Comic Cuts — 29 July 2022

Even in the middle of working on the latest task at hand, namely putting together the artwork and an introduction to the fourth book collecting The Steel Claw for a Spanish publisher, I can still be distracted by a mystery. One that came to light this week still has me scratching my head, and I'm hoping that somebody out there — maybe not a regular reader but someone Google searching for someone in their family tree perhaps — will be able to shed some light.

Bert Barton is briefly mentioned in Rob Hansen's Then, the history of British science fiction fandom, where Rob says "Apart from London and Belfast one of the few cities known to have an active fan group at this point was Birmingham. The Birmingham Science Fiction Club was apparently formed in 1949 by Bert Barton and held weekly meetings in a pub somewhere in the Digbeth area of the city, at which between six and twenty members would be present. The group never produced any fanzines, so far as is known, and so there's little we can tell about them but it is known that the group was written up in the Evening Despatch, a local newspaper, and that the really keen members would occasionally organise a trip to London in order to attend the White Horse and get the chance to speak to famous authors.This appears to have been the limit of their contact with fandom nationally." (p.91)

Well, the reference to an appearance in a local Birmingham newspaper turns out to be a report in the Wednesday, October 8, 1952 issue headlined "He starts space society" under a photograph of the mysterious Bert Barton. reading a copy of the February 1950 Amazing Stories.

From the couple of clues in the brief report, it seems likely that Bert was born Herbert Charles Barton, born on November 6, 1919, the son of Charles H. and his wife Flora Alvina Barton (nee Dougherty, 1893-), who were married in Birmingham in 1915. He seems to have been an only child, as his father died young, aged only 37 in 1924.

Barton was still living with his widowed mother in Birmingham just before the war when he was working as an aircraft subcontractor's material control and buying clerk.

Barton married Marjorie Phyllis Allcock in 1942 and had two children, Patricia M. (1942) and Robert K. (1947). In the 1940s, Barton was living at 75 Regent Road, Handsworth. He died in December 1991, aged 72.

What makes Bert Barton of particular interest is the report that he "writes modern space-fiction under various pen-names."

Which begs the question... what did he write and where was it published? The majority of published SF from that period in the pages of New Worlds and Authentic SF and the like are known. Nothing appeared under Barton's own name, and the source of most pseudonyms at that time was the cheap end of the paperback market. Could Barton have been behind still unidentified pen-names in the John Spencer SF magazines, or the author behind Vector Magroon or some such other still to be identified pseudonym.

I'll have to classify this as "a mystery that has me mystified". (There's a phrase that long-time readers will recognise!)