2019: Cleo Eldon "Don" Wilcox

– 2019 Individual Inductee –

Cleo Eldon “Don” Wilcox

Cleo Eldon “Don” Wilcox was born in Lucas, Kansas and passed away there as well. In between he was a teacher, editor, artist, and for a time was one of the most popular science fiction/fantasy authors in North America, if not the world. The sociological study “The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years” (Amazing Stories, October 1940) permanently established Don’s name in the history of science fiction. Don’s last story was published when he was 87 years old, capping off a professional writing career that spanned 53 years. One of the forgotten greats of science fiction’s Golden Age is today seeing a renaissance and has more than earned a place in the Russell County Kansas Hall of Fame.

REDISCOVERING DON WILCOX

By Mike Ashley

When I first began collecting science-fiction magazines in earnest, back in the mid-1960s, I managed to acquire a fair size batch of the pulp issues of Amazing Stories when it was published by Ziff-Davis and edited by Raymond A. Palmer and later Howard Browne. I was already aware that the Palmer Amazing was not an especially sophisticated magazine, in fact quite the opposite. It went for sensationalism, with lurid covers, headline-grabbing story titles, and high-octane action fiction. So I wasn’t looking for anything that would test the brain cells. John W. Campbell’s Astounding, it most certainly wasn’t.

But the magazine intrigued me, for several reasons, one of which was the contributors. Palmer had created a local, Chicago-based stable of writers. Some were known from their work elsewhere—Robert Bloch, Robert Moore Williams, Nelson Bond—but most appeared predominantly, indeed some exclusively, in Amazing Stories and its companion Fantastic Adventures—William P. McGivern, Chester S. Geier, David Wright O’Brien, Berkeley Livingston and, of course, Don Wilcox. These authors contributed not only under their own names and a variety of personal pen names, but also under a family of house names, that is convenience names under which the works of several writers were hidden—names like Alexander Blade, Gerald Vance, P. F. Costello. To this day it is still not completely known who wrote what under these names and, as a result, the total output of these writers has not been identified.

It was this that got me interested and I began to undertake research. I read the stories trying to identify similarities in style, but that did not particularly help. I later learned that Ray Palmer and his assistant editors, notably Louis Sampliner and David Vern, would edit the stories, sometimes excessively, to fit as many as possible into a house style. Even so, you can’t completely eradicate a writer’s style and I did start to find certain personalities amongst the work. But to be clear who wrote what, I needed to contact the writers. However, by the mid 1970s, when I started to do this, it was far from easy. There was certainly no internet to help track people down. Palmer’s circle of writers had pretty much faded away in the 1950s. A few, like Robert Bloch and William P. McGivern, had moved on to fame and fortune, but most were no longer active.

One author I was especially keen to contact was Don Wilcox because his stories stood out. He was one of the more prolific contributors to the magazine and had a distinctive style, something the sub-editors couldn’t mask. Although he occasionally wrote the formulaic fiction encouraged by Palmer, for the most part his stories had their own voice. The best known, quite rightly, is the one that established his name in the history of science fiction, “The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years” (Amazing Stories, October 1940) or, to give it Don’s original and, to my mind, much better title, “Children of Space”. It was the first to explore in detail the idea of a starship sent to a distant world on a journey where only the descendants of the original pioneers will survive. The story isn’t a simple adventure but a sociological study. The captain of the ship is in suspended animation and wakes only every hundred years to check on developments, so witnesses the changes, mostly degenerative, amongst the humans. The story was almost rejected because Louis Sampliner felt it did not fit into the mould for the magazine, but Palmer saw the true merit of the story and accepted it.

“The Whispering Gorilla” (Fantastic Adventures, May 1940) was another that proved popular. A murdered man has his brain transplanted into a gorilla, but in Wilcox’s hands this wasn’t a simple ape-seeks-revenge story but something far more human. Assistant editor David Vern liked the story and character and, with Wilcox’s permission, wrote a sequel.

Then there were the Ebbtide Jones stories started early in his career and written under the pen name of Miles Shelton—a rather posh name for Amazing Stories, and in fact Wilcox’s wife’s maiden name—she was Helen Miles Shelton. Ebbtide Jones is an enterprising dealer in space junk. He has discovered a whirlpool in space where, because of gravitational forces, masses of space debris finds its way over time, and he makes use of whatever turns up.

