In 1934, H.P. Lovecraft and his friend Robert H. Barlow poked fun at all their friends and acquaintances in a story called “The Battle That Ended the Century.” This hyperbolical fight scenario featured Two-Gun Bob (Robert E. Howard) versus The Wild Wolf of West Shokan (Bernard Austin Dwyer) and through the course of the story, the two authors mention everyone from Hugo Gernsback to A. Merritt. The whole thing was a hilarious in-joke shared with friends in an obscure mimeographed “fanzine” called The Acolyte #2 (June 1934).
Lovecraft would lead an authors’ jam with “The Challenge From Beyond” in 1935, a story featuring many of the biggest writers of Weird Tales with Robert E. Howard, C.L. Moore, A. Merritt and Frank Belknap Long (HPL had to fight to have Frank included because A. Merritt didn’t think he was famous enough). The story follows George Campbell on a cosmic roller-coaster as he goes from Lovecraftian terror to Howardian bravado. The plot is far from seamless, but it’s not likely that five authors would produce something without cracks. The final product appeared in The Fantasy Magazine #5 in September 1935.
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