| Will Murray | |
|---|---|
 Will Murray at PulpFest 2021 | |
| Born | William Murray 1953 (age 69–70) |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Writer |
Notable works | The Destroyer Squirrel Girl |
William Murray (born 1953) [1] is an American novelist, journalist, short story, and comic book writer. Much of his fiction has been published under pseudonyms. With artist Steve Ditko, he co-created the superhero Squirrel Girl.
Will Murray grew up in Boston, Massachusetts [2] and graduated North Quincy High school in June 1971, subsequently graduating summa cum laude from the University of Massachusetts at Boston. [1] After becoming a fan of the pulp fiction hero Doc Savage, he began collecting pulp magazines and wrote two psychological profiles of the character in The Doc Savage Reader. [1] He went on to write for fanzines and edit the fanzines Duende and Skullduggery before joining the pulp-reprint publisher Odyssey Publications. [1] He also co-authored the study, The Duende History of The Shadow Magazine. [1] Circa 1978, "I discovered the outline to [Doc Savage creator] Lester Dent's unwritten Python Isle and decided to take a shot at writing it. Bantam [Books] passed on it initially, and by the time they came back and asked for it and two more Docs, I was busily ghosting [the adventure paperback series] The Destroyer for [series co-creator] Warren Murphy." [1]
 | This section, except for three footnotes, includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations .(June 2016) |
The Destroyer assignment had come about when Murray, editing Skullduggery, sought out Murphy and The Destroyer co-creator Richard Sapir for an interview, and later doing freelance research for Sapir. This led to his editing a Destroyer sourcebook, The Assassin's Handbook (1982) and eventually ghostwriting the series, beginning with the 56th book, Encounter Group (1984). He began writing the series regularly with the 69th book, Blood Ties , altogether ghosting book #69 through book #107, Feast or Famine. [1] Murray has also written Cthulhu Mythos stories, including a pair of stories about Nug and Yeb, the Twin Blasphemies, and contributed single novels in The Executioner and Mars Attacks series.[ citation needed ] He wrote the retro-pulp collection Spicy Zeppelin Stories under various pen names.[ citation needed ]
Murray, also an author of nonfiction articles about pulp magazine writers such as Doc Savage creator Lester Dent, and the Shadow creator Walter B. Gibson; since 1979, he has been the literary executor for the estate of Dent, [2] and has published twenty-one Doc Savage novels from Dent's outlines under Dent's pseudonym, Kenneth Robeson. [3] His 2013 The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage novel, Doc Savage: Skull Island, teams him up with King Kong.
In June 2015, Altus Press inaugurated the series The Wild Adventures of Tarzan in the novel Tarzan: Return to Pal-ul-don , an authorized sequel to Edger Rice Burroughs' 1921 novel, Tarzan the Terrible . Late in 2016, Altus released a follow-up novel, King Kong Vs. Tarzan. Early in 2020, "Tarzan, Conqueror of Mars" was released, in which John Carter of Mars was revived. In 2023, Tarzan: Back to Mars was released.
In October 2016, Altus Press released Six Scarlet Scorpions, the first entry in a new spinoff series centering around Doc Savage's adventuress cousin, called The Wild Adventures of Pat Savage. Murray wrote the novel from an outline written by the character's creator, Lester Dent.
In August, 2018, Altus Press released The Spider: The Doom Legion, reviving the pulp hero known as The Spider, as well as James Christopher, Operator 5, and G-8 of G-8 and His Battles Aces fame. A sequel, The Spider: Fury in Steel, was published in January, 2021.
In June, 2020, Altus Press released The Wild Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, collecting ten of Murray's Sherlock Holmes short stories.
For Necronomicon Press, he edited Tales of Zothique and The Book of Hyperborea, two collections of stories by Clark Ashton Smith. His essays have appeared in books ranging from S. T. Joshi's compedium on H. P. Lovecraft, An Epicure in the Terrible, to Jim Beard's survey of the 1960s Batman TV show, Gotham City 14 Miles. He also contributed to the encyclopedias St. James Crime and Mystery Writers, St. James Science Fiction Writers, Contemporary Authors and The Dictionary of Literary Biography. A collection of his Doc Savage articles was published by Altus Press under the title, Writings in Bronze, in 2011. As a contributing editor of Starlog magazine, Murray wrote for that publication and for Starlog Press movie tie-in publications.
