"A Gentleman of Color" -- P.C. Wren (GOOD GESTES, 1929)

Beau Geste is perhaps the most famous story of the French Foreign Legion.  It's been filmed several times, most famously with Gary Cooper in the title role.  But author P.C. Wren didn't stop there; he wrote two sequel novels, Beau Sabreur and Beau Ideal, as well as a short story collection, Good Gestes, from which today's story derives, and a number of other Legion-related novels not starring Beau Geste and his brothers.  Something right off the bat that I thought was real interested is that Otto Penzler, in his introduction to the story, is careful to mention that the story was written in another time, one less politically-correct then our own, and that it contains elements that may offend modern readers.  There was no such warning before "The Wings of Kali," wherein the hero threw piglets at Muslim assassins to drive them away.  So why the warning here?

"A Gentleman of Color" concerns itself with Legionnaire Yato, a small, wiry Japanese man serving alongside the Geste boys.  A talented barber, artist, and fluent in English, French, Russian and German, Yato is as

inoffensive and polite as they come.  This, of course, attracts the ire of some of the more loutish members of the Legion.  An attempt to toss Yato in a blanket fails when Yato finally stoops to defending himself, beating three men silly and breaking the arm of Klingen, a fourth bully.

Klingen, an incredibly vain man, won't take the insult of a broken arm lightly, and begins a long campaign of verbal abuse and mean-spirited pranks on Yato, without actually touching the man.  He reminds Yato frequently and loudly that he is a colored man, and therefore inferior to white men, if he's a man at all.

The final straw comes when Klingen realizes that Yato visits one house in town fairly frequently.  Figuring he has a girl there, Klingen decides the ultimate insult would be to seduce her away from "the yellow monkey." Klingen being Klingen, his idea of "seduction" is to force himself on the girl he finds there and leave her sobbing in pain and shame when he's done.

When Yato gets wind of what happens, he plans to avenge the young lady very carefully.  And when he's done, Klingen will be the "gentleman of color"...

It seems so odd to me; of the three Foreign Legion stories presented in The Big Book of Adventure Stories, two are essentially comedies.  "Snake-Head" hinges on the fact that old Thibaut Corday has mistaken the legend of Perseus for a retelling of his own strange adventure, while "A Gentleman of Color"'s strength lies in its embodiment of Ambrose Bierce's statement that meekness is "uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while" and the irony that the titular "gentleman of color" is Klingen after suffering Yato's vengeance, rather than Yato himself.  It's odd to me because I don't see anything inherently funny about the French Foreign Legion; I would expect most Legionnaire fiction to focus on the hardships and the fighting, not on M*A*S*H* style hijinks.

"Suicide Patrol" -- George Surdez (ADVENTURE, August 1934)

George Surdez is perhaps best remembered as the man who invented "Russian Roulette."  The term first appeared in an eponymous story written by Surdez and published in Colliers' magazine in 1937, though Surdez describes a much deadlier version in which only one chamber is left empty before spinning the cylinder.  However, Surdez was also a prolific pulp writer in general, having published more than a hundred stories in Adventure magazine alone, many of them stories of the French Foreign Legion, such as today's story.  A longer one, this one actually took me two nights to read but I was too tired to do any writing last night, so here we are talking about it all in one go.

Legionnaire James "Jacques" Carroll of Fourth Company, stationed at Kasbah-Tadla, has a problem.  Well, two of them.  Two recent American recruits, Dacorda and Zerlich, seemingly

Cover courtesy Galactic Central

offer nothing but trouble.  Dacorda is quick to anger and prone to starting brawls, while Zerlich, an older man, is clearly not cut out for the Legion life.  During an engagement with an aggressive local tribe, Dacorda takes a tumble into a ravine, and Zerlich is first in after him -- not to rescue him, but to rifle through his belongings as he lies unconscious and bleeding, much to Carroll's consternation.

To make matters worse, during a barroom brawl Dacorda's rosary (referred to in the text as a scapular, though the description given is clearly of a rosary) is stolen, and Zerlich persuades Dacorda that Carroll is to blame.  Carroll, doing a little investigating, manages to retrieve the rosary and finds the identity of the thief -- Zerlich himself? What's going on here?

Somehow, the viewpoint character is the blandest of the bunch here.  Everyone else, it seems, has personality and quirks and things to make them interesting, while Carroll is just a joe schmoe everyman and it doesn't work for me.  Even characters who only get a couple paragraphs of "screen-time" feel more fleshed out and real then Carroll does.

The relationship between Dacorda and Zerlich is nuanced and fascinating, especially once Zerlich's secrets are revealed.  In some ways Dacorda comes across as the better man - as quick as he is to anger, he's quicker to forgive and holds no ill will against Zerlich for acting against him.  In a moment of seemingly-uncharacteristic wisdom, Dacorda explains that after what they've gone through during their short time in the Legion...it changes people, and changes their perspective and what they hold as valuable.

