Frank Belknap Long: Information from Answers.com

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).

1 Biography
2 Friendship with Lovecraft
3 Poetry
4 Novels
5 Collections
- 5.1 Play
6 Awards
7 Further reading
8 External links

Biography

Frank Belknap Long was born in New York City in 1901, and grew up in the Harlem area of 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." 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 an and imaginative appeal for me—that of natural history."

In his late teens, he was active in the United Amateur Press Association (UAPA). 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. 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, A Man from Genoa and Other Poems, was published in 1926.

In pulps such as Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories during the 1940's, 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 1940's , 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 1950's 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).

Long's gothic romance novels were written under the pseudonym of Lyda Belknap Long (his wife's name). 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).

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.'"

The tower of Frank Belknap Long in Woodlawn Cemetery

Long died on January 3, 1994 at the age of 92, survived by his wife, Lyda. He was buried in New York City's Woodlawn Cemetery. Despite a seven-decade career as a writer, he died impoverished; Long's fans contributed over $3000 to have his name engraved upon the tombstone of his family plot.

Frank Belknap Long left behind a body of work that included twenty-five 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."

Friendship with Lovecraft

The Genius of Mr. Long is a spontaneous and self-expressive one.
—H. P. Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft was a close friend and mentor to Frank Belknap Long. They saw each other regularly (especially during Lovecraft's residence in New York City from 1924 to 1926) and wrote to each other often. Long's family aprtment 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.

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.

Poetry

A Man from Genoa (1926) (Athol, MA: W. Paul Cook)
The Goblin Tower (Cassiam FL: Dragon-Fly Press, 1935; reprinted by New Collectors Group, 1945)
On Reading Arthur Machen (Pengrove: Dog and Duck Press, 1949)
The Marriage of Sire John de Mandeville (Roay 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 (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)
Three Steps Spaceward (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 (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 (1969) (as by Lyda Belknap Long)
Monster From Out of Time (1970)
Survival World (1971)
Fire of the Witches (1971) (as by Lyda Belknap Long)
The Shape of Fear (1971) (as by Lyda Belknap Long)
The Witch Tree (1971) (as by Lyda Belknap Long)
The Night of the Wolf (1972)
House of the Deadly Nightshade (1972) (as by Lyda Belknap Long)
Legacy of Evil (1973) (as by Lyda Belknap Long)
Crucible of Evil (1974)(as by Lyda Belknap Long)
The Lemoyne Heritage (1977)
Rehearsal Night (1981)
Ghor Kin-Slayer (Long has one episode in this round-robin sequence; Necronomicon Press, 1997)

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 (1995)
The Man Who Died Twice & Three Others (Wildside Press, 2009)

Play

Television play: A Guest in the House (1950)

Awards

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),

External links

Frank Belknap Long at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
Frank Belknap Long: Fantasist of Multiple Dimensions (biographical essay by Perry M. Grayson)
Frank Belknap Long Bibliography (w Photo)
Frank Belknap Long at Find a Grave
"The Ultimate Cthulhu Mythos Book List" - Listing of all mythos novels, anthologies, collections, comic books, and more.

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Frank Belknap Long

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