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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Classic pulp-fiction tales for the 21st-century reader
Adventure Tales is an infrequent periodical published by Wildside Press that reprints forgotten fiction from classic pulp magazines of the early twentieth century. This first issue of the series collects eight short stories and one novella. The subject matter is divided fairly evenly between mystery/crime stories and tales of adventure in exotic locales, from the South Pacific to India to Africa and ocean-going vessels in between. Sprinkled amongst the stories are several poems also taken from the pulps, penned by authors as diverse as Robert E. Howard (of Conan fame) and George Sterling.
In addition to the fiction and poetry, editor John Gregory Betancourt contributes an introduction. This is followed by an essay on Edgar Rice Burroughs by Mike Resnick, and there is even a letters column. This issue also contains an enlightening interview with Hugh B. Cave, author of more than a thousand stories, which provides a really interesting glimpse into the life of a pulp-fiction writer. These nonfiction components are valuable in that they provide today’s reader with a helpful education in the history and lore of the pulp magazines.
Cave is the “featured author” of this first issue, and his pieces are clearly the best. In “The Man Who Couldn't Die,” a luckless drifter, sick with fever, is left for dead on a barren rock called Fortune Island. There he encounters four treasure hunters, who abuse him as if he were a common slave, yet fail to break him. It’s an excellent story, and Cave’s writing calls to mind some of Jack London’s best tales. One more offering from Cave, also set in the South Pacific, is “Island Feud,” which details the confrontation between a young, idealistic doctor and an unethical boat captain. Another fine selection, “Rats Ashore” by James C. Young, may best be described as nautical horror. The captain and first mate of a ship departing South America begin to wonder where all the customary rats have gone. Although the story gives the answer away a little too quickly, once it gets rolling it offers all the suspense and fun of a classic B movie. Renowned pulp veterans H. Bedford-Jones, Harold Lamb, and Henry de Vere Stacpoole are also represented by good contributions.
The weakest stories in the book are two mysteries, “The Evil Eye” by Vincent Starrett, featuring his Chicago detective Jimmie Lavender, and “‘Watson!’” by Captain A.E. Dingle. The latter tells of two yachting playboys who fancy themselves sleuths along the lines of Holmes and Watson, but the storytelling in no way compares to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Faring better in the crime category is the novella “The Spider Strain” by Johnston McCulley, which takes up over a quarter of the volume. Though McCulley is best known as the creator of Zorro, this story features one of his other popular recurring characters, The Spider, a criminal supergenius who, despite being confined to a wheelchair, oversees a complex network of organized crime.
With the exception of “The Man Who Couldn't Die,” I wouldn’t say I was blown away by any of these stories, but they are almost all good solid examples of pulp storytelling. These well-selected pieces, coupled with the editorial content, really give the reader of today a chance to experience what it must have felt like to browse a newsstand during the golden age of the pulps. As of the time of posting this review, Wildside Press has published six installments of Adventure Tales. After enjoying issue one, I am looking forward to exploring this series further.
Stories in this collection:
Skulls by H. Bedford-Jones
Under the Flame Trees by Henry de Vere Stacpoole
Rats Ashore by Charles C. Young
The Evil Eye by Vincent Starrett
“Watson!” by Captain A. E. Dingle
The Make-Weight by Harold Lamb
Island Feud by Hugh B. Cave
The Man Who Couldn’t Die by Hugh B. Cave
The Spider Strain by Johnston McCulley
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Familiarity breeds contempt
“Adventure was considered the most prestigious pulp magazine in America. . . . And the very best author in Adventure was Harold Lamb.” So proclaims the introduction by Robert Weinberg. This volume collects 17 of Lamb’s historical adventure tales, originally published from 1921 to 1953 in Adventure and other pulp fiction periodicals. Most of these stories feature a crusader as protagonist, yet for the most part they’re not typical tales of the Crusades. Often they feature a former crusader, or descendant of crusaders, now a resident of the Holy Land, who wanders farther afield and gets mixed up in a fracas with some eastern empire, such as the Persians, Tatars, or the Mongols of Genghis Khan. Other conflicts are also represented, including the Roman Empire vs. Attila and the Huns in “Secret of Victory,” England vs. France in “Lionheart,” Teutonic Knights vs. Poles in “Knights with Wings,” and the German Empire vs. the Swiss in “The Bells of the Mountains.” There’s even a mystery story set in India (“The Village of the Ghost”) in which a British officer goes up against a local gang of thugs. No matter the time or place, Lamb unfailingly gives careful attention to historic detail and loads his stories with generous helpings of local color.
While I love classic adventure fiction and had previously enjoyed the Swords from the Desert volume in this series, after now having read almost 1,000 pages of Lamb’s work I’m beginning to think I like the idea of a writer like Harold Lamb more than I like his actual writing. Although there’s nothing wrong with these stories, there’s nothing particularly exceptional about them either. Rarely do they inspire any profoundly memorable moments, genuine surprise, or edge-of-your-seat excitement. After reading several of Lamb’s stories, one begins to discern the same patterns repeated over and over. This redundancy, coupled with the mammoth size of this volume, makes the whole of the book inferior to the sum of its parts. Though the centuries, empires, and races may vary, the hero always resembles Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name in chain mail. No matter how far east this voyager may venture, the damsel in distress almost invariably possesses fair skin and “red-gold” hair. The wandering swordsman will sign on as bodyguard to some merchant or diplomat traveling to the exotic East. After trudging across endless deserts they come to a spooky mountain pass that represents the point of no return. The hero soon discovers the master he serves has set him up for a fall, and he ultimately ends up a third party participant in a battle between two powerful empires. Victory is followed by rich rewards of booty (in both senses of the word). Half of the book is taken up by two long novellas, “The Grand Cham,” and “The Making of the Morning Star,” which more or less follow this format, although the former is unique in that it thankfully dispenses with the obligatory maiden. Lamb is exceptionally skilled at depicting sword fights or battle scenes, but his characters often resemble cardboard cutouts and he never, ever, finishes a story with a surprise ending.
Swords from the West does have its entertainment value, but after having devoted an inordinate amount of time to this collection of stories, I can’t help thinking that effort would have been more rewardingly spent on the works of Alexandre Dumas, Sir Walter Scott, Victor Hugo, or Henryk Sienkiewicz, the very writers Lamb strove to emulate.
Stories in this collection
The Red Cock Crows
The Golden Horde
The Long Sword
Lionheart
Protection
Keeper of the Gate
The Tower of Ravens
The Grand Cham
The Black Road
Knights with Wings
The Making of the Morning Star
The Bells of the Mountains
The Faring Forth
Secret of Victory
The Village of the Ghost
The Iron Man Rides
Doom Rides In
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