"Snake-Head" -- Theodore Roscoe (ARGOSY, January 7, 1939)

Greetings, readers, Bill here.  Well, my lovely long weekend with my lady has drawn to a close; she's on her way home to Maryland and I'm left with an empty bed and my own lackluster cooking.  But she'll be back to visit again next month, and we're looking at mid-January for her to move in with me, so that'll be nice and gives me something to look forward to.  For now, to fill her absence, let's take a look at a bit of pulp.  I actually read today's story on Wednesday night last week after posting "The Soul of a Regiment," and have been sitting on it for a couple days.  After this story, however, we'll be taking a short break from The Big Book of Adventure Stories; my reading this weekend, done on my Kindle while Gina was sleeping, consisted of Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male.  Also, during a trip to our local Barnes and Noble this weekend, I discovered that War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches has finally returned to print, meaning my decade-long quest to find a copy in good condition that wasn't priced into the stratosphere has come to a close.  I'm not sure if I'll return to The Big Book of Adventure Stories after reviewing Rogue Male or if I'll dive into Global Dispatches for a bit.  We'll see.  Today's story, a humorous tale of adventure amidst the French Foreign Legion, originally appeared in Argosy in the January 7, 1939 issue; also appearing in that issue was Burroughs' The Synthetic Men of Mars, which I'm sure I'll cover here someday.

Thibaut Corday, a crusty old storyteller known for his tales of service in the Legion, may have finally been outdone.  Finding a copy of Bulfinch's Mythology on a cafe table, Corday is flummoxed to discover that one of the stories told within is a story about him! Oh, sure, the author changed the names of the participants and "exaggerated" events some, but everything is essentially as he experienced it ten years earlier.

Corday's unnamed companion tries to explain that the book collects Greek myths, thousands of years old, but Corday is insistent -- this "Perseus" character is him! He launches into an explanation, telling of how he found himself isolated and cut off in a box canyon, captured by vicious Kabyle tribesmen after he wounded their Sheik's son.  He's to be put to horrible death: a starved rat placed on his stomach under a copper bowl, and a fire lit on top of the bowl to encourage the rat to dig down into his bowels.

Just before the rat starts digging, Corday is granted a reprieve; a delegation from another tribe arrives, one which was to bring the princess whom the Sheik's son was to marry.  They announce that they were attacked and the princess taken to the cave of the Snake-Woman, a monstrous hag whose evil eye turns all who behold it to stone.  When none of the Kabyles are willing to risk facing the Snake-Woman to retrieve the princess, Corday, in a fit of inspiration, bellows out that he will do it -- in exchange for his freedom.  The Sheik, giving Corday an evil eye of his own, agrees, but explains that no one has ever lived to escape the realm of the Snake-Woman...

Yes, it's a retelling of the story of Perseus and Medusa in 1920s North Africa, and you know what readers? It's a damn fine tale, and one that works out great.  I love that we're given a Weird Menace that wouldn't have been out of place in the shudder pulps like Weird Tales, and then the story turns around and, via the unnamed framing narrator to whom Corday's telling the story, a sound, rational explanation is given for it all -- not that Corday believes too much of the rational explanation, despite being the one to kill the Snake-Woman in pitched combat.  Corday, an uneducated and simple man, is content to believe in what his own eyes tell him is true and leaves it at that.

The story's pacing is tighter than anything, with the reader barely given time to draw breath between incidents of high adventure; Corday drawn into a sniper's duel with the Sheik's son, Corday stretched out and beginning to feel the heat of the fire and the claws of the rat, Corday being lowered on a rope into Stygian darkness to face off against the Snake-Woman with only a scimitar and a mirror at his disposal.  Roscoe's prose really makes the reader feel the tension of the race against time Corday has found himself in as he struggles blindly to make it through the cavern system inhabited by the Snake-Woman (and her hundreds of hissing pets) in time to save the princess from petrification.

Altus Press has been reprinting the Thibaut Corday stories in a set of collected editions.  I'm intrigued enough by what I saw of the character here that they're definitely going on my wish-list.

"The Soul of a Regiment" -- Talbot Mundy (ADVENTURE, February 1912)

Well, readers, this will be my last post until Sunday night.  Tomorrow afternoon my girlfriend's flying into town and I'll be too busy celebrating our anniversary to do much blogging.  But we'll see; she's always been very supportive of my writing and in the past has been more than happy to relax and watch Parks and Rec or nature documentaries while I write.  As is, I'm sure I'll still be reading in the evenings; it remains to be seen whether I'll get ahead on The Big Book of Adventure Stories or pick up something else to read for the weekend, something longer, so I can cover all my reading for the weekend in a single blog post.  I did pick up Geoffrey Household's novel Rogue Male recently, as well as a reprint of The Maltese Falcon.  I've got some Burroughs and E.E. "Doc" Smith on my Kindle as well.  However, speaking of The Big Book of Adventure Stories, we should address today's story.  Talbot Mundy (real name William Lancaster Gribbon; 1879-1940) was an English con-man turned upright citizen after moving to America and being "nearly killed in a mugging"; he turned to writing in 1911, selling his first story, the non-fictional "Pig-Sticking in India" and soon becoming a major contributor to Adventure Magazine and Argosy, creating such iconic stories as King of the Khyber Rifles and the adventures of James "Jimgrim" Grim; today's story, "The Soul of a Regiment," originally appeared in the February 1912 issue of Adventure and can be read here.

