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The Brian Lumley Companion

Tom Doherty Associates

John Wayne Meets the Pink Panther (aka Brian Lumley)

BY ROBERT WEINBERG

CONSIDER this writing exercise: Describe a unique individual, in a manner other than listing the usual facts and figures associated with his work or his career. Paint an honest word-picture of him as seen through your eyes. Do it in a way to inform and entertain an audience of writers and editors, people who are not easily impressed.

Sound challenging? Like most assignments, it depends entirely on the person in question. In the fantasy field, few individuals are both colorful and talented enough to make it easy. Brian Lumley leads that list. Let me tell you a little about him. Done strictly from a first-person viewpoint and colored somewhat by years of friendship.

First and foremost, there's Brian's appearance. Most authors just don't look tough. We are by and large a very plain lot. Decadent and Goth are terms used to describe a small enclave of our community, but a vast majority of us blend in with the crowds at the supermarket. Despite the hundreds of skulls we've crushed beneath our jeweled sandals, the scores of arms we've ripped from their sockets, the dozens of bellies we've sliced open with one slash of our scimitar, we do not fair well dealing with used car salesmen. With one notable exception: Brian Lumley.

Brian does more than walk the walk and talk the talk. When you shake his hand, all of the clichés from those old detective pulp magazines pop into your head. This guy's got the goods. There's no need for him to mention his military background. You sense it right away. Meeting Brian Lumley, you suddenly realize here's Harry Keogh and Titus Crow and a bunch of other Lumley heroes rolled into one. Brian's a walking advertisement for his books, he's the real McCoy, the genuine article. When he casually states he knows seventeen ways to kill you with the rolled-up newspaper you are holding in your hand, you believe him. Though Brian is always the perfect gentleman, there's that certain glint in his eye that informs you that if you're going to a book signing in Iran, this is the writer you want at your side.

Brian favors Western string ties — the kind with black straps and silver and turquoise slides. One possible explanation for this fondness is that they can easily double as a strangler's noose. However, the more probable reason is that they are the type of neckwear favored by John Wayne. And Brian Lumley is the world's greatest John Wayne fan.

Wonder what's the most memorable line spoken by Wayne in the movie version of True Grit? Can't recall the best fight scene in Wayne's many westerns? Need a reminder of the Duke's big break in Stagecoach? Ask Brian. But be prepared to be overwhelmed.

Not only does Brian Lumley know everything about Wayne's roles, his dialogue, and his characters, but he can imitate the Duke's voice with the skill of a trained impersonator. Brian does his impression with such verve and good humor that you'd swear he's John Wayne's long-lost brother who was raised in England. Which would probably be worth investigating if it wasn't for his other favorites.

For Brian isn't just a John Wayne fan. His tastes in films are broad and varied. He has an astonishing memory for film history and dialogue. And what he likes, he can mimic with astonishing skill. Brian does a great Humphrey Bogart. In fact, he does pretty good impressions of all of the male leads in Casablanca! But writers, even ones who lovingly describe unholy vampiric monsters from another dimension, don't thrive on action alone. Along with the Duke, Brian's other favorite actor is Peter Sellers, the sillier the better. In other words, in the Pink Panther films.

Brian doesn't imitate Sellers. No one can. But he does know the Pink Panther movies inside out. He remembers every gag, every joke, every pratfall. And, if you let him, he will describe them to you with boundless enthusiasm while pouring you glass after glass of his special punch.

That punch deserves a paragraph in itself. The elixir, as concocted by Brian from an ancient secret recipe (handed down from Bran Mak Morn, I suspect, or perhaps even Cthulhu itself), is right out of the films. It's the stuff that Bob Hope drank and then passed out. Miners used it to numb the cold, and race car drivers poured into their fuel tanks to get an extra kick in their engines. It's the stuff that turned Casper into a ghost.

Might I mention Brian's fiction? Over the past few years, he's gained worldwide fame for his Necroscope series, which blends vampires and fast action in a wild brew that is incredibly addictive. But the Necroscope novels, while among Brian's very finest work, aren't his only claim to literary fame.

His H. P. Lovecraft pastiches are highly entertaining and definitely not the same old stuff. His tales of Titus Crow feature a psychic investigator who is pleasingly competent and quite dangerous when the necessity arises. And in those stories it always does.

Plus Brian also writes contemporary horror belonging to no particular series. Remember "Big C?" Or the award-winning, and particularly frightening, "Fruiting Bodies?"

Brian Lumley is an author of astonishing skills. And he is a gentleman of equally amazing talents. I've known him for more than a decade and I'm proud to be numbered among his friends.

Remember what I said about some assignments being easier than others, depending on the subject? Writing this one was a pleasure.

Class dismissed.

A Chronology of Important and/or Formative Events in the Life of a Writer

BY BRIAN LUMLEY

DECEMBER 2, 1937.

