The name of Anthony Boucher has been familiar to readers of fantasy ever since the early '40s when it appeared over some of the more memorable stories in UNKNOWN WORLDS and ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION. Even earlier, the name, a pseudonym for William Anthony Parker White, was well known to mystery addicts, as was that of H. H. Holmes, another alter ego.
It was just last year that MAGAZINE OF FANTASY, later MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE-FICTION, appeared on the scene to add new luster to the name of Boucher. Co-edited with J. Francis McComas, it immediately made a place for itself as "the" prestige market of the fantasy field. F&SF is outstanding, not only for the high literary quality of its stories, but also for its freshness and the infinite varieties of new approaches to be found in its pages.
The picture opposite shows Tony Boucher with his 1949 "Edgar", symbol of the MWA award, peering at the limited edition of Poe which he received for 1945, before the present bust was devised.
Anthony Boucher is being hailed as Guest of Honor at the NORWESCON, the Eighth World Science-Fiction Convention, to be held in Portland, Oregon over the Labor Day weekend. He is swell people as you'll know when you meet him there.
I have had intensive training as a literary scholar under such great men as Arthur Ryder and S. Griswold Morley and Lawrence Marsden Price -- only I tend now not to think of L. M. Price so much as a distinguished scholar as as my father-in-law and there I go already ruining a paragraph, which illustrates what I mean.
The point is that I might undertake to do a competent biographico-critical essay on just about any other writer, but I don't see how one approaches oneself. So probably the best thing to do is to trust to free wheeling.
I was born in Oakland, California, in 1911. Both my parents were physicians. As far as I can remember (I haven't taken up dianetics yet) (does anybody remember Ted Sturgeon's UNKNOWN story about the Superman Elron?), I might as well have been posthumous; my father died when I was a few months old, and I grew up with my mother (who believed, among other sound principles, in keeping me well supplied with OZ books) and my grandfather (who had been, as D A and judge of Mono County, one of the firstrate legal minds of late nineteenth century California.
I was born William Parker White, or more precisely, was so christened. At confirmation (circa 1923) I became William Anthony Parker White (for Anthony of Padua, who still hasn't taught me how to find lost articles, as my wife will testify). Boucher was my mother's maiden name -- French-Irish. I used it a lot in adolescence as a sort of alter ego (things got very complicated with a girl who also had an alter, or altera, ego with whom Tony misbehaved abominably), then adopted it professionally when I took up mystery novels because I was still, as White, trying to be a playwright and I wanted to keep the two careers straight. (This was in 1936; my scholarly training at least forces me to put in a date here and there.
Now I'm much more apt to think of myself as Boucher than as White (except for tax bills and I'd sooner not think about them anyway and anybody who thinks that's a gag is crazy), and Phyllis is very nearly completely used to being Mrs. Boucher, even though one of the first times she was so mentioned was in a description by 4e Ackerman despite which we buy stories from his clients. (Sinister explanation of that fact later.
Boucher is pronounced to rime with voucher. This seemed perfectly plausible to the Bouchers after they'd lived in Ireland for a while; but nowadays people will try to be French, or approximately so.
Education: Three years of military academy (Hitchcock, San Rafael, Calif.), unqualifiedly disapproving all assertions that such training tends to induce militarianism. Five years of Pasadena High School and Junior College (giving me the warm pleasure of sharing an Alma Mater with Jackie Robinson, whom I still persist in thinking of as one of the greatest backs in the history of Coast football), during most of which time I was inclined to think that my professional interests lay in the physical sciences and that I might go to Caltech. Two years at USC (B A '32) and two at Berkeley (M A '34) during which I spent most of my time on writing, acting, directing, and other theatrical activities while worling (I thought) to a career as an academician in some branch of linguistics. (German major, Spanish minor, ventures into French, Portugese, Russian, Greek, Sanskrit -- where did I pick up Italian? I think just from opera librettos mostly.) By mid-'34 I had acquired an M A, an unofficial fiancee, and a decision that the academic life was not for me. Then (thank God for a minute amount of money in the family) I was an unsuccessful playwright for quite a while, did my first professional reviewing (theater and music) for a small political sheet in L A where I met Cleve Cartmill and Roby Wrntz, and finally got going commercially by selling "The Case of the Seven of Calvary" to Simon & Schuster -- instantly cabling my unofficial fiancé, then in Europe on her father's Sabbatical, that we could make it official.
We got married in 1938 (her name was Phyllis Mary Price), and we have two sons, Larry (born on Christmas 1940) and James (born on his mother's birthday 1942). They're both growing up nobly, thank you, - for instance they love to read Bradbury. They haven't decided about Boucher yet.
From there on things get complicated and are going to involve a lot of things like radio and opera and Democratic party politics unless I start restricting this to fantasy and s f (Groff Conklin talked me out of using stf).
I'll sum up the Mystery business hastily by that I have worked in justabout every branch of non-punishable murder: novels, novelets, short stories, editing anthologies, a great deal of radio, a very little TV, translation, reviewing (I'm very proud of my two Edgars for best American criticism from Mystery Writers of America), writers organization (I was one of the founders of MWA, and when is somebody going to have sense enough to start a parallel FWA, Fantasy Writers of America), photo-crimes, fact crime - practically everything but pictures.
As to fantasy: I've been a devout reader ever since I can remember. I can recall the beginnings of fiction in SCIENCE & INVENTION, and Haggard serials in in the AMERICAN WEEKLY, and the big format of WEIRD TALES. I can't imagine why, but the fact is I lost interest in science fiction just as it began to get rolling, and for a long time was fascinated only by super-natural fantasy - a fascination that formed one of the bonds on my first meeting with McComas, which was so damned near twenty years ago that we both fall to stroking our beards on thinking of it.
When I was 15 I sold a story to WEIRD TALES. It was awful, and it should never have been fought. Iy was not only vile writing, but an outright, if innocent, steal from Mrs. Bland's "No. 17", which I'd heard as oral tradition. It appeared, fortunately, as by WAPW, and has been forgotten. The only reason I bring it up here, and list it in the following bibliography, is that it got rediscovered by 4e Ackerman; this, you see, is the sinister explanation referred to earlier. Now that I have thrown my reputation to the winds and Revealed All, Ackerman's hold is destroyed, and his writers had better be good.
In the thirties (the century's, not mine) I wrote a lot of short supernatural fiction and none of it even sold to WEIRD TALES; the little of it that I could stand rereading appeared much later on in ACOLYTE.
Then in Los Angeles in 1940 Cleve Cartmill introduced me to the Manana Literary society. You've probably heard of this great organization (disrupted by Pearl Harbor), which included at various times Bob Heinlein, Jack Williamson, Ed Hamilton, Webb Marlowe, Cartmill, Wentz and God knows who all else. I became an avid UNKNOWN reader and soon began writing for it; but I was still a little cool about s f.
Then one night McComas brought me all the copies of ASF containing "Slan" and said, "Read this or all is over between us." Having tossed a coin, I read it ... and from then on I was lost.
I was, of course, miraculously lucky in getting my start in s f under the creative editorship of John Campbell -- just as I was equally lucky in starting on mystery novels with Lee Wright of Simon & Schuster. Add to those Marie Rodell of Duell, Sloan & Pearce (for which H. H. Holmes came into being), Fred Dannay of ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, and Joseph Henry Jackson of the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE; and you'll see why I have very strong ideas on the importance of the editor and the necessity of a close editor-writer relationship.
Later I got out of touch with story-writing for a long seige of radio, at the height of which I was plotting three half-hour mystery shows a week. Throughout all of this period, McComas and I were working on the idea of a fantasy magazine modeled, frankly, on EQMM. Larry Spivak, of EQMM and THE AMERICAN MERCURY, was sold on publishing it, but wanted to hit the market with it at just the right time. Regularly once or twice a year we were alerted and then everything was called off.
It was worth the wait; Spivak had his finger precisely on the pulse, and brought out the magazine at last just before the current deluge. Mick and I had planned to sneak science-fiction (pretty disreputable when we started laying plans) into the magazine little by little; but the whole picture had changed, and we shifted immediately to the title FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION with a minimum 50% s f content - if you know where to draw the borderline between s f and fantasy, which we are damned if we see how to do.
At present I live in Berkeley with my wife, my sons, my mother, my books, my records and my asthma. I coedit F&SF (which is probably the most interesting and temperamentally satisfactory work I've ever done), I review mysteries for the N. Y. TIMES and fantasy-cum-s f for the Chicago SUN-TIMES, I teach a laboratory class in writing, I give a weekly radio program (KPFA-FM, Sundays, 8:30 p m, adv) on the recordings of great voices of 25 - 50 years ago, I try to write stories to sell to other editors, and I keep thinking of a character who said, in some novel I can't place, "There must be some way to be just as poor without working so hard."
End of interim report. By now I'm getting somewhat interested as a novelist; I'll be curious to check in a year or two to see what develops with this protagonist.
