Frank Belknap Long



Frank Belknap Long (April 27, 1901 - January 3, 1994) was a prolific American writer of horror fiction, fantasy, science fiction, poetry, gothic romance, comic books, and non-fiction. Though his writing career spanned seven decades, he is best known for his horror and science fiction short stories, including early contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos. During his life, Long received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement (at the 1978 World Fantasy Convention), the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement (in 1987, from the Horror Writers Association), and the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award (1977).

Life
Frank Belknap Long was born in New York City in 1901, and grew up in the Harlem area of Manhattan. His father was a prosperous dentist and his mother was May Doty. The family resided at 823 West End Avenue in Manhattan. A lifelong resident of New York City, he was educated in the New York City public school system. As a boy he was fascinated by natural history, and wrote that he dreamed of running "away from home and explore the great rain forests of the Amazon." He developed his interest in the weird by reading the Oz books, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells. Though writing was to be his life's work, he once commented that as "important as writing is, I could have been completely happy if I had a secure position in a field that has always had a tremendous emotion and an imaginative appeal for me&mdash;that of natural history."

In his late teens, he was active in the United Amateur Press Association (UAPA) in which he won a prize from The Boy's World (around 1919) and thus discovered amateur journalism. His first published tale was "Dr Whitlock's Price (United Amateur, March 1920). Long's story "The Eye Above the Mantel" (1921) in UAPA caught the eye of H. P. Lovecraft, sparking a friendship and correspondence that would endure until Lovecraft's death in 1937.

Long attended New York University from 1920 to 1921, studying journalism but later transferred to Columbia, leaving without a degree. In 1921, he suffered a severe attack of appendicitis, leading to a ruptured appendix and peritonitis. He spent a month in New York's Roosevelt Hospital, where he came close to dying. Long's brush with death propelled him into a decision that he would leave college to pursue a freelance writing career.

In 1923, at the age of 22, he sold his first short story, "The Desert Lich", to Weird Tales magazine. Throughout the next four decades, Long was to be a frequent contributor to pulp magazines, including two of the most famous: Weird Tales (under editor Farnsworth Wright) and Astounding Science Fiction (under editor John W. Campbell). Long was an active freelance writer, also publishing many non-fiction articles. His first book, the scarce volume A Man from Genoa and Other Poems, was published in 1926. His second published book was also a volume of fantastic poetry - The Goblin Tower (1928).

In the late 1930's, Long turned his hand to science fiction, writing for Astounding Science Fiction. He also contributed horror stories to Unknown, later called Unknown Worlds. His later science fiction works include the story collection John Carstairs, Space Detective (1949), and the novels Space Station 1 (1957), Mars is My desination (1962) and It Was the Day of the Robot (1963).

In pulps such as Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories during the 1940s, Long sometimes wrote using the pseudonym 'Leslie Northern.' What Long characterized as a "minor disability" kept him out of World War II and writing full time during the early 1940s.

He also wrote comic books in the 1940s, including horror stories for Adventures Into the Unknown (ACG), and scripts for Planet Comics, Superman, Congo Bill, DC's Golden Age Green Lantern, and the Fawcett Comics Captain Marvel.

Ever versatile as a writer, Long changed with the times. In the 1950s he was uncredited associate editor on The Saint Mystery Magazine and Fantastic Universe. He was associate editor on Satellite Science Fiction, 1959; on Short Stories, 1959-60; and on Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine until 1966.

After the decline of the pulps, he moved into writing science fiction and gothic romance novels (and even a Man from UNCLE story The Electronic Frankenstein Affair, which appeared under the pen name Robert Hart Davis in the Man from UNCLE Magazine).

"The Horror from the Hills" (1963), one of Long's best known-works, was based on a dream related to him by H.P. Lovecraft

Long wrote nine modern Gothic novels, starting with So Dark a Heritage in 1966 (published under his own name), eight of which were published as by 'Lyda Belknap Long' (a combination of his wife (Lyda Arco Long)'s first name and his middle name and surname. All were entirely his own work and were workmanlike products intended to support him and his wife rather than to be of high literary quality. According to Elsa J. Radcliffe, Crucible of Evil (1974) is "a very clumsy tale both in plot and writing style. Much of the suspense seems contrived and the plot tediously simplistic."

Long also published collections of his short stories (such as The Hounds of Tindalos and Night Fear) and poetry (including In Mayan Splendor), a biography of H. P. Lovecraft, Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Nightside, and his own Autobiographical Memoir (Necronomicon Press, 1986). Illumination on his own life and work is also provided by his introduction to The Early Long (1975), a collection of his best early stories.

He married Lyda Arco,a Russian descended from a line of actors in the Yiddish theatre who ran a salon in Chelsea, NY, in 1960. They stayed together till Long's death in 1994, but had no children. Long described himself as an "agnostic." Referring to Lovecraft, Long wrote that he "always shared HPL's skepticism . . . concerning the entire range of alleged supernatural occurrences and what is commonly defined as 'the occult.'"

