author
Landell Bartlett
1897–1972
A little-known early science fiction writer and editor from Colorado, he is best remembered for the 1928 promotional chapbook The Vanguard of Venus. His work sits at the edge of pulp magazine history, where fan culture, local journalism, and speculative fiction briefly crossed paths.
1 Audiobook
The vanguard of Venus
by Landell Bartlett
About the author
Born in Colorado in 1897, Landell Bartlett was an American writer and editor whose surviving reputation rests mainly on a small but intriguing place in early science fiction. Reference sources identify him as a Colorado-born editor and writer, and his best-known work is The Vanguard of Venus, a short novel or chapbook issued in 1928 as a promotional giveaway connected with Amazing Stories.
Although he does not appear to have been a prolific fiction writer, Bartlett remains of interest to pulp and science fiction historians because his work belongs to the genre's formative magazine era. Later archival notes and collectors' sources also connect him with Colorado literary and historical circles, suggesting a life that reached beyond fiction into editorial and local cultural work.
Bartlett died in Colorado Springs in July 1972. For modern readers, his appeal is less about fame than about discovery: he represents the many half-forgotten writers who helped shape the atmosphere of early American science fiction, even if they left behind only a small body of work.