{"id":15860,"date":"2023-03-06T10:00:42","date_gmt":"2023-03-06T15:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/?p=15860"},"modified":"2023-03-06T15:08:04","modified_gmt":"2023-03-06T20:08:04","slug":"joseph-payne-brennan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/2023\/03\/06\/joseph-payne-brennan\/","title":{"rendered":"Joseph Payne Brennan"},"content":{"rendered":"

It always amazes me when I find a new pulp author and wonder why I hadn’t learned of them soon. Here is another.<\/p>\n

\"Joseph<\/a>
Joseph Payne Brennan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Joseph Payne Brennan<\/strong> (1918-90) is a weird-fiction<\/a> 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<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, Lucius Leffing<\/strong>. But all those collections are out of print.<\/p>\n

At present the only collections of his works in print are a couple of reprints from Dover Publications<\/a>: Nine Horrors and a Dream<\/em> and The Shapes of Midnight<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Nine Horrors<\/em> reprints a book originally published by Arkham House<\/a> in 1958. It contains 10 stories, five reprinted from magazines like Weird Tales<\/em>, and the rest original.<\/p>\n

It kicks off with the novelette “Slime,” which was featured on the cover of the March 1953 issue of Weird Tales<\/em> and is probably his most well-known work, reprinted many, many times. It may have been an inspiration for the movie The Blob<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

\"Nine<\/a>“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.<\/p>\n

All the stories are weird and strange.<\/p>\n

I don’t have The Shapes of Midnight<\/em>, 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<\/em>, which makes sense.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

As someone who loves occult detectives, I’d really love to see a reprint of his Lucius Leffing stories.\u00a0 Please?\u00a0 Could someone please get them back in print?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":15934,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_has_post_settings":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Pulp Super-Fan looks at Joseph Payne Brennan. #occultdetectives #weirdfiction #pulpmags","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[1,135],"tags":[1193,1292,1229,1289,1290,1291,142,304],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-15860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pulps","category-reprints","tag-arkham-house","tag-berkley-books","tag-dover-publications","tag-joseph-payne-brennan","tag-lucius-leffing","tag-the-blob","tag-weird-fiction","tag-weird-tales"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2023\/02\/joseph-payne-brennan.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3eLo8-47O","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15860"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15949,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15860\/revisions\/15949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15860"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=15860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}