Fri 24 May 2019
Pulp SF Stories I’m Reading: JOHN W. JAKES “Half Past Fear.”
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Science Fiction & Fantasy , Stories I'm Reading[8] Comments
LOU SAHADI, Editor – An Argosy Special: Science Fiction. One-shot reprint magazine. Popular Publications, 1977.
#4. JOHN W. JAKES “Half Past Fear.” Short story. First appeared in Super Science Stories, August 1951. Otherwise never reprinted.
Before John Jakes hit it rich with his Kent Family Chronicles, he was generally regarded as an all-around hack, and rightly so. He wrote a couple dozen sci-fi novels, maybe a dozen more mystery and spy novels, of which his PI Johnny Havoc books may be the best remembered today, and even a half dozen “Man from UNCLE” stories for the magazine of the same name in the mid-60s.
Of his fantasy and science fiction, his Brak the Barbarian pastiches of Robert E. Howard’s Conan tales are collectable now; the rest are safely forgotten. And the same can be said of “Half Past Fear,” his third to be published short story. In it a family of three takes in a strange traveler as a boarder, only to discover that he came from the past and that he is being pursued.
Time travel tales are almost always fun to read — they make up one of my favorite subgenres in all SF — but this one is clunky and confusing, with one of the lead characters, unable to explain how things turn out, simply shrugs and calls upon the unexplainable “paradoxes of time travel” to bail out both the author and the story, and not at all succeding.
One might be forgiven in thinking that this story was chosen for Jakes’ name only, to help sell the magazine, but if you take a look at the image at the upper left, you’ll see that none of the authors are mentioned, only the titles of the stories. A strange marketing device, indeed.
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Previously from this Lou Sahadi anthology: LEIGH BRACKETT “Child of the Green Light.”
May 24th, 2019 at 11:49 pm
It would seem we can all safely skip this one.
When I was a kid I read a fair amount of S&S, but could never get into the Brak stories. On the other hand, his Mention My Name In Atlantis provided the younger me with a modest amount of amusement.
Jakes is pushing 90, and apparently hasn’t had any new books out in some time.
May 25th, 2019 at 3:04 pm
ATLANTIS is not one that I’ve read, but I know I have a copy. I probably bought a copy, straight off the spinner rack at the drugstore two blocks down. When it shows up again, I’ll give it a try.
May 25th, 2019 at 3:50 pm
I read his Brak stories at the time as well as some others. I was quite the ecumenal reader in my youth. When I saw how popular his Kent Family Chronicles were I couldn’t not understand it. Everything of his I had read up to then had been dull and hackish. I’ve never read any of the Kent chronicles; I doubt he got better. I suspect that heavily promoted instant-history novels don’t require real writing talent.
May 25th, 2019 at 5:18 pm
I’ve always figured that Jakes was simply n the right place at the right time. The Kent books started coming out in the mid-70s in conjunction with the country’s Bicentennial celebration. Jakes was picked by book packager Lyle Kenyon Engel to write them, perhaps because of his (Jakes’) historical fiction, mostly written as by Jay Scotland.
I don’t think his prose got any better, but between good researching skills, or so I assume, and the ability to wrote stories that kept readers reading, the books sold millions of copies.
But as you say, Brian, it took SF fans totally by surprise. Maybe the phrase “shock and awe” applies.
May 26th, 2019 at 8:47 pm
Jakes wrote one well regarded space opera entry I recall, and won some fans with the ATLANTIS book, but his Brak stories were pretty routine even for sword and sorcery.
The Johnny Havoc books, that seem to have been designed for Mickey Rooney, were fun enough, but nothing more.
May 26th, 2019 at 9:02 pm
I’ll have to read one, one of these days.
May 27th, 2019 at 5:38 pm
I think the space opera I’m thinking of is WHEN THE STAR KINGS DIE, but it’s been fifty years since I read it.
May 27th, 2019 at 7:38 pm
Thanks to the good people at Goodreads, gere’s the story line of WHEN THE STAR KINGS DIE:
“In the tenth age of the star kings of II Galaxy…in that far off day of a far off future when mankind has spread beyond the Home Cluster, there was a man called Dragonard. Dragonard the Beast some called this fallen warrior of the immortal Lords of the Exchange who ruled and owned a million worlds. But Dragonard the Last Hope thought others when the terrible rumor spread that the star kings were finally dying.
“Dragonard did not know what to believe until he found himself torn from his prison, turned loose on a strange planet as a human weapon to be plunged into the heart of a cosmic mystery.
“But whose weapon was he? And what was his real mission? And above all how could he free himself to act for the real good of the people?”
Sounds like good old-fashioned space opera to me.