I was born at number 25 Yoden Avenue, Horden, County Durham, on the northeast coast of England — which not only makes me a Sagittarian but also a very close relative (geographically) to the Geordies ... both of which species are notorious for their apparent thoughtlessness of speech, attitude, and action, which often causes them to appear blunt, gauche, and frequently downright rude. Similarly, they are wont to dive headlong into all manner of doubtful situations, usually at the deep end without first checking that there's water in the pool. And in case all this conjures up a very incorrect impression, let me say that in my experience most Sagittarians are totally loyal and trustworthy, and Geordies the veriest salt of the earth.

1946, or maybe early 1947.

I read Dracula — I think I understood most of it.

1952, maybe 1953.

I was a member of NEZFEZ, or the North-East Science Fiction Society, aged 14 or 15. We had monthly get-togethers at the Red Lion pub in Gateshead. I was doing some black-and-white artwork, not to mention, er, "poetry" (I said not to mention that!) and some of it got used in the society's magazine, Satellite. Other artwork found its way into British and American fanzines such as Camber and Peon. I loved the idea of being "published." I also wrote one or two short "stories". They were pure space opera: all action with no plot, no characterization, nothing. T read them to my father, a miner, who told me, "Aye, all very nice, lad — but there's no money in words." Which put me off writing for the next fifteen years.

About the same time I read my first Cthulhu Mythos story, Robert Bloch's "Notebook Found in a Deserted House."

Also in 1953, I started work as an apprentice sawyer, the "proper job" my parents wanted me to have. Some eighteen months later, in a news agent's window on my way to work, I saw a lurid jacket on a British edition of Weird Tales — "the unique magazine" — price one shilling. I bought it, unnaturally, and a few years later began to obtain from the same news agent EC's wonderful monthly honor "comics" trio, Tales From The Crypt, et cetera. Science fiction was now on the back burner, while macabre fiction had well and truly taken over. But not long after that I got interested in rock 'n' roll, girls, beer, and many another good thing, so that my reading became more and more sporadic as my attention strayed from the path of the true weird fiction addict ...

1958.

I got married — I was just a very young guy — and was drafted to do two years then-compulsory national service in the British Army. Leaving my wife and yet-to-be-born baby girl in England, I ended up as a lance corporal (a noncommissioned officer) in Germany, in the Corps of Royal Military Police.

April 1959.

It was in Bielefeld, West Germany, that I first read Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. At least I think it was then ...

The Army: at first I hated it. Then ... I got used to it! And as the two years drew to a close, I began to wonder what I would do as a civilian. Probably nothing; jobs were scarce in 1960, and I certainly wasn't going back to my trade. The Army was security, a roof over my head, a shirt on my back, food in my mouth. I "signed on" for the full twenty-two years, and was joined by my wife and child in married quarters.

1960.

Yes, I found Lovecraft. I didn't "discover" him like several other writers who have spoken about his influence; no, for H.P. Lovecraft had been discovered — his literary value recognized — long before them by the man who was mainly responsible for saving him and his fabulous stories from oblivion, which is to say August Derleth (but more about him later.)

Lovecraft: I had probably met him earlier in Weird Tales, but I think that had been in a handful of not very remarkable stories or one or two pieces of poetry — "bits" of Lovecraft, you might say. But this was different, the real thing: an entire paperback book by Lovecraft, containing some of his best supernatural stories. A "World Distributors, London" book, it was called Cry Horror! — and the price was two shillings and sixpence, which was one eighth of a pound sterling, or about nineteen U.S. cents in today's money. And there for the first time I read "The Call of Cthulhu." That was the beginning; from then on — for eight or nine memorable reading years — I was a devout Lovecraft collector.

1963–1966.

In Cyprus, the Greeks and Turks were murdering each other. I went out there as a member of the RMP Company in Dhekelia, a British Sovereign Base Area. I fell in love with the Mediterranean and I've stayed that way ever since. I read more of H.P. Lovecraft, and others of August Derleth's Arkham House school of macabre writers.

1966.

I think it was about then that I read Matheson's I Am Legend again. Whichever, Legend is a superb novel that probably stopped me writing my own vampire novels for some twenty years.

Late 1966, England.

Prior to flying to Berlin, my next posting, I picked up most of the unread or previously unavailable Lovecraft material. And by the fall of 1967, settled into my new duties, I was dabbling with one or two short stories of my own. I wrote to August Derleth at Arkham House in Wisconsin, ordering the last few bits and pieces of Lovecraft that I still hadn't read, and I included in my letters some lines of loathly lore "from the Necronomicon" and a handful of "esoteric quotes" from one of my own "black books."

Amazingly, Derleth responded by asking if I had anything suitable he might be able to use in a new Mythos anthology he was planning! Its title was to be Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. Eventually he used two of my stories in the book. Heady, heady days ...

