Richard Hodgens

Richard Hodgens (b. New Jersey, 7 August 1936; d. New Jersey, 23 June 1990)

Richard Hodgens is primarily remembered for his one book, a translation of part of Ariosto’s Orlando Furiosa that was published under the Ballantine Adult Fantasy imprint in 1973. Yet his wide-ranging interests and writings deserve more attention.

Richard Milton Hodgens was the middle of three children of Milton Gore Hodgens (1903-1972), a teacher at a trade school, and his wife, Loretta Loehnberg (1908-1988), who were married in Manhattan on 29 April 1929. Richard had a sister, Barbara, three years older, and another sister, Dale, seven years younger.

Richard was educated from the Glen Ridge High School, in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, and at New York University (B.A. and M.A.). Around 1959 he had started working on the staff of a trade journal, Quick Frozen Foods, edited by Sam Moskowitz, who brought Hodgens into contact with more science fiction enthusiasts.

Previously, as he was finishing high school, Hodgens had published two short science fiction stories, “The Claws in Clausmas”(with John Kirwan, a close high school friend) in Universe Science Fiction for January 1955, which is a parodic look at the attempts to disrupt the sacred commerciality of the Clausmas (as a counter to Christmas, the religious holiday); and “For Glory and the Empire” in Spaceway for June 1955 (which had been submitted to the magazine in 1953). He also wrote and illustrated a children’s story set on Mars for his younger sister. He continued writing occasional science fiction through the 1960s, leaving a small number of unpublished stories and novellas. His final published story was “One by One” in the Magazine of Horror, no. 23 (September 1968), in which the final of the twelve men dedicated to Good is pursued by Evil.

Hodgens had more success with nonfiction. His first significant publication was “A Brief, Tragical History of the Science Fiction Film” in Film Quarterly, v. 13 no. 2 (1959). In 2016, when reprinted in Notions of Genre: Writings on Popular Film Before Genre Theory, edited by Barry Keith Grant and Malisa Kurtz, the editors wrote that Hodgens’s essay was “one of the first sustained critical attacks on the science fiction film as a debasement of the genre in comparison to its literary counterpart” (p. 150). Ray Bradbury wrote to Hodgens about this article on 17 December 1959: “When you speak of the film [The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms] as a ‘foolish fancy of Ray Bradbury’s’ you do me a terrible injury. The producers of that film purchased a short story of mine, ‘The Fog Horn’ … and only twenty seconds of my short story—I repeat, twenty seconds—appear.”

Hodgens in 1974

Hodgens contributed “Down with Dr. Strangelove and Other Political Science Fictions” to Tom Reamy’s Trumpet, no. 5 (April 1967) and “Notes on 2001: A Space Odyssey” to Trumpet, no. 9 (1969). Arthur C. Clarke commented on the latter in the next issue that “Hodgens’s article is one of the best I’ve read on the subject” (Trumpet, no. 10, 1969, p. 13). Hodgens had several letters of comment in Trumpet from 1965-1969, and contributed to Reamy’s other magazine, Nickelodeon, “Aristotle’s Word for Science Fiction Was Poesis” no. 2 (1976). In the late 1960s, Hodgens put together a portfolio of letters by and about Neil R. Jones (1909-1988), who is credited for the first use of the word “astronaut” in a story in 1930. This was never published.

Hodgens’s other significant body of criticism is on the science fiction stories of C.S. Lewis. Hodgens joined the New York C.S. Lewis Society at its founding, on 1 November 1969, and was a member for the remainder of his life. He contributed frequently to its Bulletin, both articles and book reviews.

Hodgens contacted Lin Carter in 1969 with a fan letter about Carter’s recently published Tolkien—A Look Behind “The Lord of the Rings”. They also discussed Carter’s anthology Dragons, Elves and Heroes, which came out in October 1969, and this brought about a casual discussion of the possibility of Hodgens translating a section of Orlando Furioso into prose for Carter’s in-progress anthology Golden Cities, Far. This, in turn, came out in October 1970. Carter included as the final selection a twenty-two page portion of Hodgens's translation of a section titled “The Palace of Illusion.” Carter also noted that if all were to go well, then Hodgens’s English prose translation would appear in 1971. But Ballantine’s precarious financial situation precluded this. The Ballantine Adult Fantasy edition of Orlando Furioso: The Ring of Angelica, Volume 1 finally came out in January 1973 (a reworked version of his “The Palace of Illusions” appears as part of chapter 12), the same month that the publisher was sold to Random House. A UK Pan/Ballantine edition appeared in September 1973. Carter’s introduction announced that Hodgens was now translating the entire book, and that “our new edition of Orlando Furioso will appear in several volumes, of which this is the first” (p. xvi). No further volumes were ever published, though rumors persisted that more of the translation had been completed. However, Hodgens's two sisters recall that while he had correspondence about other volumes, the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series was discontinued before anything was contracted. Hodgens felt that the published book should not have been credited as “translated” by him but rather as “paraphrased in English prose” by him. And though he had been schooled in Latin and Spanish, he had taught himself Italian via records that he checked out from the library in order to do the translation. 

Mark Valentine has written an appreciation of Hodgens's book at Wormwoodiana. 

Hodgens died on 23 June 1990, after having been diagnosed with a brain tumor. A piece by Mary Gehringer of The New York C.S. Lewis Society, “In Memory of Richard Hodgens,” noted his “wide range of interests, which also included kung fu movies, junk food, much early science fiction and the correspondence of Byron. . . . More than one of us discussed with Richard a favorite, long-remembered, and longed-for book only to have the volume arrive in the mail as a gift from Richard. . . . Richard’s humor was droll and could catch you unaware. He had unexpected whimsy. In a children’s story he wrote, the characters grow new clothes with each change of season, shedding their old ones, and thus never have to take baths” CSL: The Bulletin of the New York C.S. Lewis Society, no. 244 (dated February 1990, but not published until months later), p. 4.

*I am grateful to Dale F. Hodgens for sharing her memories of her brother.