Writers of Science Fiction and Mystery have always shared a common point of origin in the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Though Poe is usually thought of as a horror writer, he wrote many different kinds of stories, including the first true detective story, “The Murder in the Rue Morgue”, the first cipher story, “The Gold Bug” as well as early Science Fiction in “The Unparallelled Adventures of One Hans Pfall” and a number of other stories.
People, like Poe, who enjoy the intricacies of the Mystery are often also fascinated by the possibilities of Science, and therefore read Science Fiction. The Scientist and the Detective share many habits, philosophies and behaviors. Some of the best writers of Mysteries were also Science Fiction writers, though often making a better living in Detective Fiction than the lower paying SF. Two good examples are Anthony Boucher, for whom a
Mystery convention is named, Bouchercon; who also was one of two editors that began The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1949. The other is Fredric Brown who wrote two Mystery novels a year but is better remembered for his classic SF like “Arena” (1944) and Martians Go Home (1955). Others include Mystery bestseller John D. Macdonald who wrote the SF novels like The Wine of Dreamers (1951) when he wasn’t penning another Travis McGee or stand-alone classic like Cape Fear. He left the field because he found it “too easy”.
I was recently perusing the contents of one of Ray Palmer’s last Science Fiction magazines, Imagination, (October 1950-October 1958). Palmer sold the title to William Hamling, who edited it after the third issue. The reputation of Imagination is poor due to being more entertainment oriented than Astounding. Despite this, Imagination did give some very good writers a market to grow in, including Robert Sheckley, Ray Bradbury, John Jakes, Richard Matheson, Alan E. Nourse, Harlan Ellison, Mack Reynolds, Ray Russell, Charles Beaumont, Margaret St. Clair and Philip K. Dick as well as snatching the occasional piece from writers like John Wyndham, Theodore Sturgeon, L. Sprague de Camp, Edmond Hamilton and Robert A. Heinlein.
The magazine– towards the end of its run–was written by two or three writers under a number of house names. So, as I perused I expected some space opera and plenty of “Alexander Blade” pseudonyms and was struck by something else: I realized that many of the writers present were also Mystery writers. (I am struck by another fact as I look through these different stories: most appear midway through the issue or at the end (not as desirable as first) and only Robert Bloch and Milton Lesser received a cover. These were filler stories, often lacking robots or spaceships for the cover image.)
Writers like:
Day Keene was a pseudonym for Gunnar Hjerstedt (1904-1969). Keene wrote hard-boiled stories for the Pulps like Dime Mystery, Ace G-Man, Black Mask and Detective Tales. He also wrote forty-two novels including the Johnny Aloha titles Dead in Bed (1959) and Payola (1960). In the December 1950 issue of Imagination he offered us some historical time traveling in “What So Proudly We Hail…”.
Robert Bloch is most famous for writing Psycho (1959) and other horror stories but he also wrote for Mystery magazines as well as SF novels like This Crowded Earth (1968). In June 1951, Bloch got a nice Hannes Bok cover for “Hell’s Angel”, in which technology meets religion, one of his most famous short stories not published in Weird Tales was “The Hungry House” (April 1951) in which a couple buy a house and slowly find out its terrible secret, and “Comfort Me, My Robot” (January 1955) a tale of killer robots.
William Campbell Gault (1910-1995) wrote passable SF for Planet Stories under the pseudonym Larry Sternig and under his own name in a variety of SF magazines. In the Mystery field he had two popular series about private detectives Brock Callahan and Joe Puma along with stand alone novels. He won the Edgar Award in 1952 and the Bouchercon’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He is also remembered for his sports fiction. He wrote “I’ll See You In My Dreams” for Imagination, September 1951. The tale features a dream version of a woman who won’t leave a married man alone and is reminiscent of work by Richard Matheson.
