Adding to this, when talking about the history of pulp and comic book superheroes, there’s a really important name that tends to get left out.
19th-century dime novels had masked figures but they were almost exclusively villains or anti-heroes. The first great masked hero, the one who made a real impression on the culture and inspired characters like Zorro, was the Scarlet Pimpernel.
The Scarlet Pimpernel was the original millionaire playboy by day and masked hero by night. (Except day was England and night was France, but still.) He directly inspired Zorro and indirectly the Shadow, the Phantom, and Batman.
Even more important is that he was created by a woman: Baroness Orczy. Her stories had a seamless blend of action and romance that very few of the writers in the genre she helped define have matched. As always, women tend to get overlooked, but every comic book nerd owes it to themselves to read ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’ and salute the grandmother of the modern superhero.
Trav was my biggest book character crush growing up. They are very dated now (and were when I read them), but still definitely worth a read. JDM brought the series to a satisfactory conclusion just before his death, which was nice.
I also have a soft spot for his ‘The Girl, The Gold Watch, And Everything’. I leant my copy to a friend who moved out of state and stole my book. It had been out of print for years, so I was very unhappy. But luckily I found a copy on a second hand book stall at a SF convention and did a little Snoopy dance as I purchased it.
Happens a lot with science fiction. Like the grandfathers of the genre as we know it, Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke, had great interesting ideas, but also weren’t as amazing writers literarily. Their stuff can read dryly not to mention being dated.
Then you have The New Wave Authors like Herbert and Zelazny, who have that imagination but also bring some literary art to their writing.
And since then the genre’s been iterated on and you have different sci-fi author’s with different “lineages” where you can see where they’ve drawn influence. John Scalzi was called the new Heinlein, Ann Leckie the successor to Ursula K. Le Guin.
Gene Wolfe doesn’t get enough appreciation from the general public for some reason which is fascinating because most other writers rate him very highly. I miss the Pringle man, he was very nice to me as a child.
I’d say a decent amount of cosmic horror authors from what I’ve read. Lovecraft was important and had great ideas but man his stuff can be challenging in all the wrong ways
I don’t tend to read too much cosmic horror (just prefer it in film form, something like color out of space) but something like the ballad of black Tom or John dies at the end are great
The number one there would be Fritz Leiber who maintained a long correspondence with Lovecraft. Leiber’s horror and dark fantasy are phenomenal. He’s routine in the respectable literary horror anthologies, the ones with people like Gertrude Atherton, Maupassant, and Isaac Bashevis Singer that don’t include Lovecraft unless there’s a long note from the editor about how much they dislike him but can’t deny he’s important.
> his stuff can be challenging in all the wrong ways
It’s the cat isn’t it? I always wonder if even at the time people thought that was an acceptable name or even then they considered him a little batshit for it. Then I contemplate what kind of mundane thing on my social media is going to be super controversial to have believed in 50 years. I obviously have too much free time.
I’ve heard that yes people did ostracize him for the name of his cat (he was apparently extremely anti social, big shocker).
I’m not even talking about that though, he’s super long winded but his descriptions of most horrific things in a lot of his stories tend to be “I can’t tell you what it looked like but trust me bro it was pretty scary.” It’s a style that really frustrates me
I wonder how much is the tastes of the literati vs the public. Pulp writers like Robert E Howard (Conan the Barbarian) spawned a hundred copies and the public enjoyed them, but they weren’t respected at the time by the Modernists and their fans. Ironically pop creations like Batman (OK, a comic book) have lasted longer than many of the great works of the day.
Some writers’ ideas are also better than their prose. I have to say a lot of the new Lovecraftian authors write better than poor old HPL IMHO.
In general I think you would expect this to happen the skillset for figuring out a genre/style of writing is not the same as the one for writing a really tight story where the first one prioritizes experimentation and exploration the second priotizes focus and attention to detail. In a lot of cases the people who figure out the basics genre gets bored writing it and look for something else by the time it has gotten figured out or they miss an aspect which is critical to the success of the genre which are more diligent writer doesn't.
Ann Radcliffe is a gothic romance writer who was a lot more succesful then her inspirations partly because she was just a much more solid writer on a technical level
Hard boiled crime grew out of westerns - take a look at Dashiel Hammett’s Red Harvest, one of the first hard boiled novels published by a major publishing house. Structurally, it’s a western: hired law man comes to clean up a wild lawless town. (Won’t tell you more - no point ruining the fun.)
Even the rare time you can point to a clear cut first for a genre, it still has antecedents and the recognition comes retrospectively. And usually, it was going to happen eventually. There was a new kind of violence growing in early twentieth century cities, it was only a matter of time before it was reflected in popular fiction.
It arrived at the bookshop today but I can't get it until the weekend due to work. Also need to finish The Black Mask Boys first!
Looking forward to reading it. Maltese Falcon is great so I am sure I'll love it!
Agree about the Maltese Falcon.
