Otis Adelbert Kline

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Otis Adelbert Kline (born July 1, 1891 in Chicago , Illinois ; died October 24, 1946 in Short Beach , Branford , Connecticut ) was an American writer who wrote numerous science fiction and fantasy stories there at the time of Pulp Magazine -Stories published.

Life

Kline was versatile and both creative and business-minded. Before becoming known as a pulp writer, he was a songwriter, music publisher, and screenwriter.

When he started publishing short stories in the early 1920s, he did not limit himself to one genre, but mainly initially published both horror stories in Weird Tales and detective stories in Detective Tales and similar pulp magazines. He wrote less science fiction in the narrower sense, his specialty was fantasy acting on strange, exotic planets in the style of the Barsoom stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs , with whom Kline has been compared again and again. Don D'Ammassa says in this regard that Edgar Rice Burroughs has no competition when it comes to Martian or jungle adventures, but that Kline comes close to him in this regard, if anyone at all. Kline was also quite successful in his day. Most famous here is Jan of the Jungle , a daring jungle hero in the style of Tarzan, whose adventure was filmed as The Call of the Savage . Another Tarzan clone was Tam, Son of the Tiger , raised not by monkeys in Africa but by tigers in India. Analogously, John Carter from Mars was called Robert Grandon at Kline and on Venus.

It is, however, not a matter of slavish imitation, but rather the result of congenial inclinations towards certain genres, forms and props. The idea, based on a contribution by Donald A. Wollheim and taken up by Sam Moskowitz , that Burroughs and Kline had fought a kind of interplanetary war of singers, has in the meantime been discredited as Wollheim's manufacture.

From the mid-1930s onwards, Kline devoted himself mainly to the literary agency Otis Kline Associates , which he founded and whose best-known clients were HG Wells and, above all, Robert E. Howard . Kline's successor in the agency was Oscar J. Friend , in whose hand Howard's literary estate came. The agency still exists today.

In 1946, Kline died at the age of 55.

bibliography

The series are sorted according to the year of publication of the first part.

Dr. Dorp (short story series)
  • 1 The Malignant Entity (1924)
  • 2 The Radio Ghost (1927)
Bart Leslie (short story series)
  • The Demon of Tlaxpam (1929)
  • The Cyclops of Xoatl (1936, with E. Hoffmann Price)
Robert Grandon (series of novels)
  • 1 The Planet of Peril (1929)
  • 2 The Prince of Peril (1930)
  • 3 Buccaneers of Venus (1932, also called The Port of Peril , 1949)
Hamed the Atar (short story series)
  • The Man Who Limped (1930)
  • The Dragoman's Slave Girl (1931)
  • The Dragoman's Revenge (1931)
  • The Dragoman's Secret (1931)
  • The Dragoman's Confession (1932)
  • The Dragoman's Jest (1932, with E. Hoffmann Price)
  • The Dragoman's Pilgrimage (1933)
Jan of the Jungle (series of novels)
  • 1 Jan of the Jungle (1931, also called Call of the Savage , 1937)
  • Jan 2 in India (1935, 1974)
Swordsman of Mars (novel series)
  • 1 The Swordsman of Mars (1933, 1960)
  • 2 The Outlaws of Mars (1933, 1961)
Novels
  • The Secret Kingdom (1929, with Allen S. Kline)
  • Maza of the Moon (1929, 1930)
  • Tam, Son of the Tiger (1931)
  • Satans on Saturn (1940, with E. Hoffmann Price)
Collections
  • The Man Who Limped and Other Stories (1946)
  • The Bride of Osiris and Other Weird Tales (1975)
  • Otis Adelbert Kline Collection Book 1 (2005)
  • The Dragoman's Revenge (2007)
  • Satans of Saturn (2012, with E. Hoffmann Price)
Short stories
  • The Thing of a Thousand Shapes (1923)
  • The Phantom Wolfhound (1923)
  • The Corpse on the Third Slab (1923)
  • The Cup of Blood (1923)
  • The Phantom Rider (1924)
  • The Bride of Osiris (1927, 1975)
  • Treasure Accursed! (1928)
  • The Bird-People (1930)
  • Thirsty Blades (1930, with E. Hoffmann Price)
  • Spawn of the Comet (1930)
  • The Man from the Moon (1930)
  • The Man in Room 18 (1930)
  • The Vengeance of Sa'ik (1930)
  • The Thing That Walked in the Rain (1931)
  • The Metal Monster (1931)
  • Midnight Madness (1932)
  • A Vision of Venus (1933)
    • English: In the jungle of Venus. 1975.
  • City Slickers (1934)
  • Flaming Notes (1934)
  • Office Flirt (1934)
  • Cosmos: Chapter 8: Volunteers from Venus (1934, with E. Hoffmann Price)
  • Lord of the Lamia (1935)
  • Revenge of the Robot (1936)
  • The Iron World (1937)
  • Servant of Satan (1939)
  • Murder Is a Pipe (1939)
  • What Is the Source of Prophecy? (1939)
  • Stolen Centuries (1939)
  • Race Around the Moon (1939)
  • Satans of Saturn (1940, with E. Hoffmann Price)
  • Spotted Satan (1940, with E. Hoffmann Price)
  • The Robot Beasts (1941)
  • Stranger from Smallness (1941)
  • Meteor-Men of Mars (1942, with Harry Cord)
  • Return of the Undead (1943, with Frank Belknap Long )

literature

Web links

Commons : Otis Adelbert Kline  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Otis Adelbert Kline  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edgar Rice BURROUGHS never had a serious rival when he was writing his planetary romances set on Mars or his jungle adventures featuring Tarzan, but Otis Adelbert Kline came as close to that role as anyone. Don D'Ammassa: Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. New York 2005, p. 210.
  2. ↑ Donald A. Wollheim: The Kline-Burroughs War. In: Science Fiction News (November 1936). See John Clute: Kline, Otis Adelbert. In: SFE online.
personal data
SURNAME Kline, Otis Adelbert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kline, Otis A. (alternative spelling)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 1, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago , Illinois
DATE OF DEATH October 24, 1946
Place of death Short Beach , Branford , Connecticut