Saturday Morning Western Pulp: New Western Magazine, May 1954

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. I don’t know who did the cover art, but I’m not very impressed with it. I don’t guess they can all be by Norman Saunders or Robert Stanley or Sam Cherry, can they? Not that I could do any better, I hasten to add. I have no artistic ability whatsoever, so maybe I shouldn’t be complaining.

Anyway, this is the next to last issue of NEW WESTERN, a run that lasted twenty years. It’s also a pulp that was on the stands after I was born, although being less than a year old at the time, I doubt if I ever saw a copy back then. It leads off with a short story, something of a rarity since most pulps had a novella or novelette in the first position. “Blood Star for Satan” is by William Heuman, one of my favorite Western authors. The title doesn’t fit the story at all, and neither does the blurb that some editor at Popular Publications came up with. However, the story itself is a taut little tale about an inexperienced lawman having to deal with a trio of train robbers who ride into his town. Heuman has never disappointed me and he does a fine job with this suspenseful story.

Next is “Blast a Red Trail!” by Robert L. Trimnell, billed as a novelette on the Table of Contents but closer to novella length in my opinion. And it packs in enough plot that it could almost have been a novel. The story opens with the protagonist, Blaine Sandford, in jail, charged with murdering a man he hired to help him on his freight line. Sandford is innocent, of course, and the man who was killed had dropped some hints about having enemies back in the town where he came from, two hundred miles away. So when Sandford escapes, that’s where he heads, determined to dig up the secrets of the murdered man’s past and uncover the real killer.

He winds up in the middle of a war between a freight line operated by a beautiful young woman known as The Wench and some hired killers and corrupt businessmen working with the railroad that wants to extend into the area. If that’s not enough, there’s a lot of psychological drama going on behind the scenes and the sort of family secrets that often show up in the work of Ross Macdonald, Walt Coburn, and Max Brand. In fact, this offbeat story reminds me quite a bit of some of the stories by Max Brand (Frederick Faust).

“Blast a Red Trail!” took me completely by surprise. I’d read only one other story by Robert L. Trimnell in the past, as far as I recall, and it was a humorous Western I didn’t like very much. But this story is an absolutely terrific hardboiled Western yarn with fascinating characters and a terse, fast-moving style. Trimnell wrote about 120 stories in a pulp career that lasted only eight years from 1948 to 1956. After that, he wrote one historical novel published by Lion Books and a number of soft-core novels published by Beacon/Softcover Library under the pseudonym Brian Black, before turning out a Western series called The Loner in the Seventies. Those three novels were published under his real name by Manor Books and are expensive if you can find them. I don’t think I have any, but I’m going to check my shelves. And I’m certainly going to keep my eyes open for his name on Western pulp TOCs in the future. I want to read more by this guy.

“A Man Must Fight” is a short story by Roe Richmond, not one of my favorite Western authors but one who usually can depended on for a decent story. This one is very reminiscent of the movie HIGH NOON, with a lawman who is reluctant to seek help from the townspeople when a couple of outlaws show up intent on killing him. It’s set up as a moral dilemma story but is resolved pretty easily. Other than that, it’s okay but not very memorable.

“The Rider From Hell” is another title that must have been slapped on by an editor at Popular Publications, because it doesn’t fit J.L. Bouma’s story at all. This is another lawman story as a young deputy with new-fangled ideas about keeping the peace clashes with a hard-nosed old town-taming marshal of the “shoot ’em all and sort it out later” school. It’s a low-key tale without much action, and the drama comes more from the characters than from gunplay. It’s very well-written, and although this kind of story normally isn’t really in my wheelhouse, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Bouma is one of those authors who did mostly good work, published steadily for a long time, never achieved any real fame, and is mostly forgotten these days. He’s almost always worth reading, though.

Walt Coburn’s “The Death Dealer” is a long novelette that’s a reprint. It appeared originally in the July 1938 issue of DIME WESTERN MAGAZINE as “Signed On to Die”. That title makes a little more sense than “The Death Dealer”, although quite a bit of death is dealt in this yarn. As usual with Coburn’s work, there’s a ton of back-story and a plot that’s almost too complicated to follow and difficult to describe. What we have is a stalwart young cowboy from Montana who buys a spread in Arizona known as the Haunted Cave Ranch because, well, there’s a cave on it that may well be haunted. You see, a gang of outlaws used it as a hideout and there’s a rumor that a fortune in loot is hidden in it. There’s even supposed to be a map split up in a number of pieces that, if combined, will lead to the treasure. Throw in not two but three, count ’em, three feuding owlhoot families, a beautiful girl and her spunky twin brother, a crooked range detective, some false identities, and last-minute revelations from ’way out in left field, and you have a confusing but fast-moving, action-packed, and downright compelling tale . . . which accurately describes a lot of Coburn’s work. This one is goofy as all get-out, but I still enjoyed it a lot.

