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“A.J. Soltare is one of our authors of whom we’re very proud. He has worked with Bulwark under my father and my uncles Rupert and Sebastian. He claims I’m the easiest `boss’ with whom he’s ever had to work, but I suspect I let him get away with more as he’s been around the offices for decades longer than I’ve been alive.”

—Oscar Kharm, Bulwark publisher, in an interview on March 12, 1981

“What can I tell you about A.J.? Precious little, I’m afraid. Gentlemen’s agreement, you see. I keep his secrets and he keeps mine. All I’ll say is what he’d say about me—look to our fictions and therein you’ll find more than a little of us looking back at you. That’s as close a secret as I’ll share with you and your readers.”

—Blake Hart Montgomery, in an interview on March 4, 1981

“A.J. Soltare is an enigma, to be sure. His ACE BARRIGAN stories are far more polished than most writers’ early works and have an energy that made his stories stand out from his fellow pulpsters. He continues with other Bulwark properties like THE REDRESSOR, BRASS BRADLEY, and THE GASLIGHT and finds new niches within their tales to not just duplicate his success with Fairgeth’s mystic P.I. but transcend it while crafting new shadowy worlds around every character.

“His writing shares some similarities to earlier writers like Jack London and John Solo, though his longevity and his variety make him the stronger author. His work now spans seven decades and while his craft improved as he aged, Soltare’s entire output is eminently readable, no matter when he penned it. Whether he writes hardboiled pulp noir, supernatural horror, weird fantasy, romance, or sword and sorcery, this author knows how to appeal to his readers and expand the boundaries of any genre he chooses.”

—Critic Virginia Harold, New York Times Book Review, October 15, 1994, reviewing Nemeses Nocturnal: The Collected A.J. Soltare (Volume 2) Bulwark/Prospect 1994

“I’m embarrassed to say that I read A.J.’s stuff almost backwards. He hooked me as a reader with his Silver Age comic book work, really. I loved what he did in KHARNDAM Tales, and those led me back to the earlier stories in SAGAS SUPERNATURAL and other places. Only after I’d read through all the KHARNDAM material I could find did I look back and find his reprinted comic book work on DOC ENIGMA, and that was mind-blowing stuff for 1972, let alone for 1942 when it was originally done. A.J.’s a marvel to read in any medium and he’s only gotten better over the years. Doesn’t matter what you first read—you’ll end up reading it all because his knack for characters and plot grabs you too and won’t let go.”

—Curtis Winter, writer of the Ignisceror and Arcaniac Quartets

Alexander James Soltare was born on August 26, 1910 in Portsmouth, Maine. He led an uneventful childhood and only came to notice after his move to Chicago in 1932 where he got work at the Chicago Tribune. His first foray into fiction was “Six-Spell-Shooter,” the first ACE BARRIGAN story in OCCULT THRILLS #264 (November 1935), and he continued to regularly publish in Bulwark’s pulps and magazines and books for decades. Whether as an author or editor of fiction, nonfiction, or comic books, A.J. worked for Bulwark Publications until the age of 75.

A.J.’s penchant for gripping stories and tight plots, combined with his gift for speedy writing, garnered him a lot of work. According to some pulp historians, he approached H. Bedford Jones’ and Lester Dent’s phenomenal outputs in total words per year. Unlike some pulp authors, he worked exclusively for Bulwark, though this did not limit him from working in many different magazines or genres: BOOKS BIZARRE, BOXING THRILLS, GAMING THRILLS, GREEN GAZETTE, HERO THRILLS (pulp & comic), MISTER CONUNDRUM, OCCULT THRILLS, ORKNEY STREET, RACING THRILLS, ROMANCE THRILLS, SAGAS SUPERNATURAL, SCIENCE THRILLS, SPACE THRILLS, TALES TERRIFIC, TRUE-LIFE MAGAZINE, and WESTERN THRILLS.

While many of Soltare’s works appeared under his own name, editors disguised some of his work under house pseudonyms to hide just how much A.J. Soltare material they published. Thus, assembling his entire bibliography publicly only recently occurred. All told, whether under house names or his own, A.J. Soltare published nearly 200 novels, over 700 short stories or comic books, and nearly 500 articles or essays between 1935 and 2000.

Mr. Soltare’s most recently published work was the “Introduction” for KHARNDAM Collected #1 (TWELVELANDS Volume One; Bulwark/Prospect 2000). For those worried about the man’s longevity into his 90’s, A.J. promised in recent interviews that he’d already written new material (introductions, afterwords, or anecdotal sidebars) for every volume of the promised 14 book collection of his long-lived fantasy collaboration.

“I write to relax, to be honest. For me, it’s never the first thing I do in the morning but the last thing I do at night after conquering my day and its errands. More often than not, my process of unwinding and spooling my experiences and feelings and thoughts out in fictions leads me to watch the dawn before I get some sleep. Even now, in my so-called ‘golden years,’ I’m finding the only way I can get to sleep is to rattle off a little story or article on my trusty Underwood.”

—A.J. Soltare, “Introduction” excerpt, Bold as Brass: The Collected A.J. Soltare (Volume 3) Bulwark/Prospect 1995

© 2009 by Steven E. Schend. All rights reserved.