Sergeant-Major Billy Grogram has his work cut out for him; he could have retired on a nice pension, but out of familial obligation, he opted to continue his career with the British Army in North Africa, and found himself tasked with training the First Egyptian Foot in the ways of being soldiers of the Crown.  His commanding officers are doubtful, even dismissive of whether such a feat can be performed, but expect Grogram to do it anyways.

And Grogram does his duty and does it well; he trains his men to salute and to march in step, to follow orders and present arms.  He buys fifes and drums and trains them in their use, the better to march to.  And he teaches them about the Colours -- the regimental flag under which they will march, representative of their regiment's honor -- and why they must be revered and treated as sacred by the men who fight under them.

The First Egyptian Foot disappear in the chaos that was the Seige of Khartoum, and are assumed to have died to a man in the fighting.  But rumors persist of a strange white man followed by a group of native musicians, slowly making his way north...

That might be the most spine-straighteningly British thing I've ever read.  I'd mentioned previously, in my post on "The Man Who Would Be King," that I'm fascinated and fond of the Victorian Era; I feel like with this story, Mundy made Kipling look like a slouching American.  Grogram's extreme devotion to duty seems almost parodic -- comparable to Frederic's dedication to duty in The Pirates of Penzance -- as, starving and beaten, he escapes slavery and struggles and begs his way north to lead his regiment (what's left of it) back to British territory, but you know what? It's goddamn bracing, especially the final burst of the story in which every deprivation stamped or carved into Grogram's body by his ordeals is carefully delineated and the reader allowed to wonder over what sufferings he must have endured that we aren't told about.

"Nor Idolatry Blind the Eye" -- Gabriel Hunt (HUNT THROUGH THE CRADLE OF FEAR, 2009)

It's sometimes easy to forget that pulp continues to be written to this day.  Oh sure, there's Indiana Jones, of course, and Clive Cussler's ubiquitous paperbacks can be seen as a successor to the pulp adventure stories of days gone by, but 1930s throwback pulp is apparently the real deal.  There are people writing Shadow and Doc Savage stories to this day, Tarzan pastiches as well, and of course dreaming up new characters from old molds.  One of these is the two-fisted adventurer Gabriel Hunt, created by (surprisingly enough) Charles Ardai, CEO of internet service provider Juno.  The star of a series of novels, dictated by Hunt to various authors, (a nice throwback to how the Shadow stories were told to "Maxwell Grant" by the Shadow) Hunt is an independently wealthy globe-trotter with a woman in ever port and a side-iron that doesn't seem to stay cold for very long.  Today's story originally appeared as a backup feature for the novel Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear in 2009.

Malcolm Stewart used to be a soldier of fortune and an adventurer.  But a few years ago his wife died and he crawled deep into the bottle, drowning his sorrows in whatever cheap booze he could lay his hands on.  When a job offer comes, he sees it as just another source of income for his binges.  But his latest employer, a Mr. Burke, wants him to work dry.

This comes as no surprise, as Mr. Burke's job is one of delicacy and care; Burke was an archaeologist who found what he believes to be the Biblical Golden Calf, despite the Bible's claims that the Calf was ground to dust.  For laying a hand on the calf, the cult guarding it cut off Burke's hand, and for looking at it they sliced off his eyelids and dumped him in the desert to go blind, mad, and die.  Through sheer luck, Burke survived, though in no condition to continue the quest for the Calf.  To that end, he wants to hire Stewart.

Not sure if he believes in the Golden Calf, Stewart does believe in the money Burke has advanced him, and has promised as payment in return for the Calf, but doesn't forget that one of the qualifications that got him the job was "nothing left to lose."

Once in the desert, Stewart discovers the temple and cult guarding the Calf is quite real...and lording over them, invisible but sonorous, is an entity that introduces itself as "brothergod to the Lord you worship, and have been since men first spoke of gods.  I am many-named: men call me Melech, and Molekh, and Moloch; I have been called Legion, and Horror, and Beast, in fifty tongues, and fifty times fifty, but men also call me Father, and Master, and Beloved." Moloch offers Stewart a deal; Stewart's wife will be restored to him, if he will but bow down, and worship Moloch as a "god of might."

And after all, Stewart has nothing left to lose.

This was wonderful.  It read like a more horror-oriented take on INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE, with its desert locale, hidden, trap-filled temple and sinister guardian cult -- and even in that an older man who has spent years looking for the icon of religious significance at tremendous cost emotionally and physically is forced to ask a younger, more virile man to take up the quest on his behalf, as Burke does to Stewart, calls to mind Henry Jones Sr.'s lifelong obsession with the Grail and Indiana's desperate race to get the grail to save his life.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a Lovecraftian take on THE LAST CRUSADE, because I don't believe for a second that Lovecraft could have written a word of this; though it does remind me of some of Robert E. Howard's Mythos fiction, in which square-jawed, stalwart toughs are brought face to face with cosmic horror and escape through a mixture of luck and chutzpah.