1968.

But perhaps more importantly — this being a chronology — Derleth bought three of my shorter stories for use in The Arkham Collector, his house organ or journal. The first of these, "The Cyprus Shell," appeared in the Summer of '68 issue of TAC. And thus "Shell" was my first ever published story.

1969 and 1970.

More of my stories and poetry appeared in various issues of The Arkham Collector.

1971.

My first book — and a hardback at that, a collection titled The Caller of the Black — was published by Arkham House. This reprinted three of my stories from TAC, alongside eleven previously unpublished tales written for the book.

Arkham House would eventually publish two other books of mine: Beneath the Moors, a short Mythos novel, in 1974, and The Horror at Oakdeene, a second collection, in 1977. Between times, in 1971, alas, Derleth had died — following which Arkham House never seemed the same ...

1973.

With seven years left to complete my twenty-two in the Army (I hung in there because I wanted to pick up my military pension), I was getting stories published in the fantasy magazines. The prestigious Fantasy & Science Fiction published "Haggopian" in June. This excellent magazine would publish three more of my stories in later issues, the last being "The Sun, the Sea, and the Silent Scream" in February 1988. (Well, not quite true, becauseF&SF did publish something else of mine — a very small something — as recently as February 1990.)

Another item published by F&SF was my long short story (?) or novelette titled "Born of the Winds" ... that was the December 1975 issue. Interestingly, it was nominated for a World Fantasy Award — a fact of which I remained ignorant for a decade, only finding out about it at the '86 World Fantasy Convention in Providence, Rhode Island!

Also in 1973, I believe, my first Primal Land story, "The House of Cthulhu," found a home in Stuart Schiff's semi-prozine Whispers. It was the first story in the very first issue.

February 1974.

My first mass-market paperback book, a Mythos novel titled The Burrowers Beneath, was published by DAW Books.

I had met Donald A. Wollheim (DAW) at the Frankfurt Buchmesse in 1972. I found him a remarkable man. Don's been gone a long time now, but his paperback publishing house continues to flourish. (After Burrowers, DAW went on to publish The Transition of Titus Crow.)

1976–1977.

Fantastic Stories used two Primal Land tales; this series eventually ran to two collections of short stories and a novel, all three published eventually by W. Paul Ganley's Weirdbook Press some years later. The House of Cthulhu was the title of the first volume, and when Paul and I saw a hardback copy at a convention in the mid-'90s it carried a "very reasonable" dealer's price of $160. How we wished we'd hung on to a few more copies!

1978.

An editor at Berkley asked me to do a big novel set in an Egypt that was yet more ancient. He wanted SF, fantasy, horror, sex: everything but the kitchen sink ... which I threw in anyway. I wrote Khai of Khem in the eight months from November 1978 to June 1979. It wasn't published until March 1981. And it is still one of my own personal favorites.

1979.

A year and a bit to go, and I would have completed my term in the Army. By then I was the Initial Training Sergeant Major at the Depot of the RMP in Chichester, England. And that's when I started the Hero of Dreams series. All three of the Hero novels followed one after the other, almost without a break. Hero of Dreams, Ship of Dreams, and Mad Moon of Dreams ... all written between September 1979 and January 1981, just a month after I stood down from my military career. (The fourth, final book in the series, Iced on Aran, composed of connected short stories, was written in the latter half of 1985. Two more novelettes of Earth's dreamlands, again featuring David Hero and his pal Eldin the Wanderer, appeared in W. Paul Ganley's long-lived and rather wonderful semi-prozine Weirdbook Magazine in issues 26 and 27. Ganley also published all of the Hero books in paper, cloth, and even signed slipcased editions.)

Interesting note: Paul Ganley picked up two World Fantasy Awards for his publishing ventures. He published a long list of well-known genre names — far more people than just me — but I remain inordinately proud of his awards.

December 1980.

I was out of the Army and facing a couple of traumatic years. Still, in early 1981 I finished "Lord of the Worms," chronologically the first real Titus Crow story, which I reckon is one of my best Mythos stories. A novelette, it was published by Ganley in Weirdbook 17.

1981.

Suddenly aware that I had to make a living at this writing game — that H.P. Lovecraftian, or Robert E. Howardian, or Clark Ashton Smithian stuff couldn't any longer cut it. I was ready to leave behind what I had done for fun (and a little profit) and start to write "seriously." I started Psychomech in August 1981 and finished the trilogy (Psychosphere and Psychamok!) in January 1984. In that same period I did short stories and novelettes for anyone and everyone who would take them, and even so just managed to keep my head above water. Example: The London-based publishers Grafton advanced me just £1500 for Psychosphere. You couldn't live on it, believe me.

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Excerpted from The Brian Lumley Companion by Brian Lumley, Stanley Wiater. Copyright © 2002 ShadoWind, Inc., and Brian Lumley. Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
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