Nelson S. Bond (1908 - )
by Peter Ruber
If Robert Bloch is deservedly remembered for his special brand of black humor in many tales of horror, then surely Nelson Bond should be remembered for his completely wacky fantasy science fiction stories, many of which appeared in the pages of Blue Book, the elite of all pulp magazines. In Bond's world, the real, the surreal, and the unreal often collide in warped and wonderful ways, like no other stories have in the last sixty years.
Take Pat Pending, the wacky "inventulator" whose adventures were narrated by Don Mallory, a junior clerk in the United States Patent Office, in Washington, D.C. Or the inventive Lancelot Biggs: Spaceman, who with a few spare parts could energize his spaceship to travel at the speed of light. Or the mad magic of Mr. Mergenthwirker and his lobblies -- those fascinating, bodyless creatures who create so much mischief. Or confidence and carney man "Squaredeal Sam" McGhee, while he had not an honest bone in his body had a heart of gold, as well as a remarkable talent for becoming involved with unusual characters. Nelson Bond created other minor series characters; but he always seemed to know just how many he should write without overdoing the gimmick -- then stopped.
Bond published 257 stories in 68 different magazines between 1935 and 1958. Less than half were fantasy and science-fiction stories; the others were a mixture of conventional (if that's possible) crime, mystery, and sports stories -- for Bond could also be a straightman. Over the past half-century, seven books were culled from his short fiction output, and his stories have appeared in more than 100 anthologies. Bond never intentionally wrote a book-length novel, although Exiles of Time (1949), one of a quartet of 40,000-plus worders published in Amazing Stories, Fantastic Adventures and Blue Book during the 1940s, became his only published novel.
Bond much preferred writing short stories, and the more rewriting he did, the shorter they became; until, he says, they were just right. He says, "One of my axioms of writing has always been that good stories are not written -- they're rewritten. I would talk a story into the dictaphone, Betty [his wife] would type it, then I would revise it, and it was always shorter, because I cut it down, trimmed. The story had to be packed tight together. So I was fair at 10,000 words, good at 5,000 words, and excellent sometimes at 2,500. The shorter the Bond, the better the story." That approach to his craft contradicted the work habits of most other magazine writers, who padded their work because they were paid by the word. But Bond's work was so popular among editors that he always commanded the highest fees, even when his stories were shorter than they were supposed to be.
Nelson Bond was, and still is, a remarkable man. As of this writing, he is in his 91st year, just one of three original pulp era legends still with us. The others are Jack Williamson and Hugh B. Cave. All have become digital jockeys who prowl the Internet, though only Bond no longer writes for publication.
Nelson [Slade] Bond was born November 23, 1908, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Philadelphia. He attended Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia, from 1932-34. His interest in writing came in the sixth grade. "I had a teacher who assigned us to write an essay on one of those stupid subjects like 'What I Did Last Friday'," he recalls. "When I got it back, she had marked it with an 'S'. I asked what that means, and she said, 'I didn't know what was better than an 'E' for excellent, so I marked it 'S' for superior.' That's when I really started writing. That gave me the bite."
While still in high school, Bond convinced the drama editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer that he was an ardent theater-goer, and that he wanted become a theater reviewer. He was given tickets and wrote reviews of plays. During his years at Marshall University, Bond had a job writing string stories for the Huntington Herald Advertiser. He was also the editor of the college newspaper, The Parthenon.
After graduation, Bond joined his father's advertising and public relations agency, and in the summer of 1934 was offered the job of field representative by one of the agency's clients, the Province of Nova Scotia. Bond had just married his college sweetheart and the prospect of working and honeymooning in Nova Scotia was exciting, especially since his family was Nova Scotia-bred. His forbearers came over to America in the 1600s, and settled in Connecticut. But when the American Revolution of 1776 broke out, being British Empire Loyalists, they supported the wrong side. ["Wrong side" indeed, adds Bond.] After the war, their lands and goods were confiscated, and they were exiled to Nova Scotia.
Bond's work in Nova Scotia was simple: wine, dine and entertain vacationing celebrities, then write news stories about them which a press bureau hired by the Province placed in newspapers and magazines. When his year-long tour ended in 1935, he continued to write indirectly for the press bureau, who paid him a specified fee over and above what slick magazines like Ladies Home Journal paid him, whenever the stories were focused around Nova Scotia.
