Lionel Fanthorpe & 'Supernatural Stories'

[dem]

Thornton Bell - Grimoire: "Paul Ffloyd came out of the Labour Exchange looking very much what he was, a small, sick, embittered failure. He wore a shabby, shapeless fawn overcoat, grimed with grease and dirt, his soft-brimmed hat hung shapelessly around his ears, and his off-white muffler caressed his neck like a boa constrictor suffering from malnutrition and white leprosy." Paul is fifty, has lost several jobs down the years and his prospects are hopeless. He steps inside a second hand bookshop where the kindly proprietor allows him to browse the torn paperbacks and vintage girlie mags he can't buy. But Paul abuses this hospitality. He steals a musty handwritten black book on the assumption that ancient equals valuable, and is soon obsessed with translating its content. A shadowy demon assists, encouraging him to attempt the spell that, should he get it right, will make him the most powerful and feared man since Hitler. All he need do is gather a few essentials - the bloodied shroud of a recently buried corpse, the hand of a murdered man, that sort of thing - and the world is his oyster. So begins Paul Floyd's acquisition of some new skills to bolster his CV, including grave-robbing, tramp slaying and mutilation ... The only question now is, will the ritual succeed?

After twenty-odd pages of tight plotting, Fanthorpe likely went into improvisation mode for the cosmic final sequence, but this is another of his better horror stories and mercifully he brings us back to earth for a satisfyingly grim conclusion. Maybe those pop culture references are more commonplace than i'd thought as this one drags in Gerald Gardner and the museum of witchcraft. Also, following the pro-Soho sentiments of Bitter Reflection, now we get the melancholy "pin up magazines that had passed through so many hands the models were now probably grandmothers."

[andydecker]

Here is another of the german collections.

Supernatural Stories 93

Seven stories, credited as by Barton, Tate, Fane, Balfort, Fanthorpe, Torro and Thorpe.

Fane and Torro are Steadman/La Noire stories.

I also have some John E Muller, Lee Barton and Leo Brett novels which were published as pulps. I think they merit their own thread.

[jamesdoig]

There should be a 'best of' collection of his stuff.

[dem]

Andy, all the stories in the Damonenkiller anthology are by Fanthorpe, as are the three novels you mentioned! in his invaluable Fantasy Readers Guide, Mike Ashley lists the High Priest of Forteana's Badger pseudonyms as follows (* denotes a house name)

Neil Balfort
Othello Baron
Erle Barton
Lee Barton
Thornton Bell
Leo Brett
Bron Fane
L. P. Kenyon
Victor La Salle *
Elton T. Neef
John E. Muller *
Phil Noble
Peter O'Flinn
Peter O'Flynn
John Raymond
Lionel Roberts
Rene Rolant
Peutero Spartacus
Robin Tate
Phil Thanet
Trebor Thorpe
Pel Torro
Olaf Trent
Karl Zeigfried *

John Glasby also wrote for Badger under a number of pseudonyms but nowhere near as many as Fanthorpe.

All of a sudden, this is looking very must have.

Debbie Cross - Down The Badger Hole: R. Lionel Fanthorpe - The Badger Years (Wrigley Cross Books, 1995)

Blurb:
As well as being a gold mine for dedicated collectors of vintage SF, Supernatural and Fantasy paperbacks, this collection of fun quotations from Lionel's Badger Book days is intended to provide a few smiles for the reader. Badger Books of Hammersmith were published by John Spencer and Co which was run by two partners called Nahum and Assael. They would frequently commission a book by sending a rough drawing of the cover and asking Lionel to supply a title, a blurb and a back cover introduction more or less by return post.

Read David Langford's introduction, The Badger Game, on Ansible and tell me you ain't tempted!

Have written to Rev. Fanthorpe asking if it's still available so will let you know if i receive a reply.

[H_P_Saucecraft]

That 'Rodent Mutation' book on the cover, looks great. So James Herbert didn't get there first?

[dem]

A speedy response from the Phantom of Fanthorpe Gables to inform that Down The Badger Hole is indeed still available and you can order it here.

Saucy, courtesy of Steve, a gorgeous scan of the Rodent Mutation cover on Vault Mk I (10th post down)

[andydecker]

John E . Muller Spectre of Darkness aka Der steinerne Dämon (The stone demon)

Vampir Horror 53 1974 - cover by C.A.M Thole

This is one of a handful of novels written by R.L.Fanthorpe and John S Glasby which found their way into german pulp.

The plot of Spectre of Darkness is, well, all over the place, to put it nicely.

Lovely and innocent Lana gets visited by her so-called "uncle" Tymon, who gives her an ugly old statuette, mumbles something about being a guardian and being followed by a brotherhood, who need this statuette to rule the world. Five minutes later he is killed by a hit and run.

