A tale of two cousins concerns the early Science Fiction writers: Bruce Wallis and his cousin, George C. Wallis. Early critics thought the two men were one, then later that George did all the writing and Bruce was his agent, but E. F. Bleiler claimed that Bruce lived in British Columbia in the 1930s and had been a sailor on sailing ships. Still, the careers of the two men, have some interesting features, like they wrote at the same time only 1927-1930 and usually in tandem. After the John Wyndham pile-o-pseudonyms a reader could get to wonder if they weren’t the same guy.
Of B. Wallis we have no personal info. George Charles Wallace was born in Weedon, Nottinghamshire, England on March 18, 1871. He died on September 1, 1956 in Sheffield, Yorkshire. George had been a printer and cinema manager before taking to writing. He started in the penny weeklies, then boys’ papers and finally books. His novels in 1901 show an obvious H. G. Wells influence. He disappears after 1913 to reappear with his cousin in 1926.
The Early George C. Wallis
“The White Queen of Atlantis” (Pearson’s Weekly Extra Christmas Number, 1896)
“The Vow of King Vendis” (Short Stories, April 17, 1897)
“The Last King of Atlantis” (Short Stories, October 3, 1896-January 30, 1897)
The Children of the Sphinx: A Romance of the Old Orient (1901)
“The Last Days of Earth: Being the Story of the Launching of the ‘Red Sphere'” (The Harmsworth Magazine, July 1901) It was reprinted in The Rivals of H. G. Wells (1979).
“The Great Sacrifice” (The London Magazine, June 1903)
“In Trackless Space” (Union Jack Library, December 10, 1904)
“The World Wreckers” (Scraps, 1908)
“The Terror from the South” (Comic Life, 1909)
“Wireless War” (Comic Life, 1909), with A. J. Andrews
Harrah the Moor: The Wonderful Story of the Invasion of Europe (Lot-O’-Fun, 1910-1911) as by Royston Heath
Beyond the Hills of Mist (Lot-O’-Fun, 1913)
But while George was off doing whatever (probably writing things non-SF), Bruce was busy in the Pulps: Argosy and Weird Tales. In 1926 he begins collaborating with George on three longish pieces, writes a few more on his own then disappears. His last novel is for Weird Tales, “The Voyage of the Neutralia”.
B. Wallis
“From Time’s Dawn” (Argosy-All Story, April 7, 1923) reprinted in Super Science and Fantastic Stories December 1944 and May 1950 in Fantastic Novels.
“The Abysmal Horror” (Weird Tales, January February 1924)
“Leaping Death” (Argosy-All Story, October 18, 1924)
“John Carroll, Legionary of Rome” (Weird Tales, November 1924)
“The Tiger Weed” (Argosy-All Story, April 11, 1925)
“The Whistling Monsters” (Weird Tales, August 1926)
“Fly Island” (Weird Tales, August 1927)
Writing Together
Truly the tale of two cousins hits its high-point here when Bruce and George wrote these novellas/novels together.
The Star Shell (Weird Tales, November December 1926 January February 1927)
The World At Bay (Amazing Stories, November December 1928)
The Mother World (Amazing Stories Quarterly, Spring-Summer 1933)
More B. Wallis
“Winged Vengeance” (Weird Tales, September 1929)
“The Primeval Pit” (Weird Tales, December 1930)
The Voyage of the Neutralia (Weird Tales, November December 1937 January 1938)
But the tale of the two cousins isn’t over yet. George is back in 1938 for stories exclusively for British markets, Tales of Wonder in particular. He will write one last SF novel in 1948 before calling it quits.
The Later George C. Wallis
“The Orbit Jumper” (Tales of Wonder #5, 1938)
“In Verne’s Footsteps” (essay, Tales of Wonder #5, 1938)
“Invaders from the Void” (Fantasy #3, 1939)
Across the Abyss” (Tales of Wonder #7, June 1939)
“The Crystal Menace” (Tales of Wonder #8, September 1939)
“Under the Dying Sun” (Tales of Wonder #11, July 1940)
“The Power Supreme” (Tales of Wonder and Super Science #13, Winter 1941)
“The Red Spheres” (Tales of Wonder and Super Science #14, March 1941)
“The Cosmic Cloud” (Tales of Wonder and Super Science #15, September 1941)
“Rival Creators” (Outlands, Winter 1946)
The Call of Peter Gaskell (1948) a lost race novel along the lines of Haggard’s She with nuclear weapons.
The Science Fiction Encyclopedia says of George: “Wallis was probably the only Victorian sf writer (with the possible exception of Eden Phillpotts, who wrote little sf until 1922) to continue to publish after World War Two.” As a writer who was contemporary with H. G. Wells, George also wrote for the Pulps and finally, as SFE says, after WWII. That’s a long run. Despite that, both Wallis boys are little remembered.
