (May 7, 1921) Still another Tubby Maguire story. Cummings was working his way up to the novels that would fill future issues.
The Blind Spot by Homer Eon Flint and Austin Hall (May 14-June 18, 1921) was presented in six parts. Homer Eon Flint was mysteriously murdered on March 27, 1924. Austin Hall later wrote a sequel alone. This book was a classic of its sort though dated by today’s standards. Later novels were compared to it such as Stanley Mullen’s Kinsmen of the Dragon. The novel was reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, March April May-June 1940 and Fantastic Novels, July 1940 with the same illos by Virgil Finlay.
“Nerve” by Murray Leinster (June 4, 1921)
“Bismallah!” by Achmed Abdullah (June 11, 1921) by a colorful author known for his occult tales.
“The Elixerites” by Wolcott LeClear Beard (July 16, 1921)
“The Devolutionist” by Homer Eon Flint (July 23, 1921) is the third book in the Dr. Kinney series. These novellas would not be reprinted by Famous Fantastic Mysteries or any other Pulp (which surprised me) but by Donald A. Wollheim and his Ace Doubles.
“Out of the Desert” by L. Patrick Greene (August 13, 1921) is better known for his adventure fiction in Adventure and Short Stories. This tale was reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, October 1941
“Coil of Circumstance” by Jack Harrower (August 27, 1921)
“Raiders of the Air” by Fred T. Barton and Hubert Kelley (August 27, 1921) was reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, May-June 1940
“The Emancipatrix” by Homer Eon Flint (September 3, 1921) was the final Dr. Kinney novella.
“Land Sharks and Others” by H. Bedford-Jones (September 24, 1921) by another famous producer of adventures.
The Efficiency Expert by Edgar Rice Burroughs (October 8-29, 1921) appeared in four parts. This book was one of Burroughs’ non-fantastic novels (along with several Westerns) that he tried but to little success. As a fan of Tarzan, Barsoom, Pellucidar, etc. it was never high on my list. Burroughs sought critical acceptance by way of mundane subjects. (Could have written another Mars novel instead!) Thanks to ERBzine again.
“The Power of Madame Krishna” by Elizabeth Irons Folsom (October 8, 1921) is not a true fantastic tale but has a fortune-teller in it.
Wolf of Erlik by J. U. Giesy and Junius B. Smith (October 22-November 12, 1921) in four parts. This was the twenty-eighth volume of the long-running Semi-Dual series. Semi-Dual was an occult detective who began in 1912.
“The Sandalwood Doll” by Victor Thaddeus (November 5, 1921)
“Two Bits For Barry”by Will H. Greenfield (November 21, 1921)
“The Great Silencer ” by Bernard V. Murphy (December 3, 1921)
“The Flaw” by Eugene P. Lyle, Jr. (December 10, 1921)
“The Lost Hour” by Lyon Mearson (December 24, 1921)
Conclusion
We saw at least three major novels in this year. The Science Fiction short stories tended to be of the “Inventor” type, where a man creates something new and we see what effect it has. Sometimes this is done for laughs, sometimes not. H. G. Wells did these decades earlier but they never really went away. Supernatural stories were not common but not missing either. The occult detective has been around for at least fifty years but popular after World War I. This was also the age of Spiritualism (The year before A. Conan Doyle published The Coming of the Fairies) so mediums weren’t seen with quite the same hardness as in later decades.
Next time...1922 -1923…
