Arthur J. Burks

Arthur J. Burks was an American writer and Marine Corps officer born in 1898 and dead in 1974. Reliable reference sources describe him as a major pulp-magazine contributor who began publishing in the 1920s, wrote under several names including Estil Critchie, and later returned to military service during World War II, eventually retiring as a lieutenant colonel.

He wrote across an unusually wide range of popular genres—horror, fantasy, science fiction, detective fiction, adventure, boxing stories, and aviation tales. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction notes that his first fantastic story appeared in Weird Tales in 1924, while later reference sources credit him with an enormous overall output that made him one of the notably productive pulp authors of his era.

Although much of his work first appeared in magazines rather than books, Burks has remained of interest to readers of classic weird fiction and pulp history. Titles often associated with him include The Great Mirror and the Arkham House collection Black Medicine, which helped preserve some of his supernatural fiction for later generations.