David H. Keller (full name David Henry Keller; December 23, 1880–July 13, 1966) was a writer for pulp magazines in the mid-twentieth century who wrote science fiction, fantasy and horror. He was the first psychiatrist to write for the genre, and was most often published as David H. Keller, MD, but also known by the pseudonyms Monk Smith, Matthew Smith, Amy Worth, Henry Cecil, Cecilia Henry, and Jacobus Hubelaire.

John Clute has written, "It is clear enough that Keller's conceptual inventiveness, and his cultural gloom, are worthy more attention than they have received; it is also clear that he fatally scanted the actual craft of writing, and that therefore he is likely never to be fully appreciated."[1]

Biography

Keller was born in Philadelphia and graduated from the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1903. He served as a neuropsychiatrist in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during World Wars I and II, and was the Assistant Superintendent of the Louisiana State Mental Hospital at Pineville until Huey Long's reforms removed him from his position in 1928.

That same year, Keller would travel to New York City to meet with Hugo Gernsback, publisher of Amazing Stories, who had bought his first professionally published science fiction story, "The Revolt of the Pedestrians". Gernsback was impressed by Keller's quality of writing, unique insight, and ability to address sophisticated themes beyond the commonplace technological predictions or lurid alien encounters typically found in early pulp stories. He encouraged Keller's writing and would later call these distinctive short stories "Keller yarns".[2]

In 1929, Gernsback founded the magazine Science Wonder Stories and not only published Keller's work in the first issue, but listed him as an Associate Science Editor. It was this issue of Science Wonder Stories that introduced the term "science fiction" to the world.[citation needed] This began an intense writing period for Keller, but he was unable to support his family solely on a writer's income and set up a small private psychiatric practice out of his home in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.

Style

Keller's work often expressed strong right-wing views (Everett F. Bleiler claims he was "an ultra-conservative ideologically" [3]), especially hostility to feminists and African-Americans.[3][4] Keller has further been criticized for "his corrosive attitude toward both science and civilization," "anti-feminist, racist tendencies" and occasional "sexual sadism."[1]

The level of complexity found in Keller's writing rises above many other pulp stories of the same period and holds the promise of "science fiction literature" that would be fulfilled during the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

John Clute writes that Keller was "deeply involved in the last capacity in World War One and its consequences, his work focusing on shell shock; he was one of relatively few American sf writers to have anything like the direct experience of War That Will End War that marked so many British authors, a fact that may help explain his abiding cultural pessimism, often expressed in stories where a thin, almost literal veneer of civilization is peeled off to reveal the excrescence within."[1]

Keller wrote a number of horror and fantasy stories, which some critics regard as superior to his SF work. Most notable is his 1932 horror tale "The Thing In The Cellar". Keller also created a series of fantasy stories called the Tales of Cornwall sequence, about the Hubelaire family; these were influenced by James Branch Cabell.[5] Keller also wrote some fantasy work inspired by his interest in Freudian psychology, including "The Golden Bough" (1934) and The Eternal Conflict (1939 in French;1949 English).[6]

Bibliography

Wikisource has original works by or about:
David Henry Keller

Novels

(1929) The Conquerors

Science Wonder Stories Dec 29 and Jan 30

(1929) The Human Termites (Clute writes that it "begins as a relatively calm-minded development of the speculative element in La Vie des termites ... by Maurice Maeterlinck ... but soon leaves behind the commonplace supposition of a termite Hive Mind, moving into an almost delirious account in which both termites and humans are seen to be governed by totalitarian central intelligences. The novel's exorbitance caused considerable stir in 1929 Fandom, but in retrospect can be understood as comprising – at least in part – a Dystopian extrapolation of the horrors of mass combat in World War One; the introduction to the 1979 book edition, by Patrick H Adkins...is illuminating."[1]

Science Wonder Stories Sep, Oct, Nov

(1930) The Evening Star

Science Wonder Stories April, May

(1931) The Time Projector (w/ David Lasser)

Wonder Stories Aug, Sep

(1932) The Metal Doom

Amazing Stories May, June, July
Fantastic Nov 1967, Jan 1968

(1934) Life Everlasting

Amazing Stories July, Aug

(1940) The Devil and the Doctor
(1948) The Abyss
(1949) The Eternal Conflict
(1949) The Homunculus
(1950) The Lady Decides

