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Fantasy Fiction Field, June 1944
Page 19
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Richard Tooker The following information was gleaned from "personality sketches" - Am. Fiction Guild Bulletin and from a personal letter to Julius Unger from Mr. Richard Tooker, author of "The day of the Brown Horde". Richard Tooker: Born July 3, 1902, Farina, Ill. At the age of four an involuntary pioneer to the Dakota plains. Wrote his first yarn at the age of eight on the rough board floor of the old homestead. It was a gory Indian fighting story, inspired by Henty;s "Golden Canyon'. Influenza, from which he nearly died, turned his head for life at the age of fifteen, when he wrote an interplanetary novelette, later published in WEIRD TALES under Edwin Baird......Looking for adventure in the raw, he joined the Marines at twenty-three and found out so much about Haiti in sixteen months that he could never write a saleable story about the Magic Island....Wrote "the da of the Brown Hoard" blindly at white heat inspiration. Stock Market crash diseased the sales, but the novel established his reputation fairly well. After that he really learned to write in a most painful period of discovery that "works of genius" may be bad medicine when depression gives you buck ague and you can't repeat. Learned deliberate technique so rousingly well taht he has been able to help others make the grade from the SATURDAY EVENING POST and ESQUIRE to the pulps and the juvenile weeklies.....LATEST Book; "Inland Deep", just published by Pen of Philadelphia. A Jules Verne type of romance for young people....LATEST Magazine CONTRIBUTIONS: Esquire, Ken, ASTOUNDING STORIES, Hard-boiled, Thrilling Mystery and THRILLING WONDER. (above from Am.Fict.GB) "My next science fiction story is a long short entitled "Mongrovian Caravan", which ought to appear in THRILLING WONDER STORIES in the next issue or two. They are publishing so seldom now that it takes awhile to get any one story on their roster. Books I have worked on lagtely can be ordered from Paul M. Kourennoff, 617-B Pennsylvania St., Vallejo, Calif. They are "Oreiental Health Remedies" and "The World Healer", I get no by-line credit but was well paid for my time, which is sufficient heart's ease for me. My time is almost entirely taken up with ghost writing contracts, not all fiction by any means. I usually have contracts far in advance for my time. Just at present my main efforts on work of my own are devoted to a realistic novel of American life, set on the Missouri SLope of North Dakota where I spent seventeen years of my life in two periods, no, three all rather widely separate. Now that I am older I find that my early experiences grow more vivid and significant. I can understand why H.G. Wells left science ficiton for the realistic novel. I can also understand why A. Merritt apparently stopped writing fantasy in his later life. Afer a score or so of science fiction stories a writer tends to lose his zest for this type of story. he has given it his best and instinctively turns to a less plowed field, which invariably will be found in the realistic novel or short story or biography. The modern novel seems to be interpretive biography carried to the nth degree of development. WEIRD TALES fans of earliest rec ollections may call that I had featured novelette in one of the first two or three issues of WT. The title was "Planet Paradise". Edwin Baird was then editor. I never sold a story to Farnsworth Wright. I never could write earnestly for pay-on-publication and the out-and-out weird story never was my type.
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Richard Tooker The following information was gleaned from "personality sketches" - Am. Fiction Guild Bulletin and from a personal letter to Julius Unger from Mr. Richard Tooker, author of "The day of the Brown Horde". Richard Tooker: Born July 3, 1902, Farina, Ill. At the age of four an involuntary pioneer to the Dakota plains. Wrote his first yarn at the age of eight on the rough board floor of the old homestead. It was a gory Indian fighting story, inspired by Henty;s "Golden Canyon'. Influenza, from which he nearly died, turned his head for life at the age of fifteen, when he wrote an interplanetary novelette, later published in WEIRD TALES under Edwin Baird......Looking for adventure in the raw, he joined the Marines at twenty-three and found out so much about Haiti in sixteen months that he could never write a saleable story about the Magic Island....Wrote "the da of the Brown Hoard" blindly at white heat inspiration. Stock Market crash diseased the sales, but the novel established his reputation fairly well. After that he really learned to write in a most painful period of discovery that "works of genius" may be bad medicine when depression gives you buck ague and you can't repeat. Learned deliberate technique so rousingly well taht he has been able to help others make the grade from the SATURDAY EVENING POST and ESQUIRE to the pulps and the juvenile weeklies.....LATEST Book; "Inland Deep", just published by Pen of Philadelphia. A Jules Verne type of romance for young people....LATEST Magazine CONTRIBUTIONS: Esquire, Ken, ASTOUNDING STORIES, Hard-boiled, Thrilling Mystery and THRILLING WONDER. (above from Am.Fict.GB) "My next science fiction story is a long short entitled "Mongrovian Caravan", which ought to appear in THRILLING WONDER STORIES in the next issue or two. They are publishing so seldom now that it takes awhile to get any one story on their roster. Books I have worked on lagtely can be ordered from Paul M. Kourennoff, 617-B Pennsylvania St., Vallejo, Calif. They are "Oreiental Health Remedies" and "The World Healer", I get no by-line credit but was well paid for my time, which is sufficient heart's ease for me. My time is almost entirely taken up with ghost writing contracts, not all fiction by any means. I usually have contracts far in advance for my time. Just at present my main efforts on work of my own are devoted to a realistic novel of American life, set on the Missouri SLope of North Dakota where I spent seventeen years of my life in two periods, no, three all rather widely separate. Now that I am older I find that my early experiences grow more vivid and significant. I can understand why H.G. Wells left science ficiton for the realistic novel. I can also understand why A. Merritt apparently stopped writing fantasy in his later life. Afer a score or so of science fiction stories a writer tends to lose his zest for this type of story. he has given it his best and instinctively turns to a less plowed field, which invariably will be found in the realistic novel or short story or biography. The modern novel seems to be interpretive biography carried to the nth degree of development. WEIRD TALES fans of earliest rec ollections may call that I had featured novelette in one of the first two or three issues of WT. The title was "Planet Paradise". Edwin Baird was then editor. I never sold a story to Farnsworth Wright. I never could write earnestly for pay-on-publication and the out-and-out weird story never was my type.
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