Terror Tales - John H. Knox

Art by John Howitt

This is kind of a familiar story. A young man with literary ambitions in a central Texas town, the son of a well-respected professional man, is friends with all the locals who also have literary ambitions. He decides to become a pulp writer and pounds out stories in a small room that becomes his sanctum, while also working at various odd jobs. When he breaks in and makes his first sale, he becomes even more prolific, with his work appearing in several of the top pulp magazines of the era and even frequently featured on the covers.

Robert E. Howard, you say? Nope. This is John H. Knox we’re talking about, the son of a minister and probably the most successful pulp writer to come out of Abilene, Texas. Certainly the most successful author of Weird Menace yarns from Abilene, which is less than an hour’s drive from Cross Plains, the home of Robert E. Howard. It kind of boggles the mind to think that these two young men lived so close to each other and toiled in the same business at the same time, yet, as far as I know, they never met or even knew of each other.

Radio Archives compiled several collections of Knox’s Weird Menace stories, including this one where all the stories are taken from the pulp TERROR TALES. I decided to sample his work, and this seemed like a good place to start.

The first story in this collection is “Dead Man’s Shadow”, from the December 1934 issue of TERROR TALES. It makes use of a standard mystery plot: a creepy old house full of sinister, eccentric characters, relatives of a rich old man who are waiting for him to die so they can fight over his fortune. The protagonist is a private detective hired by one of the potential heirs who fears someone is going to try to murder him. Knox’s Texas connection comes through in this one because the private eye works for the Lone Star Detective Agency in San Antonio, and although it’s never stated, it’s easy to assume that the creepy old house is located on the Texas Gulf Coast. While there’s nothing groundbreaking in the plot, and the main villain is pretty easy to spot, Knox keeps the action moving along very well, and his prose is both evocative and fast-moving, two important qualities for a Weird Menace writer.

Art by John Howitt

“The Ice Maiden” was published in the June 1935 issue of TERROR TALES, and man, does it move! The narrator is a reporter who has journeyed to an isolated lodge somewhere in the North Woods to interview a famous Arctic explorer, along with two of the man’s colleagues. The beautiful young wife of one of the other men is there, too. After the discussion strays into the subject of mythological monsters found in the icy climes, the explorer says that he has something in the basement that he wants the others to see. Well, we all know that in a Weird Menace story, nothing stashed away mysteriously in a basement is going to be good, and sure enough, that’s the case here. Gruesome murders right and left, baffling disappearances, love at first sight . . . Knox really piles it on, and the characters barely get to take a breath before some other horror threatens them. The ones who survive, that is. I got so caught up in enjoying this story that I completely missed the clues to the big twist, which made it even more fun. This is just a great Weird Menace yarn.

Art by John Howitt

“His Bodiless Twin”, from the November 1935 issue of TERROR TALES, is a much different sort of story. It starts off philosophical, with discussions among the characters about mankind’s dual nature, the presence of good and evil in every man, and what a boon it would be if, say, a man’s evil nature could be separated from his good side through some combination of science and the occult, and then destroyed. Why, what could possibly go wrong with something like that? Of course, once the narrator agrees to go through with the experiment devised by his beautiful young wife’s cousin, who happens to be a movie star/scientist/metaphysicist, things do indeed go wrong. I’ll give Knox credit for writing some nicely atmospheric scenes in this one, but it’s talky in stretches and the big twist stretches disbelief pretty close to the breaking point.

Art by John Howitt

Dave Powell, the protagonist of “Reunion in Hell” (TERROR TALES, March 1936), is the sort of down-on-his-luck guy you’d expect to encounter in a Fifties noir novel by David Goodis or Gil Brewer. He and two other men were partners in a successful gold mine, until an explosion killed one of them and caused a scandal that ruined Dave and his other partner. Because he’s broke and desperate, Dave’s beautiful, wholesome young wife is tempted by an offer from a sleazy producer to join his burlesque show. Then, an unexpected visitor offers Dave a chance to fix everything. All he has to do is pretend to be somebody else and attend a family reunion held in a spooky old house. Again . . . what could possibly go wrong? This yarn rockets right along with a lot of well-done action and over the top horror. Knox really piles the trouble on his hero, and watching Dave battle through it is pretty entertaining. But as in “His Bodiless Twin”, the explanation for all the crazy goings-on really stretches credulity past the breaking point. I realize it’s kind of silly to be complaining about believable plots in Weird Menace stories, but Knox seems to be trying to outdo himself with every story.

