BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY JOHN RUSSELL FEARN
1,000-Year Voyage: A Science Fiction Novel
Anjani the Mighty: A Lost Race Novel (Anjani #2)
Black Maria, M.A.: A Classic Crime Novel (Black Maria #1)
The Crimson Rambler: A Crime Novel
Don’t Touch Me: A Crime Novel
Dynasty of the Small: Classic Science Fiction Stories
The Empty Coffins: A Mystery of Horror
The Fourth Door: A Mystery Novel
From Afar: A Science Fiction Mystery
Fugitive of Time: A Classic Science Fiction Novel
The G-Bomb: A Science Fiction Novel
The Gold of Akada: A Jungle Adventure Novel (Anjani #1)
Here and Now: A Science Fiction Novel
Into the Unknown: A Science Fiction Tale
Last Conflict: Classic Science Fiction Stories
Legacy from Sirius: A Classic Science Fiction Novel
The Man from Hell: Classic Science Fiction Stories
The Man Who Was Not: A Crime Novel
Manton’s World: A Classic Science Fiction Novel
The Murdered Schoolgirl: A Classic Crime Novel (Black Maria #2)
One Remained Seated: A Classic Crime Novel (Black Maria #3)
One Way Out: A Crime Novel (with Philip Harbottle)
Pattern of Murder: A Classic Crime Novel
Reflected Glory: A Dr. Castle Classic Crime Novel
Robbery Without Violence: Two Science Fiction Crime Stories
Rule of the Brains: Classic Science Fiction Stories
Shattering Glass: A Crime Novel
The Silvered Cage: A Scientific Murder Mystery
Slaves of Ijax: A Science Fiction Novel
Something from Mercury: Classic Science Fiction Stories
The Space Warp: A Science Fiction Novel
Thy Arm Alone: A Classic Crime Novel (Black Maria #4)
The Time Trap: A Science Fiction Novel
Vision Sinister: A Scientific Detective Thriller
Voice of the Conqueror: A Classic Science Fiction Novel
What Happened to Hammond? A Scientific Mystery
Within That Room!: A Classic Crime Novel
A World Beneath Ice: The New Golden Amazon, Book One
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1954 by John Russell Fearn
Copyright © 2003 by Philip Harbottle
“Introduction” Copyright © 2003, 2012 by Philip Harbottle
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
DEDICATION
To the memory of Robert Simms
INTRODUCTION, by Philip Harbottle
Although English writer John Russell Fearn died in 1960, his work continues to be reprinted worldwide. In recent years, more than a hundred of his novels in all genres have been returned to print, ensuring that his stories will continue to appear through the twenty-first century in various forms. This has been achieved despite the carping and continued bafflement of some literary critics, who cannot recognize the secret of his enduring appeal. It is a secret shared by several prolific novelists, such as the legendary Edgar Wallace. Quite simply, Fearn was a storyteller.
As writer Michael Gilbert has pointed out, Wallace—like Fearn—“was a storyteller who had learned, or maybe he knew by instinct, the first secret of story-telling. Something must be happening all the time. Not occurring haphazard, but happening in a consecutive and comprehensible chain of causation, to the resourceful hero and the attractive heroine who have been the protagonists of all real stories since storytelling began.” Despite most of their stories having been written very swiftly, writers like Fearn and Wallace, as Gilbert observed, give the feeling that the author knew “that he had been seized of a good idea, exactly suited to his scope and talents, and that he was on the top of his form.”
In England, Fearn is known not just as a science fiction author, but as a writer of detective stories and westerns. However, in the USA until recently, Fearn was still best known as a pioneer writer of science fiction, mainly because he began his career in the well-remembered and collectable prewar American pulp sf magazines, such as Amazing Stories and Astounding Stories. Wildside Press has republished The Intelligence Gigantic and Liners of Time (his first two novels), whilst the cream of his early short stories can be found in the two-volume set, The Best of John Russell Fearn. More recently, however, the Borgo Press has launched an ambitious program of reprinting all of Fearn’s many detective novels (including new posthumous titles), together with new science fiction collections and novels.
This present novel, Voice of the Conqueror, was one of Fearn’s later sf novels, first published (as The Conqueror’s Voice) in 1954 in the prestigious Canadian magazine, the Toronto Star Weekly. It was then serialized as Voice of the Conqueror in the UK British Science Fiction Magazine, under Fearn’s Vargo Statten pseudonym. It is a story which he clearly enjoyed writing, being partly based on personal experience.
Before the war, whilst Fearn was a full-time writer, his main hobby was the cinema. He was the proud owner of a 9.5 film projector, and used to throw shows to his friends at his home. The films were usually early old silent science fiction classics, such as Metropolis, Caligari, and Girl in the Moon. Fearn was to put his cinematic hobby to practical use in 1941, when Britain was in the grip of war.
At the outbreak of the war two years earlier, as a full-time writer over thirty (journalism being classed as a “Reserved Occupation”), Fearn was at first exempt from military service. But as the war continued, even journalists over thirty were called upon, and Fearn voluntarily took the medical test. However, he was adjudged as medically unsuitable. He was still obliged to undertake “essential war work,” and so took a job in an aircraft factory. Fearn found the work arduous and crushing (“It damned near killed me,” he later recalled) but fate soon intervened. What happened next was recorded in a letter Fearn sent to his Canadian pen friend Les Croutch, who published in it his fanzine Light in December 1941.
The previous summer, in a “dashing moment,” Fearn had applied for a job as a cinema projectionist, but failed to get the job. “But my name was left on the books, and