Murray stories have appeared in The UFO Files, Future Crime, Miskatonic University, 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, 100 Creepy Little Creature Stories, 100 Vicious Little Vampire Stories, The Cthulhu Cycle, Disciples of Cthulhu II, Cthulhu's Reign, Worlds of Cthulhu, The Yig Cycle, Dead But Dreaming II, Horror for the Holidays, The Mountains of Madness, Tales from the Miskatonic Library, Dracula Unfanged, Shadows Out of Time, Unknown Superheroes vs. the Forces of Darkness, Thrilling Adventure Yarns, Six-Gun Legends, Nightbeat: Night Stories and other collections.
For National Public Radio, he adapted Lester Dent's 1934 novel The Thousand-Headed Man as a six-part serial for The Adventures of Doc Savage, which aired in 1985,[ citation needed ] and was released on CD by Radioarchives.com in October 2010.[ citation needed ]
For Radio Archives, Murray produced the Will Murray Pulp Classics line of audio and ebooks, starring such pulp heroes as The Spider and G-8 and His Battle Aces.
With S. T. Joshi and Jon L. Cooke, Murray organized The Friends of H. P. Lovecraft, which raised funds to place a memorial plaque dedicated to the Providence fantasy writer on the grounds of Brown University's John Hay Library on the centennial of Lovecraft's birth in August 1990.
In 2000 Murray wrote the novel Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Empyre for Marvel comics. The story, which predicted the operational details of the Year 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington a year before they transpired, identified the author as a trained remote viewer and professional psychic. [4]
Beginning in 2006, Murray has been a consulting editor for Sanctum Books' Doc Savage , Shadow , Avenger and Whisperer reprints. He has also written dozens of introductions to the reprints being published by Altus Press, covering characters such as Lester Dent's Lee Nace and Frederick Nebel's Black Mask detective, Ben Donohue. With Off-Trail Publications' John Locke, he has co-edited the three-volume The Gangland Sagas of Big Nose Serrano, which collects all 12 of Anatole Feldman's Big Nose Serrano stories. For Black Dog Books, he penned introductions to their ongoing Lester Dent Library series of pulp-magazine reprints.
Murray's exhaustive survey, Wordslingers: An Epitaph for the Western, delved into the American Western story as it evolved in the pages of the pulp magazines of the first half of the 20th century.
Stepping into the metaphysical and spiritual genre, Murray explored the nature and origin of God in his 2016 ebook, Forever After, which he wrote under his full name of William Patrick Murray. The channelled work is told in the form of a fable, with the narrative unfolding from God's point of view.
A contributor to numerous prose anthologies, Murray has written short stories of the characters Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, Ant-Man, the Hulk, the Spider, The Avenger, the Gray Seal, the Green Hornet, The Secret 6, Sherlock Holmes, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Honey West, Zorro and Lee Falk's the Phantom.
For Marvel Comics, Murray co-created the superhero Squirrel Girl with artist Steve Ditko. He scripted The Destroyer black-and-white magazine, as well as single stories starring Iron Man and the Punisher. Murray wrote the introduction to the Marvel Comics Omnibus volume, which celebrates the 70th anniversary of Marvel Comics, as well as introductions to Volume 2 of Daring Mystery Comics, Mighty Thor Masterworks Volume 9, Mystic Comics Volume 1, Young Allies Volume 2 and Golden Age Captain America Volume 6.
In 1979, he received the Lamont Award for his contributions to the furtherance of pulp fiction research.[ citation needed ] In 1999, he earned the Comic Book Marketplace award for research excellence in the area of comics history.[ citation needed ] Murray received the 2011 Pulp Ark Award for Best Series Revival for his work on The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage.[ citation needed ] His Doc Savage novel, Doc Savage: Skull Island, won the 2014 Pulp Factory Award for Best Novel. In 2021, Murray was awarded the Golden Lion Award for his contributions to the furtherance of the works of Tarzan creator, Edgar Rice Burroughs. He received the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award in 2023 for his many career achievements.
Pulp magazines were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 to the late 1950s. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazines printed on higher-quality paper were called "glossies" or "slicks". The typical pulp magazine had 128 pages; it was 7 inches (18 cm) wide by 10 inches (25 cm) high, and 0.5 inches (1.3 cm) thick, with ragged, untrimmed edges. Pulps were the successors to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels, and short-fiction magazines of the 19th century.
