Dennis Wheatley ,Edgar Rice Burroughs And Rider Haggard Conclusion.

Edgar Rice Burroughs had never been to Africa when he started writing his Tarzan tales.His main influence was however an old Africa hand Rider Haggard the author of King Solomon's Mines and She both of which have been filmed several times.Rider Haggard was as prolific a writer as Edgar Rice Burroughs and he even created a hero adventurer the white hunter Alan Quatermain an obvious ancestor of Indiana Jones.The stories blend the African settings that Haggard was familiar with and lost world themes built on the legacy of the Ancient World.All seem to be available free online for anyone who wishes to read them. Rider Haggard's
Alan Quatermain has recently been revived by Alan Moore in his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novel series.The pulp fiction of the 20th century now largely exists on line or in ancient  paperback collections filling the book shelves of the over fifties.They are a rich treasure but one which may be lost to younger generations.Hopefully the steam punk genre may come to the rescue as it is easy to go from Wells and Verne to Burroughs and Haggard. An Update in November 2013. Dennis Wheatley's back catalogue is now becoming available on Kindle with most of the black magic stories now available at reasonable eBook prices.

Dennis Wheatley, Edgar Rice Burroughs,Rider Haggard and The pulp Masters.

Most of Edgar Rice Burroughs work is available in eBook form much of it free.Earlier this year Disney tried to revive the fortunes of Burroughs Martian tales with a block buster version of A Princess of Mars retitled John Carter.As a Burroughs fan I thought it did justice to the book although it did not catch on with the general public.I suppose Burroughs science fiction would appeal to the retro sci-fi enthusiasts of steam punk so like the sci-fi of Wells,Verne and Conan Doyle it will hopefully survive in a niche market.The audience of teenage boys who once lapped up such fictions I presume now do little reading instead playing fantasy and science fiction video games and watching DVDs on such themes.Since the Disney animation of the 1990s Hollywood seems to have finally lost interest in Tarzan.Probably the whole Tarzan theme is now too un- PC for them to touch anymore.A shame really as like Dracula and Sherlock Homes he was once a character familiar to everyone.

Dennis Wheatley ,Edgar Rice Burroughs ,Rider Haggard And The Pulp Masters.

Second only to Dennis Wheatley  in terms of ubiquitous paperbacks was the pulp writer Edgar Rice Burroughs.During the post war paperback revolution pocket sized paperbacks were sold in news agents, station book stalls and automats.Edgar Rice Burroughs with his brand leader Tarzan was a favorite for these venues.As well as Tarzan he also wrote science fiction of a dated variety set on Mars (Barsoom) Venus (Amtor) and the hollow Earth Pellucidar. Edgar Rice Burroughs was also a fairly conservative writer and also like Wheatley a man  of action.His last exploits when he was quite old were as a war correspondent in the Pacific during the Second World War.He had been living in Hawaii at the time of Pearl Harbour so when the war came to the Pacific he managed through his fame as the creator of Tarzan to be credited by a newspaper as a war correspondent.

Dennis Wheatley,Edgar Rice Burroughs and The Pulp Masters

There seem to be few current editions of Dennis Wheatley apart from a couple of the occult novels published by Wordsworth books but such was his popularity that second paperback and hard back editions from the 1960s and 70s are still available at very cheap prices on line.As yet there seem to be no Kindle versions of his books which one would have thought the literary estate would seek to remedy especially in regard to the occult novels.His Conservative views are now deemed politically incorrect which may also be preventing any revival of his works.In the 21st century the horror writer Clive Barker championed him in his TV series and book The A to Z of Horror and there was a television program devoted to him entitled a Message To Posterity.This revolved around a letter left by him in a time capsule in the late 1940s warning the future about the danger of a socialist communist dictatorship. A number of cultural talking heads discussed him and his books in the program.The critic John Sutherlan devoted  a chapter of his cultural autobiography  Magic Moments to his novel Such Power is Dangerous which he favorable reviews.He contrasts him with Aldous Huxley a literary writer who he also read as a teenager.There has also been the recent biography by Phil Barker entitled The Devil is A Gentlemen.There are also several blogs devoted to him .Whether this will result in a revival only time will tell.

Dennis Wheatley,Edgar Rice Burroughs And The Pulp Masters.

During the Second World War Wheatley  worked at on secret ops with Ian Fleming the future creator of James Bond.Wheatley  had created his own secret agent Gregory Sallust who is similar in many ways to the future Bond and who featured in a series of thrillers set during the war.Wheatley has his hero meet various real historical persons in these stories such as Hermann Goering and Hitler.After the war Dennis Wheatley continued his prolific output down  the 1970s.His books are exercises in pure escapism within a realistic 20th century setting (apart from the historical).Like most pulp fiction the message is conservative with heroes coming from the upper class and living the good life.His lost world stories are his most fantastic with visits to Atlantis, another to a lost Atlantean civilisation in the Antartic ,a lost civilisation of 17th century English cavaliers in the Sargasso sea and a visit to Mars by flying saucer.These stories are all mixed in with struggles against the Nazis in World War II and the Communists in the Cold War.His chief claim to fame however is his novels which combine conventional thrillers with Black Magic and Occult themes.

Dennis Wheatley,Edgar Rice Burroughs And The Pulp Masters.

Way back in the 1960s one of my favourite authors was the paperback thriller writer Dennis Wheatley. I must have devoured most of his oeuvre during those years .His output was prodigious and contrary to received wisdom  only a small number were concerned with the black magic and occult themes for which he is now remembered that is when he is remembered at all.Much of his work consisted of thrillers set before and during the Second World War in which he served as an adviser to Churchill's War Cabinet.He also wrote historical novels set during the French revolution and Napoleonic Wars and the late 19th and early 20th centuries.As well as the Black Magic novels he also wrote novels of the lost world variety which date back to Edgar Rice Burroughs ,Rider Haggard and Conan Doyle.I believe on modern creative writing courses the students are advised to write about what you know.In Wheatleys case this involved a year in the Kaisers Germany studying the wine trade prior to the Great War,four years in the trenches, a partnership with a Raffles style gentleman crook Eric Toombes,the Roaring Twenties as experienced by someone in the wine trade invited to all the wild parties,meetings with the worlds leading Occultist Aleister Crowley,marriage to a wife who subsequently worked for MI5 and a place in the planning department of Churchill's War Cabinet.He was also King George the Sixths favourite novelist.

Philip K Dick,Pohl And Kornbluth The Men Who Saw The Future.

Topics covered in Philip K Dicks books include parallel universes such as the Axis controlled America in Man In the High Castle but also the Neanderthal earth of Cantata 140,Schizophrenia and mental illness, artificial life forms,global heating in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Edrich,everyday domestic appliances such as doors and taxis that talk to you, artificial realities produced by drugs which are controlled by the supplier of the drugs, cryonic suspension of the dead with whom it is possible to have a conversation,The Penfield  Mood organ on which you dial up your moods for the day, a device which produces animated film versions of novels where you decide the animation style ie Moby Dick animated by,Dali or Picasso.A key trope is always the impossibility  of defining what is actually real or not in such a world.A child for example can watch real footage of an elephant and CGI footage of a dinosaur probably not understanding that one is real and the other not.Philip K Dicks world is now our world, we actually live in Philip K Dicks universe ,perpetually asking ourselves the question is this for real?