Lana doesn´t know what to do. To get away she answers an ad in the paper where they need a secretary in Trergorran Grange. Run by the enigmatic but attractive Dr. Bollinger this is revealed to be a kind of lunatic asylum where the good doctor is the warden of some freaks, half-man, half monster. (How and why exactly is never resolved). Of course Lana gets attacked by on the monsters on her first evening which the good doctor subdues with a whip. But Lana shows the Igor kindness, which comes in handy as five minutes later she is attacked by some masked guys who want the statuette. The Igor rescues Lana and dies.

Dr.Bollinger gets kidnapped by the Brotherhood and tied to a railroad line. He gets rescued by mysterious tramp and stranger Midnight Jones who knows more than he says. But the rescue is not really important as there are running no trains on this line at the moment. The winter schedule, you see. The villians apparently didn´t knew the time-table.

Lana gets kidnapped and roughed up, escapes, gets picked up by Midnight Jones, tries to hide by an artist-friend – which gets killed by the Brotherhood - gets captured again and rescued again by Midnight Jones. The Brotherhood follows them to a fun-fair, there is a gun-battle. They drive to Tregorran Grange. Midnight Jones reveals that the Brotherhood is older than the Nile and had some kind of mind-control which King Salomon robbed them of and put into the statuette. The statuette got broken into some parts later on, and if they get their vile hands on the part Lana has, the world is doomed. Oh, and Midnight Jones is some sort of half-god who battles the Brotherhood since day one and knows he will die as he can´t see the future any longer.

The Brotherhood storms the asylum, there is a gun-battle , the Igors get loose, the police comes to help along with the military, but the evil Brotherhood masquerades as the police and kidnaps Midnight Jones and Lana. Again. With the statuette. They are brought to an little isle on the coast of Cornwall, there the Brotherhood will do a sacrifice on an altar to open a portal for the devil. Midnight and Lana escape the dungeon, make it to the altar. They try to throw the altar – a big stone slab - into the sea to destroy it. The Brotherhood opens fire – they love their guns – and Midnight Jones gets hit a couple of times. Lana runs to him, help ihm throwing the altar into the sea and gets shot. And dies. Dying Midnight Jones, being a half-god and all, kills the remaining guys of the Brotherhood, takes the statuette and throws himself into the sea. End of story.

Phew, they really don´t write ´em like that anymore. Parts of that novel read as if it was abridged for length. Either that or it was written on a weekend. A lot of scenes read like "and than he came upon them and killed them. Then he escaped."

The whole plot doesn´t make any sense. Most of the parts don´t get any resolution, characters are speaking and acting like they are lobotomized, new characters gets introduced and killed off which have nothing whatsoever to do with the plot and are just padding.

My favorite is the bit with the telephone-line. Or the botched tie-him-up on the rails where no train runs. Lana gets stalked by nasty calls in Tregorran Grange, after she is there for a couple of hours. Which amounts of someone growling into the receiver. (Eeek!) Dr.Bollinger investigates his state of the art telephone-system. He discovers a mysterious line which has to be dug up in the garden. It leads to the summer-house on the grounds (which has an evil reputation!) and to a telephone which has some prints of an inhuman hand on it. Bollinger rips the cord out of the wall. Case closed. What this all has to do with the Brotherhood or the Igors – or Lana – gets never ever resolved. Spooky.

Even if they butchered this in the translation it is still a terrible mess. At least the german cover of the weekly pulp is nice. Hard to believe they sold this on the newsstand.

[David A. Riley]

I admire your tenacity in actually being able to finish this novel, Andy. I could never finish any of the stories in Supernatural Stories when I bought them in newsagents when they were originally published. I could never understand how stuff as bad as that could ever get published. Of course, Fanthorpe being the publisher, etc., explained a lot when I found this out!

[andydecker]

Mar 14, 2011 11:44:32 GMT David A. Riley said:

I admire your tenacity in actually being able to finish this novel, Andy.

Ah, I have had worse. The pulp format actually helps - 2 columns on each page, makes it a faster read.

[Craig Herbertson]

That's just the magic of Fanthorpe? I think I've only read one of his 'novels' when I was on a Badger books glut. The heady mix of pure insanity and moments of lucidity was breathtaking. I'm also interested in (purely for academic reasons) the pubic hair on the photo. Wonder if that was a continental thing?

[David A. Riley]

I remember when I first started writing Supernatrural Stories was the only short story horror magazine readily available. I did send several stories to it, thinking that what I wrote was better than what the magazine already published. I never even got a reply, even though I enclosed stamped addressed envelopes. After a short while I gave it up as a bad job. It was only later that I discovered virtually everything in it was written by the publisher.

Even so, it would have been nice and perhaps good manners if Lionel Fanthorpe had taken the time to at least return the stories to me with or without a rejection note attached. After all, in those days there were no computers with laser printers. Every typed out copy was typed out from scratch and was the work of at least several days, as he must have known.

