"After King Kong Fell" -- Philip Jose Farmer (OMEGA, 1973)

There isn't a whole lot out there that I hold to be sacred.  My relationship with the woman I love, that's sacred to me.  And strange as it might be to say, King Kong is sacred to me.  The original 1933 film is, I would argue, one of the finest films ever made and one that I never cease to want to watch.  The 1976 remake is better left undiscussed, and Peter Jackson's 2005 remake could have been edited much more tightly, but the 1933 film remains an undeniable masterpiece.  And to tell the truth, it's the only movie I've ever cried during.  When King Kong dies, I break down crying like a baby.  I have a soft spot for self-sacrificing heroes, and that's exactly what Kong is.  Watch it some time -- he puts Ann (Fay Wray) down, makes a slight, sorrowful face at her, and then shifts position to draw the fire of the airplanes away from her.  He knows he's going to die, but he'll be damned if he'll let her go out with him.  And that sends me all weepy.  Which brings me to tonight's story, by Philip Jose Farmer.  I've kind of got a love-hate relationship with Farmer; I like some of his work, but the Wold Newton Universe thing kind of leaves me cold.  I don't feel the need for all these fictional characters I love to inhabit the same world and cross over into each other's adventures, but I digress.

"After King Kong Fell" follows Timothy Howller, a witness to the events of 1931, as he watches the 1933 film with his six year old granddaughter and regales her with having been there when it really happened, two years before the film was made, forty years after the fact.  Along the way, Howller gets lost in his memories of that fateful night -- reflecting on how beautiful his Aunt Thea was, recalling having wet his pants in terror as Kong broke the chrome steel shackles, of encountering both Doc Savage and the Shadow in his rush to the Empire State Building, though neither figure is referred to by name or title, just by iconic description.  His reflections flow into the aftermath of Kong's fall -- the lawsuits face by Denham and others, the breaking off of the engagement between Ann and Jack (on the insinuation that Ann had been raped by Kong during that night, and Jack wanting nothing to do with her after that), and the notion that as a culture we need a Kong.

This has been the first story so far in The Big Book of Adventure Stories that I didn't really care for.  I think part of it is the aforementioned sacredness in which I hold Kong.  And part of it is that I just don't think it's that well-written a story.  It proceeds from an interesting premise and parts of it are excellent, but large chunks of the prose just don't work for me.

Farmer takes a hard left turn in the middle of the story for a long rumination on whether it would be physically possible for a 20-foot gorilla to rape a 5-foot human woman, ultimately deciding that, as a six-foot gorilla's erection is only two inches long, Kong's member would be an erect 21 inches, and that even if he didn't succeed, he probably at least tried.  This digression just doesn't fit into the narrative well at all in my opinion, and with its references to zoologists and biologists by name, it comes across as if Howller has researched in depth the question of how big Kong's wedding tackle was, as perhaps Farmer did.  And to suddenly fixate on "did Kong rape her?" for a couple paragraphs like that just struck me as disquieting.

Kong's an animal, a fact that Farmer states explicitly.  And while I can see where his justification comes from (the scene in the film where Kong rips off part of Ann's dress and sniffs it), ultimately I have a hard time seeing Kong as viewing Ann as anything but a curiosity and perhaps a pet, the way Koko the sign-language gorilla kept a cat as a pet.

OK, getting off that because it's grossing me the hell out...

My other big issue with this story is how easily and readily Kong slips into the background and is forgotten, or at least, becomes forgettable.  Kong is, to use Farmer's own words, a myth for the modern age; he was a god on Skull Island, and as a 20-foot gorilla, at least deserves to be paid attention to.  But Howller's mind wanders too readily to how sexy and desirable he, at 13, thought his Aunt Thea was, how embarrassed he was about wetting his pants, his memories of seeing Doc and the Shadow up close, and of course his horror and shock upon discovering that his Aunt Thea was the woman Kong picked up and dropped upon recognizing her as "not-Ann."  Kong isn't the focus of the story; Howller is.  And Kong's a god whom I feel deserves better than that.

"The Golden Anaconda" -- Elmer Brown Mason (POPULAR MAGAZINE, February 20, 1916)

Largely forgotten by the passage of time, Elmer Brown Mason (1877-1955) deserves rediscovery.  While far from prolific and with no novels to his name, Mason's adventure stories ring with an air of authenticity lacking from many author's works.  Employed as a government entomologist, Mason traveled the globe, writing stories set in places he visited.  Several of these stories starred the recurring guide and adventurer Isaiah Ezekial "Wandering" Smith, a man whose sole profession was to help any "who wants to go after something unusual in a strange place." As such, Wandering Smith finds himself, over the course of several stories, in areas ranging from the Louisiana bayous to the heart of the Amazon.  Unfortunately, Mason's writing career was cut short after being gassed in WWI; while he survived, he was left debilitated to an unknown degree and his sense of adventure left him - and his stories.  Today's story from The Big Book of Adventure Stories finds Smith deep in the Amazon with a Scotsman and some big snakes...

Professor Ritchie "Reddy" McKee - a short-statured biologist whose flaming red hair and argumentative nature might as well be a neon billboard proclaiming "SCOTTISH!" over his head - has convinced Wandering to form an expedition into the depths of the Amazon with him in pursuit of anacondas for American zoos.  The two of them, along with Wandering's cook, Mose and four Mestizo guides, are having a fine time of it -- until "Hiram Jones" shows up.

