An assorted selection that’s neither assorted nor selective enough
Wildside Press is a publisher that resurrects and reprints vintage genre fiction from the classic pulp magazines. They publish a wide variety of “Megapacks”—inexpensive omnibus collections of stories and novellas, each united under a common theme or author. The Adventure Megapack was published in 2012. “Adventure” is a pretty broad category, essentially covering anything that’s not a western, science fiction, mystery, or horror story. Yet somehow, even with such wide latitude, this collection manages to feel homogenous and monotonous.
I understand that once you disqualify every story with a trace of space travel, cowboys, detectives, or ghosts in it, the pool of available pulp fiction has dwindled quite a bit. Yet still the definition of “adventure” feels pretty narrow here. The vast majority of these stories are tales of 20th-century white guys punching and shooting their way through exotic locales. Some good examples of this are Robert E. Howard’s “Son of the White Wolf,” which features his character El Borak battling renegade Turks; “Stories of the Legion: Choc,” by H. De Vere Stacpoole, a tale of the French Foreign Legion in Algeria; and “The Spirit of France” by S. B. H. Furst, in which British and French characters face a Muslim rebellion in Burma. Too many of these two-fisted tales, however, are predictable, politically incorrect, and just plain dull. The absolute nadir of this tough-guy category is “The Fighting Fool,” by Perley Poore Sheehan, in which the lead character is an obnoxious jerk who all-too easily assumes the leadership of a submissive Tibetan tribe.
To give credit for diversity where it’s due, there are a handful of stories set in Asia, with Asian protagonists. Harold Lamb was famous for such stories, though his entry here, “Said Afzel’s Elephant,” is mediocre at best. Dorothy Quick’s “The Black Adder,” a romantic tale of India, and “The Mindoon Maneater” by C. M. Cross, about a tiger hunt in Burma, are two of the better selections. In his central Asian tale “Every Man a King,” on the other hand, author E. Hoffmann Price clumsily tries to out-Kipling Rudyard Kipling in the local color department, and ends up delivering a story so crammed with proper nouns that it’s about as much fun and intelligible as reading the Kandahari phone book.
One story about auto racing (“Checkered Flag” by Cliff Farrell) was a nice surprise and a pleasant relief from the relentless fisticuffs. Another welcome departure was “Another Pawn of Fate,” by F. St. Mars, a hunting story told from the point of view of a jaguar.
My biggest complaint about this Megapack is that it’s almost totally devoid of historical adventure. There were entire pulp periodicals devoted to such tales, yet this collection barely even dips its toe into the late 19th century, with the exception of one story of pirates in the Caribbean (J. Allan Dunn’s “The Screaming Skull”). What happened to all the knights in shining armor, the swashbuckling Three Musketeers knockoffs, or the Roman centurions? If Wildside is saving up their historical adventure for some other Megapack I’m not aware of it. They haven’t produced one yet, while they’ve already put out The Eighth Science Fiction Megapack.
Obviously, you can’t go wrong with the price of these Megapacks, but you don’t just spend your money on books, you also spend your time. There are moments while reading The Adventure Megapack that you feel like your effort is well spent, but by the time you reach the end of the 25th yarn, you may find yourself wishing for a few hours of your life back.
The Kindle file has a lot of typographical errors; not enough to hinder understanding, but enough to annoy. One of the shortest stories was pasted twice, so it appears duplicated in its entirety. The copy I downloaded even had the wrong cover image. Wildside publishes good stuff, but they should pay more attention to quality control.
Stories in this collection
(Some novella-length works have been reviewed individually. Click on titles below.)
Son of the White Wolf by Robert E. Howard
Every Man a King by E. Hoffmann Price
Pearl Hunger by Albert Richard Wetjen
The Black Adder by Dorothy Quick
A Meal for the Devil by K. Christopher Barr
Jack Grey, Second Mate by William Hope Hodgson
Said Afzel’s Elephant by Harold Lamb
Adventure’s Heart by Albert Dorrington
Another Pawn of Fate by F. St. Mars
Mystery on Dead Man Reef by George Armin Shaftel
Hag Gold by James Francis Dwyer
Maori Justice by Bob du Soe
Javelin of Death by Captain A.E. Dingle
The Screaming Skull by J. Allan Dunn
Six Shells Left by Allan R. Bosworth
Gods of Bastol by H.P. Holt
The Mindoon Maneater by C. M. Cross
The Spirit of France by S. B. H. Hurst
The Box of the Ivory Dragon by James L. Aton
Checkered Flag by Cliff Farrell
The Fighting Fool by Perley Poore Sheehan
Ghost Lanterns by Alan B. LeMay
Stories of the Legion: Choc by H. De Vere Stacpoole
The Whispering Corpse by Richard B. Sale
The Monkey God by Jacland Marmur
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Sand, swords, and severed heads
While much of the globe was engaged in the First World War, another conflict was raging in the Middle East. Arabs, aided by the British (including the famous Lawrence of Arabia), were revolting against the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which was allied with the Germans. During this war-torn period a band of renegade Turks, fed up with doing the bidding of their Ottoman and German masters, breaks off and forms their own independent tribe. Under the leadership of the fierce warrior Osman, they repudiate the Muslim faith and return to worshipping the pagan gods of their ancestors, exchanging their crescent flag for the banner of the white wolf. Osman and his band sweep across the desert in a rampage of pillaging and plundering. Along the way they capture a beautiful German agent named Olga. Her situation is hopeless, until a lone man comes riding out of the desert, an American gunfighter known to locals only by the name of El Borak.
