All there is to love about pulp fiction, without the formulaic aftertaste
John Gregg lands on the island of Puna-Puka, somewhere in the South Pacific, where he strikes up a friendship with DeCourcey, who operates the local trading post. The tropical veteran immediately takes a liking to the young newcomer, but has his suspicions that Gregg may be more than just another Pacific drifter afflicted with wanderlust. It soon comes to light that Gregg fled Honolulu, where he was wrongly accused of committing a robbery. He has come to Puna-Puka seeking DeCourcey, who is the only witness that can clear him of the crime. Gregg wants to take DeCourcey back to Hawaii to clear his name, but the trader would rather remain at his post until the day he dies. The two barely have time to argue about it before a film crew shows up on the island, complete with a temperamental director and a beautiful, vivacious starlet. Gregg and DeCourcey soon begin to suspect, however, that shooting scenery isn’t all these movie makers have in mind.
Mystery on Dead Man Reef, a novella by George Armin Shaftel, was originally published in the October 1940 issue of the pulp magazine South Sea Tales. While pulp fiction is often formulaic and predictable, this one is full of surprising twists and turns. The reader really never knows what’s going to happen next. Even the title is unexpected, as it’s really not so much a “Mystery” story, and as far as I know, there’s no “Dead Man Reef” mentioned anywhere in the text. Nevertheless, this story’s got everything you’d want in a good old-fashioned two-fisted tale. It’s like a cross between a Humphrey Bogart movie and an Indiana Jones adventure. There’s one uncomfortable scene when the hero slaps the female lead to show her who’s boss—a frequent occurrence in old movies, regrettably—but other than that there’s no other remarkably antiquated moments or heinous instances of political incorrectness; just good clean fun and edge-of-your-seat thrills.
George Armin Shaftel is not a household name in adventure fiction, and I could find almost no information on him. For some reason, this book isn’t even available on Amazon or Project Gutenberg, but Barnes and Noble is selling it as a Nook file, and you can find it in The Adventure Megapack, an inexpensive collection of pulp fiction from Wildside Press.
A frustrating hodgepodge of the elementary and the arcane
First of all, let me make it clear that I agree with Richard Dawkins on most matters religious and political, so I don’t have any axe to grind with him on that score. I admire his championing of science over superstition, and I respect his academic credentials. I just didn’t like this book very much.
In The Ancestor’s Tale, published in 2004, Dawkins imagines a pilgrimage back through time, following the evolutionary branches of the family tree of life. At certain stops along the way, humanity meets up with its cousins as their branches merge with ours. At each of these rendezvous points, Dawkins provides an essay discussing an issue related to evolution, taxonomy, or the scientific method. The chapters don’t necessarily have much to do with the particular species in question. In “The Grasshopper’s Tale,” for example, he talks about racism. “The Redwood’s Tale” discusses various scientific methods of artifact dating. This hodgepodge approach results in a lot of jumping around, which requires constant and tedious references to other chapters. There’s a Canterbury Tales metaphor running throughout the book that’s clever but ultimately serves no purpose. The backwards-through-time approach may be original but it’s not particularly effective in elucidating human origins. Much of the book isn’t really about our ancestors so much as it is about or cousins—that is, the taxonomic diversity that exists today. A linear, chronological approach may not be creative enough to win book awards, but it would have been a more useful and educational way to present this information.
What surprised me most about The Ancestor’s Tale was how little I learned from it. I’m not an evolutionary biologist—just a guy that reads National Geographic and watches Nova on PBS—yet I didn’t find a whole lot of new information here that I hadn’t seen before. Granted, I’m reviewing this book ten years after its publication, but I still find much to learn from century-old books by Darwin or Haeckel. A few passages come to mind as enlightening, like the discussion of the electrical sensory apparatus of the platypus, or the explanation of how the precursor to our spinal cord evolved from a ventral to a dorsal orientation, but such “eureka” moments are few and far between. Despite the fact that many of the topics covered are familiar, that doesn’t stop Dawkins from explaining them in the most complicated manner possible. Concepts like “most recent common ancestor” are not difficult to understand, but he goes on and on, page after page, beating that dead horse until its barely recognizable. At one point he even goes so far as to explain the structure of the atom. Those who don’t know that an electron revolves around a nucleus made of protons and neutrons are probably reading the wrong book, and it’s unlikely they’re going to get an understanding of the subject from Dawkins’ confusing explanation. Perhaps he intends to reach the broadest audience possible by idiot-proofing the text for readers who are novices to science, but the result is a book that’s too elementary for the science-savvy and too arcane for the uninitiated.
I have the utmost respect for Dawkins as a scientist. As a writer, however, he somehow managed to take a subject that fascinates me and bore the heck out of me with it. I agree with him that the natural world, and the process of evolution in particular, inspires an amazement and reverence greater than any religion could arouse, but unfortunately this book mostly inspired weariness.
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Gets you in the end
The first two chapters of Silas Marner are excellent. We are introduced to the title character, a mild-mannered, hardworking weaver who occasionally suffers from spells of catalepsy. Silas is active in his church and has plans to marry his sweetheart, but his simple, pleasant life is taken away from him when his best friend frames him for the theft of some church funds. Silas is forced to leave his hometown in disgrace. He settles in the village of Raveloe, where he takes up a reclusive existence that inspires suspicion in his neighbors. With no friends, no love, and no church, Silas concentrates solely on his occupation, and begins to fixate on the compensation he receives for operating his loom. He becomes a miser, adoringly hoarding every bit of gold that comes into his hands.
From there the book takes a sharp downturn, as from that point on Silas becomes a supporting character in his own book. Author George Eliot never delves very deeply into Silas’s miserliness. His avarice is not as finely drawn as Charles Dickens’ Ebeneezer Scrooge or Honoré de Balzac’s Gobseck. Rather than thoroughly investigate the psychological causes and effects of Silas’s affliction, Eliot treats the fact that he’s a miser as almost an afterthought, a plot element to be dispensed with in favor of other storylines. We are introduced to the local Squire’s two sons, Godfrey and Dunstan. The former is an inveterate gambler and the latter has a weakness for the ladies. While each of these sinners has some atoning to do, their personal dramas aren’t nearly as interesting as the weaver’s, and the reader finds himself eagerly anticipating the return of Silas. There are plenty of other distractions as well. Entire chapters are devoted to the irrelevant chatter and ignorant superstitions of the townspeople. Such banter may provide atmosphere, but does little to advance the story. Thankfully the book improves in its second half.
For much of its length, Silas Marner, originally published in 1861, is simply a bore. However, it is largely redeemed by its skillful and satisfying ending. At about the three-quarters mark, there’s a major surprise. From that point on, everything comes full circle and each character learns his or her life lesson. You’d have to be carved out of ice not to be moved by the conclusion. Silas’s story is truly heartwarming, and not in a cloying or syrupy way. This novel has some valuable lessons to teach about love and redemption. Too bad it takes such a roundabout way to get there.
Although Silas Marner ends up being a pretty good book, I’m not sure it merits 150 years worth of admiration. If it didn’t have author George Eliot’s name attached to it, allowing it to ride on the coattails of Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss, this novel might just have faded into obscurity like so many other romantic morality tales. Fans of Victorian literature will surely enjoy it, but the general reader of classic books can take it or leave it.
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As vapid and mediocre as its title
Adventure’s Heart, a novella by Albert Dorrington, was originally published in the May 1, 1922 issue of Top-Notch magazine. Darrel Mace, a former boxer, is shipwrecked on a deserted atoll in the South Pacific. There he is discovered by a native who invites Mace back to his home island. When they arrive, Mace is shocked to find that the community of indigenous islanders is ruled by a white woman. The welcome he receives from his new acquaintances is far from warm and, not surprisingly, he must employ his finely-honed fighting skills in order to survive.
This story bears a striking resemblance to many of Jack London’s tales of the South Seas, including the occasional thinly veiled white pride message. Mace is depicted as the physical and intellectual superior of all the natives, and Dorrington seems to consider it perfectly natural that a tribe of Pacific Islanders would willingly submit to the rule of a Caucasian queen. In the early ‘20s, of course, the queen had to be white in order to allow for some romance with the hero, as interracial love would have been taboo. The political incorrectness of it all is not particularly offensive, just cheesily antiquated. The most offensive thing about the story is that it’s rather boring. To its credit it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Through every perilous situation, Mace maintains his sense of humor and spouts a steady stream of light-hearted slang.
