J.R. Fearn began his career as a science fiction writer in the American pulp magazines in 1933, when his first novel THE INTELLIGENCE GIGANTIC was serialised in AMAZING STORIES. The following year he sold a short story, “The Man Who Stopped the Dust” to ASTOUNDING STORIES, the first of many outstanding “thought variants” he was to contribute over the next several years.

By the early 1940s, Fearn had appeared in all of the leading magazines under his own name and numerous pseudonyms, creating a variety of plot-forms under different styles that ranged from universe-destroying thought variants to the intensely human stories. His most popular pen names were Thornton Ayre and Polton Cross. As Ayre he created the first female super-heroine, Violet Ray - “The Golden Amazon” - with four stories in FANTASTIC ADVENTURES (1939-43).

In 1944, Fearn completely revised his Amazon concept, upgrading his writing from the pulp level, and broke into the hardcover market in Britain with THE GOLDEN AMAZON. In the novel version, a baby girl is the unwitting subject of an idealistic scientist’s glandular experiments, his aim being to end world wars by creating a superwoman who would institute a benign scientific rule upon reaching maturity. But the apparently successful experiment has a flaw. With her supernatural strength and scientific gifts, the Amazon grows up with a hatred for men and a ruthless cruelty. The Amazon brings the world to its knees, elevating women to positions of power. She is planning to supersede men as a species when she is seen to suddenly collapse and die, her supernatural energy burning itself out.

THE GOLDEN AMAZON was reprinted in the Canadian magazine the TORONTO STAR WEEKLY in 1945, and proved so popular with the magazine’s predominantly female readership that Fearn was commissioned to bring the Amazon hack to life for a whole series of sequels. These were tremendously successful and appeared regularly in the STAR WEEKLY over the next 16 years. ending only with Fearn’s death. The novels were syndicated to several American newspapers, with the early novels appearing in both hardcover and paperback in the UK and Canada respectively.

Having found a more lucrative market, Fearn quit writing for the pulp magazines. He wrote detective novels as John Slate, beginning with BLACK MARIA, M.A. in 1944. The book was acknowledged as a classic of the “locked room murder” genre, and reviewers hailed ‘Slate” as a second Agatha Christie. Writing as Hugo Blayn. Fearn created a scientific detective. Dr. Carruthers, many of whose adventures blur into science fiction, notably WHAT HAPPENED TO HAMMOND? (1951) featuring a matter transmitter. Fearn also became a very successful and prolific writer of Westerns, of which his “Merridrew” series is particularly noted. In 1950, Fearn was commissioned to write a long series of science fiction paperbacks for the British publisher Scion Ltd, under the contractual pen name of “Vargo Statten.” The very first novel ANNIHILATION (1950) became a best-seller and launched a new craze for science fiction in Britain. The dramatic cover by artist Ron Turner immediately proclaimed the contents: the Earth wracked by a series of solar storms, causing the remnants of a doomed humanity to try and escape into space. For many people in post-war Britain, this was their first exposure to science fiction, and the combination of an exciting story and vivid artwork made a lasting impression.

The Statten series ran to some 52 hooks, and Fearn also wrote a further dozen similar titles for the same publisher as “Volsted Gridban.” These novels were reprinted all over Europe, particularly in France and Italy. In the 1970s and 1980s, such was Fearn’s posthumous popularity in ltaly, that his detective and western novels were also translated alongside his science fiction titles. In the UK, his name was kept alive by occasional anthology reprints of some of his classic pulp short stories, and Fearn’s biographer, Philip Harbottle, also issued a number of privately printed collectable chapbooks, some of which were posthumous first editions. More recently several westerns were reprinted (in large print paperback editions by F. A. Thorpe). which are still in print.

In the U.S.A.. a full-scale Fearn revival got underway in 1995, when Gryphon Books reprinted four sf novels from 1950 in uniform editions, illustrated by Ron Turner - the EMPEROR OF MARS series. These were successful, and led to the creation of the Gryphon SF Rediscovery Series, which had reached 25 titles (all of them first U.S. editions) by the beginning of 1999. and is still ongoing. The series includes some world first editions as well as reprints, and features works by E.C.Tubb, Jack Williamson, and Don Wilcox; about half of their titles have been by Fearn. His most recent new Gryphon title is THE SLITHERERS. In 1996 Gryphon began the systematic reprinting of the entire GOLDEN AMAZON series. Their forthcoming 1999 editions of TRIANGLE OF POWER (#9) and THE AMETHYST CITY (#10), and all subsequent titles in this 26 novel series will be world first editions of stories which have hitherto only appeared in magazine and newspaper form.

All copyright in the works of John Russell Fearn is vested in the Cosmos Literary Agency, to whom all enquiries for reprinting and foreign translations should be addressed. A limited number of chapbooks including THE INNER COSMOS, SURVIVOR OF MARS, FROM AFAR, CLIMATE INCORPORATED, and others, are still available from the Cosmos Literary Agency, at $5.00 each, post free.

Available
The Best of John Russell Fearn : Volume One, edited by Philip Harbottle
The Best of John Russell Fearn : Volume Two, edited by Philip Harbottle
Voice of the Conqueor