When I saw that one of the eligible pieces for this year’s Nebula Awards was a short story, originally in French, I had to check it out. And double when I found it was published in Solaris, and even won the Prix Solaris when it was first published in 2022. It found print in English this last year in Year’s Best Canadian Science Fiction.
Best Canadian science fiction? In French? Sacré ouais!
And I am so glad I did.
This story is so wonderfully, enchantingly weird.
Geneviève Blouin (Fr.) weaves a weird little story a bit like so: The shellwomen are a kind of molluscoid mermaid – normal women (as near as I can tell) from the waist up, built like snails from the waist down. They are proud of their expansive shells, where their men and children shelter, of their warm, fleshy folds, and the milk of their breasts. Their community has a kind of fragile traditional communality – the guides of the clans are obsessed with whether they’re group-oriented enough, baskets are filled by friends and neighbors if there isn’t quite enough, they even regulate their population by trading men, shellwomen, or the poor unfortunate “slugs” (grown women with legs) with neighboring tribes. But things are afoot, and the shellwomen may have a very different future before them than the one they’ve known, caring for the children, sunning on the beach, and sheltering their clans.
Despite the title, the focus isn’t really on the shellwomen themselves, but on one of their men (or harvestmen, as they are called), Manuto. Manuto is, I don’t have another word for it, hapless – he’s a terrible leader (or “guide”) of his clan (always picking the worst assignments, because he’s too honest to maneuver for the good ones) and hidebound in his ways. He loves his shellwoman, Hina, and his children – why, his eldest daughter’s thighs are already becoming stiff and enlarged, she’ll soon form a cocoon as her foot forms! So it’s with a great deal of shock that he hears the chief advocating the rights of “harvestwomen” over the shellwomen.
Honestly, my only complaint is that the extended focus on Manuto as the main character kind of gives the shellwomen, and their secret lives, the shrift. The ending feels abrupt, and although, yes, logically all the pieces were there, it still feels like it came out of left field. This is a minor quibble, though – Geneviève Blouin is no Neal Stephenson, and the ending is still, mostly, satisfying.
The theme that emerges, on rereading the story, is this is a story about power – the power between the shellwomen and the harvestmen, the powerlessness of the “harvestwomen” (whom Manuto thinks of as “slugs,” an older and harsher word), the power of chiefs over clan guides, even the power of politicking and horse-trading, of charisma. The chief exerts charismatic power over Manuto to compromise him, and when this doesn’t work, effortlessly replaces him as guide with his brother. It only occurred to me after that the brother’s desire for a second shellwoman (because of course a new man like him thinks of collecting ‘em all, unlike his old-fashioned brother) is not long for this world. The shellwomen appear to have power over the harvestmen – after all, the harvestmen work to collect greens for their herbivorous mates, and, as the chief puts it, “all they do is watch the children and laze around all day in the sun.” – but the other side of that coin is the power to deny them their food. And the shellwomen have their own power, a real power, to counter that threat the harvestmen can hold over them. Plans within plans within plans, and all sewn up in under 8,000 words.
It feels like a strange new story that still tastes of all those Silver Age Best Ofs and paperback anthologies that I grew up. I could see this story in Dangerous Visions or something edited by Lin Carter. It gives me some hope for my own more grounded, earthy, and earnest science fiction, the stuff like “Glâcehouse,” “No More Final Frontiers,” and “The Voluntolds of America.” And yet, I could not have written anything so wonderfully, enchantingly strange as all this. Like “Rabbit Test,” this was a story that could only be written, or translated, by women.
For the folks at home, pick up Year’s Best Canadian Science Fiction, Vol. 1. If Margaret Sankey’s translation of “The Secret Lives of Shellwomen” is any indication, it really is the year’s best. And for any voting SFWA members reading this – nominate “Secret Lives of a Shellwoman.”
In 1999, I wrote to the President of the United States and the Premier of the Soviet Union to urge them towards peace, friendship, and space travel. I did so because they had a Chain Letter for Peace printed on page 136 of this book.
On page 51, there’s pictures of Skylab and an advert for a book called See Inside A Space Station if you send $9.02, postpaid, to Warwick Press at 730 Fifth Ave. New York, NY 10019.
On page 106, they discuss “EXPLORING INNER SPACE” and the frontiers of the human mind. On the facing page is an “imaging exercise” or guided meditation.
On page 183, we learn about various cooperatives and sharing that may exist in the future: childcare sharing, worker-owned businesses, food co-ops, family businesses, job sharing.
On page 75, there’s a recipe for earthworm cookies that actually taste really good! And a comparison chart of various protein sources, with insects topping the list.
On page 36, living houses. Page 37, how to plant your own model “tree house.” Page 168, cooperative games. Page 170, computers as personal trainers. Page 140, bicycles breaking the speed limit. Page 206, gasohol. Page 156, the Space Shuttle. Page 129, a dead-on description of l33tsp34k.
PICTURED: Google Translate, beta version, 1982
Page 115 – the Education of a Lifelong Learner. Born, March 23, 1985. By now, she’s spent a year on a cooperative farm in China (sic), worked at a local TV station (sic) to produce a puppet show, learned advanced math, spelling and reading at home by computer, and completed her combined PhD-apprenticeship in architecture.
This book was written before I was born, but at age thirteen, I believed. From the settled, solid adobe house where we composted and sucked honeysuckle and brought government to the people through the wonder of television, this future wasn’t just probable – it was right around the corner.
This is a future that never was, never will be, turned out true, and should have been, all at once. It’s a hippie future, as evidenced by the green-spaced cities, the macrobiotic food, the absurd digressions into ESP, world citizenship, and wholism. It’s a dated future, by the focus on space travel, robots and computers without the glimmer of a doubt as to their ubiquity.
But it’s a sweet future.
In the page “All Kinds of Families,” we see divorcees, singles, and Heather Has Two Mommies. Some embrace a simple life and some move to space colonies. People play cooperative games, garden together, and do not study war any more. They ride their bikes through Bucky Fuller’s floating cities. There is not a trace of sarcasm, irony, or cynicism to be found anywhere in these pages. A lot of things are contradictory. And anything’s possible. Let’s find out what really happens!
And we, the readers, are encouraged to participate. Almost every page has a project, something to make or do, more books to read, whether it’s a recipe for worm cookies or a chain letter to Gorbachev, we’re supposed to use the book as a springboard. As a starting point.
God damn, did I ever.
From the vantage points of 2016, plenty of it is painful to read. Uri Geller was a fraud and the Space Shuttle’s long since been shunted off. There’s no Premier to write to, and the spectre of war is more diffuse and somehow darker. “Food for Everyone” talks about how one day, we might grow enough so no one is hungry.
But I cannot condemn this book, or any part of it. A lot of that is nostalgia, and happy memories of the book that opened my mind to the possibilities of the future. But a lot of it…well, anyone who believes that sweetly, and that sincerely, in a future for everybody can’t be all bad. I mostly just want to give this book a hug, and tell it that we’re still working on a lot of stuff – but there’s no reason we can’t have Gerard O’Neill’s space colonies and lifelong learning and family co-ops…and even world citizens.
It’s worth the read – if only to remember what the future looked like when we knew wonder.
(Special treat: for fans of “Fire Marengo,” the Sophie is pictured in blazing glory on page 149.)
I picked up Sarena Ulibarri’s Another Life with great interest. Not only did she edit the Glass & Gardens anthologies (including debuting “Glâcehouse” by yours truly), but the description seemed to be marked ATTN: Roscoe.
Finding out who you were in a previous life sounds like fun until you’re forced to grapple with the darkness of the past.
Galacia Aguirre is Mediator of Otra Vida, a quasi-utopian city on the shores of a human-made lake in Death Valley. She resolves conflicts within their sustainable money-free society, and keeps the outside world from meddling in their affairs. When a scientific method of uncovering past lives emerges, Galacia learns she’s the reincarnation of Thomas Ramsey, leader of the Planet B movement, who eschewed fixing climate change in favor of colonizing another planet.
Learning her reincarnation result shakes the foundations of Galacia’s identity and her position as Mediator, threatening to undermine the good she’s done in this lifetime.
Fearing a backlash, she keeps the results secret while dealing with her political rival for Mediator, and outsiders who blame Otra Vida for bombings that Galacia is sure they had nothing to do with. But under the unforgiving sun of Death Valley, secrets have a way of coming to light.
The back cover of Another Life
Greening deserts! Rebuilding human society, better after the worst! Past life regression! Experimental social forms, vertical gardens, and rediverted waters! It’s pretty clear that Sarena and I both grew up reading the Kids’ Whole Future Catalog. And the sparse worldbuilding she does in this lean little novella is enough to clearly draw this solarpunk “ambiguous utopia” in stark lines.
Unlike LeGuin’s Anarres, though, the community is still small enough and Ulibarri focused enough to try and solve (some of) the structural issues in utopia. Over the course of the story, we touch on the emergence of class in the Founders and Inheritors, hero worship, bias (in the form of genetic fallacies like Galacia’s past life, and more broadly the community’s reliance on charlatanism), and even replicating old world systems while rejecting its values (something I notice in every counterculture and subculture).
And Galacia struggles with all of them on the side. “Cozy” became a dirty word, and solarpunk is supposed to be the coziest thing in science fiction, but I can’t think of a better word for the main conflict of Another Life. The bomb threats, massing polic- pardon, Protectors, and dramatic direct actions happen secondarily to the past-life regressions and election to a position with as little power as possible. At first, I struggled with the low stakes, but as I progressed, I realized it was on purpose, and that, bombs and police raids aside, these were the stakes of an ambiguous utopia. Legends and Lattes did nothing for me, but if that’s your speed, you’ll get into Another Life faster than I did.
But, whatever quibbles I have with the stakes or the plot, I do love the world. I’d love to sit down with Galacia and her old friends around the balcony feasts that bookend the story, toss some fishes Seattle-style in the tower, or just walk around the shore of the lake that was once Death Valley, watching the water come in because a few people said to themselves that the world could be better. The desert could be green.
Let me strive every moment of my life to make myself better and better, to the best of my ability, that all may profit by it. Let me think of the right and lend my assistance to all who need it. Let me take what comes with a smile, without loss of courage. Let me be considerate of my country, of my fellow citizens and of my associates in everything I say or do. Let me do right to all, and harm no one.
The Doc Savage Oath
So what does it all mean?
For the historians of pop culture (both professional fan and the kind that gets paid), there’s a mild interest in Doc Savage for all the bastards he’s ever spawned. Every cape
of screen and page is linearly descended from Doc, the “proto-superhero,” via Superman. Every globe-trotting adventurer, like James Bond, Indiana Jones, and especially Johnny Quest, owes his far-flung trips and exotic locales to Doc’s pre-jetsetting prop-wing adventures. Scooby Doo learned to unmask villains at his feet, the Venture Brothers comment on him in their grandfather’s image, even Yankee WWII movies (and all of their spawn) developed out of the squaddie camaderie of the Fabulous Five – right down to the sickly-looking radio man and the rough-and-smooth banter. Paul Atreides is Doc Savage’s son, by way of the Lady Jessica.
But, in this day and age, even Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino are vaguely aware of Doc, but don’t really care.
Pulp aficionados pay respect to the Man of Bronze, though not so much these days as they do The Shadow. The Eighty-Sixth Floor collected curiosities, and a few dozen old men collect Bama-covered reprints. But Doc’s poor showing in the post-pulp world means that the temporary reflag in interest in the 1960s has faded ever since – the more because of the terrible movie adaptation.
no, I’m not posting a picture here. We do not talk about the Doc Savage movie in this house.
Even readers grew tired of him. Doc is very much a product of the Thirties and early Forties. Later adventures such as The Terrible Stork are strange, eerie, pantomime Doc Savage with mechanical characters clanking through uncharacteristic and nonsensical actions. In Stork, Doc does parlor tricks for Renny, yells at him, and suddenly goes into his laboratory to demand “why did I do that?” He struggled during the War, and had no place in the new world born of nuclear ashes and economic superpowers.
But it’s his very Thirties-ness that makes him what he is.
If Superman is a timeless “truth, justice, and the American way,” then Doc veers closer to Captain America – a paragon, a very specific paragon, for a certain era to look up to.
Like Steve Rogers, Doc’s prison of zeitgeist, how closely he’s bound to the era he was created, is what makes him timeless. No one’s successfully taken Doc, his wonderful toys, or the Fabulous Five out of the ice yet – though some have tried. Taking Steve Rogers out of the ice into …well, whatever present day the writers feel like pulling him out in, to comment on the vast difference between their present day and the virtues of “just a kid from Brooklyn”… in fiction is easy. Confronting Doc, hardwired to the Thirties with all its bright mad possibility and looming terrors and misery and heroism, as a modern reader is hard.
That is, after all, what the world looks like now, and it can be hard to look it in the eye like that.
And what of the Thirties? This, to start with: Doc is a scientific marvel, made not from favorable genetics but from training and upbringing, touching the very limits of human physical and mental ability. You can self-help yourself in Doc’s footsteps! Doc is equipped with money and power, and uses it to cross the world “righting wrongs and punishing the wicked” because he and his friends are so addicted to adrenaline they can’t imagine a life without flying bullets. Later generations can snicker at the PTSD victims and laugh at the corny oaths and simplistic villains – Dent laid them out as he, personally, saw them.
