Lionel Fanthorpe & 'Supernatural Stories'

[kooshmeister]

As far as I know, no, it actually wasn't one of Fanthorpe's pseudonyms.

[helrunar]

Rev. Lionel--what a hoot. I felt the need to revisit this thread today just for some laughs.

cheers, Hel

[Dr Strange]

From Thog's Masterclass (a collection of "differently good" prose, mainly from SF and fantasy) -

R.L. Fanthorpe M.B.I.S., Space-Borne (a Badger Book), 1959

"The crowd had to be seen to be believed. There are crowds and crowds, but this was the crowd to end all crowds. Never, perhaps, ever before in the whole of human history had there been such a massive congregation. Such a teeming of humanity, as there was gathered round a wide expanse of concrete and there in the centre, like some strange steel deity, the object of their semi-idolatrous adulation, stood the ship. It centred their thoughts, as the small sphere of wind and leather, centres the thoughts of the teeming masses at Wembley Cup Finals. As far as the eye could see in every direction, were men, women, and children. Their faces eager, upturned. Full of hope, expectancy."

To cut a longish chapter short, the spaceship presently takes off:

"And then it was over, the electric silence, the dynamic tension ended, in a cataclysmic eruption of power, which seemed all the greater for its majestic and solitary loneliness; the huge silver dart leapt up, probing with its rapier tip; against the blue vaulted curtain of the heavens, and then it was up. Like Wordsworth's Skylark it rose and rose, till it became an invisible sound, receding over the heads of watching humanity. The send-off was over. The adventurers were on their way. The Argosy had sailed: Ulysses and his band were setting off from Troy. There was no turning back. It was a moment of no return. The decision had been made. The button had been pressed. The gun had been fired. The arrow had left the bow, it could not be recalled. It was further from man's power to bring it back than it was possible to live again, even one second of yesterday."

Chapter 3 begins with a detailed description of the starry sky through which the ship is now travelling: this continues for a thrilling page and a half, and names some 44 stars, constellations, zodiacal signs, etc. The brain-destroying Fanthorpean coup comes when, having exhausted the northern heavens, the author treats us to details of how things would look if the ship were travelling the other way.

[helrunar]

So many choice details there--from the comical intrusion of Wembley Cup into the "majestic" scene, to the malapropism of Argosy (the title of a magazine, not the name of Jason's ship).

It must have been a vigorous morning under the blankies for old Lionel.

Good find!

H.

[helrunar]

From the "Thog-o-matic Random Selector":

The Author reports extreme difficulty in recording one novel's alleged immortal line for an audiobook: 'All the streets of the port were running with Arab seamen.'

That may not be Fanthorpe, but it seems likely.

H.

[Dr Strange]

Here's some I turned up with the Thog-o-Matic Random Selector -

'Still, it wasn't her mind that Martinez was admiring at the moment. Simply gazing at her was like being hit in the groin with a velvet hammer.' Walter Jon Williams, The Sundering, 2003.

'Dorman felt all of his muscles growing tense in preparation for an encounter that he could not hope to avoid if his voice carried less far than it would have done if he had been just a little nearer.' Frank Belknap Long, Monster From Out of Time, 1971.

'"Captain Vandermeer, if you will please initiate a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn of the Washington, we'll begin the long journey home."' Anne McCaffrey, The Tower and the Hive, 1999.

'Then, as Kinnison kissed his wife, half a million Lensed members were thrust upward in silent salute.' E.E. 'Doc' Smith, Second Stage Lensmen, 1953.

'His landlady came to the door, loosely wrapped in dressing-gown and shawl; her husband followed ejaculating.' H.G.Wells, The War of the Worlds, 1898.

[andydecker]

And as so often Doc Smith wins.

[dem]

Supernatural Stories #38 (Badger, Jan 1961)

H. L. Fox (Henry Hall?)

Trebor Thorpe - Black Marsh Mill
Bron Fane - The Loch Ness Terror
R. L. Fanthorpe - Whirlwind of Death
Leo Brett - The Carnival Horror
Pel Torro - The Face of Stone

Blurb:
Supernatural Stories are not for the nervous, not for dark nights and lonely places. They are a literary bridge into the unknown. Imagination's gateway to the mysterious realm of other worldly adventure, suspense and drama, that lies just beyond the veil. Have you ever faced one of those savage biting winds that try to hurl men from perilous heights? Have you sailed into the teeth of a vicious 90 m.p.h. gale and wondered whether there was some strange power behind the wind? An evil power? A dark power? R. Lionel Fanthorpe, S.M.B.I.S., has written a brilliantly gripping cover story around this theme.

"The Carnival Horror" by Leo Brett, is the terrifying tale of a derelict fun fair, where strange semi-human things lurk in sinister shadows.

"Black Marsh Mill" is a wonderfully atmospheric yarn, woven around a strange Fen Country legend, the descriptions are so realistic... the reader can almost scent the weird, decaying odours of the ancient bog...

Bron Fane's contribution is startling in its sheer authenticity. This ingenious new twist on a well known legend is terrifying because it might be true.

Pel Torro's authoritative story of Easter Island is a masterpiece of suspense-filled action-packed narrative that holds the reader spellbound.
A superb collection of uneasy tales.

Leo Brett - The Carnival Horror: Weird faces peered evilly from behind the curtains. Ronnie James, grizzled gentleman of the road, dosses down for the night in the Kerways Pleasure Park, sixty years derelict since a fire burned down the Freak show. Ronnie soon grows aware the site is haunted by the spirits of the wretched, surgically deformed exhibits who perished in the flames. Luckily for him, psychic intuition alerts daredevil priest, Rev. Barney O'Flannagan, to his peril.