Doc Savage is a fictional character of the competent man hero type, who first appeared in American pulp magazines during the 1930s and 1940s. Real name Clark Savage Jr., he is a polymathic scientist, explorer, detective, and warrior who "rights wrongs and punishes evildoers." He was created by publisher Henry W. Ralston and editor John L. Nanovic at Street & Smith Publications, with additional material contributed by the series' main writer, Lester Dent. Doc Savage stories were published under the Kenneth Robeson name. The illustrations were by Walter Baumhofer, Paul Orban, Emery Clarke, Modest Stein, and Robert G. Harris.
The Shadow is a fictional character published in the United States of America by magazine publishers Street & Smith and writer Walter B. Gibson. Originally created to be a mysterious radio show narrator, and developed into a distinct literary character in 1931 by writer Walter B. Gibson, The Shadow has been adapted into other forms of media, including American comic books, comic strips, serials, video games, and at least five feature films. The radio drama included episodes voiced by Orson Welles.
Lester Dent was an American pulp-fiction writer, best known as the creator and main writer of the series of novels about the scientist and adventurer Doc Savage. The 159 Doc Savage novels that Dent wrote over 16 years were credited to the house name Kenneth Robeson.
Kenneth Robeson was the house name used by Street & Smith publications as the writer of their popular characters Doc Savage and later Avenger. Lester Dent wrote most of the Doc Savage stories; others credited under the Robeson name included:
The Spider is an American pulp-magazine hero of the 1930s and 1940s. The character was created by publisher Harry Steeger and written by a variety of authors for 118 monthly issues of The Spider from 1933 to 1943. The Spider sold well during the 1930s, and copies are valued by modern pulp magazine collectors. Pulp magazine historian Ed Hulse has stated "Today, hero-pulp fans value The Spider more than any single-character magazine except for The Shadow and Doc Savage."
The Avenger is a fictional character whose original adventures appeared between September 1939 and September 1942 in the pulp magazine The Avenger, published by Street & Smith, which ran 24 issues. Five additional short stories were published in Clues Detective magazine (1942–1943), and a sixth novelette in The Shadow magazine in 1943. Decades later, newly written pastiches were commissioned and published by Warner Brothers' Paperback Library from 1973 to 1974.
Mark Ellis is an American novelist/graphic novelist, journalist, and comics creator who under the pen name James Axler has written scores of books for the Outlanders and Deathlands paperback novel series as well as numerous other books under his own name.
Lawrence Louis Donovan was an American pulp fiction writer who wrote nine Doc Savage novels under the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson, a pen name that was used by other writers of the same publishing house. However, there are nine Doc Savage novels duly credited to Donovan, published between November 1935 and July 1937.
William Gibson Bogart was an American pulp fiction writer. He is best known for writing several Doc Savage novels, under the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.
Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze is a 1975 American action film starring Ron Ely as pulp hero Doc Savage. This was the last film completed by pioneering science fiction producer George Pal. It was directed by Michael Anderson, who had previously directed another big-budget adventure film, Around the World in 80 Days, the 1956 Best Picture of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Death in Silver is a Doc Savage pulp novel by Lester Dent writing under the house name Kenneth Robeson. It was published in October 1934.
Tarzan is a fictional character, a feral child raised in the African jungle by the Mangani great apes; he later experiences civilization, only to reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer.
Altus Press is a publisher of works primarily related to the pulp magazines from the 1910s to the 1950s.
Thrilling Adventures was a monthly American pulp magazine published from 1931 to 1943.
Doc Savage was an American pulp magazine that was published from 1933 to 1949 by Street & Smith. It was launched as a follow-up to the success of The Shadow, a magazine Street & Smith had started in 1931, based around a single character. Doc Savage's lead character, Clark Savage, was a scientist and adventurer, rather than purely a detective. Lester Dent was hired to write the lead novels, almost all of which were published under the house name "Kenneth Robeson". A few dozen novels were ghost-written by other writers, hired either by Dent or by Street & Smith. The magazine was successful, but was shut down in 1949 as part of Street & Smith's decision to abandon the pulp magazine field completely.
The Man of Bronze is a Doc Savage pulp novel by Lester Dent writing under the house name Kenneth Robeson. It was published in March 1933. It was the basis of the 1975 movie Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze starring Ron Ely.
The Volcano Ogre is a science fiction novel by American writer Lin Carter, the third his "Zarkon, Lord of the Unknown" series. It was first published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1976, with a paperback edition following from Popular Library in November 1978. It was reissued by Wildside Press in 1999. An ebook edition was issued by Thunderchild Publishing in October 2017.
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