'A Strange Novel of the Future...'

A while ago I posted a scan of the cover and some of the interior pages of a late fifties edition of Argosy that I own.  By then, it was a monthly men's magazine, but back in December 1929 it was a weekly general fiction pulp.  Sadly, I don't own this issue, which features one of those metal brassiere clad female warriors beloved of pulp artists.  The story it illustrates is 'Maza of the Moon' by Otis Adelbert Kline.  All but forgotten, (save by pulp and science fiction enthusiasts like myself), Kline was, in his day, a prolific and well regarded author for the pulps, producing several series of novels reminiscent of those produced by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  The alleged similarities between these and Burroughs' works was rumoured, in fan circles, to have sparked a feud between the two authors, although no evidence of such rivalry actually exists.  What is true is that Kline wrote a series of adventure novels in similar vein to Burroughs' 'John Carter of Mars', with Burroughs subsequently producing a new series of Venus-based stories - Kline then wrote a pair of novels set on Mars, s well as a 'Jan of the Jungle' series similar to 'Tarzan'.

The fact is that pulp editors frequently commissioned stories in similar vein to popular successes published both themselves and by their rivals.  No differently to the way in which every successful movie franchise nowadays spawns a host of imitators, hoping to capitalise upon fans' appetite for 'more of the same'.  In this regard, Kline's planetary romances and jungle stories succeeded in meeting pulp readers' demands for more thrills in the Burroughs mode.  'Maza of the Moon' could, conceivably, be seen as part of this supposed Kline-Burroughs feud, being an attempt to mimic the success of Burroughs' 'Moon Maid' series, (previously published in Argosy), but, in reality, the similarities between the two works are superficial.  Kline was an assistant editor of Weird Tales, where many of his short stories were published, with many others appearing in its sister publication, Oriental Stories.  His output declined rapidly during the late thirties and early forties, as he focused on his role as a literary agent, (he was Robert E Howard's agent).  This cutting short of his literary efforts, along with the fact that his highest profile works were doubtless commissioned as cash ins on the success of Burroughs' most popular works, probably accounts for the fact that Kline is not widely remembered today.