Venus on the Half-Shell

AFTERWORD MORE REAL THAN LIFE ITSELF: PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER’S FICTIONAL-AUTHOR PERIOD ^{BY CHRISTOPHER PAUL CAREY}

By one count, Philip José Farmer, a Grand Master of Science Fiction, has written and had published fifty-four novels and one hundred and twenty-nine novellas, novelettes, and short stories. Creatively, Farmer’s work is equally ambitious. In 1952, he authored the groundbreaking “The Lovers,” which at long last made it possible for science fiction to deal with sex in a mature manner. He is the creator of Riverworld, arguably one of the grandest experiments in science fiction literature. His World of Tiers series, which combines rip-roaring adventure with pocket universes full of mythic archetypes, is said to have inspired Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber series and is often cited as a favorite among Farmer’s fans. And in the early 1970s, he penned the authorized biographies of Tarzan and Doc Savage and inspired generations of creative mythographers to explore and expand upon his Wold Newton mythos. Yet among all of these shining minarets of his opus, Farmer has stated that he has never had so much fun in all his life as when he wrote Venus on the Half-Shell.

I believe it is no coincidence that this novel belongs to what Farmer has labeled his “fictional-author” series. A fictional-author story is, as defined by Farmer, “a tale supposedly written by an author who is a character in fiction.” Many of Farmer’s readers are aware that Venus on the Half-Shell originally appeared in print as if authored by Kurt Vonnegut’s character Kilgore Trout. However, most are not aware that Farmer, in league with several of his writer peers and at least one major magazine editor, masterminded an expansive hoax on the science fiction readership that spanned a good portion of the 1970s.

As with Farmer’s usual modus operandi, the plan was ambitious. Beginning in about 1973-74, in true postmodern reflexivity, a whole team of writers acting under Farmer’s direction were to begin submitting fictional-author tales to the short fiction markets. Farmer’s files, to which the author kindly gave me access, reveal that his plan of attack was executed with focus, precision, and a great deal of forethought.

The authors queried to write the fictional-author stories were instructed that “the real author is to be nowhere mentioned; it’s all done straight-facedly.” Each story would be accompanied by a short biographical preface giving the impression that the fictional author was indeed a living person. However, all copyrights were to be honored; those who chose to write stories “by” the characters of other authors would need to contact those creators for permission. Sometimes Farmer himself wrote the creator and, having received permission, then handed over the fictional-author story to his fellow conspirator to complete. Authors were encouraged to submit their stories to whatever market they pleased, although the majority were to appear in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, whose editor, Edward L. Ferman, was in on the joke. Once enough of the stories had been published in various markets, Farmer himself planned to take on the role of editor and collect them all in a fictional-author anthology.

Writing even before the fallout with Kurt Vonnegut (which is described in great detail by Farmer in his “Why and How I Became Kilgore Trout”), Farmer placed great emphasis on literary ethics during the execution of his hoax. Even authors whose characters had lapsed into the public domain—and whom Farmer and his cohorts could have used legally without payment of royalties—were offered 50% of any monies made by the publication of a fictional-author story (a stipulation that appears to have been waived by all of those who granted Farmer permission). Provisions were made for the original authors and their agents to receive copies of the stories upon publication. And always, Farmer made clear that his request to write a story under the name of an author’s character was his intimate tribute to said author.

While the vast majority of those queried for the use of their characters granted permission, a couple did not. Farmer wrote respectful, though clearly disappointed, replies to these authors, explaining again that he only meant to honor them with the stories, but that in deference to them he would withdraw his offers and pursue them no further. Most authors, however, reacted much differently and became infected by the passion that seemed to ooze from Farmer when he proposed to them his audacious hoax. Nero Wolfe author Rex Stout, besides granting permission to write the story “The Volcano” under the name of his character Paul Chapin, was tickled enough to suggest that Farmer should also author stories by Anna Karenina and Don Quixote. Farmer’s correspondence indicates that he planned on doing just that. P. G. Wodehouse, author of the Jeeves and Blandings Castle stories, also tried to come up with alternative fictional-authors among his own works that could be used, and it is telling of the excitement surrounding Farmer’s fictional-author conceit that multiple authors queried for permission enthusiastically consented by exclaiming the phrase “Of course” within the first paragraph of their replies. Occasionally, permissions went in the other direction. J. T. Edson, the author of many Westerns, sought permission to use Farmer’s Wold Newton genealogy as the basis for his own characters’ ancestry in his Bunduki series, a request Farmer happily approved; and while the Wold Newton genealogy was not exclusively related to the proposed fictional-author series, it remains clear that Farmer was pleased to interweave the two concepts in several instances.