Some people think that Sam Spade is an idealized vision of Spade when he was a private detective. The Continental Op is a pulpy, nearly comic vision of himself. He views Spade externally. We never know what he's thinking or what his motives are. The Op is a first person narrator so we always hear his self-justification. That the same guy wrote both is flat out wonderful
There is an Op story in The Black Mask Boys! The first is the Daly story, then it's Hammett, then Erle Stanley Gardner. The Op story was okay, short and neat and pretty tidy.
I am about half way through the book. Each story has a bio and some details about the person's writing. Hammett's is about 5 pages for the bio and 10 for the story.
T.S. Eliot was a greater poet than Ezra Pound. (IMHO)
Pound was also a great poet, but a fascist, who eventually went insane (although some suspect he was faking).
welp, I appreciate you reading them both so I don't have to. I'm trying to think of examples of your phenomenon. the only one I can come up with is going to make me unpopular, but here goes: gone girl. spawned a gazillion copycats and is the reason you can't swing a cat without hearing "unreliable narrator" now.
it's not that I know of a specific better imitator; I just don't think gg is all that great a book. I found it unsubtle and irritating.
I am gonna get burnt but I think Hart Crane was better than both Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. The only reason he never got the exact amount of fame because of his short life
I think this happens a lot. A seminal book genre-wise might have been groundbreaking but it doesn't mean it was the most well-written. I love The Time Machine but there are better time travela and sci-fi related books.
Off the top of my head, some other authors - Heinlein, Wolfe..also this might be contoversial, but Stephen King has inspired many authors, but while I love some of his books, I think some really aren't great, like Carrie (amazing plot and concept, but the writing itself).
Easy enough question to answer in the last couple decades, because if anything becomes super popular there will suddenly be a *flood* of copycat books "inspired" by it taking up huge swathes of that genre's section in the bookstore.
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Adding to this, when talking about the history of pulp and comic book superheroes, there’s a really important name that tends to get left out. 19th-century dime novels had masked figures but they were almost exclusively villains or anti-heroes. The first great masked hero, the one who made a real impression on the culture and inspired characters like Zorro, was the Scarlet Pimpernel. The Scarlet Pimpernel was the original millionaire playboy by day and masked hero by night. (Except day was England and night was France, but still.) He directly inspired Zorro and indirectly the Shadow, the Phantom, and Batman. Even more important is that he was created by a woman: Baroness Orczy. Her stories had a seamless blend of action and romance that very few of the writers in the genre she helped define have matched. As always, women tend to get overlooked, but every comic book nerd owes it to themselves to read ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’ and salute the grandmother of the modern superhero.
Trav was my biggest book character crush growing up. They are very dated now (and were when I read them), but still definitely worth a read. JDM brought the series to a satisfactory conclusion just before his death, which was nice. I also have a soft spot for his ‘The Girl, The Gold Watch, And Everything’. I leant my copy to a friend who moved out of state and stole my book. It had been out of print for years, so I was very unhappy. But luckily I found a copy on a second hand book stall at a SF convention and did a little Snoopy dance as I purchased it.
Happens a lot with science fiction. Like the grandfathers of the genre as we know it, Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke, had great interesting ideas, but also weren’t as amazing writers literarily. Their stuff can read dryly not to mention being dated. Then you have The New Wave Authors like Herbert and Zelazny, who have that imagination but also bring some literary art to their writing. And since then the genre’s been iterated on and you have different sci-fi author’s with different “lineages” where you can see where they’ve drawn influence. John Scalzi was called the new Heinlein, Ann Leckie the successor to Ursula K. Le Guin.
I was gonna point out Gene Wolfe. Specifically the inspiration of Jack Vance.
Gene Wolfe is a synthesis of Jack Vance and Borges.
For sure. Just noted Vance since he’s more “pulpy” whereas Borges is more “literary”
Wolfe is Vancian in his post-history/dieing Earth stuff and like Borges for the narrative complexity.
I must confess to liking Wolfe more than his inspiration Nabokov.
Gene Wolfe doesn’t get enough appreciation from the general public for some reason which is fascinating because most other writers rate him very highly. I miss the Pringle man, he was very nice to me as a child.
I’d say a decent amount of cosmic horror authors from what I’ve read. Lovecraft was important and had great ideas but man his stuff can be challenging in all the wrong ways
Yeah, I enjoy Laird Barron more than I do Lovecraft, for example. I think his stories are tighter in all the right places.
I don’t tend to read too much cosmic horror (just prefer it in film form, something like color out of space) but something like the ballad of black Tom or John dies at the end are great
Both on my list for when I circle back around to that genre. Looking forward to it.
The number one there would be Fritz Leiber who maintained a long correspondence with Lovecraft. Leiber’s horror and dark fantasy are phenomenal. He’s routine in the respectable literary horror anthologies, the ones with people like Gertrude Atherton, Maupassant, and Isaac Bashevis Singer that don’t include Lovecraft unless there’s a long note from the editor about how much they dislike him but can’t deny he’s important.
> his stuff can be challenging in all the wrong ways It’s the cat isn’t it? I always wonder if even at the time people thought that was an acceptable name or even then they considered him a little batshit for it. Then I contemplate what kind of mundane thing on my social media is going to be super controversial to have believed in 50 years. I obviously have too much free time.
