In 1941, the same year Fisher published I Wake Up Screaming, Gruber, under the name Charles K. Ron Hubbard (the latter once told Gruber that his shift from science fiction to religious fiction occurred when he was shot in the neck with a poison dart while travelling up the Amazon). Already a prolific pulp writer, he counted amongst his friends the future father of Scientology, L. Gruber, some fifteen years older than Fisher, was from a small farming town in Iowa. Over the years, the two men would remain close. They, of course, hit it off immediately, and left Bodin’s office on Fifth Avenue just below 23rd Street, on their way to Greenwich Village where, in Washington Square Park, they talked for three hours about their hopes, ambitions and their writing. It was in the Manhattan office of Ed Bodin, an agent who represented both authors, that the writers finally crossed paths. Prior to his arrival in New York, Fisher had corresponded with Gruber, but the two had never met. In 1934 he moved to New York where, despite near destitution, he continued to pursue a career as a writer, and met, for the first time, his friend Frank Gruber. He was also, by this time, writing for a number of sex magazines. Discharged from the Marines in Los Angeles in 1932, Fisher stayed in L.A., where he continued to write for US Navy, for which he was paid one cent a word. He was still in the service when he began to publish stories and articles in US Navy and Our Navy. Born in 1912 in Marine City, Michigan, Stephen Gould Fisher was thirteen when he sold his first story to a magazine.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |