Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of the Scientific Romance in the Munsey Magazines, 1912-1920

by Sam Moskowitz (ed. )

  As THE CAVALIER approached the end of its first year as a weekly, it had become a highly unusual magazine, with offbeat concepts in storytelling and an excellent balance, made possible by 192 pages. To attempt to solidify the readers and give them something in common, the December 28, 1912, issue announced the Cavalier Legion, a brotherhood made up of readers, who would be identifiable by a red button with a green star in the center, supplied free to anyone who wrote in and asked for it. The slogan was "Good Fiction, Good Fellowship." It is not known just how much enthusiasm readers showed for the idea, but it is quite probable that Arthur Sullivant Hoffman, editor of ADVENTURE, got his idea for the formation of the American Legion (which eventually became the great veterans' group) from this source. ADVENTURE announced the concept in their November, 1914, issue, and hammered away at it until it eventually evolved into a national veterans' organization.

  Despite Bob Davis' resourcefulness and good taste in selecting stories and keeping the magazine exciting, the major hope for its success rested in the new type of "scientific romance" which had been inaugurated by George Allan England's Darkness and Dawn and not in the reworked themes of discovering a method of manufacturing gold or cultivating an ape, or, as in the case of Gaston Leroux's Balaoo; or, The Footprints on the Ceiling (November 23-December 12, 1912), discovering the Missing Link, who can converse fluently with animals. Entertaining as these stories might have been, they lacked the element of novelty.

  The sequel to Darkness and Dawn, titled Beyond the Great Oblivion, was featured on the cover of January 4, 1913, by Clinton Pettee, who had illustrated Tarzan of the Apes. The scene showed Allan Stern and Beatrice Kendrick, clothed in furs, turning to confront a pack of wolves trailing them through a forest in Manhattan, from which still rise the bent structures of gutted skyscrapers. The sequel begins virtually without a break from the last paragraph in Darkness and Dawn, and is enthrallingly imaginative. Allan and Beatrice set sail for Boston and are almost drowned in a cataract in the Atlantic Ocean off Long Island Sound. They rebuild an airplane found in the ruins of Providence, Rhode Island, and fly west. A "bottomless" chasm the other side of Pittsburgh appears to have no other side. Their plane gives out and drops them into the chasm, where they are captured by a race of humans, descended from survivors of a great cataclysm when a huge portion of the earth, possibly five hundred miles across, ripped out of the North American continent and was flung into space, to become a second moon (in a sense this is an early story of the concept of an "artificial" earth satellite). They win the confidence of this race by helping them fight off enemies and, in a ritual battle with its leader, Allan becomes ruler of the People of the Abyss and helps them once more "emerge into the sun."

  Beyond the Great Oblivion was literally weaseled out of George Allan England, who produced the ninety-thousand-word novel in segments and got paid piecemeal as he delivered it. The first portion brought one hundred dollars on August 21, 1912; the second, two hundred dollars on August 25; the third, one hundred dollars on September 12; and the balance of the novel, six hundred dollars on September 25. The rate of one thousand dollars represented 1% cents a word, a slight rate increase over Darkness and Dawn. In running the story, the editor footnoted that "Darkness and Dawn ... was one of the most talked-of serials which ever appeared in THE CAVALIER—its imaginative power and realism recalling Jules Verne at his best." The four issues containing it were offered for sale, for those who had not read it.

  Little time was wasted in securing the final novel in the trilogy, The Afterglow, when Davis found letters of approbation pouring in for Beyond the Great Oblivion. George Allan England delivered 16,200 words of the final story of February 25, 1913, and was paid $850 for the completed 76,500-word novel on April 9, 1913. To encourage England, Davis gave him a shot at the higher-paying MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE, buying a four-thousand-word nonfantasy, The Sprucer, for two hundred dollars on January 29, 1913, at a rate of about five cents a word.

  In The Afterglow, Allan and Beatrice fly up to the earth's surface to prepare the way for recolonization from below. The ruins of the Metropolitan Opera House yield a cache of phonograph records and a phonograph. One of them is a recorded marriage ceremony, so the two pledge their troth as a minister dead fifteen hundred years intones the vows.

