His Beautiful Hands

I first encountered the work of Oscar Cook (1888-1952) not by his prose but by a television adaptation of one of his stories. It remains the only Cook story to have been filmed. It was one of a handful of episodes of Rod Serling's Night Gallery series, which I watched avidly upon its first broadcasting, that really stayed with me. The show ran three seasons, from November 1969 through October 1972. I was nine years old when Night Gallery debuted, but I was already completely familiar with Serling's early series, The Twilight Zone, which ran from 1959 through 1964--though I certainly watched it in re-runs. Oscar Cook's story was "Boomerang," first published in Switch on the Light (1931), edited by Christine Campbell Thomson (then married to Cook). Serling himself wrote the teleplay, re-titling it "The Caterpillar."  It was broadcast on 12 March 1972, when I was twelve years old.  More than fifty years later I still recall its impact.

Many years passed before I paid attention to the authors whose works had been adapted into films or television shows, and I was glad finally to read "Boomerang." It was not frequently reprinted, and I suppose I must have read it in A Century of Creepy Stories (1934). About twenty years ago, John Pelan of Midnight House was contemplating  doing a volume of Cook's stories, and one of Thomson's stories--or a best of both in one volume. I put together bibliographies of both, and did some research on their lives, but the plans came to nought. More recently I learned Johnny Mains was planning a Cook omnibus, so I sent him the bibliography I had compiled years earlier. Johnny added to it considerably, and it is now published in his omnibus (where Johnny generously kept my name as part of the byline). 

His Beautiful Hands: The Short Fiction of Oscar Cook has now been published by Ramble House, and it is a thick compilation, containing around forty stories (plus some nonfiction, etc.), and the results of Johnny's researches appear in various introductions and appendices. There is even a short Foreword by Cook's grandson. 

Our knowledge of Cook has thus been considerably advanced, and anyone interested in British horror fiction from between the First and Second World Wars will find this volume essential.