World Without Chance: Classic Pulp Science Fiction Stories in the Vein of Stanley G. Weinbaum. John Russell Fearn
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 success. In order to try and help his friend, Fearn’s revisions to his mss. became more and more extensive, so much so that Gillings actually doubted whether Frank Jones actually existed; he suspected that the prolific Fearn (who was himself submitting stories unsuccessfully to Gillings under his own name) was using a pseudonym to increase his chances of success.
In this Gillings was initially quite mistaken. Frank Jones was a member of the Blackpool Writers Circle. But the overly-suspicious Gillings remained intractable. He remained equally so when Fearn began to submit mss. by his other friends in the Blackpool Circle, Edgar Spencer and Geoffrey Medley.
On 26th May 1937 Fearn wrote Gillings again:
“You’ll find an MS herewith from Geoff Medley. He lives at the same house as Frank Jones, and, to my mind, has turned out a fairly decent English or Amazing type sf yarn. I suggested he might try you before Amazing and see if you could find room anywhere in a future edition of Tales of Wonder for him. I’ve enclosed a stamped envelope for him. Please write to him direct. Don’t be too hard on the guy. He spent all his Whit Weekend typing on this machine (which he borrowed) in order to complete the yarn. If you think anything of it, OK. No business of mine.”
But Gillings would reject this story, plus Medley’s follow-up effort, “Carcinoma Menace”.
On June 10th 1937 Fearn reported to Gillings:
“Julie thinks that ‘World Without Chance,’ Cross’ first effort, is a first class effort and remarkably like Weinbaum. Same applies to ‘Chameleon Planet,’ which I’ve just completed. If Cross should prove more of a hit than Fearn I’ll be tickled to death!”
Fearn wrote to Gillings again on 19th June 1937:
“I saw Frank Jones the other day and so far his yarns haven’t clicked in the US, because they’re too simple. I’ve read them through and I think they’re pretty good for England. I’m attaching their synopses also. If you think them worthy I’ll get him to send them on.”
I managed to trace and contact Geoffrey Medley a number of years ago, and he told me how he had come to know Fearn:
“Fresh from school at the age of fourteen, I reported to 15, Birley Street, Blackpool, to take up the duties of junior office boy to the pompous