Long died on January 3, 1994 at the age of 92, survived by his wife, Lyda. Due to his poverty, he was interred in a potter's field for indigents. Friends and colleagues, on learning of this indignity, had his remains moved and reinterred at New York City's Woodlawn Cemetery, in a family plot near that of Lovecraft's grandparents. Despite a seven-decade career as a writer, he had died impoverished after many years living in the Chelsea District of Manhattan; Long's fans contributed over $3000 to have his name engraved upon the tombstone of his family plot. Lyda died shortly after Frank and her ashes were scattered on his grave.

Writing
Frank Belknap Long left behind a body of work that included twenty-nine novels, 150 short stories, eight collections of short stories, three poetry collections, and numerous freelance magazine articles and comic book scripts. Author Ray Bradbury summed up Long's career: "Frank Belknap Long has lived through a major part of science fiction history in the U.S., has known most of the writers personally, or has corresponded with them, and has, with his own writing, helped shape the field when most of us were still in our early teens." The Genius of Mr. Long is a spontaneous and self-expressive one. &mdash;H.P. Lovecraft H.P. Lovecraft was a close friend and mentor to Frank Belknap Long, with whom he came in contact in 1920 when Long was but nineteen. Lovecraft found Long a stimulating correspondent especially in regard to his aesthetic tastes, focussing on the Italian Renaissance and French literature. Lovecraft published some of Long's early work in his Conservative (e.g. Felis: A prose Poem [July 1923], about Long's pet cat) and paid tribute to Long in a flattering article, "The Work of Frank Belknap Long, Jun.," published anonymously in the United Amateur (May 1924) but clearly by Lovecraft. They first met when Lovecraft visited New York in April 1922.

They saw each other with great frequency (especially during Lovecraft's Brooklyn residence in New York City from 1924 to 1926), at which time they were the chief members of the Kalem Club and wrote to each other often. Long's family apartment was always Lovecraft's residence and headquarters during his periodic trips from Providence to New York. Long writes that he and Lovecraft exchanged "more than a thousand letters, not a few running to more than eighty handwritten pages" before Lovecraft's death in 1937. Some of their correspondence has been reprinted in Arkham House's Selected Letters series, collecting the voluminous correspondence of Lovecraft and his friends. Long's Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Night Side was extensively edited by James Turner.

During the 1930s, Long and Lovecraft were both members of the Kalem Club (named for the initials of the surnames of original members—K, L, or M). Long was also part of the loosely associated "Lovecraft Circle" of fantasy writers (along with Robert Bloch, August Derleth, Robert E. Howard, Henry Kuttner, Clark Ashton Smith, C. M. Eddy, Jr., and Donald Wandrei) who corresponded regularly with each other and influenced and critiqued each other's works.

Long wrote a brief preface to the stillborn edition of Lovecraft's The Shunned House (1928). Lovecraft, in turn, ghostwrote for Long the preface to Mrs William B. Symmes' Old World Footprints (W. Paul Cook/The Recluse Press, 1928), a slim poetry collection by Long's aunt. Long's short novel The Horror from the Hills (Weird Tales, Jan and Feb-March 1931; published in book from 1963) incorporates verbatim a letter by Lovecraft recounting his great 'Roman dream' of Hallow'een 1927. Long teamed with Lovecraft in a revision service with Lovecraft in 1928. Long's parents frequently took Lovecraft on various motor trips between 1929 and 1930, and Lovecraft visited Long at Christmas between 1932 and 1935 inclusive. Lovecraft helped set type for Long's second poetry collection, The Goblin Tower (1935), correcting some of Long's faulty metre in the process. Lovecraft's letters to Long after 1931 have all been lost, with the letters up to that date existing primarily in transcriptions prepared by Arkham House.

The Long/Lovecraft friendship was fictionalized in Peter Cannon's 1985 novel Pulptime: Being a Singular Adventure of Sherlock Holmes, Lovecraft, and the Kalem Club as if Narrated by Frank Belknap Long, Jr.. Long was a Guest of Honour at the Lovecraft Centennial Conference in Providence in 1990.

Long wrote a number of early Cthulhu Mythos stories. These included "The Hounds of Tindalos" (the first Mythos story written by anyone other than Lovecraft), The Horror from the Hills (which introduced the elephantine Great Old One Chaugnar Faugn to the Mythos), and "The Space-Eaters" (featuring a fictionalized HPL as its main character). A later Mythos story, "Dark Awakening", appeared in New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. The story betrays the influence of Long's pseudonymous romantic fiction, and the final paragraph was added by the editor at Long's suggestion.

