H. Bedford-Jones drew a curtain of privacy about his life in a manner that has consistently frustrated would-be researchers and biographers. One of the most prolific and arguably one of the most popular authors in the first half of the twentieth century, he wrote primarily for the mass-market pulp-fiction magazines. A meaningful portion of the ninety-odd novels and the more than twelve hundred shorter works of fiction written by Bedford-Jones is either science fiction or fantasy--perhaps as much as 10 percent of his total output. Much of the rest includes significant fantastic elements. Bedford-Jones's forte, historical adventure, colored much of the science fiction and fantasy he produced. Commonly for the time, he mixed genres with abandon, paying little attention to what was crystallizing as convention. His nongenre work often included healthy doses of the fantastic, whereas his fantastic works-- especially the later ones--were written prosaically, with the imaginative elements...