[dem]

David, much as Fanthorpe's name has become synonymous with the magazine, he was never the publisher of Supernatural Stories or any of the other Badger titles - that was John Spencer. The editors were Maurice Nahum & Sam Assael, and Mike Ashley wonders if they ever read any of the submissions received, many of which, in the early days, were that poor. Lee Wright, one of the first contributors, told Ashley "I never once knew them to refuse a manuscript no matter how bad it was. Indeed, I remember there was a junior clerk in my office who produced appalling rubbish and, on my advice, sent it to Spencer's. They accepted it, much to my surprise." I'm guessing you were submitting stories in the mid-sixties. By that time the magazine was coming to its end and it's likely Nahum & Assael were happy to rely on the ever-industrious Fanthorpe to fill the issues.

Andy, you're probably right that Spectre of Darkness was "butchered in translation", not, i suspect that it made much difference. The short stories i can cope with - some of them are very entertaining - but tackling a Fanthorpe novel that isn't Rodent Mutation cover to cover? you are a braver man than i!

[Craig Herbertson]

Mar 14, 2011 16:23:51 GMT David A. Riley said:

I remember when I first started writing Supernatrural Stories was the only short story horror magazine readily available. I did send several stories to it, thinking that what I wrote was better than what the magazine already published. I never even got a reply, even though I enclosed stamped addressed envelopes. After a short while I gave it up as a bad job. It was only later that I discovered virtually everything in it was written by the publisher.

Even so, it would have been nice and perhaps good manners if Lionel Fanthorpe had taken the time to at least return the stories to me with or without a rejection note attached. After all, in those days there were no computers with laser printers. Every typed out copy was typed out from scratch and was the work of at least several days, as he must have known.

David, they probably said 'this seems to make sense' and got confused.

[David A. Riley]

Thanks for correcting my misconception, dem. I don't know where I got the idea that Fanthorpe published the magazine - I thought I'd read it somewhere, but I mustn't have done.

Yes, it was the mid to late 60s. Possibly most of the copies I then saw for sale were older issues too. I think they tended to hang around bookstalls and newsagents for quite some time, possibly because they weren't exactly hot sellers. I can't imagine who actually read them, because they were appallingly bad. Which is a shame. There was a chance in those days for a magazine like that, with the right contributions, actually getting somewhere. A missed opportunity.

[dem]

Debbie Cross's Down The Badger Hole (Wrigley Cross Books, 1995) arrived in post today with an accompanying note from the Fanthorpes, so thank you very much to Rev. Lionel & Patricia for providing so speedy a service! Contents list as follows.

Introductory Material
Lionel & Patricia Fanthorpe - Albatross Pie
David Langford - The Badger Game
Debbie Cross - Introduction

Excerpts
March Of The Robots
Short But Meaningful
Rodent Mutation
Is There a Thesaurus In The House?
Aliens From The Stars
Amazing Analogies and Startling Metaphors
Hygeine 101
Colourful Prose
Philisophically Speaking
Mental Olympics
Fanthorpe By Another Name
A Miscellany
Galaxy 666

R. Lionel Fanthorpe - Curse Of The Khan (Supernatural Stories #105, Badger, 1966)

Bibliography

"Helen Powell kept her head and began working away bravely at the gag. She was glad that she had washed her cardigan in soft, gentle soap flakes, in accordance with the instruction on its ticket. She would not have fancied chewing through wool that might have been flavoured with powerful detergent!"

Some of you will remember Kim Newman & Niel Gaimen's Ghastly Beyond Belief: The Science Fiction And Fantasy Book Of Quotations (Arrow, 1985), a compilation of 'worst' bits from a variety of pulp authors (many who happened to be R. Lionel Fanthorpe under one pseudonym or other) and a book i have no fondness for whatsoever. The excerpts which go to make up the bulk of Down The Badger Hole are likewise a celebration of the Reverend's early crimes versus English literature, the difference being that this time he is entirely complicit in the project and even directs the author toward some examples she may have missed. At 160 pages of reader-friendly type, Down The Badger Hole is far easier on the eye than Supernatural Stories ever was. Consequently i've already covered plenty of ground and am a wiser man for the experience! For example, despite the iconic cover illustration, it seems the creatures exposed to radiation in Rodent Mutation are not rats after all, but - "Police! Help! We're being attacked! We're being attacked by giant beavers!" Not just any old giant beavers, either, but giant beavers with highly developed powers of telepathy and telekinesis. Sev's favourite, the blow-by-blow account of a young woman brushing her teeth in 'John E. Muller's Dark Continuum, shows up in the chapter Hygiene 101, and we man-eating slime lovers have another title to hunt down, 'Trebor Thorpe's Lightening World from Science Fiction# 38 (1960) in which Kel and Tony have a long chat about the nature of the sticky, burning jelly that is eating into their skin before belatedly arriving at the conclusion, "We're being digested alive! We've got to get this stuff off!"