John Murray Reynolds (1901-1993) is a writer who was on my radar because I saw his name occasionally in Weird Tales or Planet Stories. I always thought he was one of those people who sold two or three stories to the Pulps then were forgotten. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Reynolds was a prolific writer of Pulps, only occasionally selling to what were the low-paying fantastic magazines.
What really brought this home to me was a reference to Reynolds in Fell and Foul (1991), a collection of John Dickson Carr stories. Douglas G. Greene writes in the introduction:
One of Carr’s closest friends during the early 1930s was John Murray Reynolds, who though working fulltime for a steamship company, was an active writer for the pulp magazines; he created the once-famous character, Ki-Gor of the Jungle. Murray explained to Carr that writing pulp stories was not time-consuming—he himself wrote while standing on subway cars on his way home from work— and he introduced Carr to his magazine editor…
It wasn’t hard to find more Reynolds once I started looking. He sold to all types of Pulps including Short Stories, Frontier Stories, Five-Novels Monthly, Adventure, Thrilling Adventure, Top-Notch, Sea Stories, Golden Fleece and Boys’ Life. He also sold to slicks like Liberty and Cosmopolitan. Reynolds, as Greene mentions, wrote the first of the Ki-Gor novels: Ki-Gor—King of the Jungle (Jungle Stories, Winter 1938) under his own name and not the house name “John Peter Drummond”.
Of course, my interest is still with his fantastic stories, only eight of a reputed hundred and fifty he wrote. Seeing that he sold often to Short Stories, I knew he must have been popular with Dorothy McIlwraith, but Reynolds did sell two stories to Farnsworth Wright before McIlwraith took over Weird Tales. The first of these even got the cover.
“The Devil Plant” (Weird Tales, September 1928)
“The Celadon Vase” (Weird Tales, March 1929)
Art by Paul Dudley
“The Dark Planet” (Boys’ Life, March-June 1935)
“Forest of Evil” (Weird Tales, April 1938)
“Puppets of the Murder Master” (Bulls-Eye Detective, Fall 1938)
“Peace on the Sea” (Golden Fleece, January 1939)
“The Golden Amazons of Venus” (Planet Stories, Winter 1939) was the first story to appear in Planet Stories. It is a pretty standard adventure tale with lots of Edgar Rice Burroughs influence. What surprised me was the location of a watery, cloud-covered Venus (that I always thought of as a Leigh Brackett thing) is already here. Then again Arthur K. Barnes was using it earlier in Thrilling Wonder as was ERB in his Carson of Venus novels. Reynolds has the slightly stupid idea of Venusian riding dolphins…
“The Golden Amazons of Venus” follows the second expedition to the cloudy planet in a spaceship called The Viking. Her captain is Gerry Norton, who lands the ship in the Venusian jungle only to meet Closana, princess of the country of Savissa, home to the golden skinned Amazons. The male population of Savissa is one in five thousand, so naturally the women do and control most activities.
The Amazons are under attack from another race, known only as the Scaly Ones, fish men from the swamps who have enslaved the green-skinned men of Venus. These conquerors are ruled by the mysterious Lansa, who turns out to be Captain Lansing from the first Venus expedition. Lansing has a spy in pilot, Olga Stark, who engineers the capture of Norton, Closana and Scottish chief engineer Angus McTavish. The three are taken to the stronghold of Lansa, forced to call The Viking and lure the crew into Lansing’s clutches, then unceremoniously used as bait to catch the Venusian equivalent of pterodactyls, the Dakta.
During the hunt, the trio escape but not before freeing a green man who turns out to be Sarnak the leader of the resistance. Sarnak, from his underwater hideout, gives them aquatic gear and riding dolphins plus directions back to Savissa. While they journey back underwater they find The Viking, her helicopter props, used for manoeuvring when planetside, broken but otherwise intact. Angus is attempting to repair the ship but they lack metal for the new props.
It is after Angus gets The Viking topside that they discover a beautiful and impossible city, which as suddenly disappears. Exploring they reveal the invisible city of Moorna. Gerry meets the leaders of the city and tries to talk them into interveeing on behalf of the Amazons, who face an invasion by Lansa. They refuse, being neutrals, but they do give Gerry the needed metal and fly him and half his crew to the main land in invisible air ships.
The Scaly Ones have besieged the city and Gerry and his comrades begin a long war with the invaders. The walls of the city fall to Lansa’s new supode ray and things look bad. Lansa lures Gerry and Closana to the last remaining garden. Lansa has won! Except a spearhead pierces Lansa’s throat. Sarnak and the resistance have overthrown the Scaly Ones back in Lansa’s capital and now flood into the city. Angus and the repaired Viking show at the same time and victory is assured. Savissa falls, as an old prophecy says it would, but reports from those who fled the city, seven boys have been born and the old curse has finally lifted. The Amazons will rebuild and become even stronger. The only bad news is Olga Stark has not been found, and the body of Lansa has disappeared. Gerry Norton and the crew of The Viking are headed back for Earth but not alone, for Closana is going with him.
It’s apparent Reynolds was setting the stage for a sequel that never happened. He had learned well from his master, Burroughs, always leave an escape hatch into the next novel.
“Goddess of the Moon” (Planet Stories, Spring 1940)
“The Soul of Ra-Moses” (Weird Tales, May 1940)
Reynolds did publish seven novels, but only one was fantastic in nature, The Private Life of Henry Perkins (1947). Don’t know much about except its cover suggests something along the line of Walter Mitty, an ordinary man who dreams of great adventures.
