Kenneth Bulmer (1921–2005)
Author of Transit to Scorpio
About the Author
Disambiguation Notice:
Kenneth Bulmer (1921-2005) was the actual name of this author. His pseudonymns included Alan Burt Akers, Frank Brandon, Rupert Clinton, Ernest Corley, Dael Forest, Peter Green, Adam Hardy, Philip Kent, Bruno Krauss, Karl Maras, Manning Norvil, Chesman Scot, Nelson Sherwood, Richard Silver, H. Philip Stratford, and Tully Zetford. Kenneth Johns was a collective pseudonym used for a collaboration with author John Newman. Some of Bulmer's works were published along with the works of other authors under "house names" (collective pseudonyms) Ken Blake (for a series of tie-ins with the 1970s television programme The Professionals), Arthur Frazier, Neil Langholm, Charles R. Pike, and Andrew Quiller.
(ger) Kenneth Bulmer (1921-2005) war der bürgerliche Name dieses Autors. Zu seinen Pseudonymen gehörten Alan Burt Akers, Frank Brandon, Rupert Clinton, Ernest Corley, Dael Forest, Peter Green, Adam Hardy, Philip Kent, Bruno Krauss, Karl Maras, Manning Norvil, Chesman Scot, Nelson Sherwood, Richard Silver, H. Philip Stratford, und Tully Zetford. Kenneth Johns war ein Sammelpseudonym, das benutzt wurde für die Zusammenarbeit mit dem Autor John Newman. Einige von Bulmers Werken wurden mit denen anderer Autoren unter den "house names" (kollektive Pseudonyme) Ken Blake (für eine Buchreihe zur Fernsehserie "The Professionals"), Arthur Frazier, Neil Langholm, Charles R. Pike und Andrew Quiller veröffentlicht.
Series
Works by Kenneth Bulmer
The Key to Irunium / The Wandering Tellurian (Ace Double H-20) (1967) — Author — 70 copies, 1 review
The Electric Sword-Swallowers / Beyond Capella (Ace Double 05595) (1971) — Author — 57 copies, 1 review
I soli di Scorpio 2 copies
Short Fiction Collection 2 copies
O MUNDO EM CHAMAS (WORLD AFLAME) 2 copies
Lunga caccia nello spazio 2 copies
Lallia The Slave Girl 1 copy
Fox - Blood Bath 1 copy
Fox 1 copy
as estrelas são nossas 1 copy
The Steel Claw 4 1 copy
The Steel Claw 3 1 copy
The Steel Claw 2 1 copy
The Steel Claw 1 1 copy
The star venturers 1 copy
La arenas del infierno 1 copy
1981 1 copy
El mundo en llamas 1 copy
Green Shadows 1 copy
The fowling 1 copy
Lives 1 copy
The Sun of Scorpio 1 copy
Ice and Fire 1 copy
Cybernetic Controller 1 copy
Associated Works
The Mammoth Book of Men O'War: Stories from the Glory Days of Sail (1999) — Contributor — 105 copies, 1 review
The Mammoth Book of Hearts of Oak: Classic and New Stories from the Age of Fighting Sail (2001) — Contributor — 40 copies, 1 review
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Bulmer, Kenneth
- Legal name
- Bulmer, Henry Kenneth
- Other names
- Akers, Alan Burt
Brandon, Frank
Clinton, Rupert
Corley, Ernest
Forest, Dael
Green, Peter (show all 17)
Hardy, Adam
Kent, Philip
Krauss, Bruno
Maras, Karl
Norvil, Manning
Scot, Chesman
Sherwood, Nelson
Silver, Richard
Stratford, H. Philip
Zetford, Tully
Prescot, Dray - Birthdate
- 1921-01-14
- Date of death
- 2005-12-16
- Gender
- male
- Occupations
- author
- Awards and honors
- Guest of Honour, Eastercon, UK (1968)
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- London, Middlesex, England, UK
- Places of residence
- Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England, UK
- Place of death
- Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England, UK
- Map Location
- England, UK
- Disambiguation notice
- Kenneth Bulmer (1921-2005) was the actual name of this author. His pseudonymns included Alan Burt Akers, Frank Brandon, Rupert Clinton, Ernest Corley, Dael Forest, Peter Green, Adam Hardy, Philip Kent, Bruno Krauss, Karl Maras, Manning Norvil, Chesman Scot, Nelson Sherwood, Richard Silver, H. Philip Stratford, and Tully Zetford. Kenneth Johns was a collective pseudonym used for a collaboration with author John Newman. Some of Bulmer's works were published along with the works of other authors under "house names" (collective pseudonyms) Ken Blake (for a series of tie-ins with the 1970s television programme The Professionals), Arthur Frazier, Neil Langholm, Charles R. Pike, and Andrew Quiller.