I’ve probably mentioned before how I met Fred Grove at the Western Writers of America convention in San Angelo, Texas, in 1990. Let me tell you, sitting and talking with Fred Grove for a couple of hours at an outdoor barbecue, under some giant pecan trees on the banks of the Concho River as the cool of the evening settled down over West Texas, is a pretty darned good memory. His short story “Satan’s Saddlemate” wraps up this issue. (What was it with the editor of this issue? This is the second story with “Satan” in the title, plus we also have “The Rider From Hell”.) This one is about a cavalry patrol in Texas coming on a family of settlers massacred by Comanches and trailing the war party back to their village for a showdown. There’s also a white girl captive to be rescued. Although there’s some nice action late in this story, most of it is rather low-key and introspective. Grove was a really fine writer and does a good job of capturing the time and place. He’s always worth reading, and this story is no exception.

This is a very solid issue of NEW WESTERN MAGAZINE. There’s not a bad story in the bunch, and several of them are very good to excellent. If you have a copy on your shelves, it’s very much worth reading.

Review: Wild - Gil Brewer

WILD is actually the first Gil Brewer novel I ever read, approximately 40 years ago. I had heard of Brewer but didn’t know anything about him or his books except that my buddies Bill Crider and Ed Gorman said they were good. That was enough of a recommendation for me. When a copy of the original Fawcett Crest edition from 1958 came in at the used bookstore I managed, I grabbed it for myself and read it. All these years later, with Black Gat Books reprinting this novel recently, it seemed like a perfect time for one of my rare rereads.

Lee Baron is one of the few private eye protagonists in Gil Brewer’s fiction. Lee, who has been working as a private detective in California, returns to his hometown of Tampa, Florida, to take over the agency of his late father, who has just passed away. For his first case, he’s hired by an old flame to talk to her husband, from whom she’s estranged, and try to set up a reconciliation. This seems like an odd assignment for a private detective, but Lee takes the case and, wouldn’t you know it, discovers a dead body almost right away. The corpse has been mutilated, so it’s hard to tell who the dead man is. Is it the old flame’s husband? Is it one of the guys who was involved in a recent bank robbery that netted the thieves almost half a million bucks? Loot which is still missing, by the way. Or maybe the dead man was tied in with whoever hired the hulking, out-of-town thug to hand Lee a beating and scare him off the case, or kill him if he won’t scare. Let’s not forget the second murder, or the old flame’s beautiful but slutty sister, who Lee was also involved with in the old days.

And all of this is just in the first twelve hours after Lee takes the case.

WILD is a real whirlwind of a novel. Gil Brewer is known for the propulsive nature of his plots and writing, and that quality is in full force in this one. I had no clue what was going to happen next, and Lee Baron sure as hell doesn’t. But something is going to happen, you can be sure of that, and it’ll probably be bad.

I have a confession to make. When I first read WILD back in the Eighties, I didn’t care much for it. It didn’t make me a Gil Brewer fan, and I didn’t read anything else by him for quite a while. But then I read the Hard Case Crime reprint of his novel THE VENGEFUL VIRGIN (which just happens to be the next novel Brewer published after WILD) and thought it was terrific, one of the best hardboiled/noir novels I’d read in a long time. I’ve gone on to read many more of his novels and have enjoyed every one of them.

So what did I think of WILD when I reread it? I’m happy to report that I liked it much better this time around. The plot is suitably twisty, the characterization is vivid, and Brewer’s writing is quite poignant, almost poetic in places. At the same time, it still manages to capture the white-hot desperation of the people involved in this swamp of lust and greed. If you’re already a Gil Brewer fan and haven’t read WILD, you’ll definitely want to check it out. If you haven’t read Brewer, as I hadn’t all those years ago, you might want to start with one of his classics like 13 FRENCH STREET, SATAN IS A WOMAN, or THE VENGEFUL VIRGIN, as mentioned above. But WILD is well worth reading, make no mistake about that. It’s available in paperback and e-book editions. 

 

Manville Moon #7: Pay Up or Die - Richard Deming

“Pay Up or Die” is the seventh and last of the Manville Moon novellas to be reprinted in e-book format. It originally appeared in the May 1951 issue of BLACK MASK DETECTIVE. There are about a dozen more Moon short stories and novelettes that appeared in various pulps and digests, mostly MANHUNT, throughout the Fifties. Maybe a publisher will collect them one of these days.

This yarn finds our one-legged private eye protagonist being hired to protect an actress who’s been getting death threats. Before Moon can even get started, though, a murder takes place. His client is the intended victim, and there are several suspects for the killer, including a dangerous mobster who used to be married to her. Sure enough, Moon gets taken for a ride again (this seems to happen a lot) and barely escapes with his life before he untangles the case and discovers the murderer’s identity.

The plot in this one is a little more complicated than in the previous two stories, but I still figured it out well before the end. No matter. Manville Moon is as likable as ever and Richard Deming’s polished prose is a pleasure to read. There are three full-length novels featuring Moon. I have all of them and am looking forward to reading them.