  Three at a time they fly the people out of the great chasm, forming a new surface colony. Attacked by the subhumans first encountered on awakening in New York, they utterly exterminate them with a monumental forest fire which traps the horde against a river.

  Beatrice bears Allan a son, who will eventually take over his leadership. The colony grows to one hundred thousand. Science is rediscovered, and soon there are many airplanes, printing presses, a shipyard, and even a monorail. The story ends with ringing hope for the future, now that the old systems no longer exist and mankind can build anew. "I see a world," concludes England in socialistic fervor, "where thrones have crumbled and kings are dust. The aristocracy of idleness has perished from the earth.

  "I see a world without a slave. Man at last is free. Nature's forces have by science been enslaved ... a world in which no exile sighs, no prisoner mourns; a world on which the gibbet's shadow does not fall; a world where labor reaps its full reward—where work and worth go hand in hand!

  "I see a world without the beggar's outstretched palm, the miser's heartless, stone stare, the piteous wail of want, the livid lips of lies, the cruel eyes of scorn."

  The truth, however, was that England had not written a great socialistic tract, but he had written a marvelous scientific romance, which was destined to provide a few hours' escape from the devils he decried. In that respect it possessed more practicality than a good part of his political philosophy.

  At the conclusion of the final installment, Bob Davis asked the readers whether they would like to see the three novels—all 216,000 words of them—brought out in hardcovers. At that time, Davis handled subsidiary rights for authors, including book, newspaper syndication, and moving picture. The response must have been heartening, for the trilogy appeared under the title of Darkness and Dawn from Small, Maynard and Company in 1914. The book carried the inscription: "To Robert H. Davis, unique inspirer of plots, do I edicate this trilogy. G.A.E." It included as a frontispiece the P. Monahan full-color cover from The Afterglow, depicting Beatrice and Allan opening the lead box in which they found the phonograph. The endpapers were the line drawing from the cover of Darkness and Dawn, showing the two surveying the ruins of the skyscrapers in Manhattan. There were three interiors, one a black-and-white rendition of the cover of Beyond the Great Oblivion and two black-and-whites apparently drawn especially for the book by E. W. Gage. The volume sold for $1.35 and saw at least three printings.

  George Allan England, with some acknowledged help from Bob Davis, had struck, in the Darkness and Dawn trilogy, a success formula very similar to that which would make Edgar Rice Burroughs in the years immediately ahead one of the world's most widely read authors. Why he did not follow up on it is a literary puzzle. He would write a substantial number of science-fiction novels and short stories in the future, some of exceptional quality, but they would not be scientific romances.

  Possibly part of the answer rested in his versatility. He could satisfactorily write virtually any type of story requested. He sold to almost all the other major pulps and some of the important slick magazines. They would buy almost any type of thing he wrote. With Edgar Rice Burroughs, it was different. When he wrote The Outlaw of Torn in answer to an editorial request for a historical novel, it would be summarily rejected. Whenever he deviated from the scientific romance or Tarzan, he either had trouble selling it or had to settle for lower rates. He was writing to support a family. He could not afford to experiment. This forced him to write primarily those things which he would have the least trouble placing, and these proved to be just the things that would bring him fame and fortune and would create an entire new school of science fiction.

  THE CAVALIER in mid-1913 was a thick magazine
, printed in large, clear type, selling for ten cents, with attractive covers but no interior illustrations at all. Though its readers' department contained long and fulsome blurbs of virtually every important forthcoming story, the stories, with rare exceptions, were presented as so many slices of cheese, without any intimation of what they were about other than their title.

  Despite the masculine title of THE CAVALIER, there were many love stories published. These love stories were of a nature that had a general appeal, but the notion that THE CAVALIER was a men's magazine was not accurate. The readers'-department letters ran a high proportion of letters from women, most well satisfied with what they were getting. The covers, with some exceptions, highlighted a woman, even if she was but one of many participants in an action scene. Increasingly, an attractive woman's head in the identical manner and sometimes by the same artists that appeared on women-oriented publications like THE LADIES' HOME JOURNAL, THE WOMAN'S HOME COMPANION, THE RED BOOK, and COSMOPOLITAN graced the cover of THE CAVALIER.

