Edgar Rice Burroughs was a master of the jungle and interplanetary adventure. It is only natural he should have imitators. The most famous (or perhaps obvious) was Otis Adelbert Kline. But before Kline wrote of his imaginary Venus, another writer staked that territory with a long-running saga called The Radio Series. That writer was Ralph Milne Farley, pseudonym of Roger Sherman Hoar (1887-1963). Hoar has sparked many questions for me ever since I first encountered him in the old Ace paperbacks, The Radio Beasts and The Radio Planet (1964). The first novel begins with a recap of what was obviously a preceding story not included in those books. The questions begin… where was the first story?
The second question was why the pseudonym? Why was “Ralph Milne Farley” better than “Roger Sherman Hoar”. Both have the same ring of the Victorian novelist to it. Hoar was a member of a family of well-respected lawyers and politicians. He was a state senator in Massachusetts as well as Assistant Attorney General, and the inventor of a guided missile system used in WWII. His relative, Roger Sherman, was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. I can only conclude that he might have been trying to protect that well-respected name from being tarnished by such an activity as writing for the “soft magazines,” as pulps were known then.
Read the rest:
https://www.michaelmay.online/2016/05/the-radio-man-questions-and-answers.html