Dead Man's Chest - Norbert Davis

Norbert Davis is one of the authors I was introduced to in the legendary, Ron Goulart-edited anthology THE HARDBOILED DICKS in the Sixties. I’ve been reading and enjoying Davis’s work off and on ever since. He’s best remembered for his hardboiled yet humorous mysteries, but he wrote other kinds of stories for the pulps, too, including straight adventure. One such example is the novelette “Dead Man’s Chest”, originally published in the November 1936 issue of THRILLING ADVENTURES.

The protagonist of this yarn is drifting adventurer Poco Kelly (a great name if I’ve ever seen one). A character in this story refers to him as a soldier of fortune, but Kelly immediately corrects that to “soldier, but no fortune”. He finds himself in a small town on Mexico, rescuing a beautiful American girl being pursued by sinister stalkers, getting mixed up in a torture killing, clashing with a vicious criminal, and getting captured by a gang of bandits, all while trying to locate a map (drawn on a piece of tanned human skin, no less) that’ll lead him and the beautiful girl to a fortune in gold.

There’s nothing in “Dead Man’s Chest” that we haven’t seen before, but the key to its appeal is in Davis’s handling of the material. And luckily, he does a great job of it. His prose is fast and vivid and action-packed, Poco Kelly is a very likable protagonist, and there are just enough touches of humor to remind you that you’re reading a story by Norbert Davis. And then, at the very end of the story, he throws in a nice twist that I wasn’t expecting. It put a grin on my face, too.

I really enjoyed “Dead Man’s Chest”. It’s a very solid pulp adventure tale that I found well worth reading. It’s available in a stand-alone e-book edition from Wildside Press with an informative and entertaining introduction by publisher John Betancourt. (I had no idea until I read the introduction that Davis was married to mystery author Frances Crane. I have most, if not all, of Crane’s novels about married sleuths Pat and Jean Abbott, but I’ve never read any of them. I can’t help but wonder if Davis had any influence on them. I’ve got to get around to trying those.)

Nordic & Finn - Peter Brandvold

Anders Nordic is a big, bearded Scandinavian from Dakota Territory who’s working holding down a line camp on a ranch in New Mexico. He’s an unsociable sort, so the solitary life at the line camp suits him very well. But he has to go into the nearby town of Cimarron from time to time to pick up supplies, and once day while he’s in the settlement, he sees some boys picking on a stray dog. Anders likes dogs and maybe even senses a certain kinship with this one, so he puts a stop to the abuse and sends the scared youngsters scurrying away.

Unfortunately, one of the boys is the son of the local banker, whose pride and arrogance prompts him to try to have Anders arrested. This does not go well, and Anders’ simple impulse to carry out a good deed is instead the opening move in a series of increasingly bloody and tragic circumstances.

NORDIC & FINN is the latest novel and the first in a new series from Peter Brandvold, one of today’s most popular Western writers. He’s long been a favorite of mine, and he certainly doesn’t disappoint this time around. He writes action as well as anyone in the business and always creates compelling characters. Anders Nordic is a great protagonist, very likable despite his solitary nature, or maybe because of it since the reader gets to see him temper that self-imposed isolation in his developing relationships with Finn (the dog he rescues) and several humans who prove to be good friends.

However, this is a Brandvold book, so it’s not all warm fuzzies. The action is tough and unrelenting, and not everything turns out exactly as you might expect. It sure had me turning the pages to find out what was going to happen, and it even kept me up later than I intended in order to do just that, something that almost never happens these days. If you’re a Western fan, I give NORDIC & FINN a very high recommendation. It’s available from Wolfpack Publishing in e-book and trade paperback editions on Amazon, and it's one of the best books I’ve read this year. I’m looking forward to the next volume in the series.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Speed Detective, September 1943

I haven't seen too many tennis court shootouts on pulp covers. In fact, this one painted by H.J. Ward for an issue of SPEED DETECTIVE is the only one I recall. There are some familiar names inside, including Robert Leslie Bellem (twice, once as himself and once as Jerome Severs Perry, one of my favorite pseudonyms), Laurence Donovan (as Larry Dunn), house-names William Decatur and Randolph Barr, and Harold de Polo and Arthur Feldman, both real names as far as I know. There's a story by Lloyd Sanders, too, but it's his only credit in the Fictionmags Index, so he could be one of the Trojan Publications regulars. Or not. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, October 1944

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. The cover art is by George Rozen, and it accurately illustrates a scene from the lead novella in this issue of EXCITING WESTERN.

That lead novella, “Gun Thunder in Broken Bow”, is by one of my favorite Western authors, W.C. Tuttle. Most of Tuttle’s career was spent writing novels and stories in the several different series he created, but he wrote a fair number of stand-alone yarns, too. This is one of them, and it finds former convict Tex Colton returning to his hometown after spending several years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Everybody believes Tex has returned so he can get the loot he stashed, but he can’t do that since he didn’t pull the robbery in the first place. However, his brother, who has taken over his ranch in the meantime, did. (Not a spoiler—this is revealed very early on.) To add injury to insult, or vice versa, Tex’s brother has also married his old sweetheart.

