Weird Tales Writers Who Wrote Westerns

If you missed the last one…

This post is brought to you by the upcoming Strange Adventures that features four Weird Westerns starring Deputy Sheriff Brett Hope. Hope, who appeared for the first time in the collaboration story “The Man Who Had a Death Wish” with J. F. Gonzalez (Cthulhu Sex Magazine, November 2005) returns to face zombies, vampires and strange being created from magic and hatred.

Being a Pulp writer was not a high-status affair. A sale was a sale. Some Pulpsters were completely mercenary, selling to anyone, any genre that would pay a penny-a-word, or some times less. It was only with the coming of Science Fiction that writers thought to make a living writing only one kind of story. Edmond Hamilton and Jack Williamson tried their hardest to be simply SF writers but succeeded in a limited way. Williamson grew up on a Texas ranch and could have written mountains of cowpoke tales but he didn’t want to.

The economics were against you. When Edmond Hamilton started in 1926, there was Weird Tales and Amazing Stories, or a sale to a weekly like Argosy. That was it. For these die hards, an occasional Western to put food on the table was acceptable. Clifford D. Simak was one of these, writing about a half dozen Westerns around 1944. His Westerns often feature doctors or other unusual heroes but his warmth and humanity were to make him one of Science Fiction’s top hands.

Other writers, like John D. MacDonald, tried several different genres like Westerns and SF before abandoning them for his favorite, Mystery and Suspense. Other writers identified with the West but occasionally wrote something too outre for the regular crowd. Eli Colter was one of these. She was a big deal in the Western magazines. She didn’t need to sell Weird Tales anything. But she did.

So what this means is we have Horror writers who seldom wrote a Western, Western writers who occasional penned a Horror tale, and generalist who wrote in many genres equally. I have divided this list up accordingly.

Horror Writers Who took a Western Detour

These writers have a back catalogue dominated by the fantastic.

Bassett Morgan (aka Grace Jones) (1884-1977)

Grace Jones appeared as Bassett Morgan appeared thirteen times in Weird Tales but she also wrote Northerns for Boys’ Life and Frontier Stories. She wrote an article on “Bill Miner, Gentleman Bandit” (Street & Smith’s Western Story Magazine December 31 1932) and a story, “Flame and Fog (All Star Western & Frontier Magazine August 1932).

Sewell Peaslee Wright (1897-1970)

Wright could as easily be in the last piece on Science Fiction writers, having penned the early space opera series about John Hanson of the Space Patrol. He also wrote Horror tales for Weird Tales like “The Wolf”. He appeared in Rangeland Stories, All Star Western & Frontier Magazine, Western Trails July 19 , The Golden West Magazine September 1930 and also wrote numerous Northerns.

Robert E. Howard (1906-1936)

Robert E.Howard will always be known as the creator of Sword & Sorcery and Conan the Cimmerian. He wrote in several genres including Horror and straight Western. He also did some great Weird Westerns like “The Horror From the Mound” (Weird Tales, May 1932) and “King of the Forgotten People” (Magazine of Horror, Summer 1966)  A born Texan, who better to write about post oaks and sagebrush? If he hadn’t killed himself in 1936, there is a good chance he would have become a Western professional.

Thorp McClusky (1906-1975)

During the Pulps, McClusky was happy to write weird stuff for Weird Tales and some SF mags. With the passing of the Pulps, he turned to article writing for Men’s magazines and the last of the Western Pulps, penning “Hang the Man High” for Fifteen Western Tales August 1955. 

Joseph Payne Brennan (1918-1990)

J. P. Brennan was a late Weird Tales writer, getting in only three stories before the Pulp gave up the ghost (see what I did there?). He published his own Horror magazine but wrote for Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine as well as ten Western tales.

Western Writers Who Wrote Some Horror

These writers are known, sometimes famously, as authors of Western tales.

Eli Colter (aka May Eliza Frost)(1890-1984)

Eli Colter wrote a dozen pieces for WT, some three-part serials between 1925 and 1939. She and her husband would later write for Strange Stories. Whatever she did in Weird Tales, her success in the Westerns was outstanding, writing hundreds of stories. She even graduated to the high-paying Slicks which resulted in Hollywood adapting some of her work. Colter never had to sell to a low-paying mag like WT but she obviously wanted to write about ghosts and other strange ideas. A labor of love.

Chandler H. Whipple (1905-1977)

Chandler H. Whipple wrote for many Western Pulps including Ranch Romances, Western Story and Cowboy Stories. He sold some stories to the high-paying Weird Menace pulps like Terror Tales but his last two ventures into the macabre appeared in Weird Tales. Whipple and Robert E. Howard collaborated on “Boot-Hill Pay-Off” in 1935. Whipple couldn’t figure out how to end the story so REH did it for him.

Jim Kjelgaard (1910-1959)

Jim Kjelgaard has found fame in the YA dog book genre with classics like Big Red (1943). He spent many years writing Westerns and Northerns in the Pulps first. He wrote three strange tales for Dorothy McIlwraith, and even collaborated with Robert Bloch, who was one of the Milwaukee Fictioneers as well. No matter what he’s writing there is almost always a focus on animals or the wilderness. For more on Kjelgaard’s Weird Tales stories, go here.

