It always amazes me when I find a new pulp author and wonder why I hadn’t learned of them soon. Here is another.
Joseph Payne Brennan (1918-90) is a weird-fiction author and poet. He wrote several hundred short stories, and actually started writing pulp westerns before turning to weird fiction in the 1950s, almost all at Weird Tales.
He then started his own small press that published his own magazines, and his stories were later anthologied and collected. He also created his own occult detective, Lucius Leffing. But all those collections are out of print.
At present the only collections of his works in print are a couple of reprints from Dover Publications: Nine Horrors and a Dream and The Shapes of Midnight.
Nine Horrors reprints a book originally published by Arkham House in 1958. It contains 10 stories, five reprinted from magazines like Weird Tales, and the rest original.
It kicks off with the novelette “Slime,” which was featured on the cover of the March 1953 issue of Weird Tales and is probably his most well-known work, reprinted many, many times. It may have been an inspiration for the movie The Blob but can’t find any proof of that. Here the slime was thrown up from the ocean bottom, and menaces a town in an unknown state.
“Levitation” tells of a carnival-goer who has a bad encounter with a hypnotist. “I’m Murdering Mr. Massington” is an unusual tale of someone wanting to be immortalized. “The Hunt” is about a man being followed by another that takes a very sinister turn. “The Mail for Juniper Hill” is set in his fictitious locale of Juniper Hill, about a postman who must complete his rounds no matter what.
All the stories are weird and strange.
I don’t have The Shapes of Midnight, but it reprints a collection from Berkley Books that are taken from several anthologies. The Dover edition has only 10 of the original 12, dropping two stories that were reprinted in Nine Horrors, which makes sense.
So if you haven’t read his stuff, do pick up these two collections. They are short and inexpensive. I think someone is working on a more complete reprint of his work, but not certain.
As someone who loves occult detectives, I’d really love to see a reprint of his Lucius Leffing stories. Please? Could someone please get them back in print?
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