As usual in a Tuttle story, there are some broadly comic characters and situations to go along with a solid Western mystery and some good action. It’s a winning formula with variations from story to story regarding which element is stressed the most and never fails to entertain me. The balance is very good in this one, with the added bonus of a nice twist in the end that I probably should have seen coming but didn’t. “Gun Thunder in Broken Bow” isn’t the equal of Tuttle’s Hashknife Hartley series, but it’s a solidly enjoyable yarn.

T.W. Ford was a pulp editor as well as an author, and he turned out hundreds of Western, detective, and sports stories for just about every publisher in the business. I’ve found him to be an inconsistent but mostly very good author. His short story in this issue, “Law in His Blood”, about a rancher who’s mistaken for a notorious outlaw, has a pretty predictable main twist to it, but the writing is excellent and Ford sneaks in another twist at the end that’s very effective. I liked this one as well.

Ralph J. Smith’s short story “Gunned From the Grave” is his only credit in the Fictionmags Index. It’s about an old gunsmith’s encounter with the man who killed his son in a shootout. A poignant, reasonably well-written story that is okay but doesn’t leave much of an impression.

The novelette “Boothill Beller Box” is a notable one. It’s part of a long series starring Arizona Ranger “Navajo” Tom Raine, and this story features Raine teaming up with Wayne Morgan, the Masked Rider, and Morgan’s sidekick, the Yaqui Indian Blue Hawk. As far as I know, this is one of only two such crossover stories between Thrilling Group Western characters. Steve Reese from RANGE RIDERS WESTERN appears in an earlier Navajo Raine story, “Rawhide Ranger”, in the April 1944 issue of EXCITING WESTERN. The title “Boothill Beller Box” refers to a telephone line being strung from a cowtown to a nearby logging camp. This is a loggers vs. cattlemen story in which Wayne Morgan is framed for murder. Just like in 1960s Marvel Comics, the two heroes meet and fight at first before realizing they’re on the same side, after which they team up to defeat the bad guy. The author of this one packs quite a bit into it and it’s a really good yarn. Unfortunately, a proofreading and/or typesetting error almost ruins the story by completely invalidating the big twist in the plot. I salvaged it by editing it in my head back to what it should have been. The author’s identity is also a mystery, since the Navajo Raine stories were published under the house-name Jackson Cole. I suspect this one may be by Chuck Martin. It reads like his work to me, and he’s known to have written Navajo Raine stories as well as contributing several Masked Rider novels to that pulp under his own name. But that’s just an educated guess on my part and may be totally wrong.

I also suspect that the next story in this issue, “Cheyenne Death Trap”, is by Chuck Martin. It’s part of the long-running series featuring Pony Express Rider Alamo Paige that was published under the house-name Reeve Walker. Paige is a good character, compact in stature as most of the Pony Express Riders were but tough, smart, and handy with a gun. In this yarn, another rider is robbed and murdered, and Paige sets out to track down the killer. In the process, he faces a death trap unlike any I’ve ever encountered in a Western pulp. This is a clever story and also a very good one.

Mel Pitzer published about 50 stories in various Western pulps between the mid-Thirties and the late Forties. His story “Killer on the Range” wraps up this issue. He uses present tense to tell this story, a technique I hardly ever see in a Western pulp and one that I don’t really care for. It works okay in this case, as an old wrangler tells the story about a stallion accused of killing a rancher. What really happened is pretty obvious, but the story reads okay and is entertaining, although still the weakest in the issue.

This is an above average issue overall of EXCITING WESTERN, which was usually pretty good to start with. W.C. Tuttle, T.W. Ford, Navajo Tom Raine, and Alamo Paige are all dependable Western pulp enjoyment. If you have a copy on your shelves, it’s worth reading.

Down Range - Taylor Moore

I don’t read many modern thrillers, but I’d seen enough good comments about Taylor Moore’s debut novel DOWN RANGE that I decided I’d give it a try. Plus, it’s set in Texas which is always a nice bonus as far as I’m concerned.

The protagonist is Garrett Kohl, a DEA agent who’s working for the CIA in Afghanistan. That’s where this novel begins, but the setting switches quickly, and logically, to the Texas Panhandle, where it remains for the rest of the book. Garrett, who grew up on a ranch near the town of Canadian, is tasked with protecting the life of a little Afghan boy who witnessed a massacre. He figures going home will be the best way to do that.

Unfortunately, he hasn’t figured on landing up to his neck in an even worse mess that will threaten the life not only of the boy he’s charged with protecting but also everybody else in Garrett’s family.