Dent’s incredibly personal touch is an aspect of his timelessness, too. Here are masked or disguised villains, motivated by greed or pride, and here is a Man of Bronze and his closest friends to stop them. Here are the terrors of his age – economic depression, rising fascism, wars and rumors of wars, rapacious landlords and greedy bankers – and here is a face under a hood, ready for Doc to punch in and hoist by his own petard. Here are the exercises you, too, can do at home to become “better and better, to the best of my ability, that all my profit by it.” Here’s the oath that sounds a little too earnest to be a cynical marketing gimmick. Here’s increasingly-elaborate Wonderful Toys, handheld superfirers that shoot bullets that don’t kill and have tracer rounds, cars with miniaturized televisions in them, soundproofed airplanes. Wouldn’t those be nice? Here’s a delicate brain operation that makes criminals Better. And here’s Lester Dent, holding his heart on his sleeve, making exactly the paragon of virtue he wanted to see in the world…for good and for ill.
It’s a peculiar thing, but the more you write your own foibles, your own obsessions, your own quirks — from being raised in a hundred-year-old adobe by two loving hippie parents who shout too much, and from reading books that are always twenty years out of date because you got them at the library book sale and from chasing homeschool dreams of da Vinci and Doc Savage and orangutans and Asian philosophy and printing ‘zines and memorizing The Simpsons and Mystery Science Theater — the more timeless and “relatable” (oh that word!) your work becomes. My best stories are the ones where I wear my heart on my sleeve.
And the only author I’ve ever read who puts quite as many fingerprints as Lester Dent on every word of prose was Robert Heinlein.
And finally, Doc’s earnestness shines from everything. As a Millennial, I lived through the hipster era. I asked some friends of mine if they thought I was a hipster, as I was into homebrewing beer, foreign folk songs, swing dance, and retro fashion. “No,” was the immediate answer, “you enjoy everything too earnestly to be a hipster.” Which is why they hung out with me. In an age defined by cynicism, “fake news,” scoffing, affect, and sneers, the earnestness of Dent and of Doc stands out by way of contrast. Stands out? Bestrides like a colossus, more like. There is much every modern reader needs to take Doc to task for, to criticize and doubt him for – the Crime College, the blackface, the casual stereotyping, telling Pat to stay in the kitchen, the whole raft of Dent’s vintage Thirties values as expressed through his heroic paragon who has suddenly become a plaster saint.
And after all the criticisms are rightly levelled and Doc’s superlative goodness is cut down to a more appropriate fit…there is still that earnestness that Doc is a paragon, is what we all could be and could strive for, is ultimately on the side of justice. And it really does stand out by way of contrast from every word written, uttered, moaned, tweeted, or screamed that one imbibes from 2023.
This might be the twilight of Doc Savage. I might be the last one alive to call myself a fan of the Man of Bronze, who has ever tried to copy Doc’s Method of Self-Improvement at home, who can recite the history of how Ham got his name, and Monk’s role in it. Even if the remake gets made (with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson or whoever follows him), I doubt it will raise much interest in the books. They’re too much of their time, too idiosyncratic, too influential, and, not in the least, super objectionable to any decent human being living after the Civil Rights movement. There’s a lot of artistic, ethical, and historical distance to overcome.
But it is worth overcoming. For all his myriad bastards, no one is aggressively hopeful, deeply personal, and, in Dwayne Johnson’s words, “FUCKING WEIRDO” as Doc Savage. No globe-trotting spy or kindly alien or superscientist comes with an earnest promise of self-improvement or a sincere belief you can replicate his heroism as home. No other paragon, with the possible exception of Captain America, so completely embodies his zeitgeist or the stamp of his creator, and in embracing them so completely, transcends them. Superman stopped being a New Deal superhero before Doc did.
We have rising fascisms. We have wars and rumors of wars. We have economic depressions, bright mad possibility, and wild-eyed philosophies struggling to break free, no matter who it hurts when they escape. The Thirties came back ninety years later.
We need Doc Savage. His time comes around again, but we need a Doc Savage to fit our times. We need him to be a Doc Savage who’s striven to be better and better these last ninety years, and rights the wrongs he did then and all the wrongs we know are wrong in 2023.
We need Lester Dent to put a face behind the wicked mask, and send Doc, Monk, Renny, Ham, Long Tom, Johnny, and Pat down there to bust trouble, gum up the works, feed the hungry, smash the munitions, right wrongs, and punish evildoers. Just to show it can be done.
We need to remember it can be done – even if only on pulp paper for 10c a copy.
(One of the few times Bama decided the original was perfect as it stands and just did his own version)
DATELINE – NEW YORK CITY/…PROSPER CITY, NEW JERSEY? – In an insalubrious roadside diner, Alice Cash, her brother Jim, and the woman they call Aunt Nora huddle over their sandwiches, watching the thick, oily raindrops fall.
Alice CashAunt Nora Boston
(No, you can’t convince me I’m wrong)
A few terse words pass between the three, words of terror and haunting “back home.” Suddenly, a bell tolls on the radio, a bell that strikes the trio utterly still with fear. And yet, they are far from Prosper City, the bell could not be tolling for one of them…could it? Nevertheless, they pile into their jalopy, which Jim assures the ladies is full of gas. As they take off for New York City, a sinister berobbed figure, all black except for the green bell emblazoned on his chest, emerges with a recently used hose and a newly-filled ten gallon tank of gas…
The jalopy breaks down in the middle of nowhere, and as Jim sets out, the women arm themselves with a pair of blue-steel revolvers. And well they should, more hooded figures of the Green Bell emerge from the woods, murdering Jim on the electrified third rail of a nearby track.
In New York, a serpentine man name of Slick Cooly meets a rotund, multi-chinned industrialist with the improbable name of Judborn Tugg. They exchange the standard Doc Savage exposition, as well as some more: they’re in league with the hooded figures who killed Jim Cash and threaten Alice and Aunt Nora, they work for a mysterious figure called the Green Bell, and they are plotting to overthrow him to secure his organization for themselves. And to do this, they are approaching Doc Savage first. No sooner said than done, Tugg solicits Doc on the eighty-sixth floor as Slick guards the lobby should the girls appear. His attempt to frame them are foiled by Monk (always out to help a lady in need), and he escorts them upstairs as Tugg departs, disappointed in Doc’s uprightness. Monk takes Slick’s money roll and donates it to the Unemployed Fund. The other four trickle in as Aunt Nora explains the situation:
A year ago, Prosper City was a thriving cotton mill town in New Jersey, but after Judborn Tugg switched his biggest mill in town to poverty wages, everyone else followed, under the sinister influence of a man calling himself the Green Bell. Outside agitators, led by Slick Cooly, pushed the workers to strike, with robed figures assaulting and killing workers that tried to scab, or, worse, driving them to gibbering madness! Yet the two are thick as thieves, and Chief Clements is none the wiser. Aunt Nora’s Benevolent Society has tried to help as she can but she’s exhausted her savings, so she, the Cash siblings, and a playwright living in her boarding house, Ole Slater, are out of options. Someone needs to take out the Green Bell and restore harmony between the bosses and the workers. But no sooner does Aunt Nora finish her grim tale when two men enter the office: Ole Slater, who’d followed out of his puppy-dog love of Alice Cash, and Ham, who brings dire news – Doc Savage stands accused of the murder of Jim Cash!
Leaving Ham behind to do actual lawyer stuff for once, Doc and the rest make a quick exit to Prosper City. Doc sneaks past Chief Clements to Aunt Nora’s boarding house, where he hands Aunt Nora a fistful of dollars to provide food for the hungry and store credit to the most generous grocers and tells her to organize an event in the abandoned circus tent just outside of town. One falls to his knees and weeps. The “skinflint merchants” get nothing. He sends Renny to make a big fat deposit in the local bank, saving it from insolvency. Despite Slick’s agitators and Chief Clements’ detectives (both real and just-sworn-in-from-the-bad-part-of-town), the event goes on and everyone in Prosper City shows up for the free food.
Well, almost everyone. The Green Bell summons his men, reveals he knows Doc is at Aunt Nora’s house, verbally castigates Tugg, and dispatches Slick Cooly to drive Doc insane using the strange device by the old barn. Slick tries to perforate the Green Bell after the meeting, but hits only air. A bundle of sticks over a tile drain! But where would it lead? Slick isn’t keen to find out. He plants the device in Doc’s room.
Meanwhile, under the circus tent…
Doc, speaking over the PA, promises he is not “insulting” those who’ve taken clothes, loans, and food with charity – he’ll be expecting it to get repaid. He promises they’ll be drawing pay and able to repay inside of two weeks, and calls up all the industrialists and bosses. However, instead of guillotining them (as we might expect in 2023), Doc offers to buy them out, lock stock and barrel, at fair market value and sell them back at the same prices in a year. His only provision is that the new wages and work-hours must be maintained when they’re bought back. The bank he deposited at is happy to extend all the loans necessary as Doc’s deposit more than covers the minimums. Needless to say, the bosses bite.
Now turning to the workers, he asks for all the ex-servicemen to come onto his payroll as guards, a fighting force against the Green Bell’s berobed minions.
“The family of any man who dies in the line of duty will receive a trust-fund income of two hundred dollars a month for the balance of life.”
Doc savage, being reassuring
The tent event is a rousing success, and Doc’s thought are on the Green Bell’s retribution as he heads back to his room.
He finds the box, and explains to Long Tom that it uses specific sonic waves (which he can detect thanks to his two-hour daily exercise) that deactivate brain centers. Everyone piles in to the room to watch it tick, and Doc got both fingerprints and blacklight video. Blacklight – is there anything it can’t do? They uncover Slick Cooly (of course), and Doc lights out to find him…at Chief Clements’ office!
Ambushing Slick, Doc informs him
“You’re going to die,” He said, neglecting to mention the mortal date.
lester dent, being clever
Doc demands the Green Bell’s identity, but Slick truthfully tells him he doesn’t know. He tries to cut a deal with Doc, but Doc worms out of him that he and Tugg killed Jim Cash…which is all Chief Clements needs to hear. No sooner have Doc and the chief shook hands than a shot rings out! Slick Cooly lay crumpled on the cell floor, having started to gibber in madness, and a stricken deputy stands there with the gun! Sadly, their alliance lasts just long enough to drive to Judborn Tugg’s and for Tugg to pull a holdout heater on the chief. Doc jumps him, and Tugg is out of ammo – but not out of friends! Green Bell minions rush Doc with roscoes flashing, and Doc is forced to retreat as fresh murder accusations fill the night air. He retreats back to Aunt Nora’s to plan, only to find out his room has been bombed. Worse, the bomb had been planted from inside the house, from the garrot of the late, lamented Jim Cash.
Said cold body has just arrived by train, and Doc and Monk join the rest of the town thence. Hiding behind a fat guy, Doc gooses Renny into expositing while threatening the cops (no mean feat!). Doc lights some firecrackers as a distraction and examines the body, finding the hidden message: IN MY FACTORY LOCKER.
Doc makes a hasty escape and crosses the train yard to Collison McAlter’s Little Grand Cotton Mill (he’s one of the good bosses). “The rods lipped flame” as the Green Bell’s men open fire. Doc manages to sneak past as they shoot each other, finding the name plate JIM CASH. Empty! Collison sticks a snubnose in Doc’s back, mistaking him for a hooded Green Bell man. He says he came to the plant in the night and hid from the Green Bell mooks as they took up arms and positions. He speeds Doc back to Aunt Nora’s in his limousine, as bosses do.
From New York, Ham confirms the suspicions of the last few chapters as the rest (Monk, Renny, Ole Slater, Aunt Nora, Alice Cash, Long Tom, Jonny, and various hangers-on, who are reproducing at an alarming rate in this book) arrive. After getting fooled by a clever and frankly hilarious ruse involving an old barrel and fake fire, the Prosper City Police suffer a couple of murders as they search the house for Doc. They don’t find him – but they do find the gun that shot Chief Clements in Monk’s spare suit! Alice manages to slip a message to Doc before her arrest…and his.
They give him the usual strip in Aunt Nora’s basement and cart him over to the station, but are interrupted by the tolling of the green bell! Someone is to die or be driven mad. Doc takes the chance to escape as they cross the Prosper City bridge and heads back for Aunt Nora’s. He watches Tugg get himself kicked out of the house (courtesy the thick boots of Monk and Renny), and follows him to an abandoned barn where “the Green Bell’s pack” is assembling, dressed in their color-reversed Klan robes. Doc instantly discerns the underground pipe gag as he listens in. Tugg reveals a bottle of cyanide near Aunt Nora’s home and the Green Bell tells him to poison her well just as Doc opens a hole in the pipe outside. Collecting cigar butts and a match, he lights a noisesome bundle of tobacco and buries it in the pipe, trusting his well-trained nose to recognize the smell when, and where, it emerged from the pipe. His search is ended, however, by the meeting breaking up and Judborn Tugg himself headed home.
Tugg finds the Green Bell in his home, roscoe in hand, furious that Savage had tailed him and rescinding his orders regarding the cyanide. The mystery man fades into the shadows, leaving Tugg trembling in his huge, empty house.
Doc, back near the barn, pops some holes, sounds some pipes, and makes an unexpected discovery. The pipes that the Green Bell used to communicate with his men ends in an old coal shaft, going down “more than tenscore feet.” He makes his way back to Aunt Nora’s, and nearly springs the Green Bell’s Fallout death-trap, but recovers the bottle and replaces its contents with dirty water. Adjusting the tree-sitting machine gun, Doc heads for the house and summons Johnny with his eerie trilling, explaining himself using sign language through Johnny’s binoculars. Johnny passes a package, and Doc greets Judborn Tugg just as he walks in his front door.
For Doc is dressed in the peculiar dress of the Green Bell himself!
Doc orders Tugg to resume the poison plan, and swiftly escapes despite Tugg’s inept attempts to follow. Tugg’s paranoia starts to get to him, the more when he hits the tripwire on the machine gun and only Doc’s careful adjustments prevent him from getting perforated! This is too much for Judborn Tugg, and he makes for Aunt Nora’s house, offering to clear Doc’s name in exchange for a minute to appeal to the Man of Bronze. Monk calls Doc in, and a shot rings out!