Art by John Drew

If Knox faltered—a little—in the previous two stories, he more than redeems himself with “Kiss Me—and Die!”, a great yarn from the March/April 1937 issue of TERROR TALES. The plot is still packed full of stuff. Let me see if I can remember all of it. First of all, the story takes place in and around an isolated Arizona settlement that’s mostly a ghost town called Angel’s Grave. The setting gives it an almost Western feel at times. The place is called Angel’s Grave because local legend has it that two hundred years earlier, a Spanish soldier murdered his mistress and concealed her body in a cave. But ever since then, her ghost, known as “Sister Death”, has been appearing and luring men to their deaths with a siren-like scream. A mad scientist from Germany who claims to have mastered the process of alchemy has showed up in the area and built a laboratory in a cave that may or may not be the final resting place of Sister Death. Then there’s a millionaire toy manufacturer who wants to buy the process from the mad scientist, assuming, of course, that it turns out to be real, and the toy manufacturer has a beautiful daughter who the narrator, an undercover newspaper reporter, falls in love with at first sight. The mad scientist has deaf-mute assistants and a mysterious Hindu servant. And, oh, yeah, a blind violinist and a drunken artist are hanging around Angel’s Grave, too. Whew. As crazy as all that sounds, Knox actually makes the plot work, while providing several gruesome murders and plenty of breakneck action. I had a great time reading this one.

Artist Unknown

Compared to the inspired lunacy of “Kiss Me—and Die!”, the set-up for “Tenement of the Damned” (TERROR TALES, November/December 1937) is fairly simple. It also makes use of Knox’s Texas background in the setting, an unnamed city along the Texas/Mexico border that I think is probably supposed to be El Paso. It seems that a Mexican drug smuggler named El Vibora—The Viper—has been shot and killed by the Border Patrol, but the poor people who live in the slums near the Rio Grande believe that he has come back to life in the form of a snake that draws women and children to their deaths. It’s up to two-fisted real estate agent Jim Francis to figure out what’s really going on, and he has a personal reason to do so because his beautiful young wife, whose father owns the property where the slum sits, has a mysterious serpentine mark on her arm that shows she’s a target of El Vibora! At times, this story reads like Knox was trying to write a straightforward hardboiled detective yarn, but it never strays very far from Weird Menace territory. It’s a good story and moves along quite well.

It also wraps up this collection, which is no longer available. But if you already have it on your Kindle and are a Weird Menace fan, I give it a pretty high recommendation. Knox can be a little inconsistent, certainly, but all the stories are enjoyable and a couple of them are exceptional. I think he’s an interesting writer, and I intend to read more by him. There are three print collections of his Weird Menace stories available from Ramble House, and I've already ordered them even though there’s some duplication between them and the ebook volumes I have.

And I still think it’s a shame Knox and Bob Howard never ran into each other. I think they would have gotten along just fine.

No Pockets in a Shroud - Richard Deming

“No Pockets in a Shroud” is the fourth novella featuring Richard Deming’s private eye character Manville Moon. It was published originally in the January 1949 issue of the iconic pulp BLACK MASK, a magazine long past its glory days by that time but still publishing plenty of good hardboiled detective fiction. “No Pockets in a Shroud” is a fine example of that.

Moon, who operates in an unnamed Midwestern city, is a World War II vet who lost his right leg from the knee down to a shell blast in Europe. He gets around pretty well on an artificial leg, though, and other than not being able to run very fast anymore, his injury doesn’t really hamper him. He’s still plenty tough and smart and still attracts the ladies, even though he describes himself as ugly.

As this case opens, Moon is approached by two competing mobsters, each of them determined to control the city’s gambling. Open warfare between them is looming, and each man wants to hire Moon to be on his side if that happens. Moon isn’t having any of it. The last thing he wants is to get caught in the middle of a gang war. Then one of the mobsters surprises him by trying to hire him in advance to investigate a murder. Whose murder, Moon wants to know? Turns out, the mobster thinks somebody is trying to kill him, and if the would-be murderer succeeds, he wants Moon to bring the killer to justice.