It takes a while to get everything in the plot set up, and consequently the first half of DOWN RANGE is a little slow despite a few bursts of action. But then the second half is almost all action, and Moore does a great job with it. I know from experience as both a writer and a reader that it’s hard to do lengthy firefights without them getting boring, but Moore pulls that off and kept me flipping the pages with enthusiasm and eagerness to find out what was going to happen. However, as much as I enjoy action in my reading, that’s not the main appeal of this book for me.

I said up in the first paragraph that I don’t read many modern thrillers, and here’s the reason for that: they all sound alike. Too many of them read as if they could have been written by any of a hundred different contemporary thriller authors. My theory—and this is only a theory—is that many of these authors haven’t read extensively among older thriller authors and mostly read the work of their peers. They’ve had so many rules hammered into their heads that they don’t know any other way to write. And so everything they produce reads the same.

To be honest, there’s some of that in DOWN RANGE, too. There are scenes that could have come out of any of a thousand other books. But then . . . ah, but then . . . there’s a bit of description, or a line of dialogue, or an interaction between characters, or even a throwaway moment of transition, and a grin appears on my face as I think that nobody else in the world would have written this particular thing this particular way. Only Taylor Moore. And that’s what makes DOWN RANGE an excellent novel. He knows the place and he knows the people and he writes about all of it in his own voice.

Now, there are a couple of quibbles I can make. I don’t think it takes two and a half hours to drive from the Joint Reserve Base in west Fort Worth to Possum Kingdom Lake (but I’m thrilled that a contemporary thriller even mentions Possum Kingdom Lake). I think I could make it in an hour and a half, two tops. But you know what, I could be wrong about that, especially since Moore doesn’t specify exactly where on Possum Kingdom Lake Garrett is going. The other thing (and I’ll die on this hill) is that y’all is spelled y’all, not ya’ll.

You see why I called them quibbles.

Anyway, all in all, DOWN RANGE is an absolutely superb book, and if you enjoy thrillers, I give it a very high recommendation. It's available in e-book, hardback, paperback, and audio editions. I don’t know if I’ll become a fan and read everything Taylor Moore writes, but I’ll definitely read the next book in this series.

Above the Line - Raoul Whitfield

Raoul Whitfield's short story "Above the Line" appeared in the November 1928 issue of AIR TRAILS, only the second issue of that aviation pulp. It features pilot Buck Kent and is probably the second of approximately 20 stories about Buck. There's a Whitfield story in the first issue of AIR TRAILS and I suspect it's the one that introduced the character. In this one, Buck is flying to meet a friend at an isolated cabin on the border between California and Mexico (or possibly Arizona and Mexico; Whitfield is a little vague about that). Instead, he runs into a dangerous mystery involving gangsters and stolen loot.

I read this story on a whim. I was kind of in the mood for an aviation yarn, and I've really enjoyed everything I've read by Whitfield, so I gave it a try and I'm glad I did. There's plenty of violent, well-written action both in the air and on the ground. I had a very good time reading it, and if you're a Whitfield fan, it's worth checking out. You can read it, and a bunch of other pulp aviation stories, on the Age of Aces website, which gets a high recommendation from me.

48 Years Ago Today

 

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Apache Rifles (1964)

As many Audie Murphy movies as my dad and I watched when I was young, I’m surprised I never saw APACHE RIFLES, one of Murphy’s later movies that came out in 1964. But missing it back then gives me the opportunity to watch and enjoy it for the first time now.

This is a cavalry vs. Indians movie, but only sort of. Murphy plays Captain Jeff Stanton, a young officer whose father, also a soldier, got himself and his troops massacred because he was sympathetic to the Indians. Naturally enough, this makes Murphy’s character more hostile to the Apaches . . . until he gets to know some of them and falls in love with a young missionary teacher who lives among them. A bunch of white men scheming to get control of Apache land so they can mine on it complicates matters. These plotters are led by L.Q. Jones and Ken Lynch, both of whom are suitably despicable.

This is an odd little movie, a bit of a forerunner to the revisionist Westerns of the Seventies in which all Indians are noble and all white men (except for the one or two who sympathize with the Indians) are evil. Honestly, Murphy looks a little uncomfortable playing a character who becomes so sensitive by the end of the movie. For another thing, when I saw that this movie was directed by William Witney, I thought, “Oh, boy, lots of action!” Well, no. There is some action, and when it takes place, it’s staged excitingly and effectively, as you’d expect from a movie helmed by Witney. But an awful lot of time is spent on guys standing around talking.

All that said, I had a good time watching APACHE RIFLES. Murphy may not have been a very technically skilled actor, but the camera loved him and he takes full advantage of that screen presence. The movie looks great with excellent photography and production values. If you’re a Western fan, it’s a perfectly fine way to spend an hour and a half and I’m glad I finally saw it. Just don’t go into it expecting a lost gem.

The Savage Sword of Conan #3 - Frank Tieri, Patrick Zircher, John C. Hocking, et al.

THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN #3 opens with a long Conan story called “Wolves of the Tundra” written by Frank Tieri and drawn by Cary Nord. I’ve seen Nord’s work before and liked it, and his black-and-white art in this tale, while not as lush as his color work, is quite good and very effective. However, after reading a few pages of the story, Tieri’s script takes a turn that came really close to making me say, “Nope,” and not finishing it. In order for the plot to work, the reader has to accept something that I just couldn’t. To say more would be to venture too far into spoiler territory. Despite that, I actually did read the whole story, and while it never worked for me, I have to admit that the ending did give me a little chuckle. I didn’t care for this story, but as they say, your mileage may vary.

Next up is an excerpt from John C. Hocking’s CONAN: CITY OF THE DEAD, followed by an excellent autobiographical essay by Hocking detailing the background of the two novels in that collection. I’ll read anything Hocking wants to write featuring Conan, or anything else, for that matter. His work is always top-notch.

There’s a nice Howardian poem by Jim Zub with a good illustration, then the conclusion of Patrick Zircher’s three-part Solomon Kane story. The wrap-up of this yarn is just as good as the previous two installments. It’s a very satisfying conclusion to a fine tale.

A short, wordless Conan yarn with story and art by Alan Quah concludes this issue. The art is good, the story wry and entertaining. I don’t know anything about Quah, but he’s done a pretty good job with this one and I’d read more by him.

Despite my complaints about the main story, I enjoyed reading this issue of THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN and I think most Howard fans would, too. I’m looking forward to the next issue.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: The Underworld Magazine, June 1929

This cover by W.C. Brigham is eye-catching for a couple of reasons: the sheer brutality of the scene depicted, plus the use of a swastika in the logo well before it gained notoriety for other reasons. THE UNDERWORLD MAGAZINE was an early gang pulp published by Harold Hersey, and if I recall correctly, a lot of Hersey's pulps used a swastika in their logos. There are some good authors in this issue including James P. Olsen and Galen C. Colin (both probably best remembered for their Westerns), Henry Leverage (one of the stars of the gang pulps, and he appears twice in this issue, once as himself and once under the name Carl Henry), Armitage Trail (the author of SCARFACE), veteran pulpsters Anatole Feldman and Harold Ward, and a couple of one-shot authors, Mack Ozark and W. Jeremiah Evans. Mack Ozark especially sounds like a pseudonym to me. I've read almost nothing from the gang pulps, and I really think I should explore them more. Just a matter of finding the time.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, July 1949

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. The cover art is by Sam Cherry and illustrates, although not with complete accuracy, a scene from the Jim Hatfield novel featured in this issue.

The last Hatfield novel by A. Leslie Scott that I read, “The Wasteland Empire”, was a mining story, with barely a mention of ranches and cattle. The one in this issue, “The Spoilers’ Trail”, is also a little unusual because it’s a railroad yarn through and through. Scott put his mining experience to good use in the previous tale, and the time he spent as a railroader gives this one an undeniable air of authenticity.

In “The Spoilers’ Trail”, Jim Hatfield, ace of the Texas Rangers, is sent in to discover who’s behind the sabotage and outright attacks plaguing the construction of a railroad line through West Texas. The C&P Railroad is run by an old friend of Hatfield’s, James G. “Jaggers” Dunn, who appears in numerous stories by Scott, sometimes as the protagonist of stories published in RAILROAD STORIES, often as a supporting character in Jim Hatfield novels. Dunn doesn’t show up until late in this one, but he’s the reason Hatfield is on the case to start with. Hatfield starts out working undercover as a railroad guard but winds up bossing most of the construction project, since in addition to being a Ranger he’s also an expert engineer.

There’s a subgenre of pulp adventure stories centered around construction projects, and this one actually fits more in that category than it does as a Western, although there are some ambushes and shootouts. Much of the plot is concerned with engineering problems, and that culminates in a long, suspenseful scene in which Hatfield and some of the workers battle to save a partially completed bridge during a flood. At one point, Hatfield and some companions are trapped underground by a cave-in (never go to the opera with Ellery Queen, or into a mine or a railroad tunnel with Jim Hatfield) and saves the day with an unusual and dramatic way of breaking out.

Scott is in top form in “The Spoilers’ Trail” even though it’s not very representative of the Hatfield series as a whole. It’s a fast-paced yarn with an interesting background, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The first of three back-up short stories in this issue is “A Badman’s Dog” by Dupree Poe. A vicious outlaw murders the lawman who discovers his hideout, but he adopts a puppy that the sheriff had with him at the time of the killing. This isn’t the heart-warming tale you might expect but rather a story of justice and retribution. It also seems to be lacking a plot twist that might have made it more effective. Even so, it’s a fairly entertaining story, and I’ll venture far enough into spoiler territory to say that the dog does not die.