It’s only a distraction, and Tugg is suddenly keen to vacate the premises. Tugg does not disclose the message the Green Bell whispered to him through a crack in the wall: “I will dispose of Doc Savage, but if I fail, I will need you as bait for the trap!”
Doc summons the boys for a meeting, and doles out each man his assigned task: Johnny to acquire geologic maps of all the myriad coal mines, Monk and Renny to protect Aunt Nora, Alice, and the house, and he himself works with Long Tom to triangulate the secret radio transmitter that jams all Prosper City signals to sound out the green bell tolling. They discuss who the Green Bell might be, and though Doc knows, he offers no confirmation without proof, and proof he has not. They also discuss public opinion and which way the police will tumble, for or against Doc. The Green Bell himself emerges to tamper with Long Tom’s car, and finds himself face to face with Doc on the other end of a flashlight. But he makes good an escape as his minions fall before Doc’s honed combat skills.
The police tear off hoods and arrest the minions, with Ole Slater declaring “just bums from around town!”, but they give no chase to Doc. Clearly, the police are tumbling Doc’s way. Long Tom gets a secret message from Doc in the trunk of his car, to play along with the Green Bell’s attempted assassination. He tosses his roadster over Prosper City bridge and into the river after emptying it of all his equipment.
Doc, meanwhile, cooks up a ruse to interrogate the prisoners stashed in Aunt Nora’s parlor, along with like half the town. Monk’s methods (mostly hairy fists) have produced nothing, so Doc looks deep into his eyes. The man can’t reveal who the Green Bell is (of course), but he coughs up Chief Clements’ real killer and the Green Bell’s murder of the hanging cop. Satisfied, Doc pays off the ambulance to run them up to the Crime College in upstate New York. Johnny returns, and Doc distracts by playing up the one shattered piece of the bombed madness-box, loudly announcing that the finger prints will damn the Green Bell! The villain kills the lights and throws the evidence in the fireplace…covering his fingers in “a certain chemical” that will turn his guilty fingers yellow…in like a week or so.
Ham arrives, with good news: “The murder charge against you in New York is all washed up!” He’s desperate for action, and gets none. In, er, a couple of ways. The factories throw open their doors and Renny dives joyously into organizing crews and ordering their miniature army to their garrisons and patrols. Doc spends his time in medicine, studying the madmen, and declares they can all be cured – in time. Alice Cash cottons that Doc is progressively “Prosperizing” his forces, retreating himself and bringing the Fabulous Five behind him out of day-to-day operations, and asks him to stay. He gives her the Spider-Man spiel about his romantic prospects, then does his daily two-hour regimen.
That night at nine is another meeting at Aunt Nora’s – a last meeting.
At eight forty, the Green Bell tolls!
Monk holds down one radio set, as Long Tom triangulates the other – to Aunt Nora’s house! The calls are coming from inside the house! But Doc doesn’t buy it, and lights out with the transmitter after a glance at Johnny’s maps. He finds an abandoned coal mine the black hoods file into, and quietly and quickly follows. In the underground cavern, with
Pillars – coal left standing to support the roof – were a forest before his eyes. In this forest, black-cowled men were clustered.
The Green Bell is present – in person! He orders his men to unmask, and all the good guys are not present, and all the bad guys are. Handy. He outs Tugg as a traitor and exposits: he planned to ruin every owner in town and buy him out for a song! Doc, of course, is unsurprised. The Green Bell further exposits that he is a millionaire from selling stocks since the Depression started. His plan will make him the unthinkable – a possessor of a billion dollars, a billion-aire, if you will. As he offers Tugg the single dollar for which he purchased every stick of Tugg’s property, he slithers a blade into the rotund industrialist’s heart! Expositing yet farther, the Bell explains that his powerful radio transmitter is in a hidden chamber directly under Aunt Nora’s house! Also the room is full of nitroglycerin. He’s got it connected to a seismograph and a smaller portion of nitroglycerin ready to cause just the earthquake needed – on the dot! It will destroy all evidence, and Aunt Nora in the bargain!
Doc quietly unsheathes his transmitter, and transmits the exposition to Monk’s rig up in Aunt Nora’s living room. But the men split early, and Doc is spotted! Some idiot fires a bullet, heedless of the nitroglycerin that the Green Bell literally just explained to them. Doc is thrown into the stone lining the tunnel as the Green Bell, the czar of fear, and every one of his men are consumed in the underground fireball. Emerging bruised and battered, Doc encounters Monk, who explains that everyone got out of the house in time thanks to Doc’s broadcast, and Alice Cash reveals, with the very last line, the true identity of the Green Bell.
AN EERIE TRILLING SOUND – This being a ’33, Doc does not have most of his toys or more exotic superpowers. As a result, he relies a lot more on the tradecraft and woodcraft, which is marginally more grounded. His command of dead drops, secret codes, tracking, tailing, and traps is as impressive here as his toe-torn shrimp-ties would be later in Fear Cay and his full The Shadow befogging of men’s minds would be in The Mental Wizard.
But it’s Doc’s benevolence, and one of the few cases of his employing his money and status as an actual power, that steals the show here. The one-man New Deal cleans up Prosper City the way Dent hoped FDR would clean up the nation. He puts not only the Fabulous Five, but Aunt Nora, Alice Cash, Colliston McAlter, the ex-servicemen, and the poor and destitute of Prosper City to use, each according to their particular talents and dispositions. Almost unique among Doc Savage novels, we see Doc here as an exemplary leader, putting everything in motion and retiring to his own wacky hijinx.
FISTS OF GRISTLE – Renny is the hidden power of today’s adventure. He acts as Doc’s first officer, getting blankets and boots distributed, work-crews and servicemen into place, depositing checks and running shows. Those fists come into play, but Renny really shines as Doc’s open palms.
SUPERAMALGAMATED! – Johnny contributes his unique eyewear to signaling Doc in the dark, and his expertise to acquiring and interpreting the geological maps of the area, identifying the coal mine near Aunt Nora’s house where the Green Bell operated.
“YOU SHYSTER CLOTHES-HORSE!” – Ham gets to be a lawyer today! And it realistically takes a long time to get the four crumbs to crumble and get Doc cleared of murder accusations in New York.
“YOU MISSING LINK!” – Monk is the heavy here, and Doc consciously uses him so. Not only does he guard, rough up, and act as Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair to the army of ex-servicemen deputized into Doc’s service, he unintentionally plays Bad Cop to Doc’s Good Cop. And makes an ass of himself trying to one-up Ole Slater for the affections of Alice Cash (politely oblivious in her pining after Doc’s Apollonian energy).
WIZARD OF THE JUICE – Long Tom is in fine form here. His triangulation of the signal is what leads directly to the climax, and the improvisation of tossing the car in the river is spectacular in a book chock-full of cunning tradecraft. He also Johnny’s bit to give us the amazing curse “Jersey curiosities!”
WHERE DOES HE GET THOSE WONDERFUL TOYS? – Aside from the superfirers and blacklight flashes, Doc has a paucity of wonderful toys here. As noted, he relies mainly on tradecraft and ordinary items (and a few next-Sunday-AD items like the miniaturized radios and the micro-TV in the car). You could plausibly believe a wealthy man of Doc’s status and accomplishments in 1933 could have access to almost all the toys Doc deploys here.
CRIME COLLEGE MATRICULATES – The Green Bell is the textbook example of the stock Doc villain – insinuated secretly in with Doc by chapter 2, controlling his minions from behind a hood, mask, or Wizard of Oz works, unmasked like a Scooby-Doo villain by a smug Doc on the second-to-last page. “And I woulda got away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling gentlemen adventurers!” It’s notable that Republic serials would lift this type of villain wholesale, even as Dent abandoned it as exhausted by the end of the thirties.
Other, savvier readers had the exact perp fingered by about the halfway point, but I myself was left guessing until his final reveal, and had great pleasure in guessing who among Prosper City’s residents might be the Green Bell himself – if indeed there was only one of him!
Aside from the Bell himself, all I can say is that of Slick and Tugg, the wrong one got plugged.
AGED LIKE FINE MILK – Oddly enough, I think it’s Doc’s treatment of the industrialist class of Prosper City. Doc rolls into town like a one-man New Deal, and aside from giving Tugg and the other Green Bell minions justice, he treats the likes of Collison McAlter like misled, frightened fellow adults. Chief Clements, too, is not only capable of human speech but as the authority of Prosper City is well-intentioned, just dim and misled by Tugg and the Green Bell. Any author willing to tackle this kind of story, this kind of setup, in 2023 would have portrayed all of the industrialists as on the Green Bell’s payroll (assuming it wasn’t a conspiracy by the bosses in the first place, and there was no Green Bell). Doc’s (and Dent’s) portrayal of the industrialists as victims of the Green Bell just as much as their workers, and just as eager to get back to work if only they had a little help, definitely dates the work.
And I have no doubt that most of Twitter will demand an apology from Dent and try to SWAT his house for his class copaganda.
BACK MATTER – Why not explore the back matter yourself? Courtesy of The Eighty-Sixth Floor, here’s an organized collection of all the back matter available here on Al Gore’s Internet!
THE VERDICT – This is my favorite Doc Savage book ever. Doc rolls into town like a one-man New Deal, sets up lines of credit for workman and capitalist alike, infuses his own cash into the proceedings and takes over the stunted capital of the town to put everything back in motion. As fun as the Scooby-Doo antics of the Green Bell and his color-negative KKK are to watch, the capitalist tent revival (because what else do you call it?) is the real heart of the book. Just like with The Munitions Master, Dent channeled his own fears and the fears of his country and his times, gave them a face behind the photos in the papers, and sent Doc and the Fabulous Five down there to fix ‘em but good. I feel this is where Doc shines brightest as benevolent force of nature, “lending [his] assistance to all who need it” and getting the town on its feet…by putting things in motion and walking away.
Crime College aside, this is the book where I most admire Doc. And I think there’s a lot to admire here. This is an odd one (no exotic locations, no Wonderful Toys, more digression than would ever appear again) but a good one. I hope you agree with me – even if Czar of Fear doesn’t turn out to be your favorite, too.
This is the Back Matter section of the previous “Doc Savage at 90” review, for April, 1933’s The Land of Terror. Although he wouldn’t introduce it until Quest of Qui in July, 1935, I’d like to talk about the Doc Savage Method.
The Doc Savage Method is Dent, with suicidal overconfidence, trying to define Doc’s mysterious two-hour daily exercise regimen, the source of his physical and sensory powers. But it was one of Dent’s fixations, and with either masterful cynicism or genuine idealism, he wrote up a series of “modified” exercises that readers could practice at home to hone their own bodies, intellects, and senses.
What sets the Doc Savage Method apart from modern (or even contemporary) workout regimens is the focus on the last two elements of those. Integral to the exercises aren’t just the dynamic tension of your biceps and triceps, but reciting the times tables and Kipling’s “Gunga Din” as you do so and cataloguing all the green items in the room with your eyes closed while you do it. Far beyond Kim’s Game and layered listening, Dent goes into comparative taste-testing and a variety of progressive subtle discernments. Far beyond Roman rooms and funny pictures, Dent demands raw memory power.
This exercise Doc Savage usually takes immediately on rising in the morning. Standing before an open window in shorts, feet wide apart and body relaxed, he breathes deeply and slowly eight or ten times.
Then, still relaxed, he reaches down to the right foot and, bending from the hips only grasps an imaginary hundred-pound weight. Slowly and without jerking, muscles tensed, the imaginary weight is lifted above his head. It is held there while Doc inhales and exhales deeply, having held his breath while lifting.
The weight is heavy, and requires tremendous exertion of every muscle of the body. Doc’s legs are tense and quivering, and his back muscles stand out as they aid the arms and stomach tendons. This is accomplished by opposing the pull of the muscles with mental resistance.
After reaching the top of the lift, Doc sets the imaginary weight down beside his left foot, straightens up and relaxes.
At the same time while taking the above exercises, Doc also trains his powers of observation by looking out the window and mentally cataloguing everything that comes within his range of vision. He then turns his back and repeats the physical exercise, lifting the imaginary weight up from the left foot and lowering it to the right, reviewing in his mind all the while that which the eye had photographed through the window.
This exercise is usually repeated five times by Doc, and at its conclusion he lists on paper all the objects he can remember seeing outside the window.
Only at the end of seven days does Doc check one list against the other…and sees much improvement after that period; for the mind is grasping more details each day.
When possible, Doc completes these exercises in a room with four windows, using a different one each week for the test, and for the fifth week goes back to the first window. Again list-checking shows him much improvement over the first week.
(Of course he’s in his shorts, one of Dent’s other fixations was unconscious homoeroticism)
The physical aspect of Exercise II is what we now call “mental imaging,” which enjoys an occasional revival in fitness science (and “science”) every few decades or so (in the 1960s/70s among the human potential movement, in goal-setting in the 2000s). I sometimes pretend at such things myself, though usually for writing purposes. The sensory aspect here is old as the hills – Robert-Houdin would take his son in front of shop windows to do exactly this in the 1880s and 90s. Combining them is the real innovation here – and it’s why I listen to audiobooks and podcasts when I work out, or count cars out the window when I’m standing in the company gym doing my karate kata.
Let’s try another.
Exercise VI
One of the first taste exercises ever used by Doc Savage was the attempted identification of individual solutions of coffee, tea, salt water, sugar water, diluted vinegar, and mustard water. He prepared six one-ounce bottles and, after sterilizing them, filled them three-quarters full with drinking water.
Into each bottle he poured a teaspoonful of each of the beforementioned Iiquids. Each bottle was labeled, naming the contents within. Then he closed his eyes and sipped from each bottle in turn, noting on paper what he thought the flavor to be.
After reaching the stage where he could differentiate correctly, he added water to the bottles until the flavor was barely perceptible…and then tried identifying them.
