Keeler, Harry Stephen

Entry updated 22 September 2025. Tagged: Author.

(1890-1967) US electrical engineer, editor and author of more than 70 crime-and-detection thrillers whose bizarre complexity – the "webwork novel", in his own phrase – irrelevant stories-within-stories and reliance on a multiplicity of staggering coincidences led to his being cherished by fans for other than literary reasons, rather as R Lionel Fanthorpe is enjoyed for his unashamed padding. Both the title and the nested narratives of the nonfantastic Thieves' Nights (1929) echo the Arabian Nights. Keeler's situations often verge on the science-fictional, with semi-plausible Inventions like the titular glasses of The Spectacles of Mr Cagliostro (1926; vt The Blue Spectacles 1931): these allow the reading of a "secret" message that is blazoned across the country on billboards. Sing Sing Nights (1928), though primarily a suspense thriller, features the transplant of a human brain into the skull of a gorilla. The Box from Japan (1932) is set in the Near Future of 1942, with various eccentric Predictions including a new food source (the Giant Sugar Cactus), the return of Prohibition and holographic colour television.

The Face of the Man from Saturn (1933; vt The Crilly Court Mystery 1933) is not itself sf but centres on the eponymous piece of sf artwork concealing another hidden message, and includes the inset sf story "John Jones's Dollar" (August 1915 Black Cat), here introduced as a manuscript titled "How Socialism Finally Arrived in the World!" – socialism being one of Keeler's enthusiasms. This 1915 tale, which was reprinted in Amazing Stories for April 1927, is the author's best known (albeit poorly written) contribution to sf: a story of runaway compound interest in which the dollar invested in trust for John Jones's distant descendants grows to a sum of Money exceeding the total wealth of the Far-Future solar system; the framing story features Education in SF via Videophone conferencing link as a professor in 3221 CE (3235 in The Face of the Man from Saturn) addresses his globally scattered class.

From 1919 to 1940 Keeler edited the minor Pulp magazine 10-Story Book. His late novel The Man Who Changed His Skin (written 1959; trans into Spanish 1966; 2000) is true sf, a story of Identity Exchange caused by a Drug derived from an extraterrestrial tree whose seed came to Earth via meteorite; a white Bostonian of 1855 is trapped in the body of a Black man and his own body cannot be found. [DRL]

see also: Food Pills.

Harry Stephen Keeler

born Chicago, Illinois: 3 November 1890

died Chicago, Illinois: 22 January 1967

works (highly selected)

The Spectacles of Mr Cagliostro (London: Hutchinson, 1926) [hb/]
- The Blue Spectacles (London: Ward Lock, 1931) [vt of the above: hb/]
Sing Sing Nights (New York: E P Dutton, 1928) [hb/]
Thieves' Nights (New York: E P Dutton, 1929) [hb/]
The Box from Japan (New York: E P Dutton, 1932) [hb/]
The Face of the Man from Saturn (New York: E P Dutton, 1933) [hb/]
- The Crilly Court Mystery (London: Ward Lock, 1933) [vt of the above: hb/]
The Man Who Changed His Skin (Vancleave, Mississippi: Ramble House, 2000) [written 1959: pb/Gavin L O'Keefe]

about the author

Bill Pronzini. "The Amazing Adventures of the Kracked King of Keelerland" in Son of Gun in Cheek (New York: The Mysterious Press, 1987) [nonfiction: pp65-83: hb/Pamela Noftsinger]

links

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