As concerns those peers enlisted to write the fictional-author stories under Farmer’s coordination, the list included (among others) Arthur Jean Cox, Philip K. Dick, Leslie Fiedler, Ron Goulart, and Gene Wolfe. Unfortunately, not all of these writers succeeded in completing their stories or having them published, though there were some notable exceptions. At Farmer’s suggestion, Arthur Jean Cox tackled one of his own creations, writing “Writers of the Purple Page” by John Thames Rokesmith, published in the May 1977 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Rokesmith was a character in Cox’s novella “Straight Shooters Always Win” (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Edward L. Ferman, May 1974). And Gene Wolfe—whose humorous “Tarzan of the Grapes” appears in Farmer’s survey of feral humans in literature, Mother Was A Lovely Beast—wrote “‘Our Neighbour’ by David Copperfield,” first published in the anthology Rooms of Paradise (ed. Lee Harding, Quartet Books, 1978), albeit under Wolfe’s own name. But the fun did not end there. Author Howard Waldrop, although not enlisted by Farmer, sought out the author of Venus on the Half-Shell and joined in with the other conspirators, publishing “The Adventure of the Grinder’s Whistle” as by Sir Edward Malone in the semipro fanzine Chacal #2 (eds. Arnie Fenner and Pat Cadigan, Spring 1977; reprinted in the collection Night of the Cooters, Ace Books, 1993, wherein Waldrop, in his introduction to the story, says, “Like with most things from the Seventies, this was Philip José Farmer’s fault”). Harlan Ellison’s “The New York Review of Bird” (Weird Heroes, Volume Two, ed. Byron Preiss, Pyramid Books, 1975), while not technically a fictional-author story, was tied in with Farmer’s project, and served to turn Ellison’s nom de plume, Cordwainer Bird, into a full-fledged fictional author. Bird went on to appear in Farmer’s fictional-author tale “The Doge Whose Barque Was Worse Than His Bight” as by Jonathan Swift Somers III (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Edward L. Ferman, November 1976; reprinted in Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, Titan Books, 2013). Farmer himself used the Cordwainer Bird pseudonym for his story “The Impotency of Bad Karma” (Popular Culture, ed. Brad Lang, First Preview Edition, June 1977), which he later revised and had published, using his own name this time, under the title “The Last Rise of Nick Adams” (Chrysalis, Volume Two, ed. Roy Torgeson, Zebra Books, 1978), and integrated Bird into his Wold Newton genealogy in Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (Doubleday, 1973; reprinted in a deluxe hardcover edition by Meteor House, 2013, and in paperback and ebook editions by Altus Press, 2013).

The failures—those fictional-author stories imagined but never written—are almost as compelling as the successes. Ed Ferman suggested that Farmer have Ron Goulart write a story as by his character José Silvera, and while Farmer did query him, there is no immediate evidence that Goulart pursued the matter. Farmer himself sought and was granted permission to write a story under the name Gustave von Aschenbach, the novelist from Thomas Mann’s A Death in Venice; however, apparently overwhelmed by the large number of fictional-author stories he planned to write on his own, Farmer turned the idea over to writer and literary critic Leslie Fiedler. This story, too, seems to have fallen by the wayside; if it was ever written, it never saw print.

One of the first authors approached to join in the conspiracy was Philip K. Dick. Farmer trusted Dick with the secret of who had written Venus on the Half-Shell, and in the process discussed Dick writing a fictional-author tale for Ferman’s magazine. Dick decided this would be a short story entitled “A Man For No Countries” by Hawthorne Abdensen, the writer-character from his classic novel of alternate history, The Man in the High Castle. No fictional alter ego could have suited Dick better for the undertaking, as Abdensen himself was the fictional author of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, a novel that implied the existence of multiple realities. The Chinese-box scenario must have pleased Dick, who worked often with such themes; but it must also have pleased Farmer, who years later went on to write the similarly head-twisting Red Orc’s Rage, a novel wherein Farmer’s own World of Tiers series serves as the basis for a method of psychiatric therapy to treat troubled adolescents, and in which Farmer himself lurks just off screen as a character. Although “A Man For No Countries” never seems to have been written, Farmer’s role in proposing that Dick pen a fictional-author story is important, for that unwritten story appears to have been the idea-kernel that led Dick to write the posthumously published novel Radio Free Albemuth, which itself was an aborted draft of his critically acclaimed novel VALIS. One must also ponder the timing of Farmer’s proposal, in the spring of 1974, a period when Dick claims to have had a number of mystical experiences, including one in which his mind was supposedly invaded by a foreign consciousness.