During this exercise, Doc recited aloud John McRae’s poem “In Flanders Fields.”
This is a fine example of one of Dent’s many ‘discernment’ exercises. I’m given to understand the like was fairly common among the nascent self-help culture in the 1930s, but the Doc Savage Method is the only place I’ve encountered them directly. This is also a great example of Dent (either with a fig leaf or without even bothering) adapting Doc’s no-doubt highly scientific exercises to items the average 11-year-old boy would find around the house in 1935. This is also how I memorized “In Flanders Fields,” practicing a variant on this back in China in the Learning to Think days.
Exercise CVII
Through his many adventures in the far places of the world, Doc Savage has come to a complete knowledge of all countries, their climates, whether mountainous or plain, whether hot or cold, the accessibility and the means of getting there.
A study of his youth helped to gain this information, for Doc played at times a game with himself. It might have been called “expedition going.”
Doc would sit in front of a globe of the world and spin it. While the globe was turning, Doc would close his eyes and then reach forward and stop the whirling with his finger. Where the finger rested, there would be the country which Doc would visit mentally.
For example, if the country were Tibet, Doc would trace the means of getting there and the transportation to be used. This would mean a perusal of steamship schedules across the Atlantic, railroad maps, and times of train departures in India…if entrance to Tibet were to be made that way. Passing through the Khyber Pass in northern India would give Doc historical background of that bloody gash through the hills.
Study of the climate was necessary, for Doc would have to prepare mentally the clothing he would take on the trip. The topography of Tibet would come in for study, for upon that would hinge the method of transportation…whether pack mule, on foot, or by modern motor car equipped to cover the rugged country.
Study of the nature of the people would tell if guns to any number would be needed for protection. If permission from the local authorities would be necessary before entrance to the country, Doc would be called upon to study the political situation and gain knowledge of what personages to approach.
Since he was going to Tibet, Doc had to look up in archeological books that which he might search for that would be of value to mankind in explaining past civilizations.
While on these mental expeditions, Doc would name the States or provinces of the country to which he was going, the capital of each, and its present ruler.
This is my favorite one. I have a globe on my desk right now. And looking up geographic and travel information is mind-bogglingly easier now when compared to the 1930s.
It beats “memorize the names and capitols of the countries of the world in alphabetical order” absolutely hollow.
In the course of researching for your mental expedition, each nation takes on a flavor and a color, and you discover a few salient facts to hang your hat on (putting my thumb on India many years back is how I discovered Vikram and the Vampire and the existence of the Blue City of Jodhpur and the noble knightly class of Rajputs). It becomes a place in your head.
My daughter will be practicing this for her geography lessons, when I homeschool her. Fantastic writing practice, too.
My finger landed in the Philippines. A splendid place to expedition in my mind.
This is a longer entry on the back matter than usual, but that’s because this is what first drew me to Doc Savage – this eerie, alien way to Learn to Think (and tone my body at the same time). A lot of it is nonsense. But there are some real jewels in the Doc Savage Method. For reference, I’ve included the complete Method in a document, here, as originally listed on The Eighty-Sixth Floor.
DATELINE – APRIL, 1933 – NEW YORK/VOLCANIC ISLAND OF THE SOUTH SEAS – In New York, renowned chemist Dr. Jerome Coffer gives the usual “who is Doc Savage?” speech to his incredulous co-workers, notes that he’s dining with his former pupil, the Man of Bronze himself, that evening, then steps out of his factory and explodes into a puff of thundercloud leaving only an arm behind. Two sinister men, Squint and an associate, flee the scene.
Doc, sitting in the idling car, is horrified.
He investigates the scene and puts his woodcraft to good use pursuing the two men. He chases down their accelerating car, despite deployed roscoes to dissuade his pursuit. Switching to his own roadster and a disguise of …a tweed cap, Doc follows them down to Riverside Drive. He closes on the five men, and in his anger and rage at losing a second father (after losing his own father so recently in his first adventure, The Man of Bronze) he takes the killer and swings him around like a rag-doll to drive the others into their inexplicable 18th century pirate ship in New York Harbor.
Did I mention the pirate ship? It comes up again. They have a pirate ship.
The old ship had a truculent, sinister appearance. Atop the deck house, a large sign stood. It read:
THE JOLLY ROGER Former Pirate Ship. (Admission Fifty Cents)
Doc straight-up murders a guy, then investigates THE JOLLY ROGER. It’s filled with torture equipment and death traps. Obviously. Doc maims another fellow, and interrogates him as he lay dying of dope-fiend withdrawal. The man confesses that the killing smoke is called the Smoke of Eternity, and that low-level mooks such as himself have no idea what it is. He rasps out the start of a name, “K,” but dies dramatically. Doc dispatches the remaining mooks, leaving only Squint. Doc lets him escape and follows him up Riverside Drive to his mysterious master.
Squint arrives at number ten of a “narrow street which had a long row of houses exactly alike,” and Doc tails him over the roofs. He meets with another four-pack of mook, and calls “Kar,” the mastermind. He’s authorized to spill all the beans, offering each mook a million dollars, using the Smoke of Eternity to dissolve bank vaults, trains, and anyone in their way. They’ve got two jobs to start: a train job, and to kill Doc Savage! Doc surprises them, and does the eerie trilling over the phone, scaring Kar.
Having scared off the mooks and Squint, Doc heads to Coffer’s home. He finds the typewriter ribbon with Coffer’s message to the police, mentioning the names Oliver Wording Bittman and Gabe Yuder…and a mysterious spot known only as Thunder Island. He next pays a visit to this Oliver Wording Bittman, the renowned taxidermist, a skeletal soul with a penknife. Lester Dent would like to remind you of the penknife on his watch chain. Bittman reveals he knew Doc’s sainted father, and that the Savages owe him gratitude and help. Which comes in helpful, as Oliver Wording Bittman, renowned taxidermist, realizes that whoever used the Smoke of Eternity on Jerome will come after him next, for the terrible secret of Thunder Island. Doc decides it’s time to call in the cavalry.
“Monk,” Doc suggested, “could you take on a little trouble right now?”
“I’m on my way!” chuckled Monk. “Where do I find this trouble?”
“Call Renny, Long Tom, Johnny and Ham,” Doc directed. “All of you show up at my place right away. I think I’m mixed up in something that will make us all hump.”
“I’ll get hold of them,” Monk promised.
After ducking a Smoke of Eternity bomb that takes out the George Washington Bridge, Doc meets up with the boys on the eighty-sixth floor. Well, almost all the boys…according to “the prettiest secretary in New York,” Monk has been kidnapped! The bad guys (including Squint) take him to THE JOLLY ROGER, which drops a regular smoke bomb to disguise the seaplane and submarine, the latter of which carries Monk off for Kar to interrogate. The interrogation goes nowhere, thanks to Monk’s nerves of steel, so they jam him out a torpedo hatch in a box and slowly let the sea in.
Long Tom traces the phone wire at the tenth-house address, which Dent describes in loving detail. Johnny, Doc dispatches to locate Thunder Island and tell him something of the rock formations there. They discuss the possible atomic implications of the Smoke of Eternity.
“I am not sure what the Smoke of Eternity is,” Doc explained. “But I have an idea what it could be. When the substance dissolves anything, there is a weird electrical display. This leads me to believe it operates through the disintegration of atoms. In other words, the dissolving is simply a disruption of the atomic structure.”
“I thought it was generally believed there would be a great explosion once the atom was shattered!” Johnny murmured.
“That was largely disproved by recent accomplishments of scientists who have succeeded in cracking the atom,” Doc corrected. “I have experimented extensively along that line myself. There is no explosion., for the very simple reason that it takes as much energy to shatter the atom as is released.”
…awkward.
Renny and Ham are dispatched to Monk’s penthouse place, as Doc heads down to the Hudson to investigate THE JOLLY ROGER. After investigating the ancient ship, he locates the box that Monk was shoved into and rescues the renowned chemist and ape impersonator. They take on the submarine, docked cunningly beneath THE JOLLY ROGER, and successfully round up all the mooks on the poop deck. Attempts to interrogate are interrupted by the usual bullets to silence prisoners forever. Kar escapes but not for lack of trying on Doc and Monk’s part.
Upon return to the eighty-sixth floor, Doc and Monk hear from Long Tom that the phone calls all came from the submarine, and find Oliver Wording Bittman (the renowned taxidermist) waiting! He wants to join them…for safety’s sake. Doc graciously accepts, and sketches the third man of the expedition, Gabe Yuder, from Bittman’s memory. The put out the APB, and no sooner do Ham and Renny eulogize Monk as the chemist delightedly listens in. Then they return in force to THE JOLLY ROGER.
This attack goes rather better than the first two. There is too much over-the-top two-fisted pulp action to summarize here, but suffice to say a bank gets robbed, Doc is cunning, and THE JOLLY ROGER goes up in the Smoke of Eternity, along with half the Hudson and a sizeable chunk of the dock.
A week later, Doc has sent the mooks to his Crime College and given the bank’s money to the finest restaurant in town to hand out free food to the bums, and we are treated to another installment of Doc’s daily exercise regimen, reading Braille while detecting high-frequency sounds. They get word from San Francisco that four of Squint’s crew were seen boarding a tramp liner there, bound for that most sinister and spine-chilling of countries: New Zealand! Doc, the Fabulous Five, and Oliver Wording Bittman (the renowned taxidermist) board one of Doc’s planes to follow at fabulous speeds of 300 miles per hour. They meet the liner, only to find out the four men had met a yacht in international waters and escaped! As they cannot take to the air (the liner not being equipped with the “modern catapults with which some ocean greyhounds are now equipped”), they sail to Auckland, where Kar has murdered all of the native guides who once took Jerome, Bittman, and the mysterious Gabe Yuder to Thunder Island.
There is thus only one choice: they themselves must head to Thunder Island, with Bittman as their guide. They descend into the smoke and mist of the caldera, only to be menaced by a dark shadow in the mists – a prehistoric pterodactyl! “A flying reptile of the Pterosauri order,” according to Johnny. “A gigantic, eerie thing reminiscent of a mangy crocodile clad in a great gray cape,” according to Dent.
Doc’s plane goes down this time due to pterodactyl bite, and the men resort to parachutes. The pterodactyls (plural) continue to bedevil the men, and they in turn continue to fire recklessly on endangered species in their native environment. They survive the attacks, and also the bubbling red-hot mud lake of convection-free magma. They drift to one of the cooler outer edges of the caldera as Dent explains how volcanoes work. But they are scattered, and Doc lands in “a tangle of creepers and low trees which looked like ordinary evergreens.” Out of the mist emerges “as fearful and loathsome a sight as human eyes ever beheld!”
I’M A MUTHAFUCKIN’ T-REX!
Doc says to look lively. They look lively. In the course of the T-Rex chasing Monk, they find everyone (except for Renny), and discern that the T-Rex hunts in a very peculiar way – no, not by movement, by voice! They glide silently away while Doc decoys the Tyrannosaurus away. As night falls, they scramble up into some tree ferns for safety. The night is filled with “titanic struggles of reptilian monsters” and there is not much sleep to be had. Come morning, they find Renny’s bloodied hat and parachute. In their grief, they are ambushed by a cat-dog-weasel-bear, a creodont.
MEANWHILE, WITH RENNY…
Renny had fallen into the first “terrible monster fight” the evening before, blinding a T-Rex with his parachute and springing onto her enemy – a terrifying triceratops! And spring he does – riding the trike by the horns, each “gallon of knuckles” hand wrapped around her two upper horns and cinched around her lower horn! When she finally goes down, Renny grabs hold of a vine, goes exploring, and explains how evolution works for the reader, before encountering an ordinary giant dire serpent, longer than a freight car – which on closer inspection is the colossal bulk of a brontosaurus! He climbs a tree, only to be assaulted by a miniature pterodactyl. He fires, but the pterodactyl closes its jaws around his parachute. Renny succeeds in choking the pterodactyl with his own two hands and leaves it for a charging, murderous stegosaur, running as it gives chase to him instead. He stumbles and falls into a trench, the roaring stego rushing past him, clawing his way out of the suffocating grave! But “sharp teeth sink into his body!”
MEANWHILE, WITH DOC…
Doc again pulls the sacrifice play, decoying the creodont while the others escape. This time, he takes Monk’s tobacco (Monk rolls his own. Why does that make perfect sense?) and springs on the creodont, stuffing its eyes with R. J. Reynolds’ finest! Monk chirps, “I was thinkin’ about quittin’ anyway!” as the gang are reunited. They philosophize about how this lost world could have survived and maintained itself (with some genuinely interesting musings on the fantastic ecology), and look for Kar.
“We’ve got to count every bullet. Although the weapons are virtually useless against these prehistoric monsters, they will be effective upon Kar.”
“Kar!” Ham clipped. “I had nearly forgotten that devil!”
Ham speaks for us all
They make their way past some certainly-just-scene-dressing geysers to the edge of the convection-free magma, hunting for breakfast. Ham skewers an animal “about the size of a large calf […] spongy looking antlers, two in the usual spot […] the other lower down below the eyes. It had a cloven hoof and looked edible.” This primitive deer they cook the primitive deer in a natural cauldron after taste-testing the cooled water. But Kar may not have been so clever – they spot smoke out in the mist! Not Kar…Renny! The sharp teeth had belonged to a tiny hyena-like thing that he easily dispatched after sacrificing some shoulder skin.
Yet the fires still burn!