One of my favourites, probably because it was the first story by Wilcox I read, was “The Giants of Mogo” (Amazing Stories, November 1947). Wilcox presents the seemingly implausible idea of mile-high giants living in a far distant star system, and who can’t believe the midget humans who stumble on to their planet can have the intelligence to create spaceships. This first short novel is written rather like a fairy-tale and so soon lulls you into its concept and carries you along.

The idea of fairy tales must have appealed to Wilcox because some of his best stories, certainly his most atmospheric, were fantasies in Fantastic Adventures. A particular gem is “Mademoiselle Butterfly” (May 1942) about a femme fatale and her unusual pets. It’s one of his more sinister stories. “The Land of Big Blue Apples” (May 1946), on the other hand, is more of a spoof, set on a fairy-tale Mars. Now and then Wilcox would produce an opening line which holds you spellbound. Take this one from “Rainbow of Death” (January 1942):

"Deep in the lavender mists that fill the caverns within the earth, the nine hundred and ninety-nine Servants of Death are labouring, even as they have labored through all of the earth’s past and will continue to labor for an eternity of future time to come."

When I read that forty years or more ago it grabbed my attention and the story does not let you down.

These and much else made me determined to track down Don Wilcox. It took me several years. It wasn’t until 1983, thanks to Will Murray and Ryerson Johnson, that I at last had Wilcox’s address and made contact. It began an epistolary friendship that lasted for well over a decade. From the start I encountered a welcoming, friendly, very human individual who was happy to talk about his life and work and to share memories and experiences.

What I learned was that although Wilcox became friends with both editors Ray Palmer and Howard Browne, as well as many of the writers, especially William P. McGivern and David Wright O’Brien, he saw writing as a solitary dedication. “I was a loner in my writing habits,” he told me. Though he didn’t always write at home. There was a big dining room on the lower floor of the LaSalle Railway Station in Chicago which was half empty in the afternoon and he would sit there with his notebook or with pages spread out in front of him with notes and ideas for stories and characters and see what hatched. Other times he would take a stroll through the park or the zoo. It was while walking through Lincoln Park Zoo that he saw a gorilla watching the crowd and the idea for “The Whispering Gorilla” came to him. When Wilcox and his family lived at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, Palmer would occasionally visit them. Wilcox recalled sharing a picnic table with Palmer. Palmer would read manuscripts whilst Wilcox plotted a story. But, as he told me, “I fear I was slightly tense, and perhaps only medium-warm as a friend.” It seems that although Wilcox could join in with his colleagues he worked better on his own.

Maybe this had something to do with his background. He was not, after all, a native Chicagoan, and his training was as a teacher. I would hazard a guess that Wilcox may well have been one of the better educated of the Ziff-Davis writers.

Don was born in Lucas, Kansas on August 29, 1905. His father, Horace, worked as a bank cashier of the First National Bank in Lucas, where he later rose to the position of President. His mother, Docia, was a housewife. Don was christened Cleo Eldon Wilcox and was the second of what would be four children, with an elder sister (Zola) and a younger brother and sister (Marvin and Thelma). Don’s father had been educated at the Kansas Christian College in Lincoln and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree. Before entering employment at the bank, he became assistant principal at Lincoln High School.

Don rather followed in his father’s footsteps. He graduated first from Lucas High school and then from the University of Kansas (KU) with an M.A. in sociology (hence the interest in “The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years”). In his teaching crareer Don taught English, creative writing, sociology, music and history. His first teaching job was at nineteen years old, for two years at the Junior High School in Bird City, Kansas. Returning to KU to complete his degree, he then spent three years as a teacher and principal at Lucas High School, after which he served three years as the principal of a tiny three-teacher rural high school at Harlan, Kansas. He also taught at Northwestern University and the University of Kansas. It was while teaching at Lucas that he met his future wife, Helen, and they were married on June 22, 1929. Their daughter, Carolyn, was born in August 1937.