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Multidimensional mission in Good Show Sir! — bad science fiction and fantasy covers (July 2025)
Reviews
The sword-and-planet series "Dray Prescot of Scorpio" by Alan Burt Akers (i.e. Kenneth Bulmer) is intended in nearly every way to echo "John Carter of Mars." While the Civil War background of John Carter was in living memory when Burroughs wrote, it was old history for Bulmer, who chose in 1972 to recruit his Dray Prescot from the 1700s. Mars is astrologically the planet ruling Scorpio, and just as a constellation has more lights and area than a planet, the Prescot books spend more pages and show more plot convolutions to achieve the same outcomes that Edgar Rice Burroughs awarded to his adventurer. The achievement of winning the hand of a princess on Carter's adopted planet in the very first Barsoom story A Princess of Mars takes Dray Prescot the full five volumes of the "Delian Cycle" (named for the Princess Delia) to accomplish.
Manhounds of Antares starts the "Havilfar Cycle" with a couple of chapters of happy denouement for the Delian situation in Vallia. But that is just background to provide motivation to Prescot when he is supernaturally displaced by the Star Lords, who deposit him in a slave pen on the distant southern continent of Havilfar, where the reader must now anticipate he will be preoccupied for another five books. Indeed, based on the names of the further cycles within the long series, it appears that Prescot might not complete his odyssey to return to Vallia until book fifteen.
Much of Manhounds has the feel of the film Groundhog Day (1993), as Prescot attempts to perform the task that he believes the Star Lords to have set for him. On each failure, he finds himself bounced back to the same imprisonment where he was put without any explicit guidance in the third chapter. It is not until the end of the book, having made a little progress on the task they evidently had in mind for him, that their avian messenger tells him of its larger scope.
The planet Kregen in the Alpha Scorpii system is bigger than Barsoom, and accordingly its people are littler. Where Burroughs had towering Green Martians and White Apes, Bulmer has many sorts of 'halflings,' and on Havilfar these tend to outnumber the homo sapiens types, whom they call 'apim.' The halflings come in a bewildering variety of types, and Bulmer often mentions them without supporting descriptions, making the glossary from the end of the previous Prince of Scorpio volume useful in this book (where it's not reproduced). Prescot actually overcomes his own racial prejudices to some extent here, giving him a little higher moral caliber than the Confederate cavalier Carter, although his chivalrous gender rigidity continues to pose challenges parallel to those enjoyed by his Barsoomian model.
I quote my previous verdict that "There's nothing much on Kregen that you couldn't find on Barsoom or Mongo," but some glimmers of comedy that I found in the fourth book returned in this sixth one, and I have hopes that they might in later sequels bloom into a sort of Vancian humor. show less
Manhounds of Antares starts the "Havilfar Cycle" with a couple of chapters of happy denouement for the Delian situation in Vallia. But that is just background to provide motivation to Prescot when he is supernaturally displaced by the Star Lords, who deposit him in a slave pen on the distant southern continent of Havilfar, where the reader must now anticipate he will be preoccupied for another five books. Indeed, based on the names of the further cycles within the long series, it appears that Prescot might not complete his odyssey to return to Vallia until book fifteen.
Much of Manhounds has the feel of the film Groundhog Day (1993), as Prescot attempts to perform the task that he believes the Star Lords to have set for him. On each failure, he finds himself bounced back to the same imprisonment where he was put without any explicit guidance in the third chapter. It is not until the end of the book, having made a little progress on the task they evidently had in mind for him, that their avian messenger tells him of its larger scope.
The planet Kregen in the Alpha Scorpii system is bigger than Barsoom, and accordingly its people are littler. Where Burroughs had towering Green Martians and White Apes, Bulmer has many sorts of 'halflings,' and on Havilfar these tend to outnumber the homo sapiens types, whom they call 'apim.' The halflings come in a bewildering variety of types, and Bulmer often mentions them without supporting descriptions, making the glossary from the end of the previous Prince of Scorpio volume useful in this book (where it's not reproduced). Prescot actually overcomes his own racial prejudices to some extent here, giving him a little higher moral caliber than the Confederate cavalier Carter, although his chivalrous gender rigidity continues to pose challenges parallel to those enjoyed by his Barsoomian model.
I quote my previous verdict that "There's nothing much on Kregen that you couldn't find on Barsoom or Mongo," but some glimmers of comedy that I found in the fourth book returned in this sixth one, and I have hopes that they might in later sequels bloom into a sort of Vancian humor. show less
The third installment of Akers' long, long Kregen series is absolutely formulaic sword and planet fiction. The book features beast-men, airships, exhaustive detail of exotic military technology, a kidnapped princess, a predatory queen, an arena battle with a monster, and heroic nudity. Protagonist Dray Prescott's companion-in-arms is Seg Segutorio, a name that recalls the Tars Tarkas of Barsoom, although Seg is more conventionally humanoid than the green Martian. The bird steeds that are show more called tarns in the Gor books feature here as multiple species, including corth and impiters.