While Farmer was by far the most industrious and successful of the group in executing the fictional-author ruse, many of his own plans had to be abandoned because of time constraints placed upon him by other writing obligations. Farmer’s correspondence, notes, and interviews from the fictional-author period reveal a long and fascinating list of stories never written and those started but not completed:

“The Gargoyle” as by Edgar Henquist Gordon. (Fictional title and author from Robert Bloch’s short story “The Dark Demon”; permission for use granted by Robert Bloch.)

“The Feaster from the Stars” as by Robert Blake. (This unfinished Cthulhu Mythos pastiche derives from a title and fictional author in H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Haunter of the Dark.” Lovecraft’s story is a sequel to Robert Bloch’s “The Shambler from the Stars,” wherein Bloch kills off a character based on H. P. Lovecraft. Robert Blake, of course, is an analog for Robert Bloch, and is in turn killed off in Lovecraft’s tale. A good friend of Farmer’s, Bloch enthusiastically gave his blessing to this unfinished story about Haji Abdu al-Yazdi, a pseudonym belonging to one of Farmer’s real-life heroes, who was also the main protagonist of the Riverworld series: Sir Richard Francis Burton. Robert Blake is also mentioned in Farmer’s Cthulhu Mythos tale “The Freshmen,” which was recently reprinted in the anthology Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, Titan Books, 2013.)

“UFO Versus CBS” as by Susan DeWitt. (From Richard Brautigan’s The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966.)

Untitled “Smoke Bellew” stories. (Continuation of the series by Jack London. Although the stories were in the public domain, permission was refused by London’s literary executor and the stories went unwritten.)

Untitled story as by Martin Eden. (From Jack London’s Martin Eden; no record yet found of a permission query.)

Untitled story as by Edward P. Malone. (The intrepid reporter from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. As mentioned above, this fictional author was turned over to Howard Waldrop.)

Untitled story as by Gerald Musgrave. (From James Branch Cabell’s Something About Eve. Interestingly, Cabell used anagrams prominently in his work, as Farmer does in Venus on the Half-Shell.)

Untitled story as by Kenneth Robeson. (Proposed second story of The Grant-Robeson Papers; the first was Farmer’s “The Savage Shadow” as by Maxwell Grant.)

The Son of Jimmy Valentine as by Kilgore Trout. (Permission denied by Kurt Vonnegut after the fallout from Venus on the Half-Shell.)

“The Adventure of the Wand of Death” as by Felix Clovelly. (“Felix Clovelly” is a pen name of Wodehouse’s thriller novelist Ashe Marston from Something New. Permission granted by Wodehouse.)

But however many ideas Farmer abandoned, his list of completed fictional-author tales is equally impressive. These tales are sly, tongue-in-cheek, sometimes shocking, and more often than not uproariously funny. The following list is a chronological bibliography of Farmer’s published fictional-author stories:

The Adventure of the Peerless Peer as by John H. Watson, M.D. (Aspen Press, 1974; reprinted as The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Peerless Peer, Titan Books, 2011. Dr. Watson, of course, is from the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.)

Venus on the Half-Shell as by Kilgore Trout. (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Edward L. Ferman, December 1974-January 1975; reprinted in book form, Dell, 1975, and Titan Books, 2013. Kilgore Trout is the wildly imaginative, though sad-sack, science fiction author from the works of Kurt Vonnegut.)

“A Scarletin Study” as by Jonathan Swift Somers III. (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Edward L. Ferman, March 1975; reprinted in Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, Titan Books, 2013. Jonathan Swift Somers III appears as a fictional author in Venus on the Half-Shell, and is also the subject of Farmer’s biographical essay “Jonathan Swift Somers III: Cosmic Traveller in a Wheelchair.”)

“The Problem of the Sore Bridge—Among Others” as by Harry Manders. (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Edward L. Ferman, September 1975; reprinted in Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, Titan Books, 2013. Harry “Bunny” Manders is a fictional author from the Raffles stories of E. W. Hornung.)

“The Volcano” as by Paul Chapin. (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Edward L. Ferman, February 1976. Paul Chapin appears in Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novel The League of Frightened Men.)

“Osiris on Crutches” as by Philip José Farmer and Leo Queequeg Tincrowdor. (New Dimensions 6, ed. Robert Silverberg, Harper & Row, 1976. Farmer wrote of Leo Queequeg Tincrowdor in his novel Stations of the Nightmare and short story “Fundamental Issue.”)

“The Doge Whose Barque Was Worse Than His Bight” as by Jonathan Swift Somers III. (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Edward L. Ferman, November 1976; reprinted in Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, Titan Books, 2013. See the entry above for “A Scarletin Study.”)

“The Impotency of Bad Karma” as by Cordwainer Bird. (Popular Culture, First Preview Edition, ed. Brad Lang, June 1977; revised version published in Chrysalis, Volume Two, ed. Roy Torgeson, Zebra Books, 1978 as “The Last Rise of Nick Adams,” now under Farmer’s own name. Cordwainer Bird appears as a character in Harlan Ellison’s short story “The New York Review of Bird” and in Farmer’s “The Doge Whose Barque Was Worse Than His Bight.”)

“Savage Shadow” as by Maxwell Grant. (Weird Heroes, Volume Eight, ed. Byron Preiss, Jove/HBJ Books, November 1977. Maxwell Grant was the house pen name used by the authors of The Shadow pulp magazine and paperback stories.)

“It’s the Queen of Darkness, Pal” as by Rod Keen. (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Edward L. Ferman, August 1978; revised version published in Riverworld and Other Stories, Berkley Books, 1979 as “The Phantom of the Sewers.” Rod Keen is a fictional author from Richard Brautigan’s The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966.)

“Who Stole Stonehenge?” as by Jonathan Swift Somers III. (Farmerphile: The Magazine of Philip José Farmer, no. 2, eds. Christopher Paul Carey and Paul Spiteri, October 2005. Although this one-page fragment of an unfinished Ralph von Wau Wau story was published under Farmer’s name, the original manuscript is attributed to Jonathan Swift Somers III; see the entry above for “A Scarletin Study.”)

Farmer has cited Paul Radin’s The Trickster, a book about the role of the mischievous archetype recurrent in mythology and folklore, as one of his influences; and among the stories at hand it is easy to see why. By assuming the role of a fictional author, Farmer dons a shamanic mask and enters the sublime creative world where fictional characters take on a life more real than our own.

A long-held theory goes that Farmer unconsciously hatched his fictional-author series, as well as penned his many pastiches, in an attempt to get over a period of writer’s block which had descended upon him during the early to mid-1970s. I do not doubt it; although, if true, I—doubtless along with all of Farmer’s readers—am grateful that his muse found such a scintillating, creative means to overcome its obstacle.

But there is another possibility, more fun to contemplate and more in tune with the spirit of the fictional-author concept: Perhaps Farmer’s muse did not merely find a clever mechanism to jumpstart itself. What if the fictional-author period was not a hoax after all, but instead Farmer, donning his shamanic mask, did indeed glimpse into another universe? One in which William S. Burroughs wrote Tarzan of the Apes, and John H. Watson hobnobbed at the same gentlemen’s club as A. J. Raffles and Edward Malone. Where Kurt Vonnegut may have asked Farmer’s Riverworld counterpart, Peter Jairus Frigate, for permission to write a World of Tiers novel. A universe in which you and I are merely fictional characters in the works of a Grand Master of Science Fiction.

Yes, paging through this new edition of Venus on the Half-Shell, I think I too am getting a glimpse through the doors of perception.

Thank you, Philip José Farmer, for opening them.

Christopher Paul Carey is the coauthor with Philip José Farmer of The Song of Kwasin, and the author of Exiles of Kho, a prelude to the Khokarsa series. His short fiction may be found in such anthologies as The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 1: Protean Dimensions, The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 2: Of Dust and Soul, Tales of the Shadowmen: The Vampires of Paris, Tales of the Shadowmen: Grand Guignol, and The Avenger: The Justice, Inc. Files. He is an editor with Paizo Publishing on the award-winning Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, and the editor of three collections of Farmer’s fiction. Visit him online at www.cpcarey.com.