As early as 1932 he had turned his hand to writing, initially short plays for the high-school classes and then several feature articles for the Kansas City Star. By the late 1930s Don believed he might make a living from writing and took the risk of uprooting his family and moving to Chicago, Illinois in 1938. He did the round of publishers, ending up at the back of the alphabet with Ziff-Davis Productions and Amazing Stories. He had not previously taken any notice of science fiction, but felt he could give it a try. He had read about experiments on small animals by freezing them instantly with “liquid air” and then reviving them. A convict serving life had suggested it be tried on him. Don concocted a story around this which became “The Pit of Death”. Palmer bought it for $90.00 and it appeared in the July 1939 Amazing Stories. Wilcox was on his way.

As he learned the ropes with Palmer he found he could sell one or two stories a month; some, such as “Disciples of Destiny” (Amazing Stories, March-April 1942) and “The Eye of the World” (Fantastic Adventures, June-July 1949 as by Alexander Blade), of novel length. He also wrote for the other Ziff-Davis magazines Mammoth Western and Mammoth Detective and in total published over a hundred stories.

All good things come to an end, though. By the late 1940s Palmer had become fascinated by flying saucers and the Shaver Mystery, the latter a belief by Richard S. Shaver that the Earth was still under the malign influence of evil beings, which he called ‘deros’, which were descendants of an advanced race that used to live on the Earth in aeons past. Palmer established his own magazine Fate to explore UFOs and other phenomena. Howard Browne took over as editor and he wanted to change both Amazing and Fantastic Adventures into more sophisticated, possibly even slick, magazines. Wilcox, as one of the more adaptable contributors, continued to sell to Browne until 1952, but it was time to move on.

Thanks to a recommendation from Browne, Wilcox turned to television. He was introduced to Olga Druce, the producer of the TV series Captain Video. In those days Captain Video was broadcast live on a daily basis, so it not only ate up material, the scripts had to be written in such a way as to allow actors time to move between scenes and for the sponsors links to be incorporated. It took Don a while to pick up this process but in the end he produced a batch of twenty scripts for one particular story sequence. One factor that Wilcox noticed when he watched the production of the plays was how quickly scenes rushed past which, in a story, could be better savoured and he feared that viewers might be missing some of the material. After the experience Don found it less satisfying than writing stories. There was little if any feedback from viewers and the restrictions of the half-hour format was very limiting. By the end of the twenty episodes Don told me he was “utterly exhausted”.

By then he found that he had also moved on from Ziff-Davis. For that matter, Amazing Stories and its new companion Fantastic, had also moved on. He wrote a few more stories for the magazines during the 1950s, but his last for a very long time was “The Smallest Moon” for Boys’ Life in 1957. Browne tried to encourage Wilcox to write for John Campbell’s Astounding, but by now Don had turned his thoughts to other activities.

Following a trip to Guatemala in 1958, Don developed, with the help of the American School foundation, a bi-lingual magazine for Spanish pupils. Called Caminos, it began in September 1959 and was used by many Spanish language classes in the United States. Don not only helped produce the magazine he wrote extensively for it and illustrated it, providing most of the covers for the next six years. In 1965 he became editor of Opportunity News, a newly established weekly magazine for Mexican-English migrant workers in Oregon. Two years later Don moved on again, and spent the next eight years in public relations and editing for the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. After his retirement in 1975, he settled in Sarasota, Florida, where he returned to his love of painting, chiefly oil painting, producing many portraits.

It was in Sarasota that I at last tracked Don down in 1983 and I was delighted to be able to entice him back into writing and encourage his last two published stories. I put Don in touch with Robert M. Price who edited a number of little magazines, the chief one being Crypt of Cthulhu, dedicated to the work of H. P. Lovecraft. Price had developed several new publications, one of which was based on old-style space opera, called Astro-Adventures. Issue #8 (June 1989) included both an interview with Don that I conducted via our correspondence and a new story “Visit the Yo-Yo Falls”. At that time I had also started a series of anthologies for the British publisher Robinson Books, including a sequence based on the myths and legends associated with King Arthur. For the second book in this series, The Camelot Chronicles (1992), Don brought together his passion for writing and art in an ingenious story, “Blueflow”. This was his last published story.

To have known Don was a real delight. We lost touch in his final years after he and Helen moved back to Kansas to live with their daughter. He died on March 9, 2000, aged 94, in Lucas and was laid to rest in the Fairview Township (Lucas) Cemetery.

