THAYER, Tiffany (Ellsworth)

(1902-1959)

   Prolific and once immensely popular US novelist - his first novel, the courtroom drama Thirteen Men (1930), was reprinted 40 times in 20 years. After the success of Tiffany Thayer's Three Musketeers (1939),he devoted most of his remaining years to an enormous historical work, Tiffany Thayer's Mona Lisa; of 7 projected instalments, only the 1200ppThe Prince of Taranto (1956) ever appeared. TT's sf includes The Greek (1931), about a NEAR FUTURE dictatorship, Doctor Arnoldi (1934), which recounts the grisly implications of being both immortal (IMMORTALITY) and unkillable, and One-Man Show (1937), a Thorne-Smith-like comedy of the afterlife. He was an enthusiastic follower of Charles FORT, founding the Fortean Society and editing its publication Doubt for many years. Althoughunknown today except for this affiliation, TT exerted an influence that has yet to be assessed: his highly kinetic, sardonic prose was almost certainly known to Alfred BESTER, and his Mona Lisa project may well have coloured the description of Fellowes Kraft's opus in John CROWLEY's AEGYPT (1987).

GF

   Other works: 33 Sardonics I Can't Forget (anth 1946).About the author: Charles Fort, Prophet of the Unexplained (1970) by Damon KNIGHT contains some material on TT.