Doc scouts ahead, and nearly gets his head shot off. But when he gets back to his men, Oliver Wording Bittman (the renowned taxidermist) has vanished! But he did not make it far before something felled him. Further shots bring Bittman around as the shooter goes down from one of Doc’s shots between the eyes. They rejoin the others and close on the fire. Closer…and closer…
Abandoned! The fire has died down, the men’s equipment scattered about, but no bushwhackers await them. Attempting to trail the missing men avails nothing, so the Fabulous Five, Doc, and Oliver Wording Bittman climb their trees for the night. Their attempts at rest are interrupted by a sinister shuffling below, as of scores of great beasts!
To Doc’s keen ears came the sound of grinding teeth at work on the base of Monk’s fern. Then big incisors began on his own tree!
Capable bronze hands working swiftly, Doc picked off a fragment of his own shirt. He put a flame to it, got it blazing, and dropped it. The burning fragment slithered from side to side as it fell. It left a trail of sparks. But it gave light enough to disclose an alarming scene.
A colony of monster, prehistoric beavers had attacked them!
This right here is why this book places so high in my personal list. I have no words. Dent was mad as a hatter and it is glorious.
Yet they have been sent by Kar, who tied and killed one of them and dragged it to where Doc and his men sleep, to take advantage of the beaver’s well-known and legendary lust for vengeance above all else! Yet they are scared off by a single gunshot, mistaking it for the tail-slap of warning. The only casualty of the dire beaver attack is Bittman’s pen-knife. After breakfasting on ground sloth, Doc lights out alone to trail the two men who had dragged the dead beaver the previous night. Dent treats this as a safari, showcasing Doc’s woodcraft and a variety of strange animals like giant prehistoric skunks, tiny horses, and more pterodactyls. Doc squares off against a T-Rex, which hops kangaroo-like across the land. Then he finds Kar’s two men…what is left of them. They were not as cunning as Doc, and met a grisly fate between the jaws of the terrible thunder lizard!
Worse, Kar has snatched his friends!
Doc follows their trail, nimbly evading each of the Fallout-style traps that Kar has left him (thanks in no small part to some cunning signals on Monk’s part). Finally, he stumbles upon Kar’s plane, and the secret hangar that shields it. He comes upon his Fabulous Five, but they’re in no immediate danger…and Oliver Wording Bittman, renowned taxidermist, has been taken away for fiendish reasons unknown! Doc stumbles over Gabe Yuder’s grave (trampled to death by a hopping tyrannosaurus), and realizes what most of us realized three chapters ago. Two expositing bad guys exposit until Doc emerges from hiding and silently dares them to shoot first, before he caps a couple of punks for raising iron in his direction. This signals the Five to make their escape.
But the plane is launching! Doc hops from rock to rock and goes into a dead sprint to catch up to the departing aircraft, catching it just as it takes to the air. Kar tries to shoot him off the wing like he’s William Shatner, but runs out of bullets before Doc runs out of vengeance. He explains how he always knew Kar was Oliver Wording Bittman, renowned taxidermist, and all Bittman can exclaim is “you won’t kill me!”
He’s right – Doc can’t kill his father’s savior. He allows Bittman to parachute out back into the crater, but casually hurls his suitcase full of Smoke of Eternity after him, narrowly avoiding crashing the plane in a great fireball in the rocky caldera while he’s at it. He watches as Bittman gets bogged down and eaten by a hopping Tyrannosaur which foolishly falls in the magma.
But greater things are afoot – the Smoke of Eternity is eating Thunder Island alive! Doc quickly picks up the Five and they watch, spellbound, as the South Seas Lost World is consumed in the terrible thundercloud of the Smoke of Eternity, every ancient horror and wonder of that choking jungle consumed by the strange stuff! Now the raw materials of the Smoke of Eternity are eternally beyond reach, as Doc nudges the plane and rises out of the steam and into the sun.
AN EERIE TRILLING SOUND – This is Doc’s second adventure, and the last that would hang on “Doc is out to avenge a fatherly figure in his life” motivation. So he straight up murders some dudes, something that would be anathema by the end of this year.
Doc has more of an internal life here, both in mourning the second father in Jerome Coffern (whose death almost in front of Doc’s own eyes clearly shakes him) and in the rising dichotomy between his father’s debt to Oliver Wording Bittman and the increasing evidence that Bittman is the mastermind Kar. One could almost speculate that it was in losing his own father and Jerome in so short a time and the way Bittman was able to manipulate him that Doc becomes the withdrawn, Stoic man of bronze that we all know, trusting only to the Fabulous Five (and later Pat) and even then, only so far.
FISTS OF GRISTLE – Renny introduces himself by smashing in Doc’s door on the eighty-sixth floor. He comports himself like a true Great War vet on THE JOLLY ROGER and throws each of those “a gallon of knuckles” left and right. But it’s on Thunder Island where he comes into his own, getting his own chapter dedicated to catching up with his independent adventures (something I’ve never seen done so extensively in any other Doc Savage novel). He RIDES A TRICERATOPS BY THE HORNS!
SUPERAMALGAMATED! – Johnny has not yet discovered that mighty thesaurus, and is introduced bantering with Long Tom in a very Monk-and-Ham manner. He’s on top of getting a hold of the rock samples, one of the early McGuffins, and comes into his own lecturing on geology on the trip to and deep within Thunder Island. Geology, evolutionary theory, paleontology, paleobotany, he’s a walking encyclopedia. He even offers up his monocle for a loupe as both he and Doc examine an outcropping of strange rock that might be the source of the Smoke of Eternity.
“YOU SHYSTER CLOTHES-HORSE!” – Ham’s sword-cane comes in spearing a deer for dinner. He mentions that he similarly captured and cooked a deer in a natural caldera in Yellowstone once. This is never elaborated upon. Mainly, Ham is here to be the straight man, offering the adventurous layman’s opinions and questions…which is interesting, as later that would be Monk’s M.O.
“YOU MISSING LINK!” – Monk drew the short straw and was the designated kidnappee today! He holds up under interrogation and survives in his water coffin long enough for Doc to come, going back-to-back badass with the Man of Bronze against Squint and his gang on THE JOLLY ROGER. His smoking habit (never mentioned again – presumably he succeeded in quitting) also saves all of their lives, after being effectively set up chapters before, disguised as a clue that he was taken from his office by force.
WIZARD OF THE JUICE – Long Tom is also here!
WHERE DOES HE GET THOSE WONDERFUL TOYS? – Aside from the soundproof plane, Doc is remarkably low-tech this adventure. Which makes sense – Dent hadn’t invented most of the toys yet. Although Doc’s superfirers are in evidence, they neither moan nor shoot mercy bullets, but very deadly real bullets, being more semiautomatic pistols than anything else. The main attraction here is the villain’s Smoke of Eternity pistols and bombs, but, eh, ya seen one chemist dissolve in a miniature thundercloud leaving only a grisly limb behind, ya seen ‘em all.
CRIME COLLEGE MATRICULATES – Oliver Wording Bittman is a fine example of the early-Doc genre of “character introduced in Chapter 2 who turns out to be the sinister disguised villain on the second to last page.” While a lot of them wore hoods or masks, Bittman-as-Kar worked exclusively over the phone or intercom and disguised his voice instead. In Bittman’s case, it’s perfectly obvious from his early manipulation of Doc, constant attendance on Doc and the Five, and hilariously over-the-top cowardice that the Lion would sneer at that he has to be the bad guy. Dent would tinker with this formula a bit to make it ever so slightly more difficult to discern who the man behind the mask (or phone line) is.
AGED LIKE FINE MILK – The statements about the lack of any explosion when splitting the atom and the hopping kangaroo T-Rexes would seem to be just ordinary pulp technobabble, but Dent was up on his science. Both were indeed the going theories at the time, and Doc is right in that scientists “proved” that splitting the atom was net-neutral in terms of energy in late 1932. Which is why I’m filing it here, under “aged like fine milk,” because the only thing that happened was that science advanced in the past 90 years. As we would hope it would.
Doesn’t make those bits any less snicker-worthy though.
The, uh, South Seas cannibals are rather less defensible. Interspersed with Johnny and Doc both delivering the finest encyclopedia entries on local geology and flora that Dent could find are the “natives” of the atoll surrounding Thunder Island made entirely of stereotypes that Moby Dick harpooned back in 1851. They have a “devil-devil house” with human skulls mounted in front, no knowledge of guns, but are incredibly impressed when Doc addresses them in their own tongue. Fortunately, other than looking menacing, they don’t act on any of those century-old stereotypes and in fact are quite hospitable to the Fabulous Five and Doc (and Bittman).
Still distasteful in a book that’s otherwise remarkably free of authentic 1930s bigotry, though.
BACK MATTER – I have split this week’s Back Matter entry into its own separate post, as this is a special entry requiring much more detail.
THE VERDICT – This is the raw, vigorous early Doc in fine form. Dent still hadn’t nailed everything down yet and was still experimenting (hence Jonny and Renny trying to replicate the Monk/Ham dynamic, Doc relying more on woodcraft and environment than on his wonderful toys, Bittman being the obvious villain by dint of being the only suspect, and Doc’s reckless waste of human lives). Some of it doesn’t work, and some of it really does. We go from a random pirate ship in the Hudson River to a lost world of hopping T-Rexes and dire beavers! Each of the Fabulous Five gets a moment to shine in his own field – even Long Tom! What’s not to love? Even the one scene of odious dirty-30s racism both surprised me with its presence and with its surprisingly light touch.
If the airship sequence from The Lost Oasis was a pinnacle of classic pulp action, and the Lost Oasis itself a pinnacle of pulp weirdness, then Thunder Island is the happy marriage of both into one package. And the New York sequence is nothing to sneeze at either.
Honestly, if you liked Fear Cay, I recommend reading Land of Terror next, “the finest and first” as it were. But next week, we arrive at my very favorite Doc Savage story of all:
DATELINE – AUGUST 1938 – PARIS/WEST AFRICA – In Paris, Doc Savage, Ham, Monk, and Ham’s pet chimpanzee Chemistry are enjoying a military parade, while a hiliariously sinister Russian, Carloff Traniv, looks on. Yet a man carrying that most suspicious of Parisian goods, a sack of baguettes, is on the move. And then, suddenly, the crème de la crème of the French National Guard have their legs…melted! Not more surprising are the attempts of the gendarmerie to arrest Doc Savage, or of the stricken Parisian crowd calling for his blood! Traniv congratulates himself on framing Doc, as radios blare that the recent shocks in China and the Soviet Union and now Paris are the fault of one man – Doc Savage!
Doc is abducted by two dancers, John and Mary, just as “Doc Savage” comes on the radio for an announcement:
“I, Doc Savage, am going to rule the world!”
obviously the real Doc Savage
He promises another demonstration on an American battleship within a few hours, which he delivers with grisly precision. In Washington, both Johnny and Renny are arrested. Long Tom gets picked up by air. In Paris, Monk and Ham are gassed trying to escape and Doc accidentally bisects a man trying to interrogate him. It was the machinations of Traniv, of course, who exposits to “Pecos” Allbellin, the South American dandy, about his plans for Doc Savage. Doc infiltrates the room, but is turned to ice!
YES! The cover REALLY DOES have something to do with the story!
Monk and Ham make good an escape, and follow Doc’s refrigerated body to an “abandoned” airport outside of Paris. Using his eyes as Morse code, Doc fills them in on Traniv, Pecos, and their attempted switcheroo. After Traniv’s plane shoots down six French flyers, they unleash Chemistry on the plane’s crew, following it up with thick hairy fists and the slashing sword-cane of Harvard. Things look bad before Doc springs into action. Traniv mocks him from afar, as Long Tom (now in London) enjoys a rescue from John and Mary (remember them?). They demand Long Tom help them locate Doc, but Long Tom hesitates – just long enough for the English Grenadier Guards to be cut down as the American battleship, the French, Soviets, and Chinese had been!
Meanwhile, aboard the transport, the three men can’t get the autopilot (or “robot pilot” as Dent calls it) off, and are being flown to the secret base somewhere in Africa. Doc advises his two men “brush up on [their] Yoruba dialect” as some kind of unmanned flying machine guns, “drone” planes if you will, carve their wings clean off! They crash near the “largest, most complete munitions factory in the world,” a “secret one” to “disrupt the peace of the world.” They are beset upon by things, dressed as soldiers, that remind Ham of nothing more than the Zombi legends of Haiti.
Like this, but better armed and with snazzier uniforms.
Doc surrenders, and they are led into an ancient stone temple turned modern munitions factory (no doubt to disrupt the peace of the world). Traniv kills his own men to establish his villain credentials, but refrains (for the moment) from his Bond Villain Speech. Doc is separated from Monk and Ham by advanced electrical field, and the two men are ambushed by Pecos Allbellin to test the nefarious belts he believes Traniv is using to cause the killings and destruction. As if in answer, Traniv demonstrates his “murderous radio waves” which take down a South African mail runner while the vast machine works assemble plans, guns, and tanks all around them.
Finally, Traniv reveals his plan – he wishes Doc’s vast surgical expertise, especially his capacity to make “slight operations” to the brains of those under his care. Traniv’s own surgeon makes the Living Dead operations of his soldiers possible, he asks Doc to perform a similar operation on “all the world’s dictators,” to follow his commands alone. When he resists, Doc is taken away to be operated on – “in ten minutes, he will be a living dead man!”
That’s when Long Tom, John, and most important, Mary crash into the place. Mary was once Allbellin’s great love (…this month…) and distracts him long enough for Long Tom to take his chance. Long Tom winds up taken to Cell 3, where Monk and Ham (who were not dead!) catch him up and they escape by mechanically altering their voices, some 60 years before Kevin McAllister was even born. Their escape is cut short by a group of gangsters, the “royal guard,” who are not so easily fooled as the Living Dead.
The operation on Doc goes smoothly, as Mary and John find out when Allbellin reveals he knew the whole time they were British secret agents. John is apparently killed, and Mary led out to meet the new Doc and get her own operation as Allbellin’s toy. John, free and unobserved, goes to the radio room. He manages to get word out, but it does Mary no good. After his sudden death, the interrupted transmission is resumed, with directions for the Arctic. Mary is brought before the revenant that was once Doc Savage, and goes under his knife.