Claiming to be an orchid hunter, "Jones" narrowly escapes a band of enraged headhunters by jumping on to Wandering's boat with a story that he upset the locals by grabbing an orchid growing in one of their graveyards.  Wandering can readily see through the fake name, and has his eye on "Jones," expecting a lot more trouble from him to come.

Things start looking up once Wandering and "Reddy" befriend a local tribe and enlist their aid in catching anacondas by the dozens.  When Reddy starts asking about other snake species, especially the venomous Fer-de-Lance, the natives shake their heads, explaining that all other snakes were captured and taken to the "land of the dead" long ago.

The road to Hell may be paved with good intentions, but the road to the land of the dead is paved with megalithic stone blocks carved to resemble an anaconda twelve miles long, and at the end, Wandering and Reddy are flabbergasted to discover a white girl, nude except for a golden anaconda coiled around her body, being worshipped as a goddess.  And when "Jones" finds her cache of rubies, things become very dangerous for our snake-hunting friends...

"The Golden Anaconda" is a real winner, and I'm eager to acquaint myself with more of Elmer Brown Mason's stories.  The atmosphere of the tale is electric, and you can practically smell the jungle around the characters.  The characters are appropriately larger than life (especially the diminutive Reddy) but still find themselves in awe of what they encounter in the jungle, lending a mythic air to the place that just feels right.

The story is narrated by Smith as if he's telling it to us over drinks, and I really appreciated getting inside his head, seeing what he's thinking and his struggles regarding what is "right" to do about "Jones."

I have a soft spot for the Jungle Goddess archetype, from Ayesha in H. Rider Haggard's classic She to Marvel Comics' Shanna the She-Devil, and the nameless woman appearing in "The Golden Anaconda" represents an interesting break from the traditional formula.  Instead of a leopard-skin bikini, she's draped in the shimmering coils of a live, seemingly-tame (but woe betide he who lays a hand on her) anaconda; instead of speaking imperiously or grunting in broken "Me Tarzan, You Jane" English, she's mute; and instead of feral or domineering she's girlish and sweet.  It's an interesting change of pace, and I like it.

"Sredni Vashtar" -- Saki (H.H. Munro; THE CHRONICLES OF CLOVIS, 1911)

Happy Halloween, readers! While I'd originally intended to mark today by taking a break from The Big Book of Adventure Stories and talking about Robert E. Howard's classic Southern Gothic tale of revenge and undeath, "Pigeons from Hell," I happened to look ahead in The Big Book and was delighted at what I saw was next.  I'd originally discovered the works of Saki (real name: H.H. Munro) at least a dozen years ago in a slim book in my grandmother's house; the book included today's story which, like many of Saki's works, satirized his native Edwardian England, with a macabre twist to it all.  When I saw that "Sredni Vashtar" would fall on Halloween if I stuck with The Big Book of Adventure Stories, I knew I had to leave Howard aside for the time being and talk about this story.  Short, sweet and gruesome, this story (and several of Saki's other tales) can be read for free here.

Conradin is a sickly ten year old boy, and according to the doctors, unlikely to live another six months.  He lives in the care of his cousin, Ms. De Ropp, whom he privately refers to simply as "the Woman."  Overbearing and distasteful, the Woman's ministrations strike Conradin as cruel, pointless, and likely the cause of his deterioration.  For her part, while she would never openly admit to disliking Conradin, she'll admit to feeling no displeasure at depriving him of things that might be "bad" for him.

Conradin has two "friends," both of whom live in a disused gardener's shed at the back of the Woman's property.  The first, dubbed Henrietta, is a mature hen; the second is Sredni Vashtar, a "polecat-ferret" kept locked in a hutch, discreetly purchased from the local butcher's boy.  In Conradin's lonely mind, Sredni Vashtar assumes the proportions of a diabolic god, and Conradin comes to worship the beast as an idol.

On the grounds that being out in the shed so much can't be good for the boy, the Woman has Henrietta removed and sold; upon noticing that the removal of the hen does not stop Conradin from visiting the shed, she realizes that something is locked in the hutch.  Assuming the hutch to contain guinea pigs, the Woman goes to clear them out, as Conradin watches in horror and dejection from the house.  But Conradin has been praying to Sredni Vashtar, and perhaps today's the day his prayers are answered...

"Sredni Vashtar," like its eponymous polecat-ferret, is proof of the power that can be contained in small packages.  In The Big Book of Adventure Stories, "Sredni Vashtar" clocks in at just three pages but it's a powerful tale that just sticks to you forever, you know?

The story is told entirely from Conradin's perspective, and he seems like a fairly hale and healthy boy (or at least, perceives himself as such), and it's hard to get a sense of him as sickly; I, at least, came away from the story with the nagging idea that Conradin's supposed sickness is an imaginary hobgoblin, created and enforced by the Woman to keep Conradin quiet, contained and inoffensive.  The fact that she forbids him the luxury of having toast on the equal grounds of it A) being "bad for him" and B) because it's too much trouble to make, I think lends credence to this idea that his "illness" is something she's created.  His satisfaction as he sits in the dining room, defiantly making himself buttered toast, while listening to the maid in the other room debating with the rest of the household staff how to tell him his cousin's run afoul of Sredni Vashtar seems like the medicine he needed all along.

While an iconic and popular tale, I feel like "Sredni Vashtar" lacks some of the twistedness that makes many of Saki's tales so much fun.  As soon as you know Conradin has an overbearing guardian and a pet ferret, you know she's going to meet a bad end by said ferret; compare with a story like, say, "The Interlopers," where just as things are starting to look up for the characters, things turn worse then ever.