There was once a classic Weird Tales writer called Nictzin Dyalhis – except that probably wasn’t his real name – and a story called ‘When the Green Star Wanes’, which was described as “a seminal work in the history of pulp [science fiction]” (Everett Bleiler) – except that it’s also sort of old-style nonsense. Bleiler also called it “(d)istasteful and negligible as fiction”. And as you know, dear listener, we love such complicated nonsensicals, so today our regular reviewer Dave Brzeski covers a fun collection of Dyalhis’s work, The Sapphire Goddess: The Fantasies of Nictzin Dyalhis (DMR Books).
Before you dive in, however, do remember our opening sentence. Who was Nictzin Dyalhis? The whole subject of the man’s birth, marriages, and name(s) has been covered well by others, especially on the Bear Alley site, which is linked in the review below. In short, he may have been a man called Fred Wilstone Dallas, or he may have been someone else entirely. His reported age varies, as do the details of his parents. His forename may have been a complete invention; that Dyalhis surname was supposedly Welsh, or Scottish, or Roman, and so on. He could also have been born in Arizona or Massachusetts – it only gets better the more you dig…
Old Nictzin did, however, apparently invent the ‘blastor’!
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The Sapphire Goddess: The Fantasies of Nictzin Dyalhis
Author: Nictzin Dyalhis
Introduction: D.M. Ritzlin
Publisher: DMR Books
Format: Paperback, ebook
Reviewer: Dave Brzeski
Nictzin Dyalhis has always been something of an enigma. Researches into his life have always turned up little, and what there is comes with contradictions. The best overview is probably the one by Steve Holland on his Bear Alley Books Blog.
I probably first encountered the work of Nictzin Dyalhis way back in the early seventies. I suspect it was in a used paperback copy of Worlds of Weird (1965), edited by Leo Margulies. A few years back I suggested to David Sutton of Shadow Publishing in the UK, that I’d dearly love to put together a complete stories of Nictzin Dyalhis collection. David gave me the go-ahead to do so. The problem, I immediately realised, was actually sourcing the stories. There aren’t all that many, but not all are easy to find – to say the least. The project was shelved.
Dave Ritzlin evidently had the same idea not long after I did, but he got a bit further than me. The resulting book is still not a complete collection of all of Nictzin Dyalhis’s work, but it does include all of the weird fiction/fantasy stuff. Ritzlin confirmed that this was mainly down to those four missing stories being very, very hard to find, at least in their original appearance. Of the remaining four tales, two are westerns and two are crime stories.
This collection opens with ‘When the Green Star Waned’, which was originally published in Weird Tales (April 1925). It’s one of those classic old school science fiction tales, where every planet of the Solar System is inhabited – sort of an alternate universe, where Aerth had history somewhat similar to that of Earth, but it would be difficult to make our history, since this was written, quite fit within this version of the Solar System. All the planets – Markhuri, Vehez, Aerth, and its Moun, Mharz, Jopitar… you get the idea, have very similar spaceships, called Aethir-Torps, but they tend to keep out of each other’s business. Thus it takes quite some time before anyone notices that things have changed on Aerth.
They’ve been invaded and subjugated by creatures from the dark side of the Moun. Creatures that originally came from much further afield. There’s an almost Lovecraftian feel to it all.
It’s interesting to note that this story has the first recorded use of the term, blaster, albeit spelled blastor here, for a ray gun, or energy weapon.
As one would expect, the prose, let alone the science is a little archaic and dated, but it’s a fun read.
Readers who are experiencing the work of Nictzin Dyalhis for the first time in this volume, may be forgiven for thinking, “Yes, ‘When the Green Star Waned’ was indeed fun, if dated, but I don’t see why so many people make such a fuss about this guy’s work.”
‘The Eternal Conflict’ was published in Weird Tales in October, 1925 – just six months after ‘When the Green Star Waned’. You may well wonder, on reading it, if it really was by the same author. This one was good then and it’s good now – excellent in fact. Told by an acolyte of a non-intrusive religious sect on Earth, it’s in equal parts a cosmic weird fiction tale and a classic Angels versus demons story of the battle/balance between good and evil, love and hate, which is as relevant now as it was back then – a true classic.
It was eighteen months before Dyalhis came to light again, this time with the only fantasy story he sold outside of Weird Tales. ‘He Refused to Stay Dead’ appeared in the May 1927 issue of Ghost Stories. It’s an interesting tale of reincarnation, involving an undead revenant, described by the protagonist as troll and vampyr, albeit he exhibited no recognisable features of either. I was intrigued to note some elements of the occult detective subgenre in this one too. It does suffer somewhat from some common errors including a misunderstanding of the uses of Bell, Book and Candle in Christian lore, a Norseman and Saxon speaking Elizabethan tinged English to generate the proper ancient feel and horns on a Viking helmet. The latter two almost make me wonder if Dyalhis was an influence on Stan Lee! Despite that, it’s an enjoyable tale and I find myself intrigued by possibilities for sequels involving the main protagonists.
