As concerns those peers enlisted to write the fictional-author stories under Farmer’s coordination, the list included (among others) Arthur Jean Cox, Philip K. Dick, Leslie Fiedler, Ron Goulart, and Gene Wolfe. Unfortunately, not all of these writers succeeded in completing their stories or having them published, though there were some notable exceptions. At Farmer’s suggestion, Arthur Jean Cox tackled one of his own creations, writing “Writers of the Purple Page” by John Thames Rokesmith, published in the May 1977 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Rokesmith was a character in Cox’s novella “Straight Shooters Always Win” (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Edward L. Ferman, May 1974). And Gene Wolfe—whose humorous “Tarzan of the Grapes” appears in Farmer’s survey of feral humans in literature, Mother Was A Lovely Beast—wrote “‘Our Neighbour’ by David Copperfield,” first published in the anthology Rooms of Paradise (ed. Lee Harding, Quartet Books, 1978), albeit under Wolfe’s own name. But the fun did not end there. Author Howard Waldrop, although not enlisted by Farmer, sought out the author of Venus on the Half-Shell and joined in with the other conspirators, publishing “The Adventure of the Grinder’s Whistle” as by Sir Edward Malone in the semipro fanzine Chacal #2 (eds. Arnie Fenner and Pat Cadigan, Spring 1977; reprinted in the collection Night of the Cooters, Ace Books, 1993, wherein Waldrop, in his introduction to the story, says, “Like with most things from the Seventies, this was Philip José Farmer’s fault”). Harlan Ellison’s “The New York Review of Bird” (Weird Heroes, Volume Two, ed. Byron Preiss, Pyramid Books, 1975), while not technically a fictional-author story, was tied in with Farmer’s project, and served to turn Ellison’s nom de plume, Cordwainer Bird, into a full-fledged fictional author. Bird went on to appear in Farmer’s fictional-author tale “The Doge Whose Barque Was Worse Than His Bight” as by Jonathan Swift Somers III (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Edward L. Ferman, November 1976; reprinted in Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, Titan Books, 2013). Farmer himself used the Cordwainer Bird pseudonym for his story “The Impotency of Bad Karma” (Popular Culture, ed. Brad Lang, First Preview Edition, June 1977), which he later revised and had published, using his own name this time, under the title “The Last Rise of Nick Adams” (Chrysalis, Volume Two, ed. Roy Torgeson, Zebra Books, 1978), and integrated Bird into his Wold Newton genealogy in Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (Doubleday, 1973; reprinted in a deluxe hardcover edition by Meteor House, 2013, and in paperback and ebook editions by Altus Press, 2013).
The failures—those fictional-author stories imagined but never written—are almost as compelling as the successes. Ed Ferman suggested that Farmer have Ron Goulart write a story as by his character José Silvera, and while Farmer did query him, there is no immediate evidence that Goulart pursued the matter. Farmer himself sought and was granted permission to write a story under the name Gustave von Aschenbach, the novelist from Thomas Mann’s A Death in Venice; however, apparently overwhelmed by the large number of fictional-author stories he planned to write on his own, Farmer turned the idea over to writer and literary critic Leslie Fiedler. This story, too, seems to have fallen by the wayside; if it was ever written, it never saw print.
One of the first authors approached to join in the conspiracy was Philip K. Dick. Farmer trusted Dick with the secret of who had written Venus on the Half-Shell, and in the process discussed Dick writing a fictional-author tale for Ferman’s magazine. Dick decided this would be a short story entitled “A Man For No Countries” by Hawthorne Abdensen, the writer-character from his classic novel of alternate history, The Man in the High Castle. No fictional alter ego could have suited Dick better for the undertaking, as Abdensen himself was the fictional author of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, a novel that implied the existence of multiple realities. The Chinese-box scenario must have pleased Dick, who worked often with such themes; but it must also have pleased Farmer, who years later went on to write the similarly head-twisting Red Orc’s Rage, a novel wherein Farmer’s own World of Tiers series serves as the basis for a method of psychiatric therapy to treat troubled adolescents, and in which Farmer himself lurks just off screen as a character. Although “A Man For No Countries” never seems to have been written, Farmer’s role in proposing that Dick pen a fictional-author story is important, for that unwritten story appears to have been the idea-kernel that led Dick to write the posthumously published novel Radio Free Albemuth, which itself was an aborted draft of his critically acclaimed novel VALIS. One must also ponder the timing of Farmer’s proposal, in the spring of 1974, a period when Dick claims to have had a number of mystical experiences, including one in which his mind was supposedly invaded by a foreign consciousness.
While Farmer was by far the most industrious and successful of the group in executing the fictional-author ruse, many of his own plans had to be abandoned because of time constraints placed upon him by other writing obligations. Farmer’s correspondence, notes, and interviews from the fictional-author period reveal a long and fascinating list of stories never written and those started but not completed:
“The Gargoyle” as by Edgar Henquist Gordon. (Fictional title and author from Robert Bloch’s short story “The Dark Demon”; permission for use granted by Robert Bloch.)
“The Feaster from the Stars” as by Robert Blake. (This unfinished Cthulhu Mythos pastiche derives from a title and fictional author in H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Haunter of the Dark.” Lovecraft’s story is a sequel to Robert Bloch’s “The Shambler from the Stars,” wherein Bloch kills off a character based on H. P. Lovecraft. Robert Blake, of course, is an analog for Robert Bloch, and is in turn killed off in Lovecraft’s tale. A good friend of Farmer’s, Bloch enthusiastically gave his blessing to this unfinished story about Haji Abdu al-Yazdi, a pseudonym belonging to one of Farmer’s real-life heroes, who was also the main protagonist of the Riverworld series: Sir Richard Francis Burton. Robert Blake is also mentioned in Farmer’s Cthulhu Mythos tale “The Freshmen,” which was recently reprinted in the anthology Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, Titan Books, 2013.)
“UFO Versus CBS” as by Susan DeWitt. (From Richard Brautigan’s The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966.)