While Moloch is presented in the story strictly in terms of a Judeo-Christian framework (and its introduction, quoted above, might be the best of its sort I've seen since the Rolling Stones released "Sympathy for the Devil"!), I can't help but suspect that this is a ploy; Moloch, as written, strikes me as something far older than Christianity, or Judaism, or possibly humanity as a whole, something that has learned how to adapt and adopt different personas with different eras to better ensnare the unwary.  Moloch is something like a cosmic anglerfish, a monster that uses its victims' own psychology and worldview against them.  And I love this.  I love the idea of a monstrous "god" that understands psychology and uses that knowledge to lure and corrupt.  Too many times I've seen Cthulhu presented as a slavering tentacled Godzilla, hungry for brains/souls, and I feel this does a disservice to Lovecraft's original concept of the Great Old One.  Moloch, in the tantalizing glimpses we're given in the story, is a Yog-Sothoth or Nyarlathotep figure done right, as far as I'm concerned.

I can't speak for the Gabriel Hunt novels themselves, but I really enjoyed "Nor Idolatry Blind the Eye" and call it worth checking out.

"Peace Waits at Marokee" -- H. Bedford-Jones (ADVENTURE, November 1940)

I hope you'll forgive me, readers (or reader, as the case may be), if I break from my self-appointed schedule of one post per day for a bit; I'm working eleven days straight this week, long hours, to complete a special project at work, and I'm currently eight days in without a break.  This will be followed by a three-day weekend during which time I'll be with my girlfriend, and as such won't be spending much time on the computer.  That being said, today's story is from the pen of H. Bedford-Jones, often called the "King of the Pulps" for his prolific output -- somewhere in the vicinity of 1400 short stories and 80 novels, but who's counting? Set during the Second World War in North Africa, "Peace Waits at Marokee" was originally published in Adventure magazine in November 1940 before being reprinted here, in The Big Book of Adventure Stories.

By some small miracle, gunner Jean Facini escaped death in a fiery plane crash, guiding the plane in to a blind landing, managing to extricate himself from the plane before it burst into flames.  As he watches it burn, another plane - an English bomber - comes to a crashing halt nearby.  Three men tumble out, and introductions are simple: ANZAC pilot Jock Erne, reserved photographer Lance, and Cockney gunner Hawkins.

Bandaging their wounds, the four men decide to set out for the English outpost at Marokee; three days' hike across the burning desert sands, but it's their one hope for survival.  However, what the three Brits don't know is that Facini is a Fifth Columnist; while technically a Frenchman, he's Savoyard French, and would like nothing better for the Savoy to be returned to Italian control.  And he knows that Marokee was taken in a surprise attack by the Italians two days ago...

I don't have a huge amount to say here; not because the story's not good or not interesting (it is, in fact, absolutely gripping) but because I'm not familiar enough with spy fiction during this period to comment knowledgeably about its place in that lineage.

And arguably, while ostensibly a spy story and a war story, there's little emphasis placed on Facini's Fifth Column activities or the war itself; it's a story about men from two sides of a conflict (albeit unbeknownst to most of them that this is the case) forced to put aside their differences and work together against a common enemy - in this case, the desert with all its hazards; heat, dehydration, sunstroke, scorpions, jagged rocks...

Facini is our viewpoint character, and rather than being simply a two-dimensional sneering villain, he's shown to be a relatively complex character that ultimately garners our sympathy and even admiration.  We're given enough to get an idea of what led him to side with the Fascists - dissatisfaction with French rule of his province and a desire, most likely fueled by nostalgia - not his own, as he's depicted as too young a man to remember a time before French possession of Savoy, but perhaps based on wistful reminisces of older family members as well, perhaps, as an idealized unified Italian state as envisioned by Garibaldi at the same time as the French annexation.

Given his output, I'm sure I'll be seeing a lot more from H. Bedford-Jones to come in writing this blog.  I'm looking forward to it.

"The Soul of a Turk" -- Achmed Abdullah (ALIEN SOULS, 1922)

Achmed Abdullah was the pen name of Alexander Nicholayevitch Romanoff -- the son of Grand Duke Nicholas Romanoff, a cousin of the Tsar, and Princess Nourmahal Durani, daughter of the Amir of Afghanistan.  This makes him the most aristocratic author we've had on BPaLGM to date, though he was hardly an active member of the Russian royal family; his mother tried to poison his father over his various dalliances, leading to a divorce and young Alexander being raised by an uncle who opted to convert young Alexander from Russian Orthodox to Islam.  After graduating from Eton, he joined the British Army and served extensively in the Near and Far East, building an impressive knowledge of Oriental customs and cultures that later served him as a novelist, playwright and screenwriter.  Today's story, the first of the "Sun and Sand" section of The Big Book of Adventure Stories, was originally published in Abdullah's collection Alien Souls, published 1922.

Mehmet el-Touati is Turkish peasant, in late middle-age when the call comes, chanted by the green-turbaned mullahs in the mosques.  The Russian is threatening to destroy Islam, they say, and holy war - jihad or, as it's spelled in the story, jehad -  is declared.  Mehmet el-Touati, along with ever able-bodied man in his village, signs up to do his share to defend the Faith from the Russians.  They form the Seventeenth Turkish Regiment.

And they march, and they fight the Armenians, because they are told that the Armenians are in league with the Russians.  And they march some more, and when the Armenians are all dead, they're sent after the Syrians.  And the Greeks.  And along the way they pick up some Prussian military officials, and the mullahs tell Mehmet and the rest of the peasants that this is right and just and good, because the Prussians are a distant sect of Islam, and their Emperor Wilhelm will help them smash the Russian and save the Faith.  Metmet has his doubts, but Islam is in trouble and the Faith must be protected.

Then one day Mehmet el-Touati hears something not meant for his ears.  He hears the Prussian drill sergeant serving his regiment as brevet-major speaking with his aides.  He hears tell that the Russians have been smashed, and now the Seventeenth Turkish Regiment is to be thrown against the British and French on the Western Front.

Mehmet el-Touati thinks about this.  He doesn't care about the British or the Americans.  He signed up to defend the Faith from the Russian.  With the Russian defeated, the Faith is safe and he can return home to his family.  But he knows how the Prussian deals with deserters.

Mehmet el-Touati thinks about this, and makes up his mind the kill the Prussian.

This is a very different take on the First World War then I'm used to.  Being an American, in history class I was never given more than the bare-bones outlines of the war before America's involvement, especially beyond the Western Front.  "The Soul of a Turk" instead looks at a theatre of the Great War forgotten by American historians - that of the Middle East, through which the German Empire aimed to cut off Russian military access to the rich oil and mineral deposits of the Middle East.  The Ottoman Empire, which made up much of the Middle East during this time, was allied with the German Empire against the Russians, hence the Prussian attaches to the Turkish soldiery on display here.

With its emphasis on the drudgery and discomfort of war and the insignificance of the individual , in some ways "The Soul of the Turk" reminds me of All Quiet on the Western Front, which would not be published until seven years after this story was; I'm not saying All Quiet was inspired by "The Soul of the Turk" in any way, just that both authors were likely drawing on similar experiences to guide their writing, though in Abdullah's case, filtered through a distinctly Middle Eastern belief in kismet and the guiding hand of fate in all things.

"Off the Mangrove Coast" -- Louis L'Amour (OFF THE MANGROVE COAST, 2000)

Best known as a prolific author of western fiction (having produced eighty-nine novels and fourteen short story collections at the time of his death, with several further collections to be released posthumously, in one of which today's story was first published), Louis L'Amour wrote prolifically across a number of genres, right up to the end of his life - his final novel before his death, The Haunted Mesa, being science-fiction.  Today's story is not one of L'Amour's "frontier stories," nor something as far out as The Haunted Mesa; rather, a story of greed and betrayal, the lack of honor among thieves, set against the crystalline waters of the South China Sea.  One of his later stories, "Off the Mangrove Coast" was found several years after L'Amour's passing in a carbon paper box L'Amour had taken from an aluminum factory in Germany at the end of WWII.  It was initially published in 2000, having not sold to the magazines during his lifetime, in an anthology collection under the same title.

"Off the Mangrove Coast" finds our nameless narrator -- known simply as "Scholar," as he'd brought a few books with him on his journey -- on a stolen yacht in the South China Sea with three unsavory characters from across the globe; Limey Johnson from Liverpool, Smoke Bassett from Port-au-Prince, and Long Jack from Sydney.  They're sailing in search of a sunken freighter Limey Johnson claims knowledge of, drowned with $50,000 in the captain's safe.  Each man dreams of what he's going to do with his share, $12,500...or will it be larger? For as Scholar reflects, "who can say what can or cannot happen in the wash of a weedy sea off the mangrove coast?"

The sunken freighter located, it falls to the Scholar and Limey to dive down for it, they being the only two with experience in a diving suit.  Braving hungry sharks and the inherent dangers in diving in ten fathoms of water, Scholar finds the worst perils are awaiting him back on the ship as he learns who's looking to kill for his share of the treasure...and who will put their life on the line to protect him.

With incredibly taut pacing and a lean, pared-down style, L'Amour has hit this one out of the park.  Add in an exotic locale described evocatively without losing that lean style, a bloodthirsty shark, double-crosses and a ghoulish method of sending a man to his death involving aforementioned shark...this story was a real winner, one of my favorites of the book so far.

The biggest highlight of the story, for me at least, was the climactic fight between Scholar and one of the men (won't tell you who) looking to kill him for his share of the treasure.  Scholar has managed to arm himself with a harpoon, but is hampered by the fact he's still wearing a bulky rubberized diving suit with weighted boots, and his opponent is unhindered and armed with a boat-hook -- which has a much longer reach then the harpoon.  L'Amour gives us a detailed break-down of Scholar analyzing the situation and figuring out how to fight effectively in these conditions, without losing high-octane pace the fight requires to maintain the reader's sense of tension.  It's really a great piece of work.

"The White Silence" -- Jack London (OVERLAND MONTHLY, February 1899)

When it comes to adventures in the frozen north, no name resounds louder than that of Jack London.  It's been over a decade and a half since I read The Call of The Wild, and it's still a story I can recall in vivid detail; London's prose is as stark and grim as the Yukon he so frequently wrote of.  Having completed the "Megalomania Rules" section of The Big Book of Adventure Stories, we've entered the realm of "Man Vs. Nature," and no author is better suited to lead the charge in that regard then London.  This short story -- profoundly short, filling just six pages -- is pretty typical London, concerning itself with the harshness of the frozen north and the imprint that harshness leaves on those humans wild-hearted enough to challenge it.  The story has, I believe, entered the public domain, and can be read in its entirety here, or as part of The Son of the Wolf, a collection of London's short fiction of the north, here.