  It should be further stressed that THE ARGOSY and THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE followed a similar policy of appealing to women. The letters seemed to indicate that housewives were the leading female supporters of these magazines. They found in them escape from the drudgery or humdrum aspect of their lives, and the clean, wholesome fiction could be read by their children without the slightest qualm. The Munsey pulps were family magazines, and unlike the dime novels of a previous era, were approved by the broad middle class of the United States.

  9. "THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE" LOSES TARZAN

  THE FULL WEIGHT of Frank A. Munsey's three-pronged experiment rested upon the shoulders of Bob Davis. With THE CAVALIER he had to prove whether an all-fiction pulp weekly was feasible. With THE ARGOSY, it was his job to see that its circulation did not decline much further, despite the fifty-percent increase in price to fifteen cents. THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE, which never had a base of readership as great as THE ARGOSY even at ten cents, had to hold and gain with the fifteen cent price.

  The fate of THE CAVALIER was still very much in doubt, though it carried as firm a circulation as a weekly as it had as a monthly, probably at seventy-five thousand. THE ARGOSY had such a large base of readership, and such a reservoir of goodwill, that nothing tragic was likely to happen. THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE was another matter. It was plainly evident that its success or failure rested on the appeal of a single writer, Edgar Rice Burroughs, who had elicited a whirlwind of appreciation with Under the Moons of Mars and Tarzan of the Apes. Burdened with the responsibility of three magazines, Davis left Burroughs entirely in the hands of Thomas Norman Metcalf, who was in every sense Burroughs' real discoverer.

  Discussing the sequel to Tarzan of the Apes, which Metcalf was pressing him for, Burroughs, in a letter dated December 5, 1912, mentioned the possibility of putting Tarzan in the Foreign Legion. In the meantime, he sent the revised historical novel, The Outlaw of Torn, in for another reading. On December 18 Metcalf rejected it for the third time.

  Finally the eagerly awaited sequel to Tarzan of the Apes, tentatively titled Ape Man, was completed and mailed in by Burroughs on January 1, 1913. Pressed so constantly for a sequel to Tarzan of the Apes, Burroughs was understandably confident that the story would be accepted. His third child, John Coleman, was on the way, and the money from the story was urgently needed.

  Then, to his utter consternation, Metcalf wrote on January 22 that Ape Man lacked "balance" and would be rejected.

  The combination of the rejection of The Outlaw of Torn and Ape Man almost closed Burroughs' writing career. He responded on January 24 that he was thoroughly disgusted, that at this rate authorship was not the proper vehicle for supporting his family.

  On January 27 Metcalf frantically telegraphed him not to get discouraged. The same day he dispatched the final rejection of the ninety-five-thousand-word Ape Man with a detailed chronicle of its faults and failings.

  Now it was Metcalf's turn to worry. The success of THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE depended upon Burroughs, and the maintenance of his own job depended on the continuance of THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE. It was evident that he was already out of his depth. He was handling a once-in-a-lifetime circulation booster like Burroughs with far less finesse than he exercised upon the scores of run-of-the-mill hacks that were grinding out an endless series of eminently forgettable stories for the new breed of pulps that were digesting millions upon millions of words per year.

  "The Gods of Mars is coming out as a serial," he had announced in the December, 1912, THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE. "This yarn is a sequel to Under the Moons of Mars, of never-to-be-forgotten popularity. The author's imagination again riots over the periphery of our terrestrial neighbor. Once more we play with thoats and snarks and so forth, and six-legged gents, and the scientific paraphernalia that can exist nowhere except on Mars, where, as we learn from our savants, 'they do those things better.'"

  Three pages of raves about Tarzan of the Apes and Under the Moons of Mars followed in a chorus that would continue for years. There was one point of discord. The readers were disappointed at the poor shake that Tarzan got at the end in losing the girl. They demanded a sequel in which this unfair situation would be remedied.

  The column ended with the comment: "There are many other letters about Tarzan. Most all of them are complimentary, though lots of folks don't seem to like the finish and are sitting round and barking for a sequel.

  "Mr. Burroughs wrote us a letter the other day, and he ended by saying: 'About a score of readers have threatened my life unless I promise to write a sequel to Tarzan —Shall I?'

  "We wonder."

