Alexander Blade! The name explodes with excitement. Now imagine a writer who has produced stories for decades, appeared in different magazines, even different kinds of magazines. You would think that person has some small amount of reputation, recognition, right? But what do you know about Will Garth, E. K. Jarvis, S. M. Tenneshaw or Adam Chase? Nothing. They are all house names used occasionally for big writers like Edmond Hamilton or Henry Kuttner (when they had several stories in an issue) but usually by unknown editorial assistants who produced thousands of words a month as part of their duties.
Let’s look at Alexander Blade in particular. I count 262 different publications for this author including stories, novellas, letters, articles and serials. He wrote for the Science Fiction, Western, Mystery and Adventure magazines. Sometimes we know the real author hiding behind the name: Robert Silverberg, Edmond Hamilton, Heinrich Hauser, Richard S. Shaver, William Hamling and Leroy Yerxa but these are only the very few. The majority are unknown and today probably unknowable.
“Death Has Red Wings” (Air Adventures, February 1940) and “Sabotage at Samarai” (South Sea Stories, February 1940) were the two first appearances of Alexander Blade. B. G. Davis edited Air Adventures and Ray A. Palmer South Sea Stories. The first appearance in a Science Fiction magazine was “The Strange Adventure of Victor MacLiesh” in Amazing Stories, May 1941. Davis never used it again so I suspect Ray Palmer may have invented it. He certainly claimed it and continued to use for the whole run of his Ziff-Davis career.
Alexander Blade made his Mystery fiction debut with “A Problem in Murder” in Mammoth Detective, May 1942. This multi-talented fellow moved on to Westerns with an article on Buffalo Bill in Mammoth Western, September 1945.
Blade would outlive his editor/creator, Palmer, when Ray left the company to form his own line of pulps. (RAP will appear here one more time.) Howard Browne inherited the RAP chaos (including thousands of dollars of unusable stories). He also got Alexander Blade and the rest of the house names in the deal. Brown wanted a better quality magazine so he hired real writers of talent. For awhile. As time went on the house names came back.
Robert Silverberg wrote in Other Spaces, Other Times (2009):
The interesting thing here is that Browne published it [“O Captain, My Captain”] under the byline of “Ivar Jorgensen” — a writer who had been one of my early favorites in the days before I knew that the Ziff-Davis magazines were entirely written by staff insiders using pseudonyms. “Jorgensen” had originally been the pen name of Paul W. Fairman, Browne’s associate editor, but now the name was being spread around to the other contributors. So after having been an Ivar Jorgensen fan in my mid-teens, I had, four or five years later, been transformed into Jorgensen myself! It would not be long before I could lay claim to “Alexander Blade” as well.
He left Ziff-Davis in 1956 to be replaced by Paul W. Fairman who went in for house names in an even bigger way.
You would think that Alexander Blade’s career would begin and end with Ziff-Davis but this was not the case. He was such a prolific and ambitious author he started to appear in William Hamling‘s magazines with “Zero Hour” (Imagination, April 1956) and “Flight of the Ark II” and (Imaginative Tales, July 1956). Hamling had learned well from Palmer. He hired Robert Silverberg and Randall Garrett to produce 50,000 a month to supply all those Alexander Blades and S. M. Tenneshaws. It has been wondered if Hamling even read them let alone edited them.
Ray A. Palmer used the Alexander Blade name one last time in his magazine (that had come out of his fiction magazine Other Worlds), Flying Saucers of Other Worlds (September 1957). “Blacksheep Angel” the cover novelette is attributed to Blade. Alexander Blade’s final tale was for Space Travel, September 1958 with “The Deadly Mission”. (The story was actually written by John Jakes.)
Alexander Blade’s decades long career was over. He had appeared in many magazines including Air Adventures, Amazing Stories, Amazing Stories Quarterly, American Ranch Romances, American Western, Fantastic Adventures, Fantastic, Flying Saucers From Other Worlds, Imagination, Imaginative Tales, Mammoth Adventure, Mammoth Detective, Mammoth Western, Rogue, South Sea Adventures, Space Travel, and Thrilling Western. Not bad for a guy who doesn’t exist!
But wait, old Alex isn’t quite ready yet to fade into that oblivion that has claimed real authors such as Chester S. Geier, Berkeley Livingston, Frances M. Deegan, Vincent H. Gaddis and host of others. He appeared one last time in 1989 (very old, no doubt) with a letter to Science Fiction Eye #5. Why he chose to break his silence after thirty years, we will never know. His unique voice will be sadly missed– what am I saying? I need another coffee…