Bond recalls that he quickly came to the realization that writing offered him more lucrative opportunities than public relations work, so he plunged into the game full-time.
As it took him several years to build momentum in the pulp fiction markets, Bond continued to write magazine articles in order to support his family. By 1938, however, he was in the thick of the rat-race; and by 1943 had written nearly three-quarters of the stories he would ever write. Disappointed at how some of his stories had been adapted as radio plays, Bond decided he could do a better job, and slid neatly into the script writing business himself. The transition wasn't difficult. He had already written several stage plays; and having reviewed numerous plays in earlier years, he understood the dramatic requirements that would grab a listener's attention.
During the 1943-44 season, he wrote 46 half-hour crime dramas for ABC's Hot Copy, plus a smattering of scripts for The Dr. Christian Show, Author's Playhouse and Curtain Time. In subsequent years he would write scripts for The Black Book, Ford Theatre, Make Believe Time, The Sheriff Show, Mystery on the Air, Dimension X, Molle Mystery Theatre, Escape, and other classic radio shows.
Then, in 1946, television came along. Bond had just adapted "Mr. Mergenthwirker's Lobblies" (one of his most popular fantasy stories) as a radio series, and was asked to adapt it for television. "Lobblies" became the first television play ever aired over a network. The network, he recalls, consisted of Boston, New York, and Washington.
"The presentation was so elaborate there was a studio audience," Bond says, "and they printed a program for it. Unfortunately, no copy of the show exists, because they didn't have tape in those days."
He adds, regretfully, "That was probably the golden opportunity of my life that I threw out the window." After the play was done, the director told Bond, "This is a brand-new medium. Why don't you come up here and get into this with us?" Bond turned down the offer because he was making more money writing for radio. The director's assistant, Fred Coe, went on to become president of NBC.
By the early 1950s, with magazines rapidly disappearing from the newsstands, and radio drama in a sharp tailspin, Bond abandoned those markets and concentrated on television plays. He was especially saddened that Donald Kennicott, the respected editor who guided McCall Corp.'s Blue Book magazine for more than 25 years retired. "The magazine sure went downhill after Don left," Bond says. Bond says that he always went where the money and the interest took him. "I think it was the interest as much as the money -- although I agree with Samuel Johnson that nobody but a knucklehead ever wrote for anything but money."
Then even television began to change. Dramas and repertory shows were replaced by mindless sitcoms, "And I stopped making as much money as I had been. So I went to Hollywood, and I bombed out in Hollywood -- I didn't have the contacts, or the knowledge of how to write for the screen."
After being out of touch with August Derleth for several years, Bond wrote him on December 18, 1964: "I spent a year in Hollywood, where I had a wonderful time meeting such old friends as Bill Fay, Bill Cox, John and Ward Hawkins, Bob Bloch, Ray Bradbury, and many, many others...but one and all, they sang the same old song. 'Wasn't it wonderful when we were writing what we wanted to write for Blue Book, Colliers, the Post, the dear, dead, deserted magazines?' Nowadays they are at the far-from-tender mercies of a new breed of monsters known as script editors, non-creative bastards who presume to tell writers how to tell a story."
By 1959, Bond was out of both television and films, and had opened up a public Relations agency in Roanoke, Virginia. He wrote Derleth in December of that year, "Glancing over our old correspondence, I discovered that I was very optimistic about TV the last time I wrote. This enthusiasm has waned completely. As a matter of fact, the closure of the fiction markets and the massive stupidity of TV led me to opening a Public Relations agency 15 months ago. It is not as much fun as writing, but it is economically sounder."
Derleth shared Bond's dislike of writing for TV. His one stint in Hollywood in 1953 filled him with an overwhelming urge to leave as quickly as possible: "[It] puts me in touch with too many just unlettered people who think they know more than creative people, a type I abominate."
One of the incidents that soured Bond during his latter years as a TV script writer was being sued in 1957 by actor Orson Welles. In that year it occurred to Bond that a whole new generation had been born which had not heard nor did not even know anything about the famed War of the Worlds radio show (1939) which had so terrified their parents.
"I researched the records and wrote a television play titled 'The Night America Trembled'," Bond explained to me, "recounting actual incidents which had incurred that night. Since Orson was no longer the young, near-handsome youth he had been I could not cast him as himself, but wrote him in as the Narrator of the play.