Habitual readers of pulp fiction know what to expect from these white-man-in-the-jungle stories, and Adventure’s Heart delivers exactly what’s expected, but nothing more. It serves its purpose while you’re reading it, but there’s nothing original or memorable about it. This vanilla tale is every bit as generic as the title it bears. If you’re looking for adventure in the South Pacific, you’d be better off reading London’s stories in the collections A Son of the Sun and South Sea Tales.
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High seas adventure done right
Jack Grey is the second mate on the steel sailing ship Carlyle, bound from San Francisco to Baltimore. With a sick captain and a cowardly first mate, Grey is the strongest and most capable man on board. Two passengers are along for the voyage: Miss Eversley, a beautiful, stuck-up young woman who looks down her nose at Grey as typical sailor riffraff, and Mr. Pathan, a creepy and suspicious character who relentlessly hits on the young woman. When the latter passenger incites the motley crew to mutiny, Grey takes it upon himself to save the lady from his barbarous shipmates.
Jack Grey, Second Mate, a novella by British author William Hope Hodgson, was originally published in the July 1917 issue of the pulp magazine Adventure. At first it seems like a blatant rip-off of Jack London’s 1914 novel The Mutiny of the Elsinore. It features the same type of ship, manned by a similar crew of lowlife scum, with the same points of departure and arrival. Grey bears a striking resemblance to Mr. Pike, the ruthlessly violent first mate of London’s novel. Even the passengers’ names are similar—Pathan vs. Pathurst. But whereas London’s novel is long, boring, and racist, Hodgson’s story is lively, exciting, and fun.
The fight scenes are very well-depicted, with a level of brutality that is quite surprising for its day. Grey has more in common with the laconic antiheroes of today’s movies than he does with the chivalrous gentlemen so common in the pulp fiction of the early 20th century. Like all damsel-in-distress stories, this one can be formulaic at times, but some memorable scenes of gritty realism elevate this one above run-of-the-mill nautical adventures. Though Hodgson never uses the word “rape,” he makes it quite clear that’s the fate that awaits Miss Eversley should Grey ever succumb to the attacks of the mutineers. 21st-century readers will appreciate that Hodgson faces such matters bluntly and doesn’t sugarcoat the savagery of the situation for the sake of some antiquated code of propriety. Hodgson’s prose is as clear and energetic as a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle caper, but his outlook is as bleak and harsh as a Robert E. Howard gorefest.
Hodgson was a prolific fiction writer who was known for his seafaring tales but penned stories in a wide variety of genres including horror and science fiction. I had never heard of him before this, but after reading Jack Grey, Second Mate, I’m certainly going to seek out more of his work.
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Not of the same caliber as his novels
I’m not a habitual reader of science fiction, but I’ve always loved the work of Frank Herbert. In fact, one reason I stopped reading sci-fi is because I couldn’t find another writer who measured up to him. His Dune books are phenomenal, and I also enjoyed his WorShip series of novels, beginning with Destination: Void. Before he achieved fame as a novelist, Herbert, like many sci-fi authors, got his start penning short stories for the pulp magazines. Three of his stories from the late 1950s (only three as far as I can tell, unfortunately) are now in the public domain, and available for free download as ebooks at Amazon or Project Gutenberg.
“Old Rambling House” was originally published in the April 1958 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. A young married couple, expecting their first child, is eager to buy a house. They find another couple who is willing to trade a house for their small trailer. When they visit the house in question, however, and see how large, modern, and luxurious it is, they can’t help but wonder, what’s the catch? The story is obviously leading to a surprise ending, and when it comes it’s even weirder than expected, but a little confusing and hard to follow.
“Missing Link” was originally published in the February 1959 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Field agents Stetson and Orne of the Investigation & Adjustment department of the Galactic Federation, land on a foreign planet. Their mission is to find a crashed Federation ship and to assess the hostility of an alien species in order to determine whether it is worthy of contact or destruction. While plenty of other sci-fi authors create alien races, here Herbert demonstrates his remarkable talent for creating fully realized alien cultures, complete with their own history, mythology, and ethics. The slang-ridden bureaucratic banter between the agents takes some getting used to. Toward the end of the story, one of the agents uses some Sherlock Holmes-style deduction to solve a mystery, but his reasoning is so convoluted that it defies belief. Nevertheless, “Missing Link” is a pretty good story and the best one out of these three.
