By KEN KORCZAK
The saga of struggling writer Michael E. Knerr is a tale from America’s literary backwaters; a story of heroism and pure grit
In the 1950s and early 1960s, there was a niche market for “smutty” science fiction novels.
They were issued by small shady publishers who worked out of a crummy one-room apartment or perhaps some seedy rented office space.
They paid $250 to $500 for 50,000 words. The thin paperbacks sold for 50 cents. Sure, $500 was decent money back in the 1950s, but it still wasn’t exactly the lifestyles of the rich and famous.
One good thing about it for aspiring authors is that it was a way to break into the business and hopefully move up to better things like landing a deal with a legacy publishing house.
One such writer in this game was Michael E. Knerr.
He hailed from the small town of Williamsport, Pennsylvania. He was determined to carve out his place for himself in literature, maybe science fiction, or perhaps his true love — historical books and westerns.
He was a close friend of another writer who had broken out into bona fide mainstream science fiction legitimacy. That author was H. Beam Piper, also a native of Williamsport, PA. Piper is perhaps best known for his popular “Lord Kalvan” series of books and stories. Piper was one of those guys who had doggedly clawed his way out of the science fiction gutter to gain considerable respect in that field — until his career cooled off and then went moribund.
Piper soldiered on for a time and struggled as his earnings dwindled and royalties dried up. Piper descended to a lowly state — so lowly that he had devolved to shooting pigeons outside his apartment window with a pellet gun for an occasional meal.
One day, after bagging a pigeon, plucking it, dressing it out and eating it, Piper put a pistol to his head and ended his own life.
For Michael Knerr, his friend’s tragic ending was a terrible blow. He was said to be devastated, partly because he felt he let his friend down when he knew he was enduring grim times. Knerr hero-worshipped Piper, the man he considered his mentor.
Even so, Knerr pressed on. He kept getting up every morning, rolling fresh sheets of paper into his manual typewriter as he endeavored to write fiction for which someone would pay him cash money.
This offering, THE SEX LIFE OF THE GODS by Knerr, is a classic example of what, in effect, was much like the sad opportunities created by the internet content mills of today. Lots of hard writing for vanishingly small pay. Knerr understood he was writing sleazy novels designed to be written as fast as possible and published with salacious titles and lurid covers.
The racy title was probably more important than the prose and plot that filled the space between the covers. The book title promised steamy sex mixed with thrilling space opera. Such works were distributed to book stands in drugs stores and dime stores and vanished from the shelves three months later.
The market for such fare was most likely young male loners — you know — teenage boys, perhaps, or early 20-something men who were not exactly slick with the women — the kind of guys who read a lot of comic books when they weren’t applying glue to model airplanes and, well, I’ll say no more.
The idea was that young fellows like this could live vicariously through these novels and thrill to the escapades of flinty-eyed, square-jawed heroes who could make beautiful women squirm with sexual desire just by walking into the room.
The cookie-cutter hero was most often a space jockey who was fast with a ray gun, could expertly pilot a starship and skillfully handle sword battles with bug-eyed aliens. Think: Han Solo, Buck Rogers and Captain America all rolled up into one.
Books like Sex Life of the Gods were considered “soft porn,” in their day, but as Knerr said: “We could have read them to our children.”
He was right about that.
The so-called sex scenes in this book, by today’s standards, barely constitute a trip to first or second base, if you know what I mean.
Believe me, there’s more sexually charged content in any of today’s family prime-time TV sitcoms. The daytime soap operas my mother used to watch are hard-core porn by comparison to Sex Life of the Gods. Knerr, and others like him, wrote these books at lightning speed. They were strictly “one-time through the typewriter only jobs” and then rushed off to the publisher.
The next challenge was getting paid.
Writers like Knerr were sometimes cheated out of pay or often had to settle for half the $500 originally promised. They usually worked with no formal contracts — just verbal agreements and maybe (just maybe) a handshake. Even a handshake was unlikely, however, because the relationship between writer and these fly-by-night publishers was usually dicey, to say the least.
Some aspects of Knerr’s life as a hack writer may sound carefree and romantic — those who knew him said he could live on one $500 or $600 payday for months. At one point, Knerr lived on a sailboat in California as he struggled to gain traction as a popular writer — but sometimes he starved, and I mean literally.
He once subsisted on a few cans of cranberries and dry crackers for days!
Knerr eventually had to opt-out of the freelance novelist. Desperate for a steady paycheck, he took a job as a small-town newspaper reporter in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, population about 6,000. He never gave up writing fiction, however. Reports vary on how many books he eventually published — some say six or seven, others say as many as 20. He may have published under several pen names. It is also known that he sold short stories to magazines, including Louis L’Amour Western Magazine.
Some sources say he gained some momentum as a writer of western and detective novels. That’s right — he broke into the mainstream — sort of. For example, his novel Heavy Weather was published as a Horowitz edition, but apparently only in Hong Kong.
Some of his other novels are:
Travis, a racy detective story in the vein of Sex Life of the Gods.
Sasquatch, a fictional tale about Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest.
Suicide in Guyana, a nonfiction book about the Jim Jones cult.
The Violent Lady, published by Monarch.
Sex Life of the Gods, for me, was an enjoyable read in the extreme because of the campy fun effect — you know, like watching an egregiously bad science fiction movie, such as PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. Knerr said guys like him “stole their plots right out of TV Guide.” LOL! That’s for sure!
Sex Life of the Gods is just so cookie-cutter in terms of plot and character, it’s almost like he used a flow chart:
–> Name hero
–> Give him X problem
–> Have him meet sizzling hot dame
–> Send him on the run from (insert cops, CIA, military, aliens)
–> Enter chase scene here
–> Has sex here …
And so forth.
I suggest you download this free gem immediately and have an incredibly great laugh and some pure campy fun. At the same time, however, reserve some respect for a bona fide hacky pulp fiction artist who was actually more than that.
By all accounts. Michael E. Knerr developed some serious literary talent and published some quality books and some magazine short stories before he died in 1999 at age 64.
NOTE: For more stories like this, please see: KEN-ON-MEDIUM