--Anthony Boucher
FANTASY and SCIENCE-FICTION STORIES under the name of ANTHONY BOUCHER
Title........................................................................................Magazine................................................Date
Adventure of the Bogle-Wolf,
The.......................................CLIENT'S SECOND CASE
BOOK..............1948
Barrier...................................................................................Astounding
S F.......................................Sep. 1942
Barrier...................................................................................Astounding
(British)...............................Oct. 1942
Chronokinesis of Jonathan Hall,
The...................................Astounding S
F.......................................June 1946
Chronokinesis of Jonathan Hall,
The...................................Astounding
(British)...............................Feb. 1948
Compleat Werewolf,
The.....................................................Unknown
Worlds...................................Apr. 1942
Compleat Werewolf,
The.....................................................Unknown (British).................................Aug.
1945
Compleat Werewolf,
The.....................................................From Unknown
Worlds................................. 1949
Elsewhen..............................................................................Astounding
S F........................................Jan. 1943
Elsewhen..............................................................................MURDER,
PLAIN AND FANCIFUL........... 1948
Expedition............................................................................Thrilling
Wonder...................................Aug. 1943
Expedition............................................................................BEST
OF SCIENCE FICTION..................... 1946
Expedition............................................................................Invasion
from Mars (pb)................................1949
Footnote to Dunne
(article).................................................Arkham
Sampler.....................................Aut. 1949
Ghost of Me,
The................................................................Unknown
Worlds....................................June 1942
Ghost of Me,
The................................................................Unknown
(British)..................................June 1942
Greatest Tertian,
The..........................................................CLIENT'S
THIRD CASE BOOK...................1950
Lazarus
(verse)....................................................................DARK
OF THE MOON..................................1947
................(translated from Jose Asuncion Silva)
Mr.
Lupescu.......................................................................Weird
Tales..............................................Sep. 1945
Mr.
Lupescu.......................................................................THE
SLEEPING AND THE DEAD................1947
Mr.
Lupescu.......................................................................Avon
Detective Mysteries #3...........................1947
Mr.
Lupescu.......................................................................Shot
in the Dark (pb)........................................1950
On a Limb
(article)............................................................Unknown
Worlds......................................Oct. 1941
One Way
Trip....................................................................Astounding
S F.........................................Aug. 1943
Pelagic
Spark.....................................................................Astounding
S F..........................................June 1943
Pink Caterpillar,
The.........................................................Adventure...................................................Feb.
1945
QUR..................................................................................ADVENTURES
IN TIME & SPACE................1946
Scrawny One,
The.............................................................Weird
Tales................................................Mar. 1949
Snulbug.............................................................................Unknown
Worlds........................................Dec. 1941
Snulbug.............................................................................Unknown
(British)......................................Win. 1948
Sribertigibit.......................................................................Unknown
Worlds........................................June 1943
Sribertigibit.......................................................................Unknown
(British)......................................Oct. 1943
Summer's Cloud................................................................Acolyte.......................................................Sum.1944
They
Bite...........................................................................Unknown
Worlds........................................Aug.1943
They
Bite...........................................................................Unknown
(British)......................................May 1944
Toy
Cassowary..................................................................Acolyte.......................................................Win.
1945
Way I Heard It,
The...........................................................Acolyte........................................................Fall
1944
We Print the
Truth.............................................................Astounding
S F...........................................Dec. 1943
Stories under the name of H. H. HOLMES
Q. U. R.
.............................................................................Astounding
S F.........................................Mar. 1943
Review
Copy......................................................................Magazine
of Fantasy..................................Fall 1949
Robinc................................................................................Astounding
S F..........................................Sep. 1943
ROCKET TO THE MORGUE (novel)..............................Duell,
Sloan & Pearce.......................................1942
Rocket to the
Morgue.........................................................Phantom.............................................................1943
Rocket to the
Morgue.........................................................Two
Complete Det. Books........................Mar. 1944
Sanctuary............................................................................Astounding
S F..........................................June 1943
Sanctuary............................................................................Astounding
(British)...................................Feb. 1944
Story under the name of WILLIAM A. P. WHITE
Ye Goode Olde Ghost Story.............................................Weird Tales................................................Jan. 1927
VERSE under the name of PARKER WHITE
Sonnet of the Unsleeping
Dead........................................Weird
Tales...............................................Mar. 1935
Sonnet of the Unsleeping
Dead........................................DARK OF THE
MOON....................................1947
This bibliography was prepared by Anthony Boucher aided by H. H. Holmes
Data entry by Judy Bemis
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