Pel Torro - The Face of Stone: The ancient statues on mysterious Easter Island were an archaeologist's dream — or a madman's nightmare. Shipwrecked, adrift on a raft in shark-infested South|Pacific waters, Professor Bernard Seaton time-slips back several centuries to help Peruvian refugees colonize the Isle de Pasua - Easter island - where they carve a stone statue in his honour. I'm not so sure this story bears any discernable relation to that described in the tag line. As if it matters.

Bron Fane - The Loch Ness Terror: Maybe it was a journalist’s dramatisation . . . but he had to be sure. Val Stearman, world's number one psychic phenomena reporter, missing, presumed drowned - or worse - in the dark depths of the Loch, his last radio report a confirmed sighting of a plesiosaur. "He imagined being slowly mutilated by the monster before it ate him. It wasn't a pleasant thought."

See also The Loch Ness Monster should you wish.

[helrunar]

"The reader can almost scent the weird, decaying odours of the ancient bog..."  Sounds like a job for Dettol. Eradicates even the toughest stains in your lav.

I checked ISFDB which is a very handy list of all the good Rev's numerous pseudonyms and as I had surmised, he wrote the entire issue. Impressive!

It all sounds like good clean fun with a soupcon of ancient fenland mildew.

Hel.

[dem]

R. L. Fanthorpe - "Whirlwind of Death": It roared out of the night like a tornado from Hell!" Horror story, written to compliment Fox's what-the-hell cover illustration. Abdul Raschid, desert ranger, white slaver, sadist, coward, the most feared man in Africa, etc., attacks a caravan, shooting dead the guards, abducting a Princess of Kor and handmaidens, and hacking down an Arab merchant - "Croak in the dust, old frog!" - to steal a jewelled ring from his finger. With his dying gasp, the Arab warns that the ring passed to him from a great line of Magi, that whoever wears it without permission is cursed. So it proves when the Djinn raises the soulless corpse of a despised lecher, Yurong the Accursed, and the ghosts of his every victim, to drive him relentlessly onward through a magically raised a sandstorm until he begs for death's release. Reader couldn't complain of being short-changed on this occasion. Outrageous padding, a tense (!) game of enforced Russian roulette, a desert zombie and the Rubaiyat.

[sadako]

I must have thumbed past hundreds of Badger books through the years (mostly avoided because of the cheap cover art) but it's taken me till now to take any of them half seriously, mainly because of one Guy N Smith, who in his 1996 tome, Writing Horror Fiction, recommends THREE Fanthorpe stories in his opening chapter on the history of the genre. For context, he only recommends ONE story from Stephen King, Shirley Jackson and (ahem) Edgar Allan Poe.

Were they friends? Was he paid to say this?

I mean, it's already rich that Guy N Smith has been invited to write a writers' guide.



The three Fanthorpe stories Guy N Smith particularly recommends are...

Softly by Moonlight (Bron Fane)

The Crawling Fiend (Bron Fane)

The Attic (Deutero Spartacus)



But seriously folks, are there any of the Reverend's supernatural stories that you would recommend?

[helrunar]

That's a hoot, Sadako! I'd never heard of Fanthorpe or any of his numerous aliases until I found my way through the hidden panel concealed in the back of the old mausoleum and entered the cobwebbed, shadowy catacombs of the Vault of EEEE-vil. I did read a couple of Fanthorpe stories on some website that was helpfully linked in one of the Fanthorpe threads (perhaps this one, but I can't recall). The stories were derivative, rambling, and the writing the sort I would describe as "workmanlike."

I have yet to read any of Guy N. Smith's confections--I have to say the reviews here, while entertaining in their own right, don't really inspire me to look for the books on various used tome sites online. I don't think either Fanthorpe or Smith got much distro over here in glorious Yankland--if they got ANY distro at all, but maybe there was a tie-in publication for GNS here thanks to the Giant Abominable Crab film, lol.

Perhaps another resident can tell us about Fanthorpe's friendship with Smith?

Great scan of the cover of Werewolf by Moonlight--I might actually enjoy that one.

cheers, Hel.

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

On Goodreads people are often complaining how bad Guy N. Smith is, but they still go back to him. Lionel Fanthorpe is probably the ultimate hack. He is the final culmination of all those desperate Grub Street scribblers over the centuries; he didn't even type anymore, it was probably too slow for his stream of consciousness method, instead he spoke into a microphone and taped it, it was his poor wife who had to put it down on paper. Because of the nature of publishing now we won't see his like again. 

[David A. Riley]

Oct 21, 2023 13:34:00 GMT sadako said:

I must have thumbed past hundreds of Badger books through the years (mostly avoided because of the cheap cover art) but it's taken me till now to take any of them half seriously, mainly because of one Guy N Smith, who in his 1996 tome, Writing Horror Fiction, recommends THREE Fanthorpe stories in his opening chapter on the history of the genre. For context, he only recommends ONE story from Stephen King, Shirley Jackson and (ahem) Edgar Allan Poe.

Were they friends? Was he paid to say this?

I mean, it's already rich that Guy N Smith has been invited to write a writers' guide.



The three Fanthorpe stories Guy N Smith particularly recommends are...

Softly by Moonlight (Bron Fane)

The Crawling Fiend (Bron Fane)

The Attic (Deutero Spartacus)



But seriously folks, are there any of the Reverend's supernatural stories that you would recommend?

I readily admit to never having been able to finish any of Fanthorpe's stories. Admittedly I haven't tried to read that many, most of them back in the day when copies of that awful magazine Supernatural Stories was available to buy in newsagents.

[sadako]

Well, that's what I thought the general consensus was! Knowing how fast he and his wife used to write these still makes them of interest. But I'm floored that Smith called some of his stuff "exceptionally good novels" and that they're going for such high prices now.