COMMONSCUT

Commons Cut Stories

Pulp, Adventure and Early Sci-Fi

Verne, Wells, Burroughs, dime novels, early comic characters.

Dime novels, pulp magazines and the first science fiction. Buffalo Bill on stage, Nellie Bly racing Phileas Fogg, H. G. Wells naming the atomic bomb, and three 1931 arrivals: The Shadow, Dick Tracy and Lovecraft's The Whisperer in Darkness.

Where a character's copyright and trademark differ, the story says which is which.

7 stories

  • Nov 14, 1889: Bly and Elizabeth Bisland both left New York (137th anniversary, Sat Nov 14, 2026).

    Nellie Bly’s Race Around the World

    On Nov 14, 1889, Nellie Bly set out to beat a fictional hero's 80 days. Jules Verne himself toasted her and doubted she would make it. She didn't learn until Hong Kong that a second woman had left New York the same day, heading the other way.

  • Dec 2, 2026

    Wells Named the Atomic Bomb

    In 1914 H. G. Wells wrote a novel about "atomic bombs" and set their key discovery in 1933. In 1933 a Hungarian physicist who had read it stood at a London traffic light and conceived the nuclear chain reaction.

  • Dec 16, 2026

    Buffalo Bill Forgets His Lines

    Ned Buntline subtitled his 1869 Buffalo Bill serial "The Wildest and Truest Story I Ever Wrote." Three years later he wrote Cody a play in about four hours. On opening night Cody couldn't remember a word of it.

  • Jan 1, 2027

    Before He Was Dick Tracy

    Chester Gould mailed sixty comic-strip ideas to the Chicago Tribune's Joseph Patterson over a decade and sold none. The sixty-first was "Plainclothes Tracy." Patterson said the title was too long: cops are called "dicks," so call him Dick Tracy.

  • Jan 1, 2027

    Lovecraft’s Planet Yuggoth

    Less than three weeks after astronomers announced a ninth planet in March 1930, H. P. Lovecraft wrote to a friend: "I think I shall suggest its being named Yuggoth!" He didn't get his way, so he put it in a story instead. The planet was Pluto and the story was "The Whisperer in Darkness," published in August 1931. It enters the US public domain Jan 1, 2027.

  • Jan 1, 2027

    The Shadow Began as a Voice

    In 1930 "The Shadow" was just a sinister announcer's voice on a CBS radio show. Listeners walked into newsstands asking for "that Shadow magazine," so Street & Smith hurried one out, and a magician who ghostwrote for Houdini invented the character to fill it. The 1931 Shadow enters the US public domain on Jan 1, 2027.

  • Burroughs’s Joke Pen Name

    The man who created Tarzan and John Carter was so embarrassed about writing "crazy" Mars stories that he signed the first one "Normal Bean," meaning a sane head. The editor "corrected" it to "Norman Bean," then apologized in print, and Burroughs wrote back: "you sure did smear up the original."

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