FOX, Gardner F(rancis)

(1911-1986)

   US lawyer and author, who began writing in 1937 for DC COMICS, including SUPERMAN. Arguably his most important work was for COMICS: though it is claimed that he published at least 160 books under various names, this pales beside his 4000 or more comic-book stories; he created The Flash as well as the first SUPERHERO team, the Justice Society of America, in 1940. In the 1960s he was one of those responsible for reviving many of the superheroes from the 1940s and also created new characters, like The Atom and Adam Strange. He began publishing sf/fantasy in non-graphic form with "The Weirds of the Woodcarver" for Weird Tales in 1944. He used several pseudonyms at this time, including Jefferson Cooper,Jeffrey Gardner and James Kendricks, though not for sf. He was an active contributor to Planet Stories from 1945, and soon established a reputation for historical romances like The Borgia Blade (1953), not beginning to publish sf novels, either under his own name or under his later pseudonyms Rod Gray, Simon Majors and Bart Somers, until Five Weeks in a Balloon* **(1962), which novelizes the film of the Jules VERNE novel. GFF's first sf novel proper is Escape Across the Cosmos (1964), in which a man fights a menace from another DIMENSION; it was plagiarized as Titans of the Universe in various 1978 editions, variously as by Brian James Royal,James Harvey and Moonchild. His best is probably The Arsenal of Miracles (1964 dos), which combines SPACE OPERA, GALACTIC EMPIRES and a romantically conceived hero who prefigures the interest in HEROIC FANTASY which dominated GFF's later output. His sf series are the two fantasy-like Alan Morgan adventures - Warrior of Llarn (1964) and Thief of Llarn (1966)- and, as by Bart Somers, the Commander Craig space operas: Beyond the Black Enigma (1965) and Abandon Galaxy! (1967). GFF was an efficient storyteller with no visible pretensions to significance or thematic originality.

   JC/PN

   Other works: The Hunter out of Time (1965); The Druid Stone (1967), as by Simon Majors; the Kothar series of heroic-fantasy novels, comprising Kothar - Barbarian Swordsman (coll of linked stories 1969), Kothar of the Magic Sword! (1969), Kothar and the Demon Queen(1969), Kothar and the Conjuror's Curse (1970) and Kothar and the Wizard Slayer (1970); Conehead (1973); the Kyrik heroic-fantasy series, comprising Kyrik: Warlock Warrior (1975), Kyrik Fights the Demon World (1975), Kyrik and the Wizard's Sword (1976) and Kyrik and the Lost Queen(1976); Carty (1977).As Rod Gray (house name): Of the soft-porn Lady from L.U.S.T. sequence, those by GFF and of some sf interest are The Poisoned Pussy (1969), Laid in the Future (1969), Blow my Mind (1970) and The Copulation Explosion (1970).