One little innovation: A footnote points out a lack of continuity with the previous volumes, and opines that some of Prescott's memoir has been lost. It's a sort of retnoncon! Along with a different allusion to missing tapes in the second book, this may have been the author's scheme to open up gaps in the narrative that might later be filled with further writings.
Towards the middle of this book I was getting kind of bored of planet Kregen (pretty unforgivable in a book of this sort!), but the pace picked up toward the end, and I genuinely enjoyed the last two or three chapters. I guess I'll read some more Dray Prescott, but not very soon. show less
One little innovation: A footnote points out a lack of continuity with the previous volumes, and opines that some of Prescott's memoir has been lost. It's a sort of retnoncon! Along with a different allusion to missing tapes in the second book, this may have been the author's scheme to open up gaps in the narrative that might later be filled with further writings.
Towards the middle of this book I was getting kind of bored of planet Kregen (pretty unforgivable in a book of this sort!), but the pace picked up toward the end, and I genuinely enjoyed the last two or three chapters. I guess I'll read some more Dray Prescott, but not very soon. show less
An interesting, flawed tale about space drugs, space cats and space bees. It was hard to understand who the audience was supposed to be, because there were numerous depictions of violent deaths and nudity and sex but all the swear words were censored.
I enjoyed Bulmer's prose; it was almost poetically written, which is why I'm ultimately giving it the four stars.
Lots of cool ideas are explored and also some very dumb ideas are posited. And the plot goes into anti-capitalism territory instead show more of playing it safe with a traditional adventure direction. Worth a read for sure. show less
I enjoyed Bulmer's prose; it was almost poetically written, which is why I'm ultimately giving it the four stars.
Lots of cool ideas are explored and also some very dumb ideas are posited. And the plot goes into anti-capitalism territory instead show more of playing it safe with a traditional adventure direction. Worth a read for sure. show less
Prince of Scorpio is the fifth of many Dray Prescot sword-and-planet novels, completing the first "cycle" of a longer series. Unlike the books that have come before, it does provide a real plot resolution, with Dray unsurprisingly winning the hand of the Kregish princess Delia after a climax that brings together all of the comrades he had befriended over the prior volumes. This achievement did make the book more satisfying than the others.
In the seventh of twenty chapters, the story show more introduces Jikaida, which is Kregish chess, or rather Jetan, or Kaissa, not failing to use any of the standard tropes of the sub-genre. The game's name relates to the battle-cry Jikai and to the verb jikaider, to flog with crosswise stripes.
Author Alan Burt Akers (actually the prolific Kenneth Bulmer) included a glossary in this book, and I can't recall the last time I used a glossary so extensively while reading a work of fiction. In addition to character names and exoplanetary geography, entries cover exotic flora and fauna and titles both aristocratic and military. There are a plethora of "halfling" types, i.e. bestial humanoids, with individual species names. Another reference item is the map of the planet Kregen. I found it difficult to read, but it was better than nothing!
By the close of this account, the motives of the Star Lords and the Savanti, two different powers responsible for Prescot's transportation between Earth and Kregen, are still thoroughly obscure. He has, however, affirmed his opposition to slavery, and embraced that as his self-selected mission on the alien world.
There's nothing much on Kregen that you couldn't find on Barsoom or Mongo, but the prose quality continues its slow incremental improvement, and if you just want some heroism in a conventional planetary romance, these books are entirely adequate. show less
In the seventh of twenty chapters, the story show more introduces Jikaida, which is Kregish chess, or rather Jetan, or Kaissa, not failing to use any of the standard tropes of the sub-genre. The game's name relates to the battle-cry Jikai and to the verb jikaider, to flog with crosswise stripes.
Author Alan Burt Akers (actually the prolific Kenneth Bulmer) included a glossary in this book, and I can't recall the last time I used a glossary so extensively while reading a work of fiction. In addition to character names and exoplanetary geography, entries cover exotic flora and fauna and titles both aristocratic and military. There are a plethora of "halfling" types, i.e. bestial humanoids, with individual species names. Another reference item is the map of the planet Kregen. I found it difficult to read, but it was better than nothing!
By the close of this account, the motives of the Star Lords and the Savanti, two different powers responsible for Prescot's transportation between Earth and Kregen, are still thoroughly obscure. He has, however, affirmed his opposition to slavery, and embraced that as his self-selected mission on the alien world.
There's nothing much on Kregen that you couldn't find on Barsoom or Mongo, but the prose quality continues its slow incremental improvement, and if you just want some heroism in a conventional planetary romance, these books are entirely adequate. show less
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