And then Hitler walks in.
No, really.
“The little man,” “the dictator” of a Central European country “with eyes like psychological blowtorches” shows up with Martin Bohrmann in tow, gives the salute, walks into a room, goes down a trapdoor with a Goofy cry, gets chloroformed. Bohrmann (who looks and talks like Hermann Goering) frets until the “secret radiophone” of Hitler’s turns on, ordering a surprise attack on “the defenseless Great Britain!” All in the name of self-defense of course.
Traniv turns from the radiophone and observes Doc Savage giving Adolf Hitler a delicate brain operation…
(a rare sentence)
…as tensions mount across the world, supplied by Traniv’s munitions plant.
For a moment, the lights go out in the operating room. In that time, we find out that Doc had never been operated on, had instead operated on the surgeon, Koral, to restore his senses. Maddened with anger (and frankly, wouldn’t you?), Koral is out for blood…while Doc is out to bring the whole works down.
An execution is in order, to Allbellin’s great pleasure – Mary, Monk, Ham, and Long Tom are to be an example to us all. Doc makes for them, as Dr. Koral inspects every uniform in the guardroom. Note that, it’ll be important later. He’s tied up with the rest, muttering “it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter.” Chemistry (remember Chemistry?) goes absolutely apeshit on the execution squad, allowing Mary to escape, but the other four are recaptured, lined up, and shot just as Traniv departs. Mary hails the nearest plane…
…where Hitler is trying desperately to look inconspicuous. He had not been operated on, and was considering the implications. Then some rando shoots him just above the temple.
Seriously, page 109 of the Bantam paperback. Dent just casually ices Hitler in 1938.
This line would have made the scene perfect.
Ahhh. The Thirties.
Anyway, back in the execution yard, of course Doc and his men had switched uniforms with the guards. Even Chemistry gets his own uniform! Doc produces some liquid smoke from his vest of many wonders and brings the rains down in Africa.
(Blessing status unknown)
In London, the men of Downing Street are long-faced, as “a certain unfriendly power” are conducting an aërial assault over their heads. In Siberia, in Manchuria, in South America, bands of soldiers are staging sudden attacks and disappearing. “Hundreds of small, radio-controlled flying machine guns had been dispatched,” in preparation for Traniv’s cadres in every world capital to seize control on behalf of their would-boukoun master.
Doc and his men (and Chemistry) rush into the compound for the radio room, but are trapped and suffocated in the dark. Allbellin goes into investigate, and falls right into their trap. Travin smashes his desk as the message goes out: “This is Doc Savage, the real Doc Savage, speaking.” He gives their latitude and longitude for the combined fleets of the world’s naval powers (England, France, America, Japan, Germany, Russia, and Brazil) to converge on his location, down in Africa. Traniv demands they be belted, so there can be no mistake of killing them this time!
Doc’s aides are re-re-recaptured, Doc escapes across a roof. Doc locks himself in the chemical weapons room, steals a gas mask, and proceeds to do some muthafuckin’ science. He spots Allbellin, the dandy South American ex-dictator, doing himself up in one of the uniforms, feeling the fastenings with girlish glee. Making his escape, he runs into Mary (remember Mary?), loosed for exactly this purpose. When confronted with “surrender or the girl dies!” Doc has no more mettle than Indiana Jones in the same situation, and taken to …the theater of Death!
In a vast auditorium, the soldiers and gangsters watch Doc and his aides and Mary and Chemistry. Behind him, in windowed room, Traniv plays with his mechanisms as Allbellin lights a cigar. Now, now, in his moment of triumph, Traniv unleashes a Bond Villain Speech with a side of ham that would stop Auric Goldfinger cold. The belts now cinched around all their waists are listening devices and instruments of death. These are all on the same wavelength, so a single signal will kill them all. Traniv throws the lever…and is shocked as it is his own legs that melt away in pieces, along with Allbellin and the “royal guard” of gangsters in the auditorium! Too, above the capitols of the world, the “mother ships” controlling the “flying machine guns” sputter and crash, their crews bisected.
Doc, Mary, and his aides are unharmed.
Meeting with the combined admirals, Doc explains the finer points while Monk strikes out with Mary (by no small effort of Ham’s). Involving odorless colorless gasses and strange pastes and radio frequencies, the upshot (as Doc explains to Monk) is that when Koral was released, he doctored the receivers and pasted the belts of Traniv, Allbellin, and his gangsters…leaving Doc and his men’s untouched. We end on a kiss, as Mary decides to give the hairy chemist another chance.
AN EERIE TRILLING SOUND – Doc goes through more quick costume changes here than Taylor Swift. The switcheroo on the operating room table has to be the icing on the cake, though. Half the captures are on purpose (or at least can be turned to good use) and no matter how many changes of costume he has, Doc still has his utility belt.
FISTS OF GRISTLE – Renny spends the adventure punching doors in prison.
SUPERAMALGAMATED! – Next to Johnny, who no doubt spends the time catching up on his thesaurus.
“YOU SHYSTER CLOTHES-HORSE!” – Ham opens by siccing Chemistry on Monk for wearing the same outfit as himself and doesn’t let up. He and Monk do share their act of true mateship under fire in the execution yard…before going back to the hijinx.
“YOU MISSING LINK!” – …wait, had Monk even met Mary before the second-to-last chapter? You dog, you, you move fast.
WIZARD OF THE JUICE – Long Tom is also here! Mainly holding out hope for Doc no matter what the odds.
WHERE DOES HE GET THOSE WONDERFUL TOYS? – Traniv, you old bastard! Drones! Force-fields! Zombie brain treatments! That weird-ass paste/gas/radio waves killing method! This is stuff Doc never imagined even while hallucinating on peyote way back in ’34!
CRIME COLLEGE MATRICULATES – I have to wonder if Traniv’s Living Dead weren’t commentary on Doc’s Crime College (explored below) and the backlash Dent got over it.
There’s not much to say about the bad guys here, Traniv twirls his mustache like any decent White Russian with a grudge, Allbellin practically wears a black trenchcoat and specs and giggles like a girl when he tortures people. All I’m saying is, if you’re the guys who relegated Adolf fuckin’ Hitler to C-list fodder, you have got to be badder than him. And these boys…ain’t it, chief.
AGED LIKE FINE MILK – Now is a great time to talk about Doc’s Crime College. In the early days, Doc’s “Crime College,” located in upstate New York, was where he sent the unconscious and captured henchmen and lieutenants of his various enemies (as the leaders always died of petard-hoisting on the second-to-last page, as Traniv and Allbellin do here). There, a “delicate brain operation” by surgeons trained by Doc himself left them with no memory of their previous criminal lives, and job and lifestyle training meant each graduate of the Crime College had “a trade and the chance at an honest life.” No graduate of the Crime College ever reverted to criminal ways.
You might say this aged like fine milk, but the backlash was immediate and ongoing. As early as 1934, Dent felt it necessary to spell out that “this was NOT a lobotomy in any way” and by WW2, the Crime College had been quietly retired (but not before spectacularly featuring in John Sunlight’s unprecedented second attack on Doc in Fortress of Solitude). Dent tried to hang onto the concept, as it was clearly one of his fixations, like Doc’s two-hour exercise regime, ultraviolet lanterns, and Monk’s chemical skill, but even he had to knuckle under the public’s clear distaste for actual mind control via brain damage…no matter how well intentioned.
Other than that, any vaguely-serious writer after 1941 would have treated Hitler with more respect for his monstrousness and his capacity to inflict pain and death. The fact that here “the dictator” gets mocked for his stature, given a once-over like Mel Brooks on a bender, and finally casually shot by some rando on page 108 is just… *chef’s kiss*
BACK MATTER – The Bantam reissues in the 1960s (of which my copy of The Munitions Master is certainly one) dispensed with the cliffhanger endings, the letters, the Doc Savage Method, the oath, and the essays. I, for one, think they are poorer for it…though Bama’s covers certainly count for a lot.
THE VERDICT – They killed Hitler with a shot to the back of the head in 1938 in the middle of Act II. So casual, you know that bitch wasn’t even a player.
As if that weren’t enough for you, DRONES! FORCE FIELDS! SELF-AWARE BRAIN OPERATIONS COMMENTARY! All the tensions of 1938 expressed powerfully through the asides to the world capitals, the touching united front of the combined fleet, and the corking of Adolph Hitler as he leaves the story.
Did I mention he just off-handedly kills Hitler?
Sure, the biggest, baddest guy isn’t even the biggest, baddest guy, Doc’s various switcheroos border on ludicrous, the Fabulous Five have so little to do that two of them sat out, and the killing method is absolutely what Dent was thinking of when he warned of “getting too outlandish”. But what the hell, there’s enough madness to go around, and it’s not the madness of the usual pulp.
The fears and tensions that Dent was speaking to were very real, and it gives The Munitions Master a kind of poignancy your average T-Rex riding cowboy with a superfirer doesn’t quite hit. Dent really wanted the world’s troubles to be caused by a single madman with a munitions plant, so he could send down Doc Savage to hoist the man on his own petard and be done with it. He meant the allied fleet’s message to all nations and he meant the name of the final chapter – “Peace.”
Next week, some authentic T-rex riding pulp from 1933, and the week after, we conclude with my very favorite Doc Savage of all…which addresses fears and tensions of a very different era.
DATELINE – SEPTEMBER 1933 – NEW YORK CITY/THE SUDAN – A ship is docked in New York harbor, a ship offering one million dollars for the sight of one man: Doc Savage! Newsies loudly crow the top headline (the ghost Zeppelin over Maine is relegated to page 2). Doc, being a modest sort, strips to his skivvies in an alley and swims over instead of dealing with the crowds and the money.
After playing witness to an expiring Frenchman and pocketing his goods, Doc overhears two people talking in their cabin: Lady Nelia Sealing and a Rufus known, innovatively, as “Red.” They speak of “those left behind,” slavery, and diamonds, and their fear of two men: slim dark Hadi-Mot and rotund Brooklynite Sol Yuttal. All very cryptic for the Man of Bronze to unravel! And yet, speak of the Devils, the two men appear, chasing off Red and Lady Nelia with gunshots and with the mysterious “flapping darkness” that permanently rendered the Frenchman beyond all charcuterie courses. They ransack the staterooms and alert the crew – but not before Doc escapes, and with a mysterious package all his own!
Making the shore once again by turning his body into a surfboard in the wake of Red and Lady Nelia’s boat, Doc meets up with Renny, idling by the shore in guise of a hackman. The nearly naked Doc, unnoticed by the good people of New York, discovers some of what it’s all about: diamonds! Juicy big ones, too. Also the dead Frenchman’s marked-up Zeppelin homework.
Doc leaves Renny with instructions to pick up Lady Nelia and Red, before haring off after Hadi-Mot and Yuttal. He runs almost totally naked through the middle of the streets of New York, finding this a more pleasant means of crossing the Big Apple at near midnight than taking a cab, but he’s driven down an alley and under a manhole cover by the mysterious flapping darkness which craves Frenchman’s (an apparently also American) blood! It skitters needle-like on the manhole cover before departing at the call of its master.
Finally, Doc arrives at the eighty-sixth floor, where the other four of the Fabulous Five (or, as the chapter is titled, TROUBLE BUSTER, INC.) await. He instructs Long Tom to whip up some infra-red lenses and projectors, Monk to concoct a wide-acting nonfatal instant sedation formula, hands the stones to Johnny to determine their providence, and hands the Frenchman’s Zeppelin homework to Ham to follow up on. The man of bronze himself looks up Lady Nelia first in Who’s Who, then in Royalty of England – the aristocratic Spirited Young Lady had disappeared while flying over the Sahara some years before.
Not actually a clone of this woman! Earhart’s disappearance was still four years in the future.
But he’s interrupted by a call from Ham, at the hotel where Lady Nelia and Red have taken up quarters…and which Hadi-Mot and Yuttal have just entered, carrying a sinister-looking wicker basket! Doc fires off for the hotel, to the disappointment of the other four, who were hoping to join in on the action. He finds the place in shambles, the two dastards departed with Lady Nelia in tow, the rooms ransacked, Red (as the least good-looking of a set of Doc Savage victims by chapter 7) dead, and Renny defenestrated to twelve stories below! Fortunately, it was an improvised dummy in Renny’s clothes, Renny himself is clinging to the next window in a bedsheet toga.
Doc calls up the others, and Johnny and Ham have news: the stones are the finest quality, the first water, but of no known provenance in the book – mystery stones from a mystery mine, and the Zeppelin mentioned in the Frenchman’s homework is none other than the disappeared Aëromunde of a decade earlier (which is definitely not the Dixmunde with the serial numbers filed off glad we had this talk). What’s more, the dead Frenchman (not dead at the time) and a man fitting the description of the dead Rufus (also not dead at the time, but notably still redheaded) in the other room were on the crew!
Yuttal gives Doc a threatening phone call as a sinister cab pulls up in the pay parking lot opposite the hotel – and no New York cabbie would willingly enter a pay lot if his life depended on it. Monk, being Monk, is all for going down and smashing heads, but Doc demures, siccing Long Tom on the job with his mystery briefcase instead. The cab easily gets away before the men even make it downstairs…but Renny is on the job, in a high-tech autogyro, tracing the black-light lantern that Long Tom attached to Yuttal’s cab with his “supraluminal” goggles.
Zis time, ze goggles, zey DO do somezink!
And, it must be stressed, still wearing nothing but a bedsheet toga.
This book has an awful lot of strapping men nearly naked for Reasons.
