Gertrude Barrows Bennett (1883–1948)

The existence of New Weird has always implied the existence of Weird, but given I’ve never explored genre fiction from the first two or three decades of last century, and what few books I had read I’d never thought of as “weird”... Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Barsoom novels, for example. HG Wells. Robert Howard. Even early science fiction magazines, such as Amazing or Astounding. Not really weird, to be honest.

I’d heard of Francis Stevens, had even read a couple of stories by her, show more and knew it was a pseudonym of Gertrude Barrows Bennett, a hugely popular writer of science fiction and fantasy in the years after World War I. Again, not really weird.

Recently, Penguin published a short series of Weird Fiction books - an anthology, and novels by Bennet, Algernon Blackwood, William Hope Hodgson and Robert W Chambers. A couple of months ago, they were on offer as ebooks, but I only bought the Bennett. I was, I admit, expecting something like the Francis Stevens stories I’d read years before, even though the book’s blurb made it sound more like HP Lovecraft…

If anything, Claimed! reads like a tale from some horror anthology television series, The Curse of the Monkey’s Paw or something. A doctor is called to the house of the richest man in the town, even though the man is not his patient. But the doctor was available and lived close by. The rich old man has suffered some sort of shock, and is put to bed. He has in his possession a small box made of a strange green stone. It has red writing in an unfamiliar alphabet on the top, but whenever anyone looks away the inscription transfers to the bottom of the box. Although clearly made to be opened, no one has succeeded in learning what’s inside.

The old man is afraid someone is after his box, someone not entirely natural. He persuades the doctor to move into his house and minister directly/keep watch on him. The doctor agrees, chiefly because he fancies the old man’s niece.

After a series of strange events - an illusory sea seeps into the old man’s bedroom, the town is flooded several times - they learn the box was found on an island formed during a volcanic eruption near the Azores. So the old man, doctor and niece charter a ship and head for the island. But the old man and niece are kidnapped by the crew of a mysterious clipper. The doctor gives chase in the steamer chartered by the old man…

Claimed! is pretty much Lovecraft without the eldritch horror. The prose is also less overwrought. Perhaps it drags out the mystery a little too long, and then wraps it up far too quickly, but it was entertaining enough and not at all the chore to read I was expecting.

And yes, it probably was weird after all. show less

Bennett, under the pseudonym Francis Stevens, was an early writer of weird fiction, admired in the 1920s (Lovecraft), but long eclipsed by others in the genre (Lovecraft), and not included in a seminal overview of the weird, Supernatural Horror in Literature (Lovecraft). Even some photos of her are of doubted authenticity. She is belatedly being seen as an originator of dark fantasy, so it's nice to see that, eventually, the stars are become right for her.

I read Claimed! In a recent Penguin show more edition, which sadly has no critical apparatus, but does have excellent cover art. The story was first published in 1920, and is pulp rather than high literature. This doesn't have the characterisation and philosophy of slightly earlier writers, such as Blackwood, but does capture the atmosphere of the strange and otherworldly that is the mainstay of weird fiction.

In Claimed!, we have an ancient, eldritch artefact found on a mysteriously appearing then vanishing island that causes delirium and fearful visions, is associated with strange sacrifices to a sleeping deity, whose gradual awakening is heralded by madness and natural catastrophes. Lovecraft fans will recognise these as elements from his story The Call of Cthulhu, written five years after Bennett's story!

The main characters are in service to their roles in the plot, despite which I don't think they are entirely cardboard. One of the minor players had promise as a potential Psychic Detective, but sadly that fizzled out. Otherwise an engaging genre story: 4🔱 show less

This is a rather dated but still enjoyable read of one of the first multiverse stories. The three main characters all think they are time-traveling but then come to realize they had simply entered another (very dystopian) version of their own world, where time moves at a different pace, (or something... the 'science' in this story is very hand-wavy). Regardless of the scientific accuracy, the story is entertaining, mostly on the strength of the characters and the strange adventures they find show more themselves having. And really, at its heart, this is more of an adventure tale than anything else. On that level it holds up pretty well more than 100 years after first being published. show less

A surprisingly engrossing weird adventure story. I went back and forth on this a couple of times. The early stages have two explorers encountering a classic lost city in the desert, where Aztec gods are still worshipped. When a fifteen-year time-skip intervened, my interest waned as it usually does in those circumstances. However, Stevens soon gets things going again, now in weird thriller mode. This is good stuff, keeping things weird enough to signal the reader that it's all Aztec all the show more time, but equally just plain weird for the characters trying to understand it.

I have no idea how accurate any of the Aztec mythology is, but once I'd got into it, I found this an enjoyable and novel story. Stevens maintains a good foreboding atmosphere, and I half-expected it to turn into a horror story. Nevertheless, the writing remains very readable. The characters are simple and see minimal development, but play their parts perfectly well. I'd have liked to see the mysterious girl better fleshed-out, as she's potentially a very interesting character with a unique background, but perhaps this wasn't the story for that - by the time she's on the scene things are bubbling towards a climax, and pausing to give her extensive backstory would have affected the pacing. show less