"E. C. Tubb - Dumarest 32 - The Return" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tubb E. C)

authors. Writers who personally fall foul of an editor can find
their market withdrawn; others who curry mutual favors and
scratch a few backs can see their careers secured or helped
along. Most literary production has to be tailored to individual
editorial tastes, or else aimed at a guaranteed waiting market, as
perceived by the publisher. All of which vagaries are cheerfully
accepted by most journeymen writers who regard it as 'writing
for the market.'

John Russell Fearn spent years trying to find a reliable
publisher, writing for literally dozens of editors, in dozens of
styles, under dozens of names. All proved to be shifting sand,
until Fearn achieved avast personal following with readers of the
Toronto Star Weekly (with a regular readership in excess of
900,000) for his Golden Amazon series. The Star Weekly
published 52 weekly novels a year, of all types: mysteries,
detectives, adventure, and romance; it had a large female
readership. Until Fearn began contributing they rarely used sf.
At first, Fearn managed to sell to them mysteries and westerns,
and a number of straight sf novels, but sold three times as many
Amazon stories. An examination of Fearn's correspondence with
the editor of the Star Weekly highlights a dilemma facing all
writers. In 1959, along with his latest Amazon story, Fearn had
submitted a superb straight sf novel, Land's End-Labrador.
Despite the quality of the latter story, it was rejected, but the
editor's letter continued, regarding the Amazon novel:

"I feel sure that this will be all right as it is an Amazon story
and there is a big readership for those."

All of Fearn's subsequent published novels with the Star
Weekly were Amazon stories, in which the Amazon traveled
through interstellar space, from planet to planet —just like
Dumarest!

A prolific writer, Tubb had published dozens of novels in his
early career, but with almost as many publishers. He had to
battle with a fickle and fraught market place. As his Dumarest
series progressed, its background became more and more solid,
and real. Tubb realized that it could be used as a template for all
kinds of science fiction situations. The underlying concept of
Dumarest traveling from world to world offered tremendous
scope. It offered a means to explore and invent different
ecologies and cultures. As a traveler, he could meet a vast range
of varied and interesting characters —scientists, idealists,
peasants, princes, criminals, fanatics, beggars, philosophers,
cripples, children, soldiers, saints and sinners, villains and
heroes, and an endless variety of fascinating women. The
character of Dumarest himself grew and deepened from book to
book, until he became a character of considerable depth: he