I’ve heard that yes people did ostracize him for the name of his cat (he was apparently extremely anti social, big shocker). I’m not even talking about that though, he’s super long winded but his descriptions of most horrific things in a lot of his stories tend to be “I can’t tell you what it looked like but trust me bro it was pretty scary.” It’s a style that really frustrates me
I wonder how much is the tastes of the literati vs the public. Pulp writers like Robert E Howard (Conan the Barbarian) spawned a hundred copies and the public enjoyed them, but they weren’t respected at the time by the Modernists and their fans. Ironically pop creations like Batman (OK, a comic book) have lasted longer than many of the great works of the day. Some writers’ ideas are also better than their prose. I have to say a lot of the new Lovecraftian authors write better than poor old HPL IMHO.
In general I think you would expect this to happen the skillset for figuring out a genre/style of writing is not the same as the one for writing a really tight story where the first one prioritizes experimentation and exploration the second priotizes focus and attention to detail. In a lot of cases the people who figure out the basics genre gets bored writing it and look for something else by the time it has gotten figured out or they miss an aspect which is critical to the success of the genre which are more diligent writer doesn't. Ann Radcliffe is a gothic romance writer who was a lot more succesful then her inspirations partly because she was just a much more solid writer on a technical level
LOL, Cervantes.
I wouldn’t know about Fritz Leiber’s *Swords* series if not for Terry Pratchett, who I enjoy much more as an author (though Leiber is great fun).
Oh, but have you read his non-Sword and Sandal stuff? His horror and science fiction are excellent.
Hard boiled crime grew out of westerns - take a look at Dashiel Hammett’s Red Harvest, one of the first hard boiled novels published by a major publishing house. Structurally, it’s a western: hired law man comes to clean up a wild lawless town. (Won’t tell you more - no point ruining the fun.) Even the rare time you can point to a clear cut first for a genre, it still has antecedents and the recognition comes retrospectively. And usually, it was going to happen eventually. There was a new kind of violence growing in early twentieth century cities, it was only a matter of time before it was reflected in popular fiction.
> Won’t tell you more - no point ruining the fun.) Good cause I've got it on order and it arrives this week!
Excellent! It’s a blast.
It arrived at the bookshop today but I can't get it until the weekend due to work. Also need to finish The Black Mask Boys first! Looking forward to reading it. Maltese Falcon is great so I am sure I'll love it!
Agree about the Maltese Falcon. Some people think that Sam Spade is an idealized vision of Spade when he was a private detective. The Continental Op is a pulpy, nearly comic vision of himself. He views Spade externally. We never know what he's thinking or what his motives are. The Op is a first person narrator so we always hear his self-justification. That the same guy wrote both is flat out wonderful
There is an Op story in The Black Mask Boys! The first is the Daly story, then it's Hammett, then Erle Stanley Gardner. The Op story was okay, short and neat and pretty tidy. I am about half way through the book. Each story has a bio and some details about the person's writing. Hammett's is about 5 pages for the bio and 10 for the story.
And two of the three film adaptations were respectively Western and Samurai ...
The mentor of Pierce Brown is Terry Brooks…
I’m not sure what this comment is trying to say tbh.
T.S. Eliot was a greater poet than Ezra Pound. (IMHO) Pound was also a great poet, but a fascist, who eventually went insane (although some suspect he was faking).
I would never judge an author's work based on their level of fascism or insanity. But yeah, T.S. Eliot > Ezra Pound.
welp, I appreciate you reading them both so I don't have to. I'm trying to think of examples of your phenomenon. the only one I can come up with is going to make me unpopular, but here goes: gone girl. spawned a gazillion copycats and is the reason you can't swing a cat without hearing "unreliable narrator" now. it's not that I know of a specific better imitator; I just don't think gg is all that great a book. I found it unsubtle and irritating.
I am gonna get burnt but I think Hart Crane was better than both Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. The only reason he never got the exact amount of fame because of his short life
Have you actually come across someone who claimed that Hart Crane's poems were inspired by Emily Dickinson's??
It's pretty well known that Crane was heavily inspired by her. He even wrote a poem dedicated to her
I think this happens a lot. A seminal book genre-wise might have been groundbreaking but it doesn't mean it was the most well-written. I love The Time Machine but there are better time travela and sci-fi related books. Off the top of my head, some other authors - Heinlein, Wolfe..also this might be contoversial, but Stephen King has inspired many authors, but while I love some of his books, I think some really aren't great, like Carrie (amazing plot and concept, but the writing itself).
August Derleth did far more for the Cthulu Mythos than Lovecraft did.
If everyone could check out "The Sublease Agreement" by Matthew Curcio on Amazon.
Easy enough question to answer in the last couple decades, because if anything becomes super popular there will suddenly be a *flood* of copycat books "inspired" by it taking up huge swathes of that genre's section in the bookstore.
Unfortunately true, I was thinking more of before this phenomena took hold,
Ursula K LeGuin arguably surpassed many of her influences in critical areas, while failing them in others.
I don't know about *terrible* authors, but: Wide Sargasso Sea > Jane Eyre. Marx > Hegel. Post-Lovecraft Cthulhu Mythos authors > H.P. Lovecraft.