Author Long Frank Belknap

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.'" 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." 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. Television play: A Guest in the House (1950)