“UFO Versus CBS” as by Susan DeWitt. (From Richard Brautigan’s The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966.)
Untitled “Smoke Bellew” stories. (Continuation of the series by Jack London. Although the stories were in the public domain, permission was refused by London’s literary executor and the stories went unwritten.)
Untitled story as by Martin Eden. (From Jack London’s Martin Eden; no record yet found of a permission query.)
Untitled story as by Edward P. Malone. (The intrepid reporter from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. As mentioned above, this fictional author was turned over to Howard Waldrop.)
Untitled story as by Gerald Musgrave. (From James Branch Cabell’s Something About Eve. Interestingly, Cabell used anagrams prominently in his work, as Farmer does in Venus on the Half-Shell.)
Untitled story as by Kenneth Robeson. (Proposed second story of The Grant-Robeson Papers; the first was Farmer’s “The Savage Shadow” as by Maxwell Grant.)
The Son of Jimmy Valentine as by Kilgore Trout. (Permission denied by Kurt Vonnegut after the fallout from Venus on the Half-Shell.)
“The Adventure of the Wand of Death” as by Felix Clovelly. (“Felix Clovelly” is a pen name of Wodehouse’s thriller novelist Ashe Marston from Something New. Permission granted by Wodehouse.)
But however many ideas Farmer abandoned, his list of completed fictional-author tales is equally impressive. These tales are sly, tongue-in-cheek, sometimes shocking, and more often than not uproariously funny. The following list is a chronological bibliography of Farmer’s published fictional-author stories:
The Adventure of the Peerless Peer as by John H. Watson, M.D. (Aspen Press, 1974; reprinted as The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Peerless Peer, Titan Books, 2011. Dr. Watson, of course, is from the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.)
Venus on the Half-Shell as by Kilgore Trout. (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Edward L. Ferman, December 1974-January 1975; reprinted in book form, Dell, 1975, and Titan Books, 2013. Kilgore Trout is the wildly imaginative, though sad-sack, science fiction author from the works of Kurt Vonnegut.)
“A Scarletin Study” as by Jonathan Swift Somers III. (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Edward L. Ferman, March 1975; reprinted in Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, Titan Books, 2013. Jonathan Swift Somers III appears as a fictional author in Venus on the Half-Shell, and is also the subject of Farmer’s biographical essay “Jonathan Swift Somers III: Cosmic Traveller in a Wheelchair.”)
“The Problem of the Sore Bridge—Among Others” as by Harry Manders. (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Edward L. Ferman, September 1975; reprinted in Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, Titan Books, 2013. Harry “Bunny” Manders is a fictional author from the Raffles stories of E. W. Hornung.)
“The Volcano” as by Paul Chapin. (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Edward L. Ferman, February 1976. Paul Chapin appears in Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novel The League of Frightened Men.)
“Osiris on Crutches” as by Philip José Farmer and Leo Queequeg Tincrowdor. (New Dimensions 6, ed. Robert Silverberg, Harper & Row, 1976. Farmer wrote of Leo Queequeg Tincrowdor in his novel Stations of the Nightmare and short story “Fundamental Issue.”)
“The Doge Whose Barque Was Worse Than His Bight” as by Jonathan Swift Somers III. (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Edward L. Ferman, November 1976; reprinted in Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, Titan Books, 2013. See the entry above for “A Scarletin Study.”)
“The Impotency of Bad Karma” as by Cordwainer Bird. (Popular Culture, First Preview Edition, ed. Brad Lang, June 1977; revised version published in Chrysalis, Volume Two, ed. Roy Torgeson, Zebra Books, 1978 as “The Last Rise of Nick Adams,” now under Farmer’s own name. Cordwainer Bird appears as a character in Harlan Ellison’s short story “The New York Review of Bird” and in Farmer’s “The Doge Whose Barque Was Worse Than His Bight.”)
“Savage Shadow” as by Maxwell Grant. (Weird Heroes, Volume Eight, ed. Byron Preiss, Jove/HBJ Books, November 1977. Maxwell Grant was the house pen name used by the authors of The Shadow pulp magazine and paperback stories.)
“It’s the Queen of Darkness, Pal” as by Rod Keen. (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Edward L. Ferman, August 1978; revised version published in Riverworld and Other Stories, Berkley Books, 1979 as “The Phantom of the Sewers.” Rod Keen is a fictional author from Richard Brautigan’s The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966.)
“Who Stole Stonehenge?” as by Jonathan Swift Somers III. (Farmerphile: The Magazine of Philip José Farmer, no. 2, eds. Christopher Paul Carey and Paul Spiteri, October 2005. Although this one-page fragment of an unfinished Ralph von Wau Wau story was published under Farmer’s name, the original manuscript is attributed to Jonathan Swift Somers III; see the entry above for “A Scarletin Study.”)
* * *
Farmer has cited Paul Radin’s The Trickster, a book about the role of the mischievous archetype recurrent in mythology and folklore, as one of his influences; and among the stories at hand it is easy to see why. By assuming the role of a fictional author, Farmer dons a shamanic mask and enters the sublime creative world where fictional characters take on a life more real than our own.
A long-held theory goes that Farmer unconsciously hatched his fictional-author series, as well as penned his many pastiches, in an attempt to get over a period of writer’s block which had descended upon him during the early to mid-1970s. I do not doubt it; although, if true, I—doubtless along with all of Farmer’s readers—am grateful that his muse found such a scintillating, creative means to overcome its obstacle.
But there is another possibility, more fun to contemplate and more in tune with the spirit of the fictional-author concept: Perhaps Farmer’s muse did not merely find a clever mechanism to jumpstart itself. What if the fictional-author period was not a hoax after all, but instead Farmer, donning his shamanic mask, did indeed glimpse into another universe? One in which William S. Burroughs wrote Tarzan of the Apes, and John H. Watson hobnobbed at the same gentlemen’s club as A. J. Raffles and Edward Malone. Where Kurt Vonnegut may have asked Farmer’s Riverworld counterpart, Peter Jairus Frigate, for permission to write a World of Tiers novel. A universe in which you and I are merely fictional characters in the works of a Grand Master of Science Fiction.
Yes, paging through this new edition of Venus on the Half-Shell, I think I too am getting a glimpse through the doors of perception.
Thank you, Philip José Farmer, for opening them.
Christopher Paul Carey
Seattle, Washington
* * *
Christopher Paul Carey is the coauthor with Philip José Farmer of The Song of Kwasin, and the author of Exiles of Kho, a prelude to the Khokarsa series. His short fiction may be found in such anthologies as The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 1: Protean Dimensions, The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 2: Of Dust and Soul, Tales of the Shadowmen: The Vampires of Paris, Tales of the Shadowmen: Grand Guignol, and The Avenger: The Justice, Inc. Files. He is an editor with Paizo Publishing on the award-winning Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, and the editor of three collections of Farmer’s fiction. Visit him online at www.cpcarey.com.
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Philip José Farmer, Venus on the Half-Shell
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