In “Operation Haystack,” originally published in the May 1959 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, agents Stetson and Orne return. Orne has been investigating a planet where an oligarchy of women rules a slave army of males. He is seriously injured when the mission literally blows up in his face. While he’s lying in critical condition on the capital planet of Marak, Stetson uncovers a plot to overthrow the government of the Marakian League. This is the weakest of the three stories, mainly because it doesn’t contain enough science fiction. It’s like a mediocre political thriller that just happens to take place on another planet. One might see the cabal of women as a precursor to the Bene Gesserit of his Dune books, but it’s a tenuous connection at best.
These three tales are fine specimens of pulp fiction, but they don’t have the psychological, philosophical, or spiritual depth of the novels Herbert is known for. They all have a feeling of big ideas crammed into a small package, as if the short story format is too small too contain Herbert’s sweeping vision. Compared to other late-’50s sci-fi, they seem years ahead of their time, but they read as if they’re decades behind Dune, which was published only about 6 years later. Fans of Herbert can’t go wrong by reading this early work, but don’t expect to be too impressed.
Stories in this collection:
Old Rambling House
Missing Link
Operation Haystack
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Realism doesn’t need to be this boring
Arkady Nikolaevich Kirsanov, a recent university graduate, returns to his parents’ farm in a remote Russian province, accompanied by a school friend named Bazarov. Arkady’s father, Nikolai Petrovich, is a widower. His brother Pavel Petrovich lives with him on his estate. Even though the “old men” in the story are only in their mid-forties, it soon becomes apparent that the two generations do not see eye to eye. Bazarov is a self-proclaimed nihilist who has taken Arkady under his wing. Bazarov scoffs at the older men’s romantic ideals and aristocratic pretensions, while they cannot fathom his total lack of moral purpose and conviction. Pavel Petrovich and Bazarov soon develop a strong dislike for one another. Nikolai Petrovich feels uncomfortable in the presence of his own son, for he is ashamed to tell Arkady that he has taken a lower-class woman as a live-in lover.
Ivan Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons, originally published in 1862, was one of the first Russian works to be widely read throughout Europe and America. The story takes place at a time when Russia was emerging from its feudal past, and the newly reformed system of land ownership was transforming serfs into tenant farmers. Each character is representative of a different social strata and ideology, though apparently reform hadn’t yet spread to the nation’s literature because none of the important characters are peasants. Much of the novel revolves around political and social issues that will be lost on today’s readers, unless you happen to be really well-versed in Russian history. What’s left for those readers who aren’t is a novel about personal relationships. For most of its length, the book is simply a series of conversations in which the characters get to know one another. Unfortunately, these dialogues are often dull and at times even annoying. As I read the book, the adjective that kept popping into my head was “well-described”. Turgenev is an observant student of human nature, extremely skilled at depicting realistic human interaction, but he is either unable or unwilling to make the reader care about these characters. Bazarov ends up being the protagonist, which is unfortunate, because he’s the least likeable person in the book. His juvenile cynicism gets old very fast. He can’t even allow himself to love for fear of cracking his nihilist facade and displaying any sentimentality that may be perceived as a sign of weakness. Arkady is a much more sympathetic character, but unfortunately Turgenev grants him a lot less ink than his unpleasant friend.
Like Bazarov, one can sense that Turgenev, when writing this book, was making a conscious effort to be modern and iconoclastic. He is determined to present a bluntly realistic world where the characters don’t behave according to romantic conventions. It’s almost as if the story is deliberately boring in order to make a point. Yet in the end he resorts to the sentimentality of love and death just to generate some interest and empathy for these characters. The last quarter of the book is much stronger than the rest, because things actually happen.
Fathers and Sons may be Turgenev’s best-known and most highly acclaimed work, but I found it so-so at best. Despite the author’s perspicacity, this novel leaves an empty feeling that would make Bazarov proud. If this is the best Turgenev’s got to offer, I think I’m done with him.
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