  Now the sequel had been written and rejected, but all was well, because The Gods of Mars, the continuation of Under the Moons of Mars, had begun with the January, 1913, issue and would run through May, and the ecstatic letters of praise were already pouring in.

  Following Metcalf's suggestion, Burroughs, in The Gods of Mars, had taken John Carter on a two-thousand-mile voyage down the river Iss, on which all Martians go at the age of one thousand, never to return. It flows into the valley of Dor, where a race of vegetable men wait to devour the unfortunates upon arrival. This finding is a savage thrust at religion, questioning those who take dogma for granted. Such thrusts would occur again and again, even in the Tarzan stories, but remain unnoticed because they were attributed to savage or alien creatures rather than earthmen.

  Tars Tarkas, the six-armed hideous-appearing but heroic Martian chieftain and friend of John Carter, figures in the adventures. John Carter rescues his own son from the aged black goddess Issus, returning to Helium in a stolen airship, to learn that Dejah Thoris, his wife, has left for the valley of Dor in search of her son. He finds her only as a revolving chamber in which she has been placed is slowly closing, not to reopen for three years. As she leaves his sight, he sees Phaidor, a Martain woman whom he had rejected, drive a dagger at the heart of Dejah Thoris. There the story closed, and if the readers had been disturbed at the inconclusive ending of Tarzan of the Apes, they were understandably beside themselves in frustration at the termination of The Gods of Mars.

  The same line drawing of a four-armed Martian in bas-relief against a Martian sky that had headed each installment of Under the Moons of Mars was deliberately used almost like a trademark for all six chapters of The Gods of Mars. The fact that it was a sequel appeared on each issue's contents page, as well as prefacing the chapter.

  Metcalf was considerably relieved when the manuscript of a thirty-two-thousand-word novelette, The Inner World, dealing with the adventures of David Innes in Pellucidar, the land inside the earth, was mailed to him and received on February 6. Since the mail from Chicago to New York took two days, the alacrity with which he read the story can be surmised by the fact that a check for four hundred and twenty dollars was dispatched on February 12, and this was the highest word rate Burroughs had so far received.

  Metcalf's security was rudely shaken when word spread through the trade that Street & Smith Publications had
bought the sequel to Tarzan for THE NEW STORY MAGAZINE. A letter from Burroughs confirmed the rumor.

  Burroughs could not afford to lose the time he had put into Ape Man. He had surveyed the market, and Street & Smith's third contribution to the adventure pulp field, THE NEW STORY, impressed him as offering a possible market. THE NEW STORY was the result of many incarnations. It had originally been started by Street & Smith as GUNTER'S MAGAZINE. Failing to make it go, they had sold the title to the LaSalle Publishing Company of Chicago, who changed the title to THE NEW (GUNTER'S) MAGAZINE. Its present series dated from November, 1910, where it started from scratch as Volume 1, Number 1, and the title NEW STORY. Street & Smith took it back again in 1912 and made it a magazine similar in policy and format to the popular magazine and people's magazine, carrying 192 pages for fifteen cents. In policy, its fiction was somewhat more exotic and not quite as forthright as its companions'.

  Its editor was a moustached, bald-headed, good-natured lawyer named Archibald Lowry Sessions, who was on his way to becoming one of the pulp field's most capable and highly regarded editors. His first big editing job was on AINSLEE'S MAGAZINE, and was obtained in a moment of pique on the part of publisher Ormond Smith with the original editor.

  The magazine started with the issue of February, 1898, was general in nature, on slick paper, and contained fiction, articles, poetry, criticism, and humor. The secretary of its editor, Gilman Hall, wrote a derogatory note about the taste of Ormond Smith in fiction, which came to the publisher's eye. He fired the secretary and Gilman Hall, and put Sessions at the head of the magazine.

  Sessions turned out to be a good choice, and when, after a shaky start in 1906, THE PEOPLE'S MAGAZINE needed straightening out, he was switched to that magazine and proved an excellent troubleshooter. Now he was fighting to make THE NEW STORY MAGAZINE a winner, and the submission of a sequel to Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs was manna from heaven. His offer of one thousand dollars for the story, made on February 8, 1913, was accepted two days later by Burroughs.