Trailing Hadi-Mot and Yuttal, the Fabulous Five and Doc head north in their autogyro, expansive and expensive as no autogyro had ever been before (or since), but the two wily customers are always one step ahead of the bronze man! They confront some toughs at an airport dodgier than “Errol International” who think they’ve got one over when they sneak a bomb onto the autogyro.
It goes up like fireworks on the Fourth of July, but neither Doc nor his men were on it, controlling it, as it were, by remote, using a kind of control, devised on the spot by the wizard of the juice, Long Tom. Ham had driven back to New York to retrieve one of Doc’s super monoplanes, and surreptitiously picked up the rest of the gang. Believing themselves free of the menace of Doc Savage’s justice, the two masterminds fail to notice the huge plane trailing north behind them, even as dawn breaks and the sun rises toward noon. Doc’s plane inexplicably survives this adventure, they park it just outside the Maine ‘cup valley’ where the disappeared Zeppelin is hiding. They sneak aboard by the tried and true “inexplicably poorly guarded guyline” gag, finding it necessary to gas three guards and make them look like they got drunk and passed out on wild berries just as the ship launches.
Doc and the Five hide out in the great balloons of the stolen airship, which Dent takes great pleasure in describing the technical details of as if he were the Tom Clancy of the Depression. They poke holes in the skin at will (which is actually not as fatal to Zeppelins as most media would make you think) and are forced, forced mind you, to strip down in the rising heat as the ship approaches their destination, in the Sudan. They meet the inevitable fight with the guards in hand-to-hand combat, as the hydrogen gas is highly flammable!
At the time, merely a fun technical fact. Later, though…
Throwing a mook from the narrow catwalks and gantries they fight on tears a rent in the Zeppelin that forces them ever downward, so Hadi-Mot orders all the mooks out of the action and readies his wicker basket of flying death. The named villains all draw guns, full willing to set the Zeppelin on fire in some kind of unimaginable airship-ending inferno the likes of which had never been seen on Earth rather than face …that terrible thing! Doc, alerted by Lady Nelia’s cry, punches his way out of a flying Zeppelin just in time to see Hadi-Mot release the terror into the airship balloon. With only seconds to spare and without risking the ignition of the airship with a powder flash, Doc takes the creature out of action with one of his patented glass marbles of one-minute anaesthetic. A few more put the villains (and Lady Nelia) out of action, and Doc and his men gain the control car.
Finally, they approach their final destination, the desert fastness of Hadi-Mot, Yuttal, and their sinister allies.
Hang onto your hats, here’s where this ordinary yarn of autogyros, faked fatalities, stolen airships, inexplicable male dishabille, flying death, and blacklight chases gets weird.
In the center of the stony ring [of mountains] lay an oasis. A lost oasis! For certainly no hint of its presence would have reached a traveler in the desert.
A vast platter of green! The utter denseness of the vegetation caused the men to turn binoculars upon it. They saw such a jungle as they had seldom beheld.
Tropical trees were matted in such profusion that they seemed to grow one out of the other. Lianas and aërial creepers [sic] tied the whole into an impenetrable mat. Orchids and other rare and brilliantly colored blooms could be seen.
Luxuriant though the jungle was, and contrasting as it did with the blazing desert, the oasis, nevertheless, possessed a sinister and unwholesome air. It was like something green and hideous lying there in an infinity of furnace-hot, wind-tortured sand.
[…]
The black scavenger bird [a vulture, or as Johnny calls it, a ‘Pharaoh’s hen’] settled swiftly into the vegetation. Apparently, it grasped some titbit of food.
The vulture sought to lift into the air again. Its hideous black wings flapped madly. But it did not get off! The plant, the sickly-hued shrub upon which it had landed, seemed to have grasped the bird.
Slowly, the shrub closed its tentacle-like shoots. It enveloped the vulture!
“Holy cow!” Renny croaked.
The entire jungle is composed entirely of carnivorous plants.
“But what do they EAT?” “WHATEVER THEY DAMN WELL PLEASE!”
Within the jungle, though, is a rocky promontory split by a deep crevasse and possessed of a naturally-occurring dirigible hangar. Presumably a naturally-occurring nuclear furnace is just down the way. The promontory also sports a ton of men with guns and a stockade filled with “wasted hulls of human beings” chained together by the neck ten to a line. My God, what kind of monsters could do such a thing to their fellow humans in this Modern age?!
I couldn’t decide what gallows humor colonialism joke to finish this off with. Write in your own punchline and leave it in the comments!
Despite a shocking improvised twist, Doc, the Five, and Lady Nelia are besieged in a rock cleft. The vampire bats (for that is what the flying death is, ordinary vampire bats…except much larger, trainable, and also venomous, unlike vampire bats) attack, as do the men in various volleys. After much chivalry and daring-do, mainly thanks to Monk’s improved anaesthetic chemical warfare, Doc slips out toward the stockade and notices the strange apparel of their guards – bottomless cages of rattan, making the guards resemble “an oversize, toast-colored canary in a cage.” It protects them from the bats, which surround the stockade “like so many guard dogs.”
Lady Nelia relates her story: Yuttal and Hadi-Mot had been in the slave and ivory trade, but were driven deep into the desert some fifteen years before (1919) by the twin forces of law and angry fathers. They discovered the jungle composed entirely of carnivorous plants, poison thorns, poisonous snakes, and vultures, and the diamonds in the vultures’ beaks. With a little seed money (donated by vultures’ beaks), they hired a gang of ruffians to storm and steal the Aëromunde, enslaving its crew to mine for diamonds. As they died of overwork, underfeeding, savage punishment, or the jaws of the green hell, they were replaced with fresh European slaves bought from Cairo. Lady Nelia herself had developed engine trouble and landed in the worst spot in the Sahara, her life and virtue only preserved by Yuttal’s insistence she’d come ‘round one of these years. Instead, she worked with the dead Frenchman (at that time not yet dead) and Red to cobble together a second balloon and escaped out to the desert an onto a steamer…but had been followed by Yuttal and Hadi-Mot and their terrible flying death, all bound for New York and the legendary Doc Savage.
In the night, Doc escapes and liberates one of the wicker cages. He disables the stolen Zeppelin and buries the parts where they won’t be found. But a stray flashlight finds him, and bullets follow. Doc is forced into the jungle in his cage. The tentacles and jaws of carnivorous plants tear at him, venomous snakes slither in with him, all falling before Doc’s flashlight and Army knife. He emerges at great distance from his hunters, none the worse for wear, and rejoins his friends. Johnny goes in search of water, and drinks of a poison pool, but Doc saves him in time. A final volley leads to a parlay, their lives for the location of the stolen engine parts – a deal everyone knows the bad guys have no intention of keeping.
Doc and the Five are separated from Lady Nelia and forced to strip…
…again…
and Doc in particular gets the third degree so that Yuttal and Hadi-Mot can be totally sure he has none of those Wonderful Toys squirrelled away in his ass or something. We are then taken to a “very modern, up-to-date operation” of diamond mining which Dent describes in excited technical detail. Along with the indignities and horrors of modern slavery. Back in the stockade for the night, Doc produces stolen diamonds to cut their iron bonds with. He douses all the cages with chloroform (secreted earlier during the night of the carnivorous plants) and frees Lady Nelia, riling the other slaves for the obligatory Uprising. The slaves all break for the Aëromunde, while Doc and his men liberate their various weapons and go after the guards. Lady Nelia even saves Doc’s life with two well-aimed rocks.
The slaves prep the Zeppelin for takeoff as Hadi-Mot releases all the vampire bats at once, the bad guys rushing for their (doctored) cages. As the airship rises out of danger with Doc at the helm, he watches the cages fall apart from the acid, the confederates doomed by their own vampire bats. Hadi-Mot and Yuttal are consumed together. They return long enough to rescue the few remaining men, kill all the vampire bats, and divvy up the diamonds – Lady Nelia insisting her share go to building hospitals for orphans in England. Then it’s off up the Cairo for Trouble Buster, Inc.
“Cairo – on the banks of the lazy River Nile!” [Long Tom] chuckled. “That sounds peaceful enough.”
AN EERIE TRILLING SOUND – Doc spends a good third of the book running around New York at night wearing nothing but a Speedo for never-clearly-defined reasons. Sadly, CBGB’s did not yet exist to be thrilled by this news. He’s in fine form here, a science detective aboard the Yankee Beauty, a cunning guile hero in New York, a grim yet nonlethal MacGuyver aboard the Aëromunde and in the Lost Oasis itself.
But today’s ultimate Doc moment is when he navigates a jungle of carnivorous plants in his skivvies inside a rattan cage with a flashlight and a knife. Just uttering that sentence caused my chest to grow a luxuriant mat of hair in the shape of Australia. That is Weasels Ripped My Flesh level pulp manliness.
FISTS OF GRISTLE – Renny here is what Johnny was to Fear Cay. He drives a hack! He interrogates the victims! He pulls a dead-dummy fast one! He flies an autogyro! He punches through doors! He even navigates the stolen Zeppelin on three separate occasions! Not bad for one Puritan-faced engineer with fists like Virginia hams.
SUPERAMALGAMATED! – For whatever reason, Dent tries to introduce a new tic for Johnny: he never wagers except on a sure thing. Monk calls him out for it, and Dent spells it out later in narration when, aboard the airship, he quips “So, anyone willing to bet this tub isn’t going to Africa?” It never stuck, so he mostly just seems to be on a winning streak at the ponies and letting it leak out.
“YOU SHYSTER CLOTHES-HORSE!” – Ham gets an awesome kill in of a sword-thrust through the shoulder, and enjoys some fine bickering with Monk because Dent hadn’t run out of bicker yet. They also share a quiet moment while besieged flipping a coin to see who gets the one remaining gas mask. Ham loses with great dignity.
“YOU MISSING LINK!” – Monk goes apeshit or expresses his desire to go apeshit about once a scene, but his introduction is dressing like Ham and making it look like a sideshow barker and his next scene is casually whipping up a chemical concoction (nonlethal long-lasting anaesthetic gas) that we still haven’t invented today. Mostly, though, Monk’s the trigger-happy heavy, almost as ready to kill Ham as he is to kill mooks.
WIZARD OF THE JUICE – Boy is Long Tom on the trolley here. He introduces Doc’s blacklight goggles and equips them for the entire gang (although he notes he’d already come up with them a few adventures ago and just needed to make sure they were in working order) and puts them to good use bugging Yuttal’s stolen hack. Later, he grouses he should have introduced blacklight search lights, but will tomorrow. Sure beats your college roommate’s Alice in Wonderland poster, huh?
WHERE DOES HE GET THOSE WONDERFUL TOYS? – And what wonderful toys they are! From dust that sparkles in the night only when disturbed to the first deployment of Long Tom’s night vision goggles (and mention of the night vision searchlights) to old standards like the one-minute anaesthetic marbles, Doc has a full range of toys to play with today. It’s quite understandable that the bad guys took a moment to strip him, wash him, remove false teeth, trim his nails, and pull out hairs in case he had any more.
CRIME COLLEGE MATRICULATES – Yuttal and Hadi-Mot are hardly memorable material. I think Dent was going for a Ham-and-Monk contrast beween streetwise Yuttal with his spat gangsterisms (like “Nix!”) and Hadi-Mot and his mannered, textbook-English, The Sheikh-esque “swarthy foreign gentleman” air, but it never quite comes off and Dent more or less abandons any character study of the two by time Doc and the gang climb onto the Zeppelin. The four wicked aviators are clever for one scene, get mentioned twice more, and then disappear. Honestly, the vampire bats are better bad guys than the bad guys.
AGED LIKE FINE MILK – With the exception of Yankee Yuttal (who is another of Dent’s fat bastards), all the bad guys are swarthy, shifty, and speak Arabic. In his Master Pulp Plot Formula, Dent gives an example of finding an “Egyptian” phrasebook and pulling phrases out of it, as “this kids editors into thinking the scribe knows something about Egypt.” This must have been the example he was thinking of, because Dent misses no opportunity to remind the reader that these are all “some kind of natives, not whites” and peppering all the dialogue with redundantly-translated Arabic. While not one of Dent’s worst offenses, it combines with the next point for a truly fine aged-milk flavor.
All the slaves at Hadi-Mot and Yuttal’s secret diamond mine in the deserts (and jungles?) of Egypt are aristocratic Europeans. Because when you think “Africa” and “hard slavery in mines,” you definitely think “aristocratic white people.”
But, seriously, take a moment to donate to Diamonds for Peace. Blood diamonds are very real, and still with us, and horrifying in their implications. And their conditions almost as terrible today as Dent imagined in 1933.
BACK MATTER – Lost Oasis was the first issue of Doc Savage Magazine to include an essay alongside the reader letters, Doc Savage’s Oath, and original (teaser) endings. Unfortunately, I have never seen this first Doc Savage essay, though I’m sure a few mildewed copies of the original 1933 publication are still floating around on eBay for $5 apiece. I linked one of the essays, last week, from the December 1933 issue, The Phantom City.
So, let’s discuss interior art! I’ve used some of it before, but this is where we can really discuss it. Paul Orban’s (and others’) interior art were stripped out of the 1960s Bantam reissues, like all of the back matter. When I can, I love to get a hold of copies of the original ‘30s editions, because I love the dynamism and energy of those original interior art pieces.