"The White Silence" tells of three travelers: Mason; his wife Ruth, a Native American woman who has left her tribe to be with him; and a character known simply as Malamute Kid.  These three have been traveling together across the ice, and supplies are running low.  Their sled-dogs are turning vicious, snapping at each other and their masters, nearly wild enough with hunger to ignore the slash of a whip across their backs.  Their journey becomes harder when Mason is crippled by a falling tree, and their struggle to survive becomes that much more desperate.

I really don't have a whole lot to say about this story, other than to note that it's a brilliant author who can make the reader, curled up in bed under enough blankets to pin him to the mattress under their weight (as I tend to be when doing my reading), shiver in sympathetic chill at the descriptions of icy deprivations suffered by the characters.  "The White Silence" is not just a story about the cold, it's a story that's cold in and of itself.

Also of interest is the definite symbiosis between man and dog in the Yukon; neither can survive without the other in the White Silence; the story opens with Mason clearing ice from between a dog's toes with his teeth to prevent frostbite, while simultaneously discussing with Malamute Kid the somber fact that with food running low, they'll likely be eating some of the dogs before the journey's end.  It makes an impressive contrast, this scene of showing utmost care and devotion to his dogs while discussing the fact that some of them will have to die to keep himself alive.

"The Man Who Would Be King" -- Rudyard Kipling (THE PHANTOM RICKSHAW AND OTHER EERIE TALES, 1988)

Ah, Kipling.  I admit a certain fascination with the Victorian era, especially with the spread of the British Empire through its colonial holdings (a fascination aided and abetted, no doubt, by lingering family stories of an ancestor who, while serving with the British army in India, learned how to swallow live frogs - a talent he used to con people into buying him drinks every night at the pub once back in England), and as such, the writings of Kipling have always held some amount of fascination for me.  I can recite "Gunga Din" from memory (and my love for the 1939 film adaptation always surprises people who know me only through my writings on horror films) and more than once in my life I've psyched myself up for a bad day at school or work with an inspirational morning reading of "If--". Today's story was quite memorably filmed in 1975 with Sir Sean Connery and Sir Michael Caine in the leading roles, and I was quite pleased at the opportunity to read it.  I offer you the story via Project Gutenberg, to enjoy as well.

The narrator of the story (or rather, the framing story), unnamed by clearly a stand-in for Kipling himself, is crossing through India, broke but with no loss of enthusiasm for life.  In this state, he encounters two men, Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan, two adventurers ("Loafers," they call themselves) whom he stops from blackmailing a minor rajah.  Some time thereafter, Dravot and Carnehan stop in to see him at the newspaper office he's found himself working at in India.  Dravot and Carnehan want a favor from the unnamed narrator; bearing him no ill will for having spoiled their earlier plans, they ask his help in researching the area of Kafiristan, an obscure corner of Afghanistan.  In so doing, they reveal a plan they've conceived: They intend to make themselves kings of Kafiristan.  Armed with Dravot's skill with languages and 20 Martini-Henry rifles (at the time, the best rifles in the world), they intend to befriend a chieftain, help him vanquish his enemies, and then overthrow him and forge a kingdom of their own.

The next morning, the narrator sees Dravot and Carnehan off as they leave for Kafiristan.

Three years later, Carnehan crawls into the narrator's office, his hair stark white, his face haggard and drawn, his sanity shattered.  Bolstered by a sip or three of whiskey, Carnehan tells the story of how they became kings in Kafiristan -- or at least, how Dravot became a king in Kafiristan -- and how it was all shot to hell in an instant...

I will be the first to admit this is hardly proper "pulp" in terms of time-period, but with its exotic locale and hare-brained winner-take-all scheme, and the horrific violence that breaks out when it all falls apart, it's a story that has the heart of pulp.  Men shattered by their experiences and cruel tortures inflicted by strange foreigners were staples of pulp literature, and Kipling's take on them here is masterfully chilling.

More impressive is the story's basis in fact -- James "Rajah" Brooke accomplished exactly what Dravot and Carnehan set out to do, and was referenced in the story; Brooke had made himself ruler of the state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo and not only maintained his kingship, but cleared out nest after nest of Malay pirates, making the area safe for British commerce.  One of my favorite pieces of "new pulp" is Paul Malmont's The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, in which the question of where the line stands between what is "real" and what is "pulp" forms a major running debate threading through the action, and "The Man Who Would Be King," for my money, is a perfect example of that line.  In a world of real-life Dravots like James Brooke, William Walker and Cecil Rhodes, who's to say what's real and what's pulp?

"The Mighty Manslayer" -- Harold Lamb (ADVENTURE, October 15, 1918) PART 2

As promised, here we are with the second half of my write-up of Harold Lamb's novelette "The Mighty Manslayer," a saga of adventure in Central Asia in the 16th Century.

