John D. Clark

John Drury Clark, Ph.D. (August 15, 1907-July 1988) was a noted American rocket fuel developer, chemist, and science fiction writer and fan. He was instrumental in the revival of interest in Robert E. Howard's "Conan" stories and influenced the writing careers of L. Sprague de Camp, Fletcher Pratt, and other authors.

Life and career

Clark was born in Alaska. He attended the University of Alaska, and then received a B.S. at the California Institute of Technology at Pasadena, California in the 1920s, where he was the college roommate of L. Sprague de Camp. He received an M.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and, in 1934, a PhD from Stanford University. He moved to upstate New York in the early 1930s. He married in 1944.

From 1949, until his retirement in 1970, Clark developed liquid propellants at the Naval Air Rocket Test Station at Dover, New Jersey (after 1960, this became the Liquid Rocket Propulsion Laboratory of Picatinny Arsenal). His title there was chief chemist. He was the author of "Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants" (1972).

In his later years Clark lived in Newfoundland, Passaic County, New Jersey. He died in July, 1988. His papers, consisting of four cubic feet of correspondence, drafts of scientific and science fiction publications, notes, an unpublished typescript memoir, diaries (1923-1984), clippings, and photos, are preserved in the Special Collections at Virginia Tech as part of that repository's Archives of American Aerospace Exploration.

Literary career and influence

As a fan of the science fiction and fantasy magazines of the pulp era, Clark became friendly with several figures who were or would become authors in both fields, including P. Schuyler Miller, Fletcher Pratt, and L. Ron Hubbard.

Clark and Conan

Clark first encountered Robert E. Howard's fantasies of Kull, Conan and Solomon Kane in the magazine "Weird Tales". Together with Miller he worked out an outline of Conan's career and a map of the world in Howard's invented Hyborian Age in early 1936 from the then-published stories. Miller sent this material to Howard, whose reply confirmed and corrected their findings. Their revised outline, "A Probable Outline of Conan's Career," was published in the fanzine "The Hyborian Age" in 1938.

Thus established as an authority on Conan, Clark was invited to provide introductions for the first book editions of Howard's Conan stories, published by Gnome Press in the 1950s. Expanded versions of his and Miller's essay on Conan, retitled "An Informal Biography of Conan the Cimmerian," appeared in the Gnome volume "The Coming of Conan" in 1953 and (revised by de Camp) in the fanzine "Amra", vol. 2, no. 4, in 1959. It was the source of the linking passages between the individual Conan stories in both the Gnome editions and the Lancer paperback editions of the 1960s.

Clark and Miller's Hyborian Age map, together with Howard's own original, are the basis of those published in the Gnome, Lancer, and later editions of the stories.

Clark and the science fiction community

While unemployed in the mid-1930s Clark wrote a couple of science fiction stories, with plotting assistance from L. Sprague de Camp, which were published in "Astounding Stories" in 1937. While he himself wrote no more science fiction, this experience prompted de Camp to launch his own career as a science fiction writer, first with short stories and then with a novel in collaboration with their mutual friend Miller.

Clark furthered de Camp's career in another way by introducing him into Fletcher Pratt's war-gaming circle, and to Pratt himself, in 1939. De Camp and Pratt went on write some of the most celebrated light fantasy of the 1940s, the Harold Shea and Gavagan's Bar stories.

Clark also provided L. Ron Hubbard with the germ for his humorous fantasy novella "The Case of the Friendly Corpse", published in the August 1941 issue of "Unknown". According to de Camp, in the 1930s Clark and a friend named Mark Baldwin had "concocted a prospectus for an imaginary College of the Unholy Names" in the 1930s, which Clark lent to Hubbard in 1941. Hubbard then built his story around the setting.

Clark's marriage in 1944 led to the establishment of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, founded in that year by Pratt. As the new Mrs. Clark was reportedly unpopular with Pratt and others of his friends, the club gave them an excuse to spend time with him without her. The Trap Door Spiders later served as the model for Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers the Black Widowers. Clark himself was fictionalized as the James Drake character. In 1952 Clark provided the scenario for the Twayne Science Fiction Triplet "The Petrified Planet", postulating a world whose description was then used as the basis for the three novellas by Pratt, H. Beam Piper and Judith Merril forming the body of the work. An excerpt from Clark's introduction ("The Silicone World") was reissued in the December, 1952 issue of "Startling Stories", and the whole was reprinted in the 1983 Ace edition of Piper's contribution to the book, "Uller Uprising". The "Startling Stories" excerpt has also been credited to Pratt, who supposedly utilized Clark's name as a pseudonym.

Bibliography

Science fiction

* "Minus Planet," published in "Astounding Science Fiction", Apr 1937.
* "Space Blister," published in "Astounding Science Fiction", Aug 1937.

Nonfiction

* "A Probable Outline of Conan's Career," with P. Schuyler Miller, published in The Hyborian Age (1938).
* "Introduction" to "The Petrified Planet" (1952) (reused for "Uller Uprising", by H. Beam Piper (1983)).
* "The Silicone World", published in "Startling Stories", December 1952.
* "An Informal Biography of Conan the Cimmerian," with P. Schuyler Miller, published in "The Coming of Conan" (1953).
* "An Informal Biography of Conan the Cimmerian," with P. Schuyler Miller and L. Sprague de Camp, published in "Amra", vol. 2, no. 4, (1959).
* "Science Fact: Dimensions, Anyone?" published in "Analog Science Fiction - Science Fact", November 1966.
* "Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants" (1972).

External links

* http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?John%20D.%20Clark
* http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?John%20D.%20Clark,%20Ph.D.