Charles E. Fritch is another hybrid writer and editor. He was part of the LA-based crowd that included writers like William F. Nolan and Charles Beaumont. Fritch edited the short-lived SF magazine Gamma from 1963-1965 as well as Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine from 1979-1985, introducing the work of writers like Joe R. Lansdale. His Mystery novels were of the sexy variety and published under pseudonyms. He appeared twice in Imagination with “Once Upon a Monbeast” (March 1952) in which a Science Fiction writer meets a real Bug-Eyed Monster, and “Danger in the Void” (August 1954) follows the murder schemes of a married couple on a long space voyage and feels closer to the Mystery genre.
Noel Loomis worked in several genres including the cheaper SF magazines, hard-boiled Mystery, and most successfully, Westerns. He was president of the Western Writers of America and wrote a non-fiction book on The Pony Express. “The Mischievious Typesetter” appeared in the July 1952 issue is about a linotype machine with its own agenda. Fredric Brown wrote a better known story of this type (no pun intended) called “Etaoin shrdlu” in 1942.
Edward Wellen began his SF career in Imagination with “The Big Cheese”, May 1953 with a tale of rat that wants to take over the world. (What are we doing tonight, Brain?”) He would go on to write for high profile SF markets like Fantasy & Science Fiction and Damon Knight’s Orbit anthologies. In Mystery he wrote for the big guys, Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock and Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. He got to write in both genres for Foundation’s Friends (1989), when he wrote a new story about Isaac Asimov’s SF detective Wendell Urth.
Evan Hunter is better known to the Mystery community as Ed McBain, author of the famous 87th Precinct novels. When writing SF he used his real name, Evan Hunter, as he did when writing the classic novel Blackboard Jungle (1955) and the screenplay for Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963). At Imagination, he wrote three stories: “First Captive”, December 1953, about the first POW in an Earth-Mars war. “The Plagurist From Rigel IV”, March 1954 features a typewriter that is connected telepathically to an alien and “The Miracle of Dan O’Shaughnessy”, December 1954 has a singer’s voice amplified by television to become a secret weapon.
Milton Lesser is a name well-known to Science Fiction (having written a number of juveniles for Winston) but when he wrote for Mystery markets he used the much more butch Stephen Marlowe. Marlowe is the author of 38 novels (others written under the names Jason Ridway and Andrew Fraser. He even ghosted one Ellery Queen novel). He used both names at Imagination. As Stephen Marlowe he wrote “Es Percepi”, October 1955,(and got the cover) in a tale about alien ambassadors bringing new inventions to earth and causing havoc. As Milton Lesser (and other pseudonyms like C. H. Thames) he wrote dozens of stories, perhaps contributing more than any other author.
Many of the authors who have identified more with SF also tried their hand at Mysteries like Rog Philips who wrote for Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Alan E. Nourse who wrote for Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Paul W. Fairman wrote for Mammoth Mystery before his SF, John Jakes (then John W. Jakes) wrote the Johnny Havoc novels (1960-1968) but later broke into historical bestseller-dom, Mack Reynolds’ first novel was The Case of the Little Green Men, a SF-Mystery in 1951. Despite these short forays, these writers remained largely SF authors.
Towards the end of Imagination‘s run the contents were written almost entirely by three men under a series of house names. They were Randall Garrett, Milton Lesser and Robert Silverberg. Appearing as S. M.
Tenneshaw, Alexander Blade, Ivar Jorgeson, Robert Randall and other names, the old Mystery writers were gone. Randall Garrett would later (1966 on) pen the Lord Darcy stories, which are Fantasy-Mysteries, so I guess one Mystery writer still remained. I am curious why so many Mystery writers appeared in Imagination‘s pages at the beginning.
Though Hamling didn’t have a Mystery magazine in his stable he did later publish an infamous series of “sexy” books that ended in obscenity charges in the Supreme Court (and eventually prison time). Many of these sex novels were written for money by SF and Mystery writers like Robert Silverberg, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Ethan Hunter, Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Bloch and Harlan Ellison (under pseudonyms, of course).
