Burks's novelette "The Invading Horde" was the cover story in the November 1927 Weird Tales.Burks's "The Place of the Pythons" was the cover story in the debut issue of Strange Tales in 1931.Burks's novella "The Far Detour" was cover-featured on the Winter 1942 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly.First edition, The Splendid Half-Caste.
Arthur Josephus Burks (September 13, 1898 – May 13, 1974) was an American Marine officer and fiction writer.
Life
Burks was born to a farming family in
Waterville, Washington. He married Blanche Fidelia Lane on March 23, 1918, in Sacramento, California, and was the father of four children: Phillip Charles, Wasle Carmen, Arline Mary, and Gladys Lura. He served with the
United States Marine Corps in
World War I, and began writing in 1920. After being stationed in the
Dominican Republic and inspired by the native
voodoo rituals he'd learned about from Haitian prisoners in a military jail, Burks began to write stories of the supernatural that he sold to the magazine Weird Tales in 1924.[1]
In late 1927, he resigned from the Marine Corps and began writing full-time. He became one of the "million-word-a-year" men in the
pulp magazines by virtue of his tremendous output. He wrote approximately 800 stories for pulp magazines.[2] He was known for being able to use any household object that someone would suggest to generate the plot of a story. His byline was commonplace on magazine covers. He wrote primarily in the genres of aviation, detective, adventure, science fiction, sports (primarily boxing), and weird menace. Two genres he was not to be found in were love and westerns. He wrote several series, including the Kid Friel boxing stories for the magazine Gangster Stories, and the Dorus Noel undercover-detective stories for All Detective Magazine, set in Manhattan's Chinatown.[3]
His productivity decreased during the late-1930s. He resumed active military duty as the U.S. joined
World War II and eventually retired with the rank of
lieutenant colonel. Burks relocated to
Paradise in
Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania, in 1948, where he continued to write until his death in 1974. Throughout the 1960s, he wrote many works on metaphysics and the paranormal. During his later years, he lectured on paranormal activities and gave psychic readings.
Grottos of Chinatown: The Dorus Noel Stories (2009) (Off-Trail Publications)
PULP TALES PRESENTS #14: THE CRIMSON BLIGHT and Other Stories (2009) Pulpville Press
The Osilians (2012) Pulpville Press
Earth, The Marauder (2012) Pulpville Press
Man-Ape: Two Tales from the Pulps (2012) Wildside Press
Cathedral of Horror and Other Stories: The Weird Tales of Arthur J. Burks: Volume #1 (2014) (
Ramble House)
Masters of the Weird Tale: Arthur J. Burks (2018) (
Centipede Press)
The Black Falcon (2021) Age of Aces
Masters of Horror, vol 4: Arthur J. Burks—Wizard of Weird Tales (2022) Armchair Fiction/Sinister Cinema.
Critical appraisal
E. F. Bleiler described Burks' novel The Great Mirror (1952) as "pretty bad". He stated of the collection Look Behind You (1954), "In terms of content and format this is one of the low points in American fan publishing." Bleiler described Burks's collection Black Medicine (1966) as "a weak collection. The Caribbean stories show racial bias to the point of grotesqueness, and most of the other stories are routine pulp fiction. [""Three Coffins""] has points of interest, and ["Bells of Oceana"] is worth reading for a certain baroque, exuberant overkill of horror."[5]
^John Locke. "Arthur J. Burks and the Triple Evolution," in The Thing's Incredible! The Secret Origins of Weird Tales (2018).
^Burks gained the nickname of the "speed-king," or like designations, after publication of Robert A. McLean's profile, “Arthur J. Burks—Speed-King of Fiction,” Writers’ Markets and Methods, August 1928.
^John Locke. "Arthur J. Burks and All Detective," introduction to Grottos of Chinatown: The Dorus Noel Stories (2009).
^Ashley, Michael }publisher=Liverpool University Press (2000). The History of the Science-fiction Magazine. p. 121.
ISBN0853238553.
^E. F. Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction (Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 1983), pp. 91–92.
Sources
Jones, Robert Kenneth (1975). The Shudder Pulps. Oregon: FAX Collectors Editions.
Locke, John (2004). Pulp Fictioneers: Adventures in the Storytelling Business. Adventure House.
ISBN978-1-886937-83-3.
Locke, John (2007). Pulpwood Days: Volume 1: Editors You Want to Know. Off-Trail Publications.
ISBN978-0-9786836-2-7.
Locke, John (2018). The Thing's Incredible! The Secret Origins of Weird Tales. Off-Trail Publications. pp. 181–195.
ISBN978-1-9350312-5-3.