Well, before you know it, there’s a murder, of course . . . but it’s the other mobster who winds up dead, and Moon is up to his neck in the case, anyway. Also, naturally, while trying to sort out the truth, he has to deal with several beautiful women, including the wives and mistresses of the two rival gangsters. There’s also a hopped-up young gunman with an itch to ventilate Moon. All of it is hectic and breathless and a heck of a lot of fun to read for somebody who grew up on this stuff like I did.

As in the previous Manville Moon yarns, the murder is pretty complicated, but Deming puts it all together very well and all the clues are there, leading to a satisfying conclusion. Moon is a very likable protagonist. There’s one bit of business that’s so old it had long white whiskers on it even in 1949, and its stereotypical nature takes away a little from the story, but not enough to cause a real problem. I had a great time reading “No Pockets in a Shroud”, and if you’re a private eye fan, there’s a very good chance you’ll enjoy it, too. There’s an inexpensive e-book version available on Amazon if you don’t have the pulp.

By the way, the title has nothing to do with the story, and I have to wonder if some editor at Popular Publications was responsible for it. They retitled many of the stories published in their Western pulps and I imagine the same was true in their detective pulps. Anyway, it’s a good title, relevant or not, so I’m fine with it.

Salvage in Space - Jack Williamson

This novelette first appeared in the March 1933 issue of ASTOUNDING STORIES OF SUPER-SCIENCE, edited by Harry Bates. You can't really tell it's that old, however, as Jack Williamson's clean, almost spare style reads as if the story was written much more recently than that.

The protagonist is young asteroid miner Thad Allen, who leads a lonely existence wandering among the asteroids searching for valuable metals. But then he comes across what appears to be an abandoned space liner and immediately thinks that if he can get it back to Mars and claim it as salvage, he stands to make a lot of money from the discovery. Unfortunately for Thad (and I'm sure you saw this coming), something is still alive on the spaceship, as he discovers after coming across some ominous bloodstains while he's exploring the seemingly deserted corridors. Then there's the coffin-like apparatus containing the body of a beautiful young woman whose fate greatly intrigues Thad. But will he survive long enough to figure out what happened here?

"Salvage in Space" is basically a suspense yarn, and a very good one. The level of tension that Williamson creates in this story reminded me a little of John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There?" "Salvage in Space" isn't quite on that level, but I had a really good time reading it. Williamson leaves one plot point unresolved, which I found a little annoying, but other than that I found it to be a very good story. There's a free e-book version of it available on Amazon, if you don't happen to have a copy of that 1933 pulp sitting around. It was also reprinted in the anthology THE EARLY WILLIAMSON and the Haffner Press volume WIZARD'S ISLE.

Hellhounds of the Cosmos - Clifford D. Simak

I’ve read quite a few of Clifford D. Simak’s stories and novels over the decades without ever considering him one of my favorite science fiction authors, but on the other hand, I’ve never read anything by him that I didn’t enjoy, either. His novelette “Hellhounds of the Cosmos” is the earlier Simak story I’ve read, and it’s one of his earliest, period. It was only his fifth published story when it came out in the June 1932 issue of ASTOUNDING STORIES, while it was still a Clayton pulp edited by Harry Bates.

I admit, the title is what first attracted me to this yarn, along with the fact that there’s a free e-book version of it available on Amazon. But I quickly got caught up in a story that’s really wild and over-the-top compared to the low-key, often rural, homespun SF for which Simak is known. In this one, the whole earth is under assault from fearsome, midnight-black, amorphous creatures that appear seemingly out of nowhere, slaughter a bunch of people, and then disappear equally mysteriously. The newspaper reporter who’s the protagonist (a character type that is common to Simak’s work, since he was a journalist himself) interviews an eccentric professor who claims to know what’s really going on. The reporter not only gets the scoop, he becomes part of it himself when he gets caught up in the effort to fight back against these vicious invaders who have to be defeated before humanity itself is wiped out.

Does any of the science in this story make a lick of sense? Well, not really. The professor’s long-winded explanation is the sort of thing you ran into in science fiction all the time in those early days, pure handwavium. (Come to think of it, handwavium is a pretty common element in current SF, too.) But Simak makes it sound plausible, and boy, the end result is a lot of fun, especially the battle royale that makes up the second half of the tale. Then, at the last minute, Simak springs a twist that took me completely by surprise and is very effective.

I really enjoyed “Hellhounds of the Cosmos”. If you’re a fan of early science fiction and haven’t read it, you ought to. If you’ve only read SF published in the past twenty years or so . . . well, you’re probably not reading this blog to start with.