“The Return of Dave Kilbane” is by Walt Morey, an author I don’t recall reading before. Something about his style was a little off-putting to me at first, but I got used to it and wound up enjoying this tale of a young ex-convict returning to his hometown and his lawman father, just in time to help back his dad’s play in a showdown with three killers. The question is, will he, since his father is the one who sent him to prison? It’s an interesting moral dilemma solved by some well-done action. This isn’t a good enough story to make me run out and look for more by the author, but I liked it well enough.

I’ve been a fan of Lee Bond’s Long Sam Littlejohn stories for more than thirty years now. The one in this issue, “Long Sam Jumps the Devil”, finds the good-guy outlaw sticking his nose into someone else’s trouble, as usual, and winding up in a run-in with Deputy U.S. Marshal Joe Fry, the dogged lawman who is constantly pursuing Long Sam. In this case, Long Sam battles a notorious outlaw called El Diabolo Blanco, who dresses all in white, including a hood that conceals his identity, and saves the ranch belonging to an old friend. It occurred to me while reading this story that in some ways, the Long Sam Littlejohn series isn’t very well-written. The plots are extremely formulaic, and the characters have a habit of standing around and discussing things they already know, just so the reader will be filled in on what’s going on. Those flaws aside, though, I still really like this series and I’ve never read one that I didn’t enjoy. Long Sam is a great character, and Bond has a sure hand with the action scenes. Every time I read one, I’m tempted to write a Long Sam Littlejohn story of my own. Maybe one of these days.

Overall, this is another very solid issue of TEXAS RANGERS, and I’m glad I took it down from the shelf to read it.

Operator 5 #5: Cavern of the Damned - Curtis Steele (Frederick C. Davis)

The temple of a sinister cult hidden in the middle of Manhattan! A vicious Tibetan prince whipping a beautiful girl almost to death! Influential figures falling under the sway of plotters who want to take over the country! Who can possibly deal with this terrible menace? You know the answer to that as well as I do: Jimmy Christoper, also known as Operator 5, the ace of the American Intelligence Service. Only Operator 5 can possibly thwart this impending catastrophe aimed at the destruction of all regular religions and the takeover of the United States.

But what’s that? Operator 5 is accused of treason and stripped of his standing in the Intelligence Service. All the other operators are tasked with finding and arresting him, and if he puts up a fight, Jimmy Christopher will be gunned down like any other criminal!

Yep, things look pretty bad in “Cavern of the Damned”, the fifth Operator 5 novel that was published originally in the August 1934 issue of the iconic pulp OPERATOR #5. Every issue, author Frederick C. Davis, writing under the house-name Curtis Steele, came up with a new menace to threaten the entire country that only Operator 5 could defeat. This time, the threat posed by the Cult of Zavaa has definite Weird Menace overtones with its hidden temples, robed and turbaned priests and acolytes, and brutal whippings. Davis wrote for numerous different pulps, including the Weird Menace titles, so he certainly knew his way around that genre and utilizes those elements to good effect in this novel.

All the other trademarks of the Operator 5 series are here: Jimmy Christopher has an able assistant in the stalwart Irish lad Tim Donovan. He even takes a break to demonstrate a magic trick for Tim, as he usually does. Beautiful reporter Diane Elliott gets captured by the villains. Jimmy Christopher’s beautiful twin sister Nan is on hand but doesn’t have much to do in this one. Jimmy Christopher’s semi-invalid, retired intelligence agent father lends him a hand, too. The climaxes of Davis’s Operator 5 novels often border on the apocalyptic, and while he reins in that tendency a little this time, the final showdown features plenty of blood and thunder (and lepers).

I love this series because Davis was a fine writer and usually followed my motto when writing about Jimmy Christopher’s adventures: “If you’re going over the top anyway, you might as well go ‘way over.” That said, while I had a very good time reading this novel, I didn’t find it quite as appealing as some of the others in the series. I think I prefer the ones where there’s some sort of super-scientific weapon and a hidden mastermind threatening the nation, rather than a bunch of mostly nameless, faceless guys in robes and turbans who slink around getting folks hooked on hashish, which Davis nearly always refers to as “bhang!”, with the exclamation mark. After a while, I was glad I wasn’t playing a drinking game that involved references to bhang! I’d have been drunk for sure.

If you’ve never tried this series, “Cavern of the Damned” probably isn’t one you’d want to start with. If you’re already an Operator 5 fan and haven’t read this one, don’t let anything I’ve said here influence you not to read it. It’s great fun. Doing Operator 5 as a Weird Menace yarn is just a slight misstep, that’s all. It’s been reprinted several times over the years and is available currently in a very nice trade paperback edition from Altus Press.

Raider of the Spaceways - Henry Kuttner

“Raider of the Spaceways” is a novelette by Henry Kuttner that appeared originally in the July 1937 issue of WEIRD TALES, which published the occasional straight-up science fiction yarn along with horror fiction and sword and sorcery. It’s a fairly early story by Kuttner, in that he’d only been publishing fiction for about a year and a half when it came out, but by that time he had published 20 stories, so he wasn’t exactly a neophyte, either. The prose is already as smoothly polished as you’d expect from Kuttner.

The protagonist is Dal Kenworth, a young man who’s growing a crop of elysia plants on Venus, a plant that’s the source of a very powerful and valuable drug. Kuttner kind of throws in the fact that Kenworth is the son of the President of the Americas back on earth. He clashes with a notorious space pirate known as the Raider, and he and a beautiful girl from a neighboring elysia farm have to flee to Venus’s Night Side, the side of the planet that never faces the sun, which is unexplored and full of unknown dangers. What they encounter there is pretty horrible, enough so that the story does sort of fit in WEIRD TALES despite being pure SF.

Whenever I read science fiction from this era, the good stories always make me feel like I’m back in high school, sitting in a lawn chair on my parents’ front porch on a summer morning, getting some reading done before the heat builds up and I have to retreat into the air conditioning. “Raider of the Spaceways” is definitely a front porch yarn. Space pirates! Ray guns! A monster and a beautiful girl! This is my meat, let me tell you. And Kuttner puts the whole thing together with great skill, including a twist ending that I should have seen coming but didn’t.

I suspect most modern readers wouldn’t be so fond of this story (well, some of you reading this probably would be), but I loved it and had a great time reading it. In addition to its original appearance in WEIRD TALES, it was reprinted in the beautiful Haffner Press collection THUNDER IN THE VOID. It’s also available as a stand-alone e-book, and if you’d rather read it in the original, that issue of WEIRD TALES can be found on-line here and here. If you’re a fan of old-fashioned adventure science fiction like me, I give it a high recommendation.

High Country - Peter Dawson (Jonathan Glidden)

Jim Sherill is a rancher who plans to sell a herd of horses and then marry the beautiful daughter of a wealthy businessman who owns a riverboat that travels up and down the Missouri River to Montana. The plan is for Jim to take over the riverboat enterprise. But then his horse herd is rustled and in his efforts to locate the thieves and recover the herd, he’s drawn into a dangerous plot that threatens the life of a young woman who’s inherited a ranch from her father.

HIGH COUNTRY is a novel by Peter Dawson, the pseudonym used by Jonathan Glidden, a successful Western pulpster in the Thirties and Forties who became well-known as a novelist in the Forties and Fifties. His brother Frederick Glidden was even more popular with his stories and novels under the name Luke Short, but I don’t recall ever reading about any particular rivalry between the brothers. Both did very well for themselves.

HIGH COUNTRY was serialized in the pulp SHORT STORIES in March and April 1947 and published simultaneously in hardcover by Dodd, Mead, Jon Glidden’s regular publisher. It was reprinted in paperback by Lion Books in 1949 under the title CANYON HELL (with a cover by Robert Stanley) and then reprinted by Bantam, as were most of the Peter Dawson novels, in 1955. There were other Bantam editions over the years. I read the one from September 1966, and that’s my copy in the scan at the top of this post. I don't know the artist. The font on the author’s name and the title reminds me a little of the Doc Savage logo on Bantam’s reprints of that series. I don’t know if that was deliberate or not, but those Doc reprints were really, really popular during that era.

As for the novel itself, it’s a good one. Jon Glidden’s work was more low-key and realistic than that of many of the Western pulpsters. There’s some gritty, well-done action here and there, but it never goes over the top and the prose is restrained, not the least bit purple. To be honest, the book maybe could have used a tad bit more blood and thunder. But the characters are complex, Jim Sherill is an admirable, sympathetic protagonist, the villains are suitably despicable, and the romantic triangle, although it doesn’t occupy a lot of space, is handled well. Once things really take off in the final third of the book, it races right along and comes to a satisfying conclusion.

Like every other Peter Dawson novel I’ve read, HIGH COUNTRY is a solid traditional Western yarn. I found it to be well worth reading, and if you’re a Western fan, there’s a good chance you would, too.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Adventures, November 1943

This was the final issue of THRILLING ADVENTURES. The magazine went out with a good one, starting with that action-packed cover. There's an artist's signature on it, but I can't read it. Rafael DeSoto, maybe? I'm sure somebody who's better at such things than I am can supply the correct answer. Inside are stories by Louis L'Amour (a Ponga Jim Mayo yarn), Henry Kuttner (twice, once as himself and once as Charles Stoddard), Carl Jacobi, Tom Curry, Carter Sprague (really my old editor and mentor Sam Merwin Jr.), Verne Chute, and Bertram B. Fowler. And even though I've mentioned it many times before, I have to say how cool it is that in the early days of my career, I got to work with an old pulpster like Sam Merwin. I'm proud of that to this day.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Leading Western, June 1946

I feel like I should know who did the cover on this issue of LEADING WESTERN. Somebody here or on Facebook will tell me, and I'll update the post. Meanwhile, there's a strong lineup of Western pulpsters in this one