Most pulp fiction tends to be ephemeral. The old magazines crumble and fade, surviving in the hands of a few dedicated collectors. The wider world seldom gets a chance to savour most of the fiction except for the work of those few that outgrew the pulp world and established for themselves a wider literary heritage—writers like Raymond Chandler, Robert Bloch, Dashiell Hammett and Isaac Asimov. Even some of the greats, like Max Brand and Johnston McCulley, are fading in the collective memory, so it is always a moment to celebrate when the work of a great old pulpster is rediscovered and repackaged for a modern readership.

Don’s stories capture a time and an age when our outlook on life was more free and unfettered by so many modern attitudes and restrictions. They were produced to entertain a primarily American public during the years leading up to and after the Second World War and, as such, they are escapist and pure fun.

As editor, Howard Browne told Wilcox, when he asked for some writing guidance, “Gimme Bang-Bang!” And that’s what he got. Though at times, a rather more unusual “Bang-Bang” than he might first have expected. Don’s stories are full of surprises and can still deliver that thrill and excitement that they did all those years ago.

Kent, England, 2014

* * * * *

Don thought that when he sold a story he no longer owned the rights, and so, unlike many of his fellow writers, he never sought in later years to have his work reprinted. Thus as an author his name was not remembered and he was largely forgotten. The Best of Don Wilcox, Volume I (2016) and The Best of Don Wilcox, Volume II (2017) were both published by Wildside Press and are the first collections of Don Wilcox’s stories ever published. A seven-volume anthology featuring all of Don’s known science fiction/fantasy works is being readied for future publication.

* * * * *

LIST OF DON WILCOX’S KNOWN SHORT STORIES,

NOVELETTES, NOVELLAS, NOVELS & ESSAYS

Science Fiction / Fantasy Stories by Don Wilcox:

1. The Pit of Death (Amazing Stories, June 1939)

2. Ray Lattimer Series: Wives in Duplicate (Amazing Stories, August 1939)

3. Ray Lattimer Series: When the Moon Died (Amazing Stories, September 1939)

4. Ebbtide Jones Series: Whirlpool in Space (Amazing Stories, November 1939) [as Miles Shelton]

5. Dictator of Peace (Amazing Stories, November 1939)

6. Ben Gleed Series: Ben Gleed, King of Speed (Amazing Stories, December 1939)

7. ESSAY: Meet the Authors (Amazing Stories, December 1939)

8. The Robot Peril (Fantastic Adventures, January 1940)

9. The Gift of Magic (Fantastic Adventures, January 1940) [as Miles Shelton]

10. ESSAY: Introducing the Authors (Amazing Stories, January 1940)

11. Let War Gods Clash! (Fantastic Adventures, February 1940)

12. The Whispering Gorilla (Fantastic Adventures, May 1940)

13. Lester Allison Series: Slave Raiders from Mercury (Amazing Stories, June 1940)

14. Mirrors of Madness (Amazing Stories, July 1940)

15. Mystery of the Mind Machine (Amazing Stories, August 1940)

16. Ebbtide Jones Series: The Girl in the Whirlpool (Fantastic Adventures, August 1940) [as Miles Shelton]

17. Champlin Fights the Purple God (Amazing Stories, September 1940)

18. The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years (Amazing Stories, October 1940)

19. The Invisible Wheel of Death (Amazing Stories, January 1941)

20. ESSAY: Meet the Authors: Don Wilcox (Amazing Stories, January 1941)

21. Lester Allison Series: Battering Rams of Space (Amazing Stories, February 1941)

22. Secret of the Stone Doll (Fantastic Adventures, March 1941)

23. Invisible Raiders of Venus (Amazing Stories, April 1941)

24. Three Eyes in the Dark (Fantastic Adventures, May 1941)

25. The Lost Race Comes Back (Amazing Stories, May 1941)

26. Ben Gleed Series: The Iron Men of Super City (Amazing Stories, May 1941)

27. Ebbtide Jones Series: Ebbtide Jones' Atom Constrictor (Fantastic Adventures, June 1941) [as Miles Shelton]

28. Taxi to Jupiter (Amazing Stories, August 1941)

29. Secret League of Six (Fantastic Adventures, August 1941)

30. Queen of the Living Puppets (Fantastic Adventures, October 1941)

31. The Man from the Future (Fantastic Adventures, November 1941)

32. The Stevedore of Jupiter (Amazing Stories, November 1941)

33. Mr. Eee Conducts a Tour (Fantastic Adventures, December 1941)

34. Rainbow of Death (Fantastic Adventures, January 1942)

35. Ben Gleed Series: The Fiend of New London (Amazing Stories, February 1942)

36. Disciples of Destiny (Part 1 of 2) (Amazing Stories, March 1942)

37. Disciples of Destiny (Part 2 of 2) (Amazing Stories, April 1942)

38. The Perfect Trap (Amazing Stories, April 1942) [as Miles Shelton]

39. Dwellers of the Deep (Fantastic Adventures, April 1942)

40. Bull Moose of Babylon (Fantastic Adventures, April 1942)

41. ESSAY: An Author Speaks (Amazing Stories, March 1942)

42. Mademoiselle Butterfly (Fantastic Adventures, May 1942)

43. The Man Who Turned to Smoke (Fantastic Adventures, June 1942)

44. Ebbtide Jones Series: Ebbtide Jones on the Warpath (Fantastic Adventures, June 1942) [as Miles Shelton]

45. The Eagle Man (Fantastic Adventures, July 1942)

46. Robotcycle for Two (Amazing Stories, September 1942) [as Max Overton]

47. An Angel with Four Faces (Fantastic Adventures, September 1942)

48. The Deadly Yappers (Fantastic Adventures, September 1942) [as Max Overton]

49. The Hollow Planet (Amazing Stories, October 1942)

50. The Leopard Girl (Fantastic Adventures, October 1942)

51. The Ice Queen (Fantastic Adventures, January 1943)

52. Lester Allison Series: Earth Stealers (Amazing Stories, June 1943)

53. The Great Brain Panic (Amazing Stories, July 1943)

54. Craig’s Book (Fantastic Adventures, July 1943)

55. Chariot of Death (Fantastic Adventures, August 1943)

56. World of the Paper Dolls (Fantastic Adventures, October 1943)

57. Magnetic Miss Meteor (Amazing Stories, March 1944)

58. Man from the Magic River (Fantastic Adventures, June 1944)

59. Cats of Kadenza (Fantastic Adventures, October 1944)

60. Fair Exchange (Fantastic Adventures, October 1944) [as Miles Shelton]

61. Invasion Dust (Amazing Stories, December 1944)

62. The Devil's Pigs (Fantastic Adventures, January 1945)

63. Taggart's Terrible Turban (Fantastic Adventures, January 1945)

64. The Singing Skulls (Fantastic Adventures, April 1945)

65. The Scarlet Swordsmen (Amazing Stories, June 1945)

66. The Voice from Venus (Amazing Stories, September 1945)

67. The Serpent Has Five Fangs (Fantastic Adventures, December 1945)

68. Woman's Island (Fantastic Adventures, December 1945) [as Miles Shelton]

