Valley of Pretenders. John Russell Fearn

else!

      But who was this Frank Jones? Did he really exist? Hitherto, no SF historian or commentator has ever troubled to find out. The assumption has been that he did not exist.

      In point of fact, Temple’s correspondence in the late 1930s contained many letters actually signed ‘Frank Jones’, and claiming to be that separate person, By then Jones was no longer living at the same house as Geoff Medley, and the letters to Temple gave his address as that of Fearn—Jones was now allegedly lodging at Fearn’s home!

      Recalling these letters from Thornton Ayre (which he generously allowed me to copy), Temple told me: “…Jack kept trying to kid me he was really another person. I didn’t believe it…but I played along with him for the fun of it.”

      In his first letter to Fearn’s alter ego Frank Jones (Thornton Ayre) in December of 1939, Temple touched briefly on the personal side:

      “Re you being Jack—Jack has told me you are not, and I’m quite willing to believe him. In fact, I’m sure that Thornton Ayre and JRF are too different personalities. I do not pursue inquiries as to whether Jack is schizophrenic or not; his business is his business and not mine, or anyone’s. All I know is that he is a decent chap himself, generous and helpful to those who cannot be helpful to him; and an unfairly maligned author. I hope you won’t think it is flattery if I say that your letter shows traces of this same unasked-for generosity too. To continue this psycho-analysis, I’d say that this generosity is not a weak point because you both have hard business heads (which I definitely have not) and have it well under control.”

      And to add to the mystery, Walter Gillings’ earlier 1936-1938 editorial correspondence details separate story submissions from a Frank Jones, sent from a different address than Fearn’s!

      So how to reconcile the above with the fact that all of the published Thornton Ayre stories were all quite definitely written entirely by Fearn? My own careful analysis of the style of the Ayre stories—and much more significantly, the fact that years later Fearn would “mine” many of these stories and incorporate them, in adapted form, into his own novels, not to mention his reprinting several of them in the British Science Fiction Magazine in 1954-55, after he became its editor, have established Fearn’s sole authorship beyond all reasonable doubt. And the only story actually published under the name Frank Jones (“Arctic God”, Amazing Stories, May 1942) was also definitely 100% by Fearn. So…was there really anyone called Frank Jones? And what was his connection with ‘Thornton Ayre’? I have now uncovered the answer to that question.…

      Around 1935, Fearn had become a member of the Blackpool Writers’ Circle, one of the many regional writers’ club support groups which flourished in England, and who were the target audience for Hutchinson’s national monthly magazine The Writer, which gave them publicity and regularly printed the addresses of their Secretaries. The first Secretary and founder of the Blackpool group was Miss Margaret Dulling, who was later to become a very successful romantic novelist, writing as Margaret St. John Bathe. Two young sisters, Doris and Muriel Howe, also became prolific romantic novelists. Yet another successful romantic novelist to emerge from the Circle was Iris Weigh. Iris became a particularly close friend of Fearn’s, and when he founded a rival Circle, the Fylde Writing Society, after the war, she moved to join him there.

      Because of his rapid success in the American pulps, Fearn soon became a leading light in the Blackpool Circle, and he would have been friendly with one Frank Jones, who took over the Circle’s Secretarial duties in January 1937. The evidence for this can be found in the contemporaneous issues of the magazine The Writer, which announced that Frank Jones was now the Secretary, and gave his address as 51 Cheltenham Road, Blackpool—totally separate from Fearn’s address at 164 Abbey Road, Blackpool. So Frank Jones was a real person, and a writer.

      On 7th September 1936 Gillings had informed Fearn that he had been secretly given the go-ahead by the World’s Work publishers to prepare a trial issue of a new British science fiction magazine, Tales of Wonder. Secretly, because a rival publisher, Newnes, was also preparing a new SF magazine, Fantasy. Jones had then been encouraged by Fearn to try his hand at writing science fiction short stories, with Fearn subbing and revising his mss.

      Frank Jones’ first story was submitted to Gillings on 18th September 1936 on his behalf by Fearn. His covering letter to Gillings read:

      “Herewith is Frank Jones’ ‘Mr. Podmore Does It,’ written under the name of ‘Briggs Mendel’. I’ve read it through and made one or two minor pen corrections. Personally I don’t think it half bad. If you can give him a break any way it will encourage him a lot. He has other Podmore stories, which he intends to work on. I feel, and maybe you will too after you’ve read it, that a series of this quaint little gentleman will interest British readers quite a lot. Enclosed also is one of mine which I came across. ‘Planet X,’ refused recently by Thrilling Wonder Stories as not quite convincing enough, but would, I feel make a good English one.”

      Gillings was told to reply to Jones direct concerning his story. Gillings, however, had very rigid editorial criteria—he was reluctant to use anything that was too imaginative or took SF tropes for granted, in the style of the US pulps, He rejected and returned Jones’ first story.

      On 27th January 1937, Fearn sent the following ‘Flash’ to Gillings:

      “Thrilling Wonder Stories have accepted my ‘Lords of 9016.’ Frank Jones, whom you met in London, is writing science fiction under the name of ‘Thornton Ayre’ (and this name only must be used in publications, not his own.) Julie [Schwartz] thinks he has promise. He tells me that he’s just done ‘Little God’, after his first, ‘Composite Man’, failed. Oddly enough, Julie believes he might click. Will send you his address when he gets it fixed. Like me he is in removal at the moment.”

      On 22nd February 1937, Fearn again told Gillings:

      “Now here’s something else. I spent Saturday evening with Frank Jones—or, as he calls himself for fiction—Thornton Ayre. So his name won’t leak out and perhaps queer his pension for an accident of long ago, I suspect. Anyway, I do believe I had that guy all wrong! He can write SF! His latest story, ‘Dark World’, is in my opinion a corker with real thought-variant slants. Can it be that a rival grows on my own doorstep? Anyway, I’ve suggested that he write to you so perhaps he did so over the weekend. In any case—confidentially—though he seems a bit odd on the surface, he certainly knows how to slap words together. I’m very surprised to find he really knows his stuff. Unless I’m mistaken he will click before long.”

      On 4th March 1937 Gillings told Fearn that Frank Jones had indeed contacted him direct, and he was intending to give him a write-up in the next edition of his printed fanzine Scientifiction. Sure enough, there was an announcement in the magazine’s second, April 1937 issue:

      “Another newcomer to fantasy field is Thornton Ayre, Blackpool protégé of John Russell Fearn, who predicts he will burst into print shortly with thought variant, ‘Dark World’, following inevitable rejections of first efforts.”

      On 24th April 1937, Fearn told Gillings in another letter:

      “Here’s another secret—for you ALONE and not for any publication. Schwartz has suggested, in view of my turning out work so fast as Fearn, that I become somebody else with a totally different style, different typewriter, different paper and what not. So I have become Polton Cross (a village two miles out of Blackpool) and have turned out two yarns on the Weinbaum style, namely ‘World Without Chance’ (10,000 words) and ‘Outpost’ (6,000). If these yarns do click, I defy you to tell it’s me, so totally new is the arrangement of the ideas. The idea being, of course, that Fearn and Cross can click simultaneously and double my chances all round.

      “I’ve only told Frank Jones about World’s Work—and your secret is safe with him. He wants to know if you’d like to see some of his work? Carbons, I suppose. Maybe he’ll write you himself, but if not perhaps you’ll tell me and I’ll relay it. He’s rather a dilatory letter writer. He’s down in the mouth too because he hasn’t clicked over the ocean so far.”

      In the ensuing months, from time to time, Jones tried Gillings again, but without