"Being TV, all action was, of course, visual. But in the background its actors were hearing on radio the actual words of the play being broadcast (and motivating their actions). Consequently, when I submitted the play to CBS's Studio One I pointed out that as an author I was totally responsible for everything in the script EXCEPT the background radio play...and I so stipulated when a contract was signed.
"CBS offered Orson the Narrator role and he turned it down, wanting to play himself! Graham MacNamee assumed the role. The play aired to gratifying acclaim. But shortly thereafter CBS called me from New York and said, "Westinghouse, CBS and you are being sued by Welles, individually and collectively, for two million dollars each for violation of copyright.
"My response was immediate and simple. I said, 'Read the contract.' I cannot verify this, but I was told that CBS and Westinghouse did pay Orson something...but I was home free."
Bond stayed with his PR business until 1965, until a severe attack of ulcers forced him to be hospitalized. During his confinement he pondered the fate of his massive book collection were he to die. "My family had no idea of the value many items would bring," he said, and he feared that if given to an auctioneer, the collection would go for much less than its real value. Upon his release, he began to catalog his book collection and other memorabilia he had acquired, and it occurred to him that if he could translate the buying and selling of rare books into a profitable hobby, he might be able to get out of the PR racket.
Over the next quarter-century Bond became a well-known antiquarian bookseller, and a member of the Antiquarian Bookmen's Association, of which he is now a member emeritus. A few months before Derleth's death, Bond expressed delight in having gone into the bookselling business. "This book business has amazed me. From a standing start a couple of years ago it has burgeoned into a rather respectable portion of my income...the men who are in the antiquarian book trade are a fine lot... friendly, cooperative, intelligent and unbelievably honest. It is the only business I've ever heard of where dealers will on occasion pay you more than you have asked for a book, unwilling to take advantage of a neophyte's ignorance! Imagine!"
In 1966 he began discussions with Derleth about a book for Arkham House, to be called Nightmares and Daydreams.
According to the correspondence between the two men, Bond was given complete freedom to make his own selection of material; Derleth was never that liberal with most other writers. He wrote Bond, "The contents of the book look good to me, fine in fact, and I'm sure there's nothing in it to which I'd take a dislike. I've always like Bond stories, thought them several cuts above the field in general, and I've used them in anthologies whenever I could, as you know."
Unlike so many other pulp writers who were unable to adapt to changing times, Nelson Bond was a chameleon, reinvented himself several times as life's circumstances demanded -- just as skillfully as he reinvented ordinary fantasy stories and turned them into delightfully imaginative and convoluted gems. Although he explained in an October 1998 LOCUS interview that he wrote as many, or more, sports and detective stories as he did fantasy and science fiction stories, he never thought of himself as a science fiction writer, "I thought of myself as a fantasy writer."
It makes some of us wonder how he plans to reinvent himself as he heads toward his own millennium.
* * *
This Nelson Bond profile appeared in Arkham's Masters of Horror, the 60th anniversary anthology I edited for Arkham House in 2000. It is reprinted on this Web site by permission of the publisher. You'll find more details about the book at http://www.arkhamhouse.com/.)
During the weeks I worked with Nelson Bond to prepare the foregoing article, I took a bold step and suggested, as editor of Arkham House, that we publish a new collection of his stories. I pointed out that the 1968 collection Nightmares and Daydreams had been one of Arkham's fastest selling books. And having collected and read several dozen Bond short stories from Blue Book and Weird Tales, I was convinced that there were a significant number of stories begging to be reprinted.
Arkham released The Far Side of Nowhere in March 2002 to a surprising deluge of favorable reviews. Publishers Weekly starred and featured the book in their March 18 issue, together with an interview Ben Indick had with Bond, and we had another successful book in distribution. Several months after publication I toyed with the idea of a second, larger collection for publication early in 2004, and went to work on it with Nelson, then approaching his 94th birthday.
There was a certain urgency because Nelson was donating his literary papers to Marshall University (his alma mater) in April 2003, including all his radio and TV scripts and plays, the original pulp fiction magazines, tearsheets, manuscripts, and the index cards and daybooks recording publication details.
