John Eric Holmes

Holmes was the son of US Navy officer Wilfred "Jasper" Holmes and his wife Isabelle West Holmes. Wilfred Holmes was also a writer of adventure stories under the pen name Alec Hudson.[5] Like his father, John Eric Holmes also served in the armed forces, as a first lieutenant in the Marine Corps. He fought for two years in Korea. He was a medical doctor and an associate professor of neurology[3] at the University of Southern California School of Medicine. He had a son named Christopher West Holmes.[6]

Mahars of Pellucidar by John Eric Holmes, Ace Books, 1976, cover art by Boris Vallejo.

Holmes was a long-time science fiction fan, particularly of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. P. Lovecraft, and an enthusiast of fantasy role-playing games. His writings reflected both his chosen profession and his hobbies, beginning with an early short story published in 1951 and factual articles on neurology for the science fiction magazine Astounding and its successor Analog in the early 1960s.

He later wrote on Dungeons & Dragons, from the perspectives of both a Dungeon Master and an authority on the psychology of gaming, serving as editor of the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set RPG rule book, and writing a series of fantasies set in a D&D-influenced world, including four short stories and one novel. These stories, along with a previously unpublished story, were collected in 2017 into the book Tales of Peril: the Complete Boinger & Zereth Stories of John Eric Holmes, edited by Allan T. Grohe, Jr and published by Black Blade Publishing.

Holmes made an offer to TSR to develop an introductory version of Dungeons & Dragons, hoping to expand the game's demographics from college-age players to younger players and also try to get the game into the mass market.[3] His resulting Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (1977) was a revision of the original Dungeons & Dragons by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, as well as the game's early supplements, Greyhawk, Blackmoor, and Eldritch Wizardry.[3] Holmes created the wereshark monster for Dungeons & Dragons, first publishing it in Alarums & Excursions #13 (July 1976).[7][8]

Taking his writing more "mainstream," he wrote with David F. Lindsley the textbook Basic Human Neurophysiology (1984), and on his own pastiche speculative fiction novels set in the inner world of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Pellucidar, the fictional future of Philip Francis Nowlan's Buck Rogers, and the fictional past of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian.

Holmes's two Pellucidar novels were Mahars of Pellucidar,[3] authorized by the Burroughs estate, and Red Axe of Pellucidar, reportedly blocked by the same authority. Ready for publication in 1980, it initially only saw print thirteen years later in a private printing.[6] Both novels were ultimately officially re-released by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. in 2022 in hardcover, paperback, Kindle, and audio CD as part of its Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe series. A planned third novel in the series, Swordsmen of Pellucidar, remained unfinished.[6]

His other pastiches also met with mixed success. While Mordred, his Buck Rogers novel, saw print, his Conan novel, while contracted and paid for by Tor Books, was ultimately rejected. Another novel, Danton Doring, a collaboration with Burroughs' son John Coleman Burroughs, whom he helped treat for Parkinson's disease, was never completed.[6]

Holmes was a regular guest at Burroughs fan conventions such as the Edgar Rice Burroughs Chain of Friendship (ECOF). He received its Lifetime Achievement Award for his Burroughs pastiches at ECOF '93 in Willows, California.[6] He was slated to appear as Guest of Honor at 2004's ECOF Convention in Sacramento, California, but suffered a stroke and was unable to attend. He was a special guest at the June 2005 ECOF in Portland, Oregon.

• John Eric Holmes: Mahars of Pellucidar and Red Axe of Pellucidar – article by John Martin
• John Eric Holmes at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• John Eric Holmes at Find a Grave