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Robert Barbour Johnson (1907–1987) was an artist and writer of weird fiction, whose stories were admired by H.P. Lovecraft. Johnson wrote "Far Below" (1939), voted in 1953 by readers as the best story ever published in ''Weird Tales'' magazine. This story is still well regarded, and continues to be regularly anthologized in major collections such as ''The Weird'' (2010) and ''The Century's Best Horror Fiction'' (2012). ==Life== Johnson was born to a railroad family. In his youth he took a journalism course, and worked for a while on ''The New Orleans Item''. At this time he appears to have also started writing detective and horror stories published under pseudonyms. In the 1920s he also became a press agent for a traveling circus, and in this way he discovered a facility for training animals.〔Loren Coleman (2010), ''Mysterious America''〕 He could even train cats (his own cat performed on stage at the 1956 West Coast Science Fiction Conference). In the 1920s he became involved with the circus life in New York, but as the Great Depression hit America he found the winter in New York hard to bear. He relocated to San Francisco around 1930, attracted by the more hospitable climate and by the artistic and literary communities there. He appears to have been a lifelong bachelor, and always called himself an "outsider".〔Jeff VanderMeer (2010), ''The Weird''〕 In San Francisco he moved in literary circles and was friends with the fantasy author Clark Ashton Smith and his wife, and also with the Satanist Anton LaVey and the pioneering cryptozoologist George F. Haas.〔Michael Ashley (1978), ''Who's who in Horror and Fantasy Fiction''〕 In the late 1940s he also joined the San Francisco branch of the Fortean Society. Johnson published weird fiction stories in the heyday of ''Weird Tales'' magazine, such as: "They"; "Lead Soldiers"; and "Mice".〔Jeff VanderMeer (2010), ''The Weird''〕 H.P. Lovecraft wrote him a fan letter after reading his "Lead Soldiers". Johnson repaid the complement by including Lovecraft as a character in "Far Below". Later stories included "Lupa" and "The Strange Case of Monica Lilith". He also wrote for magazines such as ''Mystic'', ''Short Story'', ''Short Story for Men'', and ''The Magazine of Horror''.〔Michael Ashley, ''Transformations: the Story of the Science-fiction Magazines''〕 In his guide book ''The Magic Park'' (Century Press, 1940) he wrote about the Golden Gate Park - this work was partly a guidebook and partly an unconventional creative work about the nature and what one might term the "enchanted topography" of the park. During World War II he served in the artillery in the 1952th Service Command Unit. After the war ended he remained in San Francisco, and turned to more mainstream fiction under contract to ''Blue Book'' - providing them with six long circus stories per year. He published articles in the fantasy and science-fiction fanzines during the 1950s, and then returned to weird fiction in 1964 with "The Life-After-Death of Thaddeus Warde". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Robert Barbour Johnson」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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