The Hairless Ones Come
From rehupa.com, June 2009
One of my purchases at Windy City Pulp & Paperback Show was a replica of the pulp, Golden Fleece, January 1939. For years I had wanted to read Ralph Milne Farley’s “Eric of Aztalan” (Norsemen on the Great Lakes find far flung Mayan colony in Wisconsin). The story is about a B- grade. I worked my way through the replica which includes REH’s “Gates of Empire” when I came across an L. Sprague de Camp story I had never read. I knew of it from an article by Doug Ellis on Golden Fleece in an old issue of Pulp Vault (Hey Doug–how about getting Pulp Vault back up and running?). De Camp himself mentioned, probably in Time and Chance, having a minor cave man story early on in an adventure pulp but didn’t mention story name nor magazine title. There is a reason he kept this story hidden. It is the worst L. Sprague de Camp story I have ever read. It is a Neanderthal vs. Cro-Magnon cave man story. There is not much plot, a Neanderthal (Otter) discovers the hairless ones (Cro-Magnons) are close by and the Neanderthals are in great danger as a result. A good portion of the story is taken up by Cro-Magnons engaged in banter. The Neanderthals are discovered, attempt to flee, are hunted down, and eaten by the Cro-Magnons. End of story. The writing style is not the usual light hearted de Campian action nerd story. There are a few details such as the Cro-Magnons using throwing sticks or Neanderthal young digging for grubs but the overall effect is very un-de Campian from what you would expect. I have read my share of cave man stories over the years. For some reason, that is a subgenre that never quite jelled in pulp times. Robert E. Howard realized that a storyteller could do much more with barbarians and civilization than with cave men. Jean Auel has made a successful career out of prehistoric fiction decades later. All that wonderful Pleistocene mega-fauna is just waiting to be used for prehistoric fiction not to mention new genetic analysis in relation to mankind’s hell bent for leather wandering. Robert E. Howard’s “Spear and Fang” is Shakespeare compared to “The Hairless Ones Come” if you want to use an apples to apples comparison. I do have a fondness for P. Schuyler Miller’s “People of the Arrow” (Amazing Stories, 1935) which is another Cro-Magnon vs. Neanderthal story. Then there are Manly Wade Wellman’s Hok storie that Karl Edward Wagner was so enthusiastic about. I have to say that “The Hairless Ones Come” is probably the worst cave man story I have ever read next to “Oogie Finds Love” (Amazing Stories in the 1940s).