October 1927 saw the return of Dyalhis to the pages of Weird Tales, with ‘The Dark Lore’. Again, we have Elizabethan English used to emphasise the speech of demons and such. Plus the very readable, but still somewhat archaic, prose seems even more odd when elements of the modern World, such as an auto-accident are mentioned. All that aside, this quickly took the place of ‘The Eternal Conflict’ as my favourite story so far in the book.
Lura Veyle is a very nasty piece of work. This is a tale of her damnation, and her gradual struggle for redemption as she passes through several Hell dimensions, learning more about herself as she goes. I’m not, I have to admit a believer in religion, but I found this story very moving.
First published in Weird Tales, September 1928, ‘The Oath of Hul Jok’ is a direct sequel to ‘When the Green Star Waned’. This one is so, so good… and so, so wrong! On the one had, it’s a superb example of the sword and spaceship sub-genre as popularised by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Otis Adelbert Kline and Leigh Brackett. On the other hand it’s deeply sexist (albeit the women – referred to herein as the protagonist’s ‘Love-girls’, if you can believe it – do show themselves to be people to be reckoned with, once they’re no longer mind-controlled), pro- torture and pro-genocide.
It’s interesting to note that way back in 1928, Dyalhis had pretty much predicted the invention of computer tablets, with direct text messaging.
It wasn’t until the April 1932 issue that another Dyalhis story graced the pages of Weird Tales. ‘The Red Witch’ is a tale of reincarnation and eternal lovers. When Randall Crone falls in love with flame-tressed Rhoda Day, he soon finds he has a rival. We flash back to the stone age, when Ran Kron fights alongside the mighty Athak, eventually becoming his blood brother… until that is, Athak sets his sight on Ran’s beautiful bride, Red Dawn. Throw in a crippled weapon-maker/magic man and a mighty stone axe worthy of an H. Rider Haggard adventure and you get a pretty good page-turner of a story.
I was intrigued to find out if making ‘The Sapphire Goddess’ the title story had any reasoning behind it other than it was a cool title. Indeed it does have a lot going for it. Originally published in the February 1934 issue of Weird Tales, this is a classic sword and sorcery tale, which falls somewhere between the fantasies of Lord Dunsany and the more pulpy style of Robert E. Howard. There’s also a strong similarity to H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreamworlds stories. A modern day man (he was modern when it was written) finds himself transported back into the body of one of his previous incarnations, that of a great ruler in a classic fantasy realm. I can easily see this having been voted best story of the issue by Weird Tales readers. The editor states in his introduction that he thought it was the best story in the anthology Worlds of Weird (1965), which was where he first encountered Dyalhis’ work.
It was close to four years later, in December 1937, before Dyalhis was to return to the pages of Weird Tales. ‘The Sea-Witch’ was worth the wait! A truly excellent tale of Norse legend and long awaited justice, with a star-crossed lovers reincarnation element thrown in for good measure. As per usual for this author, it’s sword and sorcery with the emphasis heavily on the sorcery. This was the point at which I really began to be seriously depressed that Dyalhis wrote so few tales.
This excellent collection closes with ‘Heart of Atlantan’, which was published in the September 1940 issue of Weird Tales. Like ‘The Sea-Witch’, this one involves the narrator meeting and becoming rather enamoured with an ancient sorceress – this time, it’s the very lady who brought about the doom of Atlantis. Having accused Dyalhis previously of showing the sexist attitudes of his time, it can’t be denied that he certainly had a thing for immensely powerful women.
‘Heart of Atlantan’ was to be the very last story the World would see from The Mysterious Mr Dyalhis. There are only four more known stories not included in this collection. These are not fantasies, being two westerns and two crime stories, and three of them at least are very hard to track down. However, Wildside Press dedicated the fourth volume of their The Golden Age of Weird Fiction Megapack Kindle series to Nictzin Dyalhis and, along with six of the stories which can also be found in this volume, they included – ‘For Wounding—Retaliation’, originally published in the 20th November 1922 issue of Adventure.
This was his second ever story, his first having appeared in the 20th October 1932 issue of the same magazine. Since I have a copy of this ebook on my Kindle, I decided I may as well see how this story holds up…
I can’t deny that the writing style seemed a little less accomplished than in the fantasy stories, albeit that may be down to the fact that Dyalhis was attempting to take on a style that I’m less familiar with. The hero is an aged Native American – Pima to be exact – woman. The story is surprisingly anti-racist for the time, racism actually being a major factor of the story.
I asked Dave Ritzlin and he confirmed my theory that he limited The Sapphire Goddess: The Fantasies of Nictzin Dyalhis to the fantasy stories for the exact same reason that my own plans had stalled – simply because the other stories were too hard to find. It’s a shame, and I still hold out hope one day for a complete stories of Nictzin Dyalhis collection; you never know there may even turn out to be a few more that have yet to be uncovered.
The Sapphire Goddess is available in print, and a very affordable Kindle version of this book is also available through Amazon – links below:
