This is another of the Edgar Rice Burroughs novels I never got around to reading back in the days when I was a big Burroughs fan. THE MONSTER MEN is one of his earlier efforts, his sixth novel, published complete under the title “A Man Without a Soul”, in the November 1913 issue of the pulp THE ALL-STORY.
It’s a Mad Scientist yarn, as eccentric Professor Arthur Maxon seeks to
discover the secret of life and create it in a laboratory. After several
failures, he gives up the effort, only to find himself drawn irresistably back
to it. For his new experiments, he travels to an isolated island off the coast
of Borneo, along with his beautiful daughter Virginia and his sinister,
ambitious assistant, Dr. von Horn. The professor is successful, but only to a
certain extent. He’s able to create living, human-like creatures in his lab,
but they turn out to be misshapen monsters almost incapable of human thought.
After a dozen of these misbegotten failures—which, still living, he keeps
penned up in a compound—he has high hopes for Number Thirteen (that being the
original title of this novel when Burroughs wrote it, I believe). Number
Thirteen is going to be different.
And so he is, not only a magnificent physical specimen but also capable of
learning at a rapid rate, so that within weeks he’s almost as well educated as
a normal man. But then trouble erupts due to the scheming of the evil Dr. von
Horn, as well as a Malay pirate with a yen for the professor’s beautiful
daughter and various ne’er-do-wells who have their eye on a mysterious chest
they believe to be full of gold. Before you know it, everybody is galloping
around the island fighting each other, and the pirate kidnaps Virginia and
takes off for the jungles of Borneo with her. However, Number Thirteen, now
calling himself Bulan, goes after them, aided by a bizarre little army of his
own. Bulan, you see, has also fallen in love with Virginia . . .
THE MONSTER MEN certainly isn’t lacking for action. I’ve seen it described as “Tarzan Meets Dr. Moreau”, and while that’s not exactly accurate, it does somewhat capture the feel of this novel. One of Burroughs’ trademarks is having a lot of characters doing different things at once, in a relatively small area and period of time, and at this stage of his career, I don’t think he was as in control of the technique as he was later on. As a result, the plot is a little hard to follow at times and is overloaded with coincidences. That’s forgivable, though, because THE MONSTER MEN has such a great feeling of fun and enthusiasm about it. The big twist at the end is blatantly telegraphed early on, but again, it doesn’t really matter. The appeal of this book is that it’s an action-packed romp with some nice, eerie scenes to break up the running around and fighting.
I had a fine time reading THE MONSTER MEN. I’m glad that proved to be the case, because I found the last two Burroughs stories I read a little disappointing and had begun to wonder if he was one of those authors from my early years whose work wasn’t going to hold up for me. Now I know that’s not the case, so I’m glad I have quite a few unread ERB novels to get to. Some of them, I may not like, but I’ll bet many of them are going to be enjoyable. THE MONSTER MEN certainly was.
10 comments:
Thanks for readin' and reviewing' this un, James. I too bought that Ace edition years ago and never got around to reading it. But you've piqued my interest and now I know it'll be worth the time!
THE MONSTER MEN has long been one of my favorite non-Tarzans from Mr. Burroughs. I re-read it again a couple yeas ago and thought it held up pretty well.
I'll be adding this one to my shopping list. I do like mad scientists.
I went through an intense Burroughs Phase when I was 13, read everything I could get my hands on (except Tarzan and John Carter, weirdly enough, but that’s another story). Ace was in the middle of a major ERB re-issue program at the time, with matching All-new trade dress, many of the books featuring startlingly beautiful new Frazetta cover paintings. THE MONSTER MEN had a new cover but it was by Enrich Torres, not Frazetta, and it looked like a horror novel instead of an science-fantasy adventure. I was reading horror books at the time too, but that wasn’t what I wanted from ERB, so I didn’t snag it right away.
After I’d worked my way thru the Pellucidar and Caspak books, the Moon trilogy, the Mucker books etc, I finally took a chance on MONSTER MEN but bounced off it after just a few chapters. I’ve tried it again several times over the years — once during October, in the hopes that it’s Old Timey Mad Scientist / Monster vibe would grab me while I was in the Halloween Mood — but so far, it hasn’t happened. I haven’t given up on Bulan and Co. though! As often happens, your enthusiastic review makes it sound like fun, so maybe I’ll give it another go sooner than later.
And I know exactly what you mean about re-visiting favorite ERB books later in life, hoping that the Suck Fairy hasn’t gotten to them in the meantime. The first two Pellucidar books were among my absolute favorites back in the day, but they seemed much less magical on my last re-read. And as you said, the insane coincidences and the formulaic ‘capture / chase / rescue / rinse and repeat’ plotting sometimes work but sometimes…ehhh, not so much.
To a degree, I don’t really blame the books themselves. It’s like I have to be in just the right frame of mind to appreciate ERB’s decidedly old-fashioned charms; sometimes I can get in the ‘zone’ and sometimes I just can’t. Obviously, some of the books ARE just ‘better’ than others and always were; I’ve always felt the Venus books as a whole were less successful than most of his other series, and i doubt singletons like THE OUTLAW OF TORN and THE MAD KING were ever in any ERB fan’s Top Ten. But within the last 20 or 30 years or so, I’ve enjoyed books from all of his series (yes, including Tarzan and Barsoom) to varying degrees, but seemingly almost at random, if that makes sense.
The one book that I’ve had the most success with over the years is THE MOON MAID (the first novel, not the entire trilogy). For whatever reason, I’ve re-read it more than any of his other books, and if it doesn’t quite transport me with the same immersive power that it did in 1974, well, few things DO. This one still works for me better than most.
Well, that was a much more detailed ramble than I’d intended! Sorry about that. Anyhow — good review, James:)
b.t.
Thanks for that commentary, B.T. A year or so ago, I decided to give the Pellucidar series a try since I know a lot of people really like it and I'd never read any of them. So I read the first one and it just . . . didn't grab me. I haven't gone back to the series. The only Venus book I've read is the fourth one, ESCAPE ON VENUS, and that was more than 50 years ago. I remember liking it then, so again, within the past year, I figured I'd start that series from the first. Couldn't get into it. But I intend to try again on both of those series.
I know I read THE MOON MAID, but it was in that same late Sixties timeframe. I recall not being as fond of it as I was of Tarzan and John Carter. But that's another one I want to revisit to see if works better for me now, as are the two Mucker books, which I considered okay at best back then. I liked THE OUTLAW OF TORN but haven't gotten to THE MAD KING yet. Nor have I read the two Apache books, but I remember really liking THE DEPUTY SHERIFF OF COMANCHE COUNTY and THE BANDIT OF HELL'S BEND. That's one of the great things about Burroughs, there's such a wide range of material, and there's some real worth to his writings (despite liking or not liking this book or that book), or else we wouldn't still be talking about them.
One of my non-series favorites. As noted before, I was Burroughs crazy as a child in late 60s-early 70s. I find the same unevenness re-visiting them in later years. Some fabulous, some just fun and some not so great. John Carter and Tarzan were my earliest intro and they generally hold up (though John Carter seems a bit of a jerk to adult me). I also recently enjoyed the Carson series, even if it clearly not as good (it does have quite a bit of humor and politics).
I really do need to try the Venus series again.
THE MONSTER MEN was among the first 10 or so ERBs I read. I loved it at the time. The setting was great--ERB would return to it three decades later with TARZAN AND THE 'FOREIGN' LEGION. That novel was where I first learned about the Dayak headhunting culture. I still love the whole concept.
What I wish ERB had done was concentrate/add a little more on the other 'Numbers', the freakish ones. Bulan treats them like cannon fodder, but I always found them really interesting. Now, I want to state that I'm really not one who always roots for the 'monsters' in a story. You see this reader mindset a LOT nowadays, with stories telling the 'other side' of more famous stories (or thinly-veiled versions of that).
No, it's just that the other Numbers/monsters really WERE in a 'world they did not create'. They were utterly screwed from the get-go. You see them fall, one by one, generally in some way defending Virginia Mason. There seemed to be a spark of something good in them. I just thought that ERB could've done a little more to individuate and 'humanize' them. As monstrous as they were, most had some claim to being 'heroes'. In fact, it just occurred to me that this is practically a 'Dirty Dozen' scenario where generally bad characters get a chance for redemption by fighting and dying for a greater good.
ERB wrote this very early on. His creative fires were burning hot, but his authorial skills, maybe, needed a few more years to really handle the concept fully.
Thanks for reviewing this, Jim.
I hadn't thought about it, but yes, this book is definitely a Dirty Dozen type of scenario.
TARZAN AND THE FOREIGN LEGION is one of my favorites in that series. The Tarzan novels get very repetitive after a while, but there are a couple of standouts in the later ones, TARZAN AND THE FOREIGN LEGION and TARZAN AND THE LION MAN.
It's a wild mish-mosh of a story but still entertaining. Virginia is quite the plucky heroine, taking over a machine gun in her second scene to pour fire on a boat full of attacking pirates. When she's captured it turns into a "Ransom Of Red Chief" situation insofar as the pirates need to keep her alive as a hostage but she keeps breaking free and wreaking havoc on them. This would be a great ERB novel to adapt into a film.
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