THE VERDICT – The New York segment is nicely odd (both for the adventures in New York harbor and for taking place all in a single night, when most of the New York portions are daytime affairs as in Fear Cay), but the airship sequence is an absolute jewel of truly vintage action and adventure, a full Rocketeer service
…and then we get to Egypt and everything goes absolutely batshit. A JUNGLE OF CARNIVOROUS PLANTS! FLYING VAMPIRE BATS OF DOOM! A DEATH CAMP OF CAREFULLY INTERNATIONALIZED SLAVE MINERS! A RATTAN WALKING-CAGE TO SAVE THE HERO! A WWI REENACTMENT WHERE THE GAS ATTACK IS FROM THE GOOD GUYS! If the Zeppelin sequence was a jewel of traditional pulp action, the Sudan section absolutely excels at first-water pulp weirdness. This is the stuff the men’s adventures of the 60s were so desperate to, and always failed to, recapture, the stuff that dreams are made of. Despite anti-Arab racism that would make George W. Bush blush, this is still one of my favorite Doc Savage novels for how completely unhinged it progressively becomes.
DATELINE – SEPTEMBER 1934 – NEW YORK CITY/THE CARRIBBEAN – Doc Savage, walking down the street, is ambushed by the old “wallet with a hidden hypodermic needle of mickey left lying in the street” gag! How many times have we seen that old hat? Abducted by two sinister shysters, the fat Hallet and the sweaty Leakey, Doc is transported to their law offices for interrogation. Doc springs into action, having foreseen the old “wallet with a hidden hypodermic needle of mickey left lying in the street” gag, by moving his thumb just so. He out-and-out mindfucks both men, applying a variant of the Ginger Beer Trick seventy years before Sam Vimes, and discovers that they’re working for Fountain of Youth, Inc., and they kidnapped him to keep a particular sample of the species of heroine in these stories from getting to him – Kel Avery. Proactive villains, these boys are. He calls up some of his men, but Leakey and Hallet escape.
They raid the offices of Fountain of Youth, despite the best efforts of a mustachio with a red silk sash across his chest named Santini and his gang of ruffians. Doc also unearths an invisible note that Kel Avery is out in Flushing, at an address on Fish Lane. On their way out, Pat Savage makes her entrance, to the delight of Monk and Ham in particular, and Doc makes pro forma protests against her insistence on joining the adventure and defending their car from Santini and his men.
Doc, the Five, and Pat head out for Fish Lane in Flushing, an unpaved lane in a bog, the address a shack barely worthy of being called a chicken coop. Kel Avery isn’t there – but someone is. An old man hanging from a noose in the rafters introduces himself as John Thunden, 131 years young, draws two blue-steel revolvers, jumps down, accuses them of working for Santini, and beats the tar out of the boys – including both fighting Doc to a standstill and escaping when Santini’s crew show up. After a brief shootout where Pat saves all their lives (but especially Monk’s), they return to the eighty-sixth floor to use highly advanced telephone party lines to contact some of Fountain of Youth’s clients.
One of them, an incredibly rich banker that Monk wants to bash in the face of because he’s an asshole rich banker in the Great Depression, swears he can’t reveal anything…except that what’s on offer is apparently the secret of eternal life at a price of one million 1933 dollars a pop. Then the man is shot by Fountain of Youth operatives.
And nothing of value was lost.
Discovering that Kel Avery is arriving by plane that night, Pat disguises herself in Ham’s best topcoat, dons a pair of Doc’s glasses, and arranges her hair to become totally unrecognizable at the airport. And a damn good thing, too – the boys are waylaid by a bunch of randos paid off by Fountain of Youth to shout “I’m Kel Avery!” like they’re Spartacus and start a fight. But Fountain of Youth just goes ahead and kidnaps both Pat and Kel Avery (secretly the movie starlet Maureen Doreen). The boys meet up with her bodyguard, the overbuilt da Clima, and take him along for poorly-articulated reasons.
It’s-a me! Da Clima!
They find Kel Avery by the side of the road, and it all comes spilling out: her great-grandfather, Dan Thunden, sent her a mysterious package and when Santini entered the picture, she decided to hunt down Doc Savage for help. She and Pat were kidnapped, but Pat stepped up to the plate and insisted she was Spartacus Kel Avery so Santini kicked the real Kel to the curb. She mailed the package to Doc, and could use the help. They return to the eighty-sixth floor where Doc casually manipulates Kel, da Clima, Monk, Santini, and the US Postal Service for reasons to be explained later.
Johnny, disguised as a hack cabby, follows Santini retreating with the package, all the way out to the most fetid, rank, decaying, villainous spot within driving distance – the Jersey shore! He sneaks up on the seaside cabin where Santini, Leakey, Hallet, and his men regularly keep their hostage(s) and loudly discuss their double-cross of Dan Thunden. The man himself appears just in time for Santini to realize that, like disappointed college kids thirty years later, all they had in the package was oregano. A brawl ensues, with Thunden felled after killing three men, Johnny shot, and Pat at one point temporarily in control of the situation while bound and gagged with a gun in her hands. But Johnny wore his bulletproof vest, and while the bad guys take off in their plane to Fear Cay with Pat, he overhears everything, and when Monk shows up, passes out.
Johnny awakes in one of Doc’s own planes, en route to Fear Cay following Santini and his men, with a few cracked ribs for all his trouble. They are able to land on the forgotten yet strangely verdant coral islet unmolested, but not for long. After discovering a fully-dressed skeleton, Dan Thunden leads them on a merry chase to a shootout with Santini’s men at his plane, and they discover some of Thunden’s history. After washing ashore on the island in the 1830s, Dan Thunden settled in for a 90-year Caribbean vacation, taking up wholesome hobbies like hunting, fishing, and constructing fiendish death-traps in the conveniently provided cave complex beneath the surface of Fear Cay (despite the water line being almost above ground). Various parties are captured, escaped, rescued, recaptured, and always the “sound of frying fat” presaging death that leaves only a fully-dressed skeleton behind. Petards are hoisted by each of the bad guys in turn as all their secrets come out. It is all as over-the-top pulp as it sounds, but I won’t spoil it.
Maybe one thing.
At the end, triumphantly, Johnny and Doc jointly announce the cause of all the trouble:
Spoiler
SYLPHIUM! The Roman medicinal thought extinct grows wild on Fear Cay, with Dan Thunden its exhibit A. But Thunden’s longevity was from clean living under the Caribbean sun, though Doc takes samples home to advance medical science. And then, onto the next adventure!
AN EERIE TRILLING SOUNDED – Doc is in top form here, even getting unusually playful for a man usually a grave-faced cipher and Very Serious Tom-of-Finland model. His top-tier bullshit of the adventure has to be untying the knots he’s tied in at the base of his ribs behind his back with his toes, after removing his boots and socks with them. It’s so over-the-top you have to laugh.
FISTS OF GRISTLE – Renny: 1. Doors: 0. He throws those fists around with a “Holy Cow!” or two, but Renny is somewhat out-of-focus for this adventure. He mostly pals around with Johnny and swings some fists to take out Santini’s mooks.
SUPERAMALGAMATED! – Johnny gets almost more play here than in any other book in the series. The gaunt archaeologist/geologist is the one to infiltrate the cabin on the Jersey shore, taking the brunt of Dan Thunden’s damage and visibly suffering for it, making two attempts to rescue Pat, and pressing through his broken ribs all over Fear Cay. Doc, as always, plays the invincible Schwartzenegger action hero, but today, Johnny shines as the John McClane-style action survivor straight outta the Harrison Ford school of action acting. He’ll be superamalgamated, indeed.
“YOU SHYSTER CLOTHES-HORSE!” – The sword-cane gets a little use, and Ham’s banter with Monk is even more homoerotic than usual (although not to the level it would reach in a later book where they were both absent from the adventure because they were in their upstate private New York cabin for the week to go fishing). Ham’s topcoat being cut like a woman’s suit-top was pretty funny though.
“YOU MISSING LINK!” – Monk’s bashful in the presence of Kel Avery the movie starlet, and, frankly, why wouldn’t he be? He also gets his once-a-book going absolutely apeshit (pardon the pun), though this time he doesn’t kill anybody for Doc to admonish him over later. I get the impression Doc kind of misses it.
WIZARD OF THE JUICE – Long Tom is also here! …I’m gonna be saying that a lot, Lester Dent kind of ran out of ideas for the electrical wizard early on. At least in this adventure, he actually gets to put his wizardry to good use, rigging up radios and triangulating Fear Cay.
STAY IN THE SALON! – This is Pat Savage’s second adventure, back by popular demand, and though she spends most of it captured, it’s because she volunteered for the job to shield the real Kel Avery from harm. Because, hey, it’s not like Pat isn’t a trained professional at being a hostage. She leaps at adventure and although Doc puts up a token protest that she should Go Back in the Salon, It’s Too Dangerous for a Girl, even he gives up in the face of her cheerful insistence of going in harm’s way. She even pops off a few rounds from Granddad’s Colt .45, although she uncharacteristically misses her target because the plot needs Santini to get away.
WHERE DOES HE GET THOSE WONDERFUL TOYS? – Doc’s plane is SOUNDPROOFED! So you can have a conversation at NORMAL VOLUME INSIDE! Can you even imagine?
All of Doc’s standard toys are firmly in play here, and by now, Dent is perfectly comfortable with them. The superfirers with their semi-automatic firing of “mercy bullets” that can leave cuts and bruises and deploy a soporific on contact but never kill, with their “bull fiddle moan” and their “ram’s horns” cartridges, get special ammo today of rounds that leave traces, “tracer rounds” if you will, to assist in aiming. Doc’s glass marbles (that never break in his pocket, no matter how many punches and bruises he takes to the chest) with their soporific gas that last for exactly one minute (so you can hold your breath!) get use against Doc and his friends, and cunningly, too. Even his high-tech vests that have been proofed against bullets get plenty of action!
CRIME COLLEGE MATRICULATES – Leakey, Hallet, and Santini are some of the best broad-strokes villains of the series – everyone who’s read Fear Cay can remember them if you jog their memory a little. They each have their tags and their traits, their two-note personalities, they twirl their mustaches and tie people to train tracks entertainingly.
But today’s Crime College valedictorian is absolutely Dan Thunden. The 131-year-old boy-man with his white whiskers and baby face is one of exactly two villains to fight Doc to a standstill in hand-to-hand combat, and the other is Doc’s evil twin! Thunden is cunning, crafty, almost kills Doc twice, talks like a weird Southerner, and effortlessly runs rings around the Fabulous Five and Pat, whether for or again’ ‘em. The only downside is that his petard-hoisting death is relatively underplayed and pro forma, compared to the vitality of his live performance. He’s one of the handful of villains any fan of Doc’s can absolutely name without prompting, and for damn good reason.
AGED LIKE FINE MILK – Boy oh boy are Santini and da Clima excellent case studies of anti-Italian bigotry in the Fascist era. Da Clima is a blowhard miles gloriosus that Monk correctly identifies as “all talk, no steak” who gets tagged as “over-muscled” and “muscle-bound,” unable to fit through doors even Doc’s six-foot-from-shoulder-to-shoulder frame can navigate with eas. Santini is a faux-aristocrat with radio mustaches and a red sash for no damn reason across his chest except to make him an easier target for Pat’s Colt .45. Both backstab their respective allies at the first opportunity, and both get hoisted on their own petards for it. It’s a wonder neither of them pulls out a rosary or mutters an Ave Maria to work in some good, old-fashioned Know Nothing anti-Catholicism while they’re here.
Hallet’s weight and bulk are aging increasingly poorly, especially as they form his tag and the only note to his character except his cowardice. I give it another five to ten years before he’s a liability for the discerning reader.
All in all though, this book has aged really well for a series that also sports Danger Lies East, The Infernal Buddha, and Land of Long Juju. No one does blackface, no shifty Chinese show up to predictably betray the upstanding white characters at the dumbest possible time, Kel Avery and Pat both have agency and dynamism. This is one of the most approachable of the books for a reader in 2023, and that is much to its advantage.
BACK MATTER – After Pat’s first appearance, a 10-year-old fan wrote in to say that he hates when “girl characters” show up in his adventure pulps, because they’re always weak, simpering dead weights for the boys to fight over and rescue. “But if Pat Savage ever wants to come back, that’s A-OK with me!” That 10-year-old boy is the reason Pat comes back here, and for her handful of future appearances.
And he wasn’t the only reader that thought so. Dent (and his editors) downright encouraged girls to read Doc Savage too, remarkable in the sea of boy adventurers and men’s adventures that composed the (non-Romance) pulps in those days. This essay, “Are Only Men Men?”, from the back of December 1933’s The Phantom City, well spells out their opinion of girl readers who saw something of themselves in Pat Savage when the likes of Dale Arden or Pauline had left them cold.
THE VERDICT – What can be said that hasn’t been said? Fear Cay is the consensus favorite of all 181 adventures, like “City on the Edge of Forever” for Star Trek: The Original Series. Even if it’s not your favorite (and it’s not mine), you nod in understanding when it comes in first on everyone’s list. It’s got creative action, adventure, cleverness, some of it unbelievable and over-the-top just the way we want it, most of it just believable enough to pass (like Johnny’s cracked ribs dogging him the whole second half the book).
This book is also one of the two traditional gateway drugs to the series (along with the first book, The Man of Bronze). And it benefits from how well it aged like fine milk. The main brunt of Dent’s bigotry are the Italians, suspect in the 30s, but like the québécois, no longer suffering the brunt of prosecution today. Hallet the fat lawyer may make this book increasingly unpalatable, but it has nothing on the paternalistic treatment of Latin Americans, especially indigenous Latin Americans (there are six million Mayans alive today, Les, and they’re not all lost tribes in lost valleys either) in The Man of Bronze. And yet it has the vigor and virility and breezy language of Dent at his best, the things that right-wingers like to decry the loss of when you strip out the racism and misogyny.
It’s not my favorite, but I do love Fear Cay, for the uniqueness of the New York half (Doc gets captured! The bad guys are the ones to hunt him down! There’s no milksop victim! Doc viciously mindfucks motherfuckers!), for the creative action bits, and for Pat having something to do and getting to be proactive.
A top-shelf Doc Savage adventure, and the best place to start for fans new and old of the Man of Bronze.
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