The Hounds of Tindalos are Long's most famous fictional creation. The Hounds were a pack of foul and incomprehensibly alien beasts "emerging from strange angles in dim recesses of non-Euclidean space before the dawn of time" (Long) to pursue travelers down the corridors of time. They could only enter our reality via angles, where they would mangle and exsanguinate their victims, leaving behind only a "peculiar bluish pus or ichor" (Long). The Hounds of Tindalos have been used or referenced by many later Mythos writers, including Ramsey Campbell, Lin Carter, and Brian Lumley. Long's Hounds of Tindalos have also inspired a number of metal and electronic music artists, such as Metallica, Epoch of Unlight, Edith Byron's Group, Beowulf, Fireaxe/Brian Voth, and Univers Zero, all of whom have recorded tracks based upon the story.

Recognition

 * First Fandom Hall of Fame award (1977).
 * World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement (at the 1978 4th World Fantasy Convention),
 * Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement (in 1987, from the Horror Writers Association)

Poetry

 * A Man from Genoa (1926) (Athol, MA: W. Paul Cook)
 * The Goblin Tower (Cassia FL: Dragon-Fly Press, 1935; New Collectors Group, 1945. Note: Due to the somewhat misleading publisher's introduction to the 1945 edition, it is often mis-catalogued as a reprint of the 1935 Dragon-Fly Press edition. In fact, the selection of poems differs; the New Collectors Group edition drops four, "When Chaugner Wakes," "Exotic Quest," "West Indies" and "Martial: The Vacationist" and adds three, "The Prophet," "Prediction" and "Walt Whitman."
 * On Reading Arthur Machen (Pengrove: Dog and Duck Press, 1949)
 * The Marriage of Sir John de Mandeville (Roy A. Squires, 1976)
 * When Chaugnar Wakes (Fantome Press, 1978)
 * In Mayan Splendor (Arkham House, 1977; includes contents of A Man from Genoa and The Goblin Tower plus additional poems)
 * The Darkling Tide: Previously Uncollected Poetry (Tsathoggua Press, 1995; edited by Perry M. Grayson)

Novels

 * Space Station 1 (1957)
 * Mission to a Distant Star (Satellite SF magazine serial in 5 parts)
 * Woman from Another Planet (1960)
 * The Horror Expert (1961)
 * The Mating Center (Chariot Books,1961)
 * Mars is My Destination (1962)
 * The Horror from the Hills (1963); expanded edition as Odd Science Fiction (1964)
 * Three Steps Spaceward (1963)
 * It Was the Day of the Robot (1963)
 * The Martian Visitors (1964)
 * Mission to a Star (1964)
 * Lest Earth Be Conquered (1966); reissue as The Androids, 1969
 * This Strange Tomorrow (1966)
 * So Dark a Heritage (Lancer Books,1966)
 * Journey Into Darkness (1967)
 * ...And Others Shall Be Born (1968) (bound with The Thief of Thoth by Lin Carter)
 * The Three Faces of Time (1969)
 * To the Dark Tower (Lancer Books, 1969) (as by Lyda Belknap Long)
 * Monster From Out of Time (1970)
 * Survival World (1971)
 * The Witch Tree (Lancer Books, 1971) (as by Lyda Belknap Long)
 * Fire of the Witches (Popular Library, 1971) (as by Lyda Belknap Long)
 * The Shape of Fear (Beagle Books, July 1971) (as by Lyda Belknap Long)
 * The Night of the Wolf (1972)
 * House of the Deadly Nightshade (Beagle Books, March 1972) (as by Lyda Belknap Long)
 * Legacy of Evil (Beagle Books, June 1973) (as by Lyda Belknap Long)
 * Crucible of Evil (Avon, 1974)(as by Lyda Belknap Long)
 * The Lemoyne Heritage (Zebra Books, 1977)(as by Lyda Belknap Long)
 * Rehearsal Night (1981)
 * Ghor Kin-Slayer (Long has one episode in this round-robin sequence; Necronomicon Press, 1997)

Story collections

 * The Hounds of Tindalos (1946)
 * John Carstairs: Space Detective (1949)
 * The Horror from the Hills (1963)
 * Odd Science Fiction (1963)
 * The Dark Beasts and Eight Other Stories from the Hounds of Tindalos (1964)
 * The Rim of the Unknown (1972)
 * The Early Long (1975)
 * Night Fear (1979)
 * Escape from Tomorrow: Three Previously Unreprinted Weird Tales (1995)
 * The Man Who Died Twice & Three Others (Wildside Press, 2009)

Plays
A Guest in the House (television play, 1950)

Memoirs

 * "Random Memories of H.P. Lovecraft" (Marginalia)
 * "H.P.L. in Red Hook" (in The Occult Lovecraft, ed. Anthony Raven, 1975)
 * Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Night Side (Arkham House, 1975). (Exhaustively revised by James Turner).
 * Autobiographical Memoir, Necronomicon Press, 1986.

Audio/video

 * Audio recording of author panel discussion from First World Fantasy Convention, Providence, 1975. Long's voice was preserved on a flexi-disc record of this speech issued with the fanzine Myrrdin Issue 3 (1976). The other side of the flexi-disc contains a recording of Robert Bloch's speech from the convention.