C. Hall Thompson (1923-1991)

CHT is another prolific Western and Northern writer for Western Story, Adventure and Northwest Romances. A young Thompson wrote several new Cthulhu Mythos tales for Weird Tales before August Derleth shut him down. For more on C. Hall Thompson go here.

Pulp Generalists

These writers wrote in many genres. These professionals wrote Horror, Westerns, Aviation, Railway, Mystery, Spicy and every other kind of tale possible. Some like Arthur J. Burks pumped out a million words a year. They were not devoted to any one genre but followed the money. When they couldn’t sell something a little different to the higher paying mags, they’d sent it over to Weird Tales.

Hamilton Craigie (1880-1956)

Craigie was a writer of all kinds of stories like Mysteries for Midnight Mystery Stories, Sports in Sport Story Magazine, Aviation fiction in Flying Stories as well as Jungle Stories, The Shadow, Argosy All-Story, Short Stories and many others. He wrote for the the early Edwin Baird Weird Tales, 1923 to 1925.

S. Gordon Gurwit (1887-1955)

H. Bedford-Jones (1887-1949)

H. Bedford-Jones was the “King of the Pulps”. He was so popular he had no reason to ever appear in Weird Tales. He even sold his outre material to Argosy. Dorothy McIlwraith paid him for the “An Adventure of a Professional Corpse” series in 1940. She had taken over the magazine from Farnsworth Wright, moving it to new York from Chicago. She might have thought of this as a bit of coup.

Douglas M. Dold (1888-1931)

The brother of SF illustrator Elliott Dold Jr., Douglas wrote for many types of Pulps. He and Elliott even tried to start their own SF Pulp, Miracle Science and Fantasy Stories in 1931.

Galen C. Colin (1890-1973)

Colin was a regular at Wild West Weekly as well as other Westerns. His Horror content included four stories in the early Farnsworth Wright Weird Tales, between 1924-1926. For more, go here.

Anthony M. Rud (1893-1942)

Anthony Rud wrote in many genres not because he was a story machine like Arthur J. Burks. Rud, who wrote the opening story “Ooze” for the first issue of Weird Tales, did most of his writing in the capacity of editor. He worked as a sub-editor on several magazines, writing stories to fill pages.

Arthur J. Burks (1898-1974)

To get some idea of the range of magazines, and the volume, that Burks did, go here. Arthur did not write a lot of Westerns but he did do some. he preferred the aviation magazines. He also appeared frequently in the early Farnsworth Wright Weird Tales.

E. Hoffman Price (1898-1988)

Price was the only writer to have met H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith. His own fiction ranges between Mystery, exotic adventure, Horror (like the Pierre D’Artois series) to Westerns. Perhaps the only other writer on this list to have such range was Hugh B. Cave. Both EHP and Cave lived to a ripe old age and were the elder statesmen of WT.

Garnett Radcliffe (1898-1971)

Garnett Radcliffe was an English writer, here amongst all these Americans and Canadians. For more on Garnett Radcliffe’s horror fiction, go here.

John Murray Reynolds (1900-1993)

Bernard Breslauer (1902-1950)

Frank Gruber (1904-1969)

Frank Gruber may be the most perfect of all Pulp writers. If you looked in a dictionary under Pulp the picture would be Frank. He wrote the Pulp Jungle in 1967 describing his life back in 1934. He is famous as a writer of Mysteries. he is equally famous for his Westerns. he has a small amount of fame for “The Thirteenth Floor” in Weird Tales, January 1949.

Paul S. Powers (1905-1971)

Powers got his start at Weird Tales but left Horror behind for the Old West. he wrote under his own name as well as Ward M. Sevens. In his book Pulp Writer’ Twenty Years in the American Grub Street (2007), Powers complained about Weird Tales‘ reprint policy that saw the authors getting no money when the tales appeared in Christine Thompson’s Not At Night series.

Hugh B. Cave (1910-2004)

Hugh B. Cave had a long and varied career. He wrote the Justin Case in the Mystery genre, about Haiti, a place he loved, as well as Weird Menace and finally Horror novels in retirement. Why not a Western, too?

Denis Plimmer (1914-1981)

Conclusion

Damon Knight (1922-2002)

For my final selection, and there are more authors I am sure but this piece is pretty long already, is Science Fiction’s Damon Knight. Knight never wrote any ghostly stories for Weird Tales. So why did I include him? He drew illustrations for “Herbert West: Reanimator” (Weird Tales, November 1942) and “Seventh Sister” by Mary Elizabeth Counselman (Weird Tales, January 1943) Knight started out as an artist and deserves to be included here. He was a champion of very literary SF but he also edited two collection of Westerns called Western Classics From the Great Pulps (1977) and 7 Westerns From the 40s (1978). The last one contained stories by Murray Leinster, John D. MacDonald and Clifford D. Simak. Knight was acknowledging other Science Fiction writers who also rode the cowpoke trail.