Diving right in from where we left off yesterday, Khlit the Cossack, Mir Turek the duplicitous merchant and the young girl Kerula have been taken captive by the Chinese army besieging the Tatar city of Altur Haiten, under the command of General Hang-Hi.

Brought before Hang-Hi and his advisers, Mir Turek falls to his knees, babbling about recognizing the significance of Khlit's sword and the esteem he could curry by bringing Khlit to Hang-Hi and the Mandarins of China.  And no, I'm not going to tell you, readers, the significance of the sword -- far be it from me to spoil the thrill of discovery you will have from reading the tale for yourselves! What Mir Turek doesn't mention is the discovery of Ghengis Khan's tomb, though Fogan Ultai, not a captive but an honored guest of the general's, is more than happy to tell that story to Hang-Hi and his assembled staff.  Mir Turek is crippled, Khlit is made a slave building earthworks for the Chinese assault on Altur Haiten, and Kerula is made part of Hang-Hi's household staff.

Secretly reclaiming his sword, Khlit is press-ganged into service leading Fogan Ultai and several of Hang-Hi's most trusted advisers to the tomb of Ghengis Khan.  Managing to avoid the wafting poisonous fumes himself, Khlit quickly regains his freedom and opts to use it in support of his Tatar brethren.  Sneaking back through Chinese lines, he infiltrates the city and lays out a plan to the khans of the Tatars...

Nope! That's all the synopsis you get! You want to know where the story goes from there, pick up the book and read it for yourself! I mean it, most of his books are pretty nicely priced on Amazon and many have Kindle editions as well.  And I'm not getting any sort of kickback from Amazon for doing this (though I probably should set something up where if you buy stuff through links I post I get Amazon credit), I'm endorsing these books because I'm so thoroughly impressed by "The Mighty Manslayer" and think Lamb's work deserves to be read more widely.

A word of warning to readers with more modern sensibilities; Lamb's descriptions of the Chinese generals is politically incorrect, to say the least.  With phrases like "behind the slant eyes lurked the cruelty of a conquering race" and advisers making suggestions regarding pouring molten silver into a captive's ears to convince him to talk, it's a reminder that at the time this was written, the notion of a "Yellow Peril," in which Asians by their very existence threatened expansion and conquest, was still very much part of the cultural zeitgeist.  However, it's worth noting that at the same time, Khlit is of Asiatic descent and is clearly the hero of the story, and many of Lamb's heroes are Chinese, Indian, Mongol or Muslim.  That the villains of "The Mighty Manslayer" are Chinese does not mean that the author was unequivocally racist towards the Chinese.

The conclusion of the story presents an aspect of Khlit that I personally really enjoyed, his self-effacing nature.  Though highly-skilled and intelligent, Khlit is a humble man at heart and despite learning some pretty earth-shattering things, seeing some incredible sights and taking part in what is, by his own admission, the most amazing battle of his life, at the end of the story he resumes simply being plain old Khlit, wandering across the steppes with his sword at his side and his pipe in his teeth, waiting to see where life takes him next.

"The Mighty Manslayer" -- Harold Lamb (ADVENTURE, October 15, 1918) PART 1

Yes, Part 1.  Harold Lamb's "The Mighty Manslayer" is a longer story than "The Golden Snare" or "The Devil in Iron," and I didn't have the opportunity to read through the entire tale last night.  I'd like to do a post on BPaLGM every day, and so I've decided to break this story into two posts; later on, when I get a few novels in (for example,The Big Book of Adventure Stories concludes with the complete novel Tarzan the Terrible), depending on how much free time my day-job leaves me I may be reviewing it chapter by chapter.  Following a foray into swords and sorcery with "The Devil in Iron," we're back into strictly historical fiction today -- better known for his nonfiction, especially the biography Ghengis Khan: The Emperor of All Men and The Crusades, Harold Lamb also dabbled in fiction based on his research, with characters of his own creation interacting against a background of historical fact, most notably, Khlit the Cossack, whom we'll meet today.  Lamb also became a screenwriter at the behest of Cecil B. DeMille, who initially hired Lamb as a technical consultant when DeMille decided to adapt The Crusades for the silver screen.

"The Mighty Manslayer" (Adventure magazine, October 15, 1918, later reprinted in The Curved Saber, one of two Khlit collections published in 1969) follows Khlit, an aging ex-Cossack of the 16th Century who took off as an independent adventurer when faced with the prospect of a Cossack retirement, as he enters the city of Samarkand.  A pair of elephant statuettes catch his eye in the stall of the merchant Mir Turek, who is not interested in selling them - though he is very interested in Khlit's saber (unraveling the mystery of the saber is a subplot that is resolved over the course of Lamb's saga of Khlit) and offers Khlit a deal: Khlit can have the two elephants as a gesture of good faith if he will agree to escort Mir Turek and his entourage through the mountains of Central Asia and the Gobi Desert to the city of Karakorum.

Khlit is suspicious but agrees, in the process buying and freeing a young slave girl named Kerula whom Mir Turek has been abusing.  Along the way, Khlit's suspicions regarding Mir Turek and his primary henchman, Fogan Ultai, grow, especially once they welcome a gylong (a term, now out of date I think, referring to a priest or lama, though Lamb uses it in a way that seems to imply that Mir Turek and Fogan Ultain view the gylong as having some degree of knowledge or proficiency with black magic as well) into the party and have him start menacing Kerula (who has tagged along, having nowhere else to go).

Ultimately, Khlit discovers that the true purpose of Mir Turek's expedition is to find the lost tomb of Ghengis Khan and loot it of the gold and jewels contained therein.  Upon discovering the tomb, however, Khlit and Mir Turek are set upon by the Onon Muren -- the ghosts of the Great Khan's followers, sacrificed to ensure the secrecy of his burial's location -- and driven away.  Lamb makes it pretty clear here that toxic, possibly volcanic, vapors are leaching up through the ground here, and the characters are interpreting the beginnings of suffocation they're experiencing as being strangled by ghosts.

The expedition largely a bust, food supplies low and Kerula running a fever, it's suggested that the group make contact with the Tatar city of Altur Haiten to replenish their supplies and buy medicine for Kerula.  The city is currently in the midst of a siege by Chinese forces, but Fogan Ultai is adamant he can lead them through and into the city.  Khlit, worried for Kerula's safety, has no choice but to agree.  He has no idea he's being led into a trap until he's clubbed across the back of his neck, born down to the ground and a sack thrown over his head.

Hot damn, this is some good stuff! Lamb's complete Cossack adventures (totaling around 40 loosely-linked novelettes) were reprinted in a four-volume set in 2009, available on Amazon in paperback or for the Kindle -- I just threw them into my Wish List with plans to get them for my Kindle sometime in the next few weeks, paychecks permitting, because his prose is every bit as engrossing as Howard's, his characters are rich and believable, and the overall atmosphere is evocative and brings 16th Century Central Asia to life in vivid detail.

I was kind of surprised that Khlit was so easily led into the ambush at the end of what I'd read last night.  He'd been so suspicious of Mir Turek and Fogan Ultai for so long -- literally, months within the context of the story -- and then to follow Fogan Ultai, a conniving, sneaky bastard from the start, without a care in the world into a Chinese war camp.

Looking forward to reading the rest of the story tonight!

"The Golden Snare" -- Farnham Bishop and Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (ADVENTURE, April 18, 1918)

A while back I picked up a big, luxurious collected volume of adventure stories, fittingly titled The Big Book of Adventure Stories, edited by Otto Penzler and published by Random House under their "Vintage Crime/Black Lizard" imprint.  It looked like it would be a good read, the cover illustration by Rafael DeSoto had topless Hawaiian women menacing a couple of white sailors (how'd they get those panthers to Hawaii?) and the price was right - plus, I'd previously read The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, similarly edited by Penzler and published under the Vintage Crime/Black Lizard imprint when my father bought it a couple years back, and enjoyed that book immensely.

Since I'm not really 100% sure what I intend to do with this blog, I figured a good start would be just going through this book, re-reading the stories contained therein, and talking about them.  While a number of the stories in this book are from before the "Pulp Era" is generally reckoned, I figure "Pulp" is as much an attitude as it is a cheap grade of paper.  If a story from 1880 or from 1980 has the right swaggering moxie to it, I'm willing to reckon it as Pulp.

The first story in the book is "The Golden Snare," by Farnham Bishop and Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, originally published in the April 18th, 1918 issue of Adventure magazine.  Bishop was best known for writing non-fiction books on the Mexican-American War and the development of the submarine, but in conjunction with Brodeur, a professor at Berkeley, he penned The Altar of the Legion, a novel set in Roman Britain, as well as a series of stories about Lady Fulvia, a young noblewoman at the time of the Second Crusade.  Her father, Count Arnulfo, rules the city of Rocca Forte in Sicily and her hand in marriage is highly sought-after.

In "The Golden Snare," Fulvia is aboard a galley returning to Rocca Forte following a successful pilgrimage to the shrine of Santa Lucia di Celsi.  At dawn, Fulvia's ship is rammed and sunk by another ship; much to her outrage, as the coast was to be patrolled by her father's vassals while he was fighting in the Crusades.  Thrown clear of the sinking ship, Fulvia swiftly realizes that these pirates are in fact two of her father's vassals and their supporters.

Unsure whether the two traitors intend to take her hostage to force concessions from her father or to force her to choose one of them to marry, Fulvia swims to shore and takes refuge as best she can while she considers her options.  Naked, alone and unarmed, she has nothing but her wits with which to protect her virtue and her father's sovereignty.

I haven't read too much strictly-historical pulp fiction, and most of what I've read in that subgenre has been the work of Robert E. Howard.  While "The Golden Snare" lacks some of Howard's trademark blood and thunder, it's no slouch either.  There's a sequence in which Fulvia lures one of her pursuers into a trap and drowns him that gets the pulse pounding.

More interestingly, Lady Fulvia is an early example of a female protagonist in the Pulps, and as such she's a clear predecessor to the likes of Jirel of Joiry and Red Sonya of Rogatino.  Given how manly-man macho the pulps generally were, it's really interesting to see these really powerful, independent female figures who not only don't need a man to save them from peril, but openly dismisses the role of Holly Homemaker to go her own way.  In a time when women didn't even have the vote yet, women like Fulvia, Jirel and Sonya are beyond astonishing.