All of the above is fictitious, of course, except for the first sentence. El Borak, born Francis Xavier Gordon, is a recurring character in the tales of pulp fiction writer Robert E. Howard, better known as the creator of Conan the Barbarian and Solomon Kane. His novelette Son of the White Wolf was first published in the December 1936 issue of the pulp magazine Thrilling Adventures.
Like many pulp-era adventure stories, this one is somewhat formulaic and predictable, but within the expected formula Howard pushes the boundaries as much as possible and injects enough surprises to elevate this piece well above the norm of its genre. Of all those writers who filled the pages of the vintage pulp magazines, Howard is perhaps the one who best appeals to today’s audience because he was the one who took things the farthest. Despite being written in the 1920s and ‘30s, his work is just as violent, gory, and nihilistic as the action movies being made in the 21st century. Nevertheless, he still manages to maintain some of the romantic spirit of a bygone age that one finds in the classic writings of Sir Walter Scott or Alexandre Dumas. The Middle Eastern and Central Asian setting of the El Borak stories is not what Howard is known for. This subject matter is more typical of the writings of another famous pulp writer, Harold Lamb, who specialized in tales of this region. Yet Lamb’s writing is much tamer by comparison. Lamb could never let go of the ideals of chivalry and honor long enough to indulge himself in scenes that are violent enough to be scary. Howard, on the other hand, is not afraid to cross the line into brutality. Severed heads are the norm. Beyond providing gratuitous gore, such no-holds-barred violence actually creates a more historically accurate tone, as it seems history has proven that those engaged in warfare or torture in past centuries would have been more likely to employ unscrupulous cruelty rather than mercifully conform to some romantic code of ethics. In the heat of battle they wouldn’t have relented, so neither does Howard.
Obviously you’ve got to be in the mood for this sort of thing. It ain’t Shakespeare, but it sure is fun. I was unfamiliar with El Borak before reading this story, but if they’re all as well-done as Son of the Wolf, I’ll definitely be seeking out more of his adventures.
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Brutal good fun
Red Shadows, a brief novella by Robert E. Howard, was originally published in the August 1928 issue of Weird Tales magazine. It is the story in which Howard introduces his popular recurring character Solomon Kane, and for that reason it is often reprinted under the alternate title of Solomon Kane.
In the first few pages, Kane stumbles upon a girl who has been “violated” and left for dead. With her dying breath, she tells him that she was attacked by a group of bandits under the direction of Le Loup (The Wolf). With five simple words—“Men shall die for this.”—Kane vows to avenge her. Let the carnage begin. The narrative structure of Red Shadows is like the disembodied second half of a spaghetti western—all righteous retribution with no back story to precede it. There is no Solomon Kane origin story here. In fact, the reader ends the story knowing very little about the character. In a couple of spots he is described as an Englishman and a Puritan. The description of his dress and choice of weapons indicates the story perhaps takes place in the 17th century. Beyond that, there are few clues given to establish time and place, and little character development to get in the way of the action.
Kane eventually tracks his prey to Africa, where he encounters a tribe of savage natives. The African characters are not described in a flattering light, but this has less to do with any overt racism on Howard’s part than with his desire to create a nightmarish atmosphere populated with frightening villains. From reading Red Shadows it is easy to understand the enduring appeal of Howard’s stories and characters. The 21st-century action movie fan will feel right at home in his bleak and brutal world. Other classic pulp adventure writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. Rider Haggard, or Harold Lamb always hang on to some vestige of propriety in their tales which makes them seem tame by comparison. In their stories, the violence has been romanticized to the point where the bloodshed loses its harsh edge. Howard’s writing is no holds barred. He turns all the knobs up to 11. When someone dies in a Howard story, it hurts.
As a fan of historical adventure, I prefer Solomon Kane over Howard’s more famous creation, Conan, because Kane is more grounded in historical reality. Nevertheless, this is fantasy fiction, and supernatural events do take place. Howard’s great strength as a storyteller is that he has a knack for treating such fantastical occurrences with the same gritty authenticity in which he would describe a sword fight or a pursuit on horseback. For those who appreciate pulp fiction, Red Shadows is a gripping and entertaining ride. When all is said and done and the last man’s standing, you’ll be dying for more tales of Solomon Kane.
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