Random Pulp Paragraphs #1

"The Death-Masters of Quellon," by Bernerd Colby, 1932

Del Miner witnessed on that day the most cruelly savage display of unthinking barbarism that had ever been visited upon his weeping eyes. As the Death-Masters, fully adorned in their ceremonial red-and-blue garb, slaughtered huddled seditionists by the dozens, he could not tear his gaze away though every impulse in his body was to flee in revulsion. He had to watch. He had to know what horrors the Brebari were capable of, for only then would he be girded with the resolve to destroy them, once and for all.

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Notes: Bernerd Colby, born 1884, was one of the first authors to appear in the seminal pulp periodical Tales of Ancient Past and Distant Future. From 1924, the premier year of A. Joseph Gustav's celebrated magazine, through 1934, Colby provided a story approximately every other issue until he abruptly stopped writing genre fiction.

By '34, Colby's stories had grown suddenly bizarre, and Gustav informed his long-time contributer that he could accept no further stories until they could be brought back into a more conventional realm. Colby never published another story, but he rebounded soon enough, changing his name to Aerion and launching the religion Aerioism, which worshipped a race of star-beings called Feremons and at its height had nearly 600 followers.

Colby died in 1965 of renal failure, still to the very end tending his flock of Aerionists, which at the time of his death had shrunk to eleven strong.