Over the next several months, Nelson shipped me the old pulp magazines, tearsheets and manuscripts to nearly all of his fantasy and SF stories that had not appeared in earlier collections. Concurrently I prowled the Internet booksellers for copies of earlier collection, and in two months acquired them all. I confess that I haven't read them yet because I've been occupied reading the uncollected magazine stories -- many of which surprised me.
From this effort we culled Other Worlds Than Ours (for early 2004) and a future fantasy collection to be called Probability Zero (hopefully for 2006) and have enough stories for yet another large book after that.
For years I'd been exposed to Nelson's quirky fantasy stories and a few horror and weird tales, but never to his science fiction. I had not made an effort to seek them out because I'm not a devotee of SF. But I got to like Nelson's SF tales immediately for many reasons. They were intelligently written and plotted, and had an adventure-quality about them. In short order the nucleus of Nelson's next Arkham House collection began to take shape, with a fine novel, "Gods of the Jungle," and many first-rate adventure novelettes like "Martian Caravan," "Wanderers of the Wolf Moon," "Shadrach," "Luxury Liner," "Pawns of Chaos," "Phantom Out of Time," "The Ultimate Salient," and others.
Over four months I read more SF stories than I'd read in the last 20 years. Some proved to be among the best adventure stories I've read in a long time. More interesting, while all were written 50 and 60 years ago, when the science of space travel was primitive at best, a considerable number of his stories were relatively fresh by today's standards, as well as being riveting stories difficult to interrupt.
Like his colleagues of the fictioneer days, Nelson Bond wrote stories in many genres -- including sports, fantasy, horror, space travel and crime, then for radio and television. His literate writing style had few peers. As the editor of the "Off the Blotter" column in the July 1943 Mammoth Detective wrote, "All good magazines have Nelson S. Bond on the contents page, or should, because he's one sweet writer."
Even on those rare occasions when he created a less-than-perfect story plot (a large fiction output was necessary to support a family of four, Bond once told me), he seldom compromised his writing skills. That's why so many of his stories have survived the last half-century and are still as fresh as if they were just pulled out of his typewriter. If an occasional plot seems vaguely familiar to something you've read in a recent book or saw on television, very likely it echoes a storyline Bond's fertile imagination conjured up decades before. Those attributes and his delightfully dark and offbeat humor explain why many consider Nelson Bond to be one of the classic fantasy storytellers of our time.
Copyright Peter Ruber
Links:
Arkham's Masters of Horror is available at Amazon.com by clicking here.]
The Remarkable Exploits of Lancelot Biggs: Spaceman, published by Wildside Press, is available from Amazon.com. Please click here to see sample pages and to get more info.
The Far Side of Nowhere, an Arkham House collection of 29 stories, is available from Amazon.com. Please click here.
That Worlds May Live, published by Wildside Press, is also available from Amazon.com. Please click here.
Posted by ds at February 13, 2003 05:28 PM
As a young man I would awaken each day to the ratatat of the old Remington as my father worked in his office. To us, my brother and I, it was a sacred place, taboo to young eyes and only rarely seen through the seldom opened door. Once asked by my doctor what my father did I replied that "He just writes letters all day."
What a marvelous experience it is for me to see such a beautifully written article about him. My deepest thanks to Peter Ruber, to Pulp Rack, and forever to my father for writing those wonderful letters.
Posted by: Lynn Nelson Bond at April 5, 2003 04:17 PM
Lo these many years ago, I worked with Nelson Bond in his PR firm as a girl Friday. Occasionally I wrote an article for one of his clients which, of course, he edited. When he’d finished, I could hardly believe I’d written it, it was so much improved. Usually he had only removed what he called “weasel words” – unnecessary verbiage.
Nelson’s definition of a real writer was “someone who would rather write a letter than eat a meal.” His slender frame, so spare he is all but invisible when viewed in proflle, proves by his own definition that he is indeed, a real writer. Mega thanks to Peter Ruber for re-kindling awareness of the work of this remarkable author.
Posted by: Kathy Plotkin at April 14, 2003 03:54 PM
Peter, thank you for a wonderfully evocative bio of a man who has not only been a good friend for 30 years, but who has aided me immeasurably and unstintingly with time, advice and criticism. I applaud both your personal interest in a terrific writer, and your good sense in publishing him and making his stories live again.
Posted by: Bud Webster at March 17, 2004 05:54 PM
