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ashley
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bennett
brooke
brown
butler
carroll
christopher
clute
cole
collins
fearn
grant
HARBOTTLE
high
hutchinson
langford
platt
schweitzer
silverberg
singleton
stross
stableford
tubb
wallace
artists
halkon
van hollander
lindroos
maverick
wojtowicz
editor
wallace
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Philip James Harbottle was born in Wallsend on
Tyneside,
England, on October 2, 1941. He first became interested
in fantasy at the age of four, when his mother took him
to see the 1946 Walt Disney cartoon compendium Make
Mine
Music, featuring "The Whale Who Wanted
to Sing at the Met,"
which he still vividly remembers. A year later, during a
short spell in hospital, he saw a pile of American
newspaper
Comic Supplements and was intrigued by Superman.
His
youthful imagination, now firmly attuned to fantasy, was
further nurtured in the late 1940s and early 1950s by
other
comic strip characters like Captain Marvel, Dan Dare,
and
the Daily Mirror's Garth (for
which he would eventually be
invited to write the scripts for several stories).
His early aspirations were to become a strip cartoon
artist,
but in 1954 he discovered science fiction books,
beginning
with two paperbacks by John Russell Fearn and E.C.Tubb
(A Thing of the Past and The
Resurrected Man). In 1969,
following his self-publication of studies on these
authors
(most notably The Multi-Man: a
bio-bibliographical study
of John Russell Fearn published in 1968) he was
offered
the editorship of a new sf publishing company, provided
he gave up his career in local government. He did so,
and his first publication was a new monthly sf magazine,
Vision of Tomorrow. This ran for twelve
issues (1969-1970)
before falling victim to distribution troubles and
publishing
chicanery. Had the magazine been published a few years
later it might have succeeded. An already prepared
companion paperback line was aborted when Harbottle
resigned because the publisher would not back his
editorial
selections, which he had taken in consultation with other
leading publishers and the big book distribution chains
to help ensure their success. Several of the books he had
commissioned and optioned for the paperback line-notably
four "new" books of early stories by John
Wyndham-were
gleefully snapped up by other publishers and immediately
became huge bestsellers.
Sadder but wiser, Harbottle returned to his career in
Local
Government, and after slowly recovering from his earlier
traumatic experiences, he became a literary agent and
science
fiction consultant. He was commissioned to compile and
edit
The Best of E. E. 'Doc' Smith. The book
was delivered and
published in1975 in hardcover and paperback in the UK,
but
without his being credited as editor. A promised royalty
agreement failed to materialise, nor was Harbottle
informed
when the book was resold to America. He only learned of
its
1979 paperback edition there many years later.
His bad luck continued in 1977. Following a
recommendation
to the packager by Brian Aldiss, he was commissioned to
be
the major contributor to The Visual Encyclopaedia
of
Science Fiction. However, after months of
research, and
having provided tens of thousands words of material, he
became embroiled in a bitter payments dispute with the
book's
packager (eventually settled in full only after his
threat of
a legal injunction to prevent its publication.) As an act
of
retaliation, when the book was eventually published in
1977, his extensive contribution (both as writer and
illustrative source) was uncredited (as was that of his
agency clients Mike Ashley and Walter Gillings, on whose
behalf he had brought the action.) Instead of appearing
alongside the articles they had written, their names were
relegated to appearing in small print alongside a list of
other minor contributors as "Consultants.")
This was a
severe setback to his literary career, and coincided with
his wife contracting a severe illness.
Somewhat disillusioned, Harbottle withdrew to concentrate
on his local government career and his family, contenting
himself with acting as literary agent for a few other
writers, and the self-publication of numerous chapbooks,
mainly by John Russell Fearn. This followed his having
been
left Fearn's copyrights in the will of the author's widow
Carrie, who had been a family friend. He also issued
comic
strip adaptations of Fearn's stories, drawn by veteran
British sf artist Ron Turner.
His return to mainstream publishing began in 1992. After
a
delay of many years, Borgo Press finally
published his two
major books on post-war British sf publishing history,
Vultures of the Void (1992) and later
its companion volume,
British SF Paperbacks and Magazines, 1949-1956
(1994).
He was subsequently invited by New York small press
publisher
Gary Lovisi (Gryphon Books) to edit and
introduce their SF
Rediscovery series of classic novels and paperback
originals.
As of the beginning of 2001, the series had reached more
than 30 books, and is still ongoing. He also became a
regular contributor to Lovisi's magazine Paperback
Parade.
Also in 1992, following an exchange of correspondence in
which he had reviewed the 50 year history and possible
future direction of the Garth strip cartoon,
Harbottle was
invited by John Allard, the co-creator
of Garth, and editor
of the Daily Mirror strip cartoon
department, to write
several scripts for it. A fan of the strip since the
1940s,
Harbottle relished the opportunity, and sold five
serialised
stories before the scripting of the strip was taken over
in 1995 by the artist following Allard's retirement and
editorial cut-backs at the newspaper. However, this
success helped persuade Harbottle to take early
retirement
in 1996, to become a freelance writer and literary agent.
In collaboration with Sean Wallace he wrote The Tall
Adventurer: the works of E. C. Tubb (Beccon,
1996),
which was well received. Harbottle and Wallace continued
their collaboration to publish Fantasy Annual,
an ongoing
collection of new short stories, and under the small
press
imprint of Cosmos Books they issued
three paperback
originals in 1999-Death God's Doom and The
Sleeping
City by E. C. Tubb, and
Manton's World by John Russell
Fearn.
Last year Harbottle licensed his "Cosmos"
imprint to John
Betancourt's Wildside Press. He is now a consultant to
Sean Wallace, who was appointed overall
Editor-in-Chief
of the new Cosmos Books imprint. The fourth volume in
their ongoing Fantasy Annual series was
published last
October.
Harbottle's first novel, Dynamite's Daughter-a
Western
based on an unpublished Fearn manuscript-was published
in hardcover in December 2000 by Robert Hale. Large-print
paperback rights have recently been optioned to Magna
Books. His works in progress for Cosmos Books include a
new anthology series, Fantasy Quarterly, The Best
of John
Russell Fearn, The Best of Philip E. High, a new
history
of British Science Fiction publishing, and a definitive
study of John Russell Fearn.
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