Short Stories and Novellas

(1928) "The Revolt of the Pedestrians" - Amazing Stories Feb
(1928) "White Collars" - Amazing Stories April
(1928) "The Menace" - Amazing Stories Quarterly Summer
(1928) "A Biological Experiment" - Amazing Stories June
(1928) "The Psychophonic Nurse" - Amazing Stories Nov
(1928) "Stenographer's Hands" - Amazing Stories Quarterly Fall
(1928) "The Dogs of Salem" - Weird Tales September
(1929) "The Yeast Men" - Amazing Stories Quarterly Summer
(1929) "The Jelly Fish" - Weird Tales Jan
(1929) "The Worm" - Amazing Stories Mar
(1929) "The Damsel and Her Cat" - Weird Tales Apr
(1929) "The Bloodless War" - Air Wonder Stories Jul
(1929) "The Boneless Horror" - Science Wonder Stories Jul
(1929) "The Flying Fool" - Amazing Stories Jul
(1929) "The Feminine Metamorphosis" - (as Amy Worth) Science Wonder Stories Aug
(1929) "The Battle of the Toads" - Weird Tales Oct
(1929) "The Tailed Man of Cornwall" - Weird Tales Nov
(1929) "Dragon's Blood" - Fanews
(1930) "Air Lines" - Amazing Stories Jan
(1930) "Creation Unforgivable" - Weird Tales Apr
(1930) "The Ivy War" - Amazing Stories May
(1931) "The Cerebral Library" - Amazing Stories May
(1931) "Free as Air" - Amazing Stories Jun
(1931) "The Rat Racket" - Amazing Stories Nov
(1932) "The Pent House" - Amazing Stories Feb
(1932) "The Thing in the Cellar" - Weird Tales Mar
(1932) "The Hidden Monster" - Oriental Stories Sum
(1932) "No More Tomorrows" - Amazing Stories Dec
(1933) "A Piece of Linoleum" - (as Amy Worth) 10 Story Book Dec
(1934) "The Lost Language" - Amazing Stories Jan
(1934) "The Dead Woman" - Fantasy Magazine Apr
(1934) "The Literary Corkscrew" - Wonder Stories Mar
(1934) "The Doorbell" - Wonder Stories Jun
(1934) "The Golden Bough" - Marvel Tales Win
(1935) "The Living Machine" - Wonder Stories May
(1938) "Dust in the House" - Weird Tales Jul
(1938) "The Thirty and One" - Marvel Science Stories Nov
(1939) "The Moon Artist" - Cosmic Tales Summer
(1941) "The Goddess of Zion" - Weird Tales Jan
(1941) "The Red Death" - Cosmic Stories July
(1942) "The Bridle" - Weird Tales Sep
(1947) "Heredity" - The Vortex #2
(1948) "Helen of Troy Loki"
(1948) "The Perfumed Garden" - The Gorgon v2 #4
(1949) "The Door" - The Arkham Sampler Summer
(1951) "Chasm of Monsters"
(1952) "The Folsom Flint"
(1952) "Fingers in the Sky"
(1953) "The Golden Key" - Destiny Spring
(1953) "The Question" - Fantastic Worlds Fall

"Boomeranging 'Round the Moon"
"In Memoriam"
"The Face in the Mirror"
"The God Wheel"
"The House Without Mirrors" m n
"The Landslide"
"The Opium Eater"

Early Works

1895 "Aunt Martha" (as Monk Smith) in Bath Weekly
1897 "A Phenomenon of the Stars" - The Mirror Feb
1899 "Judge Not" - in The Red and Blue (University of Pennsylvania) Nov
1900 "The Silent One" - in The Red and Blue Nov
1901 "A University Story" - (as Henry Cecil), in Presbyterian Journal (University of Pennsylvania) Dec
1902 "The Birth of a Soul" - (as Henry Cecil), in The White Owl Jan
1902 "A Three Linked Tail" - (as Matthew Smith), in The White Owl March
1902 "The Winning Bride" - (as Henry Cecil), in The White Owl March
1902 "The Great American Pie House" - (as Cecilia Henry), in The White Owl April
1902 "Mother Newhouse" - (as Henry Cecil), in The White Owl May
1902 "The Greatness of Duval" - in Ursinus Weekly Oct

Poetry

1899 "The Night" - The Red and Blue (University of Pennsylvania) Nov
1902 "Undo Everlasting" - The White Owl March
1902 "L'Envoi" - The White Owl March
1902 "A Melody" - The White Owl March
1902 "A Mother's Song" - The White Owl May
1948 "Modern Science" - in: Kotan September, 1948, Vol. 1, No. 1. editor Gordon Mack.

Non-Fiction

(1941) "The Med-Lee: News Digest of the 9th Medical Battalion" :12 Nov, 19 Nov, 26 Nov, 10 Dec

Critical response

John Clute describes Keller's early work: "The stories of Keller's early prime – with their heavily foregrounded concepts and Inventions and with their endemic indifference to plausible narrative follow-through – made him an ideal writer for Hugo Gernsback, who published most of his output during these years, as well as his first book, The Thought Projector (1929 chap), in the Science Fiction Series of pamphlets."

Examining a particularly famous story, Clute writes, "'The Revolt of the Pedestrians' may be the most remarkable of these, though certainly one of the strangest. It is one of the relatively few sf tales before around 1970 to treat the hypertrophy of automobile culture in the twentieth century as Dystopian; after centuries, 'automobilists' have become almost organically tied to their Pollution-emitting cars, have lost the use of their legs, and have made pedestrianism a fatal offense. After the leader of a band of pedestrians turns off all electricity, legless automobilists die helplessly in their millions; the description of the death of twenty million New Yorkers attempting to flee Manhattan is extremely vivid. In the end, two elite pedestrians meet and prepare to breed, far from any despicable City."[1]


See also

References

Constructs such as ibid., loc. cit. and idem are discouraged by Wikipedia's style guide for footnotes, as they are easily broken. Please improve this article by replacing them with named references (quick guide), or an abbreviated title. (July 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
  1. ^ a b c d e Clute, John (July 19, 2013). "Keller, David H, M D". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Retrieved August 4, 2013. ((cite web)): Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  2. ^ Brian Stableford, "David H. Keller", in Bleiler, E. F., ed. Science Fiction Writers. New York: Scribners, 1982 (pgs. 119-123).
  3. ^ a b E.F. Bleiler, Science Fiction: The Gernsback Years. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1998 (pp. 210-214)
  4. ^ Sam Moskowitz in "Strange Horizons" (1973) singles out Keller's 1928 story "The Menace" for particular criticism over its hostile depiction of blacks.
  5. ^ Keller, David H(Enry) in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), p. 533.
  6. ^ Brian Stableford. "Keller, David H." in The A to Z of Fantasy Literature. Lanham, Md. Scarecrow Press, 2005 (pg. 231).

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