69. The Sapphire Enchantress (Fantastic Adventures, December 1945) [as Cleo Eldon]

70. The Land of Big Blue Apples (Fantastic Adventures, May 1946)

71. March of the Mercury Men (Amazing Stories, August 1946)

72. The Red Door (Fantastic Adventures, November 1946)

73. Great Gods and Little Termites (Amazing Stories, December 1946)

74. The Secret of Sutter's Lake (Amazing Stories, January 1947)

75. Princess of the Sea (Fantastic Adventures, January 1947)

76. Desert of the Damned (Amazing Stories, May 1947)

77. Confessions of a Mechanical Man (Amazing Stories, May 1947) [as Buzz-Bolt Atomcracker]

78. The Kettle in the Pit (Amazing Stories, October 1947)

79. The Giants of Mogo (Amazing Stories, November 1947)

80. The Rikit of Mars (Amazing Stories, January 1948)

81. Secret of the Serpent (Fantastic Adventures, January 1948)

82. The Ocean Den of Mercury (Amazing Stories, June 1948) [as Miles Shelton]

83. The Lavender Vine of Death (Fantastic Adventures, September 1948)

84. The Eye of the World (Part 1 of 2) (Fantastic Adventures, June 1949) [as Alexander Blade]

85. The Eye of the World (Part 2 of 2) (Fantastic Adventures, July 1949) [as Alexander Blade]

86. The Iron Men of Venus (Amazing Stories, February 1952)

87. Queen of the Floating Island (Amazing Stories, March 1952)

88. The Battle of the Howling Hatchet (Amazing Stories, April 1952)

89. Fifty Thousand Nuggets (Amazing Stories, June 1952)

90. The Man Nobody Knew (Fantastic Adventures, June 1952)

91. Too Old to Die (Amazing Stories, July 1952)

92. Mars Invites You (Fantastic Adventures, August 1952)

93. Orphan of Space (Fantastic Story, Vol. 4, No. 2, August 1952)

94. The Slave Maker (Fantastic Adventures, September 1952)

95. The Mad Monster of Mogo (Amazing Stories, November 195)

96. Tombot! (Science-Adventure, Spring 1954 – Vol. 1, No. 11, Page 2)

97. The Fires of Kessa (Other Worlds Science Stories, November 1956)

98. Graygortch (Fantastic, April 1957 – Pages 99-116)

99. The Serpent River (Other Worlds Science Stories, May 1957)

100. The Smallest Moon (Boys’ Life, October 1957; The Boys’ Life Book of Outer Space Stories, 1964)

101. ESSAY: Voyage Through Outer Space (Woodburn Independent, December 2, 1965)

102. Visit the Yo-Yo Falls (Astro Adventures, June 1989)

103. Blueflow (The Camelot Chronicles: Heroic Adventures From the Time of King Arthur, edited by

Mike Ashley, New York: Random House, August & September 1992)

104. ESSAY: Some Echoes From the Windy City (Pulp Vault, July 1989 – No. 8)

Known Western stories by Don Wilcox under the pseudonym “Max Overton”:

Too Soon to Die (Mammoth Western, December 1947)
Limpy’s Gulch (Mammoth Western, July 1948)
Five Barrels of Trouble (Mammoth Western, December 1948)
The Galloping Coffeepot (Mammoth Western, December 1948)
Hell’s Belle (Mammoth Western, January 1949)
Ladies Can Fight Too! (Mammoth Western, January 1949)
Stampede in Reno (Mammoth Western, February 1949)
Compliments of Malvender’s Den (Mammoth Western, March 1949)
Cowboy’s in the Corn (Mammoth Western, March 1949)
Res Firelight Along the Trail (Mammoth Western, June 1949)
Lonely Cabin (Texas Rangers, January 1956)

Known Mystery/Detective stories by Don Wilcox:

The Alabaster Bear (Mammoth Detective, May 1945)
Mind Over Murder (Mammoth Detective, May 1942)
Siren in the Night (Mammoth Detective, September 1942)
Once Is Enough (Mammoth Detective, November 1943)
The Case of the Cockeyed Cat (Mammoth Mystery, February 1945)
Dibble Dabbles in Death (Mammoth Detective, February 1945)
See Naples and Die (Mammoth Detective, November 1945)
The Sound of Death (Mammoth Mystery, June 1946)
Till Death Do Us Part (Mammoth Detective, July 1946)

Known Sea Adventure stories by Don Wilcox:

Introduction to a Stranger (Weird Tales, March 1939)
Even the Worm Turns (South Sea Stories, December 1939)
Paradise: No Angels Wanted (South Sea Stories, June 1940)
Treasure of the Dead (South Sea Stories, August 1940)
The Peanut Pirate (South Sea Stories, February 1940)

Young Adult Books by Don Wilcox:

1. David’s Ranch (Jullian Messner, Inc., New York). 1954, 64 pages.

2. Basketball Star (Little, Brown and Company, Boston & Toronto). 1955, 242 pages.

3. Joe Sunpool (Little, Brown and Company, Boston & Toronto). 1956, 261 pages.

4. Castle on the Campus (Little, Brown and Company, Boston & Toronto). 1959, 232 pages.

Don Wilcox Known Ghostwritten Books (wrote for others):

1. Nikoline’s Academy by Margaret Maw (Oxford University Press). 1951, 249 pages.

2. The Doctor’s Wyoming Children by Woods Hocker Manley (Exposition Press, New York). 1953, 266 pages.