Review: Queen of the Panther World

Queen of the Panther World by Berkeley Livingston
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A whimsical fantasy adventure with the weird inclusion of the author writing himself into the story as the hero. Berleley and his buddy meet a beautiful and mysterious woman at the zoo of all places and then are transported to the woman's world where her tribe lead by women riding panthers and are in a battle with a tribe lead by men who ride lizards. Several capture/escape set pieces drive the narrative and the women are aided by Berk and his friend who have the strength of several men. Not surprisingly the bosom buddies fall in love with a couple of beauties and pledge their honor in the ensuing battles. The author breaks the third wall referencing his submission deadlines and magazine publisher Ray Palmer, and several 1940s pop culture observations. Silly and fun in the tradition of the fantasy pulps of the times, I give this one three stars.

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Review: The Moon Maid

The Moon Maid by Edgar Rice Burroughs
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Evidently Burroughs wrote this as a metaphorical response to American Communists, which he abhorred, although I wasn’t able to figure out the connection. Set in the not-too-distant future USA astronauts on a mission to Mars are maliciously crash landed into a crater on the moon by saboteur Orthis, a sociopath with a vendetta for hero Julian. Discovering a vast lost civilization Julian gets involved is several capture/escape set pieces, meeting the beautiful titular Moon Maid in the process and culminating in a massive battle between warring cities – and the return of Orthis. This is a fairly typical Burroughs pulp space opera/romance with an emphasis on world building and adventure. It didn’t leave me with much enthusiasm for reading the next two entries in the three book series, so it was just reliably serviceable in the ERB scale. I give it three stars.

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Review: The Chessmen of Mars

The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Tara of Helium, young daughter of John Carter and Dejah Thoris, is serious bad-ass, killing rapists and dangerous eunuchs, and mouthing off to anyone who tries to disrespect her. Burroughs was clearly before his time when it came to bad-ass women. This pretty much follows the theme of the previous Mars stories, adventures, battles, meeting strange new Barsoom races, except this time it's Tara, and she is completely lost after being blown across the planet on her flier in a horrific wind storm, much like Dorothy in Oz. Sufficiently interesting and entertaining for a story over 100 years old, although the stilted and flowery prose of the time might be off-putting. Again the strength of the Mars books is the exquisite world building that ERB is so good at with many great examples. The story is not without weaknesses. The male hero, and love interest, goes by three different names, which can be confusing. All of the characters in the main location have names formatted like A-AAA, and similar enough to add to the confusion. It also get a bit repetitive with several capture-rescue set pieces. Pretty good book in the Barsoom series. I give it three stars.

The book is in the public domain and available here.

Review: The First Kothar the Barbarian MEGAPACK®: 3 Sword and Sorcery Novels

The First Kothar the Barbarian MEGAPACK®: 3 Sword and Sorcery Novels by Gardner F. Fox
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Gardner Fox was amazingly prolific, writing thousands of comic books, plus a slew of novels and short stories. During the Sword and Sorcery revival in the 1960s, arguably triggered by Lancer republishing Robert E Howard’s Conan pulp stories, Fox wrote these Kothar Barbarian Swordsman stories. Sure, they’re directive as hell, and would have fit right in with Weird Tales in the 1930s, although that’s no reason to be dismissive. All five of the stories republished in these Wildside Press Megapacks are equally fun and entertaining reads. All clearly following in the Howard school of pulp fiction heroics the stories are action-packed and fast moving with no elements of high fantasy to bog things down. Reminded me a lot of video games or Dungeon and Dragons adventures when the adventurer explores a magical world, encountering monster or supernatural beings, then a final battle with the Big Bad or Boss to conclude. A terrific collection of fun and pulpy stories that are well worth the bargain ebook pricing.

The First Megapack at Wildside Press

The Second Megapack at Wildside Press

Pulpgen Archive Now Online

Something that I accomplished while quarantined with COVID-19 was to bring the Pulpgen documents back online.

Pulpgen was a labor of love of many individuals to reproduce scanned pulp magazine articles digitally - rendering them as clean documents rather than yellowed scans using optical character recognition and various Adobe tools and the PDF format. The website was online from 2002 until 2021 when it unexpectedly went offline - at the time containing over 2200+ documents.

The original Pulgen static HTML files are archived at this link thanks to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

The 2200+ PDF documents have fortunately been archived several places including here. You can navigate the document repository and download or read online these treasured documents using the Browse and Search links.

Sure, I tried to keep the same minimalist aesthetic of the original site (ugly) and maybe I'll modernize it a bit someday, and yeah, I need to cleanup some redundancies and author names still. A work in progress.

Check out the Pulpgen Archive.

Review: Thuvia, Maid of Mars

Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A beautiful young princess is kidnapped and needs to be rescued by a heroic Earth/Mars adventurer is once again the plot here with the hero being Carthoris, the son of John Carter and Dejah Thoris (who are now perhaps too old or important for this type of thing) and the princess being Thuvia, a character from the previous books in the series. To complicate matters Thuvia’s hand has been promised to another, of course Carthoris is in love with her, and then he is framed for her kidnapping which threatens a global war. Again the meat of the story is discovery and adventure providing Carthoris with exciting travels across Barsoom meeting new creatures and civilizations from ERB’s amazing imagination. I particularly like the ancient imaginary bowmen that could materialize and take substance and the then greatest of them becomes a sentient being and an ally to Carthoris. The stilted dialog and prose, and the predictability of the story took away some of the enjoyment here and I give this entry three stars.

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Review: The Warlord of Mars

The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Takes up immediately following the cliffhanger at the end of Gods of Mars. John Carter has remained on Mars and is consumed with rescuing Dejah Thoris and Thuvia from the year-long trap. Unfortunately the troublesome Thule and First Born captors escape with them first and Carter becomes the pursuer with plenty of near miss rescues and exciting escapes. Burroughs continues with the blistering pace of the previous book and introduces yet another lost race of Barsoom, yellow skinned humanoids. A very worthy final chapter to the Barsoom trilogy, just as imaginative and exciting as the preceding stories and perhaps the best of the three. The epic battle at the end and the followup tie up everything nicely. Loved it. Five stars.

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Review: The Gods of Mars

The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

John Carter, reluctantly transported back to Earth at the end of PRINCESS OF MARS, manages to get back to Mars after several years and ends up in the Barsoom forbidden zone fighting a slew of plant and ape monsters, and a surprise meet up with his pal the green Tars Tarkas the Jeddak of Thark. The novel then races at breakneck speed through fights, captures and escapes, and epic battles. ERBs world building skills are exceptional and he introduces more Barsoom races with their histories, imaginative foreign landscapes, and creatures. The character Thuvia is introduced and she will play a bigger part in the series going forward. Bear in mind that the stilted and florid early 20th century style of prose might pose a barrier to some readers. It’s clearly worth the effort to accommodate the language and enjoy this terrific sci-fi adventure novel.

This work is in the public domain and freely available from https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64

 Haiku: The Devil's Dooryard

 

The Devil's Dooryard

by Wilbur Coleman Tuttle

 

  

 

Action and Chuckles
Hashknife and Sleepy style.
Bullets and Rustlers collide.

Now in the public Domain

Review: The Lost Continent

The Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Originally published as BEYOND THIRTY in All Around Magazine in 1915 the short novel was then un-published until 1955 when Ace released the mass market ERB paperbacks re-titling it as THE LOST CONTINENT. Sort of a post-apocalyptic Lost World story that tells of a period 200 years in the future where Europe has been decimated by war and has returned to tribal barbarism and overrun by jungle animals. The Panamerican narrator/hero is forced to cross the 30th parallel, which is strictly banned and enforced, and he ends up in England dealing with lions, tigers, and wolves, plus uncivilized natives including a beautiful princess, A pretty typical ERB adventure yarn with the flowery prose of the time and cardboard characters. The hero’s marriage to the queen of England was an unexpected and somewhat outlandish touch. An okay Lost World story that doesn't quite measure up to the Caspak and Pellucidar books.

In the public domain and freely available at Gutenberg.org

Review: The Death Riders

The Death Riders by Jackson Cole
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jim Hatfield, Texas Ranger, goes undercover while investigating some troubling reports of outlaw rustlers wearing luminous skull masks that have been terrorizing ranchers and townsfolk. Like most good pulp Westerns this one is an easy and entertaining read, well written and simply plotted with a nice few surprises, and it’s all tied up neatly at the end with Hatfield revealing his identity and then methodically describing how he was able to solve the mystery, much like a Golden Age Mystery detective. Like so many pulp Westerns it ends with a planned wedding. I found it a fun and comfortable read - perfect for a cold and snowy day in January.

James Reasoner posted a nice review with much more detail on his blog.

Available as ebook from Prologue Books and Amazon.

Review: Out of Time's Abyss

Out of Time's Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The third entry in Burroughs Caspak trilogy introduces a new heroic main character named Bradley, one of the crewmen from Fort Dinosaur. Bradley, Tom Billings and Tyler Bowen, the main characters from the first two books, are pretty much indistinguishable anyway. The story has been building up to an encounter with the mysterious and predatory flying Weiroo people and when Bradley is captured he becomes a one-man action hero in his battle to escape from his violent captors and rescue a lovely native woman. Burroughs does a terrific job answering the unresolved questions from the first two books, and tying up all the loose ends. Great pulp action/adventure storytelling from a master.

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Western Pulp: 10 Story Western - May 1940

I picked this one up at PulpFest primarily for the Harry Olmsted story, which I'm reading today. I can't say that I know much about the other writers that include Bart Cassidy, John G. Pearsol, Tom W. Blackburn, Moran Tudury, William Benton Johnson, Ruel McDaniel, Costa Carousso, Gunnison Steele, and H. M. S. Kemp, nor who painted this exciting cover.

Review: The Land That Time Forgot

The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The first book in Burroughs Caspak trilogy is one of the most famous of the “Lost World” type adventures and rightly so with high pulpy action that includes submarines, sabotage, prehistoric beasts, and romance. The linear narrative is provided by Tyler Bowen’s journal which he seals in a thermos and tosses into the ocean and the end, a nice setup for the next book. The inventive biology where tribes of men are at different stages of evolution is hinted at here which helps link the succeeding stories in this classic pulp adventure trilogy.

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Review: The People That Time Forgot

The People That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The second book in Burrough’s Caspak trilogy finds young Tom Billings mounting a expedition to find missing friend Tyler Bowen, who was lost in the previous novella. High adventure ensues with Billings partnering with a native girl to survive the various creatures and murderous tribes of the inhabitants of Caspak, where each tribe makes up a subset of human biological evolution. The book was written over 100 years ago has the stale prose of that time, although once I got past *that* annoyance the story sucked me in and I couldn’t put it down. The world-building and inventive biology were very impressive, and the story was teeming with adventure and action. The story requires dedicated reading due to the complexity and the odd names. If I had been reading another book concurrently I would surely gotten lost and stalled out.

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PulpFest 2019

Well I made my arrangements to attend PulpFest this year and am looking forward to it. This is the first time that I've attended in Pittsburgh as opposed to Columbus, so I'll be flying instead of driving. This may limit my haul since I'm not really interested in shipping stuff back. I've got too much stuff that I need to read now anyway, right? The only thing I'm missing is now transportation from the the airport to the hotel and back. I guess that a taxi or Uber will work unless anyone knows something more cost effective.

Here a link to the event page with lots of terrific articles about the event and Pulp magazines and their influences in general - http://www.pulpfest.com/

Review: The Polar Treasure

The Polar Treasure by Kenneth Robeson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Solidly and somewhat insanely plotted classic Pulp story with Doc Savage and his team competing with two rival gangs of thugs to locate a treasure that is lost in the Arctic from a map invisibly tattooed on a blind violinists back. The novel picks up speed in the last third after Doc loses his team and is forced to fend for himself against violent criminals, drugged Eskimos, and barehanded against a polar bear. Great stuff.

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"Verdict" Pulp magazine from July, 1953

Includes stories from several pulp-noir writers including Cornell Woolrich, Dorothy B. Hughes, Bruno Fischer, and Henry Kane. Verdict - July, 1953

 

The Book of the Phantom Bullet

This movie ham named McBride acted the death scene very realistically--mostly because some sly sinister stinker had put a real bullet completely through his think-tank. And as foul luck would have it, Dan Turner was on the scene and having it demonstrated that the trigger-finger was quicker than his hawkshaw eye. From then on, Dan was busier than a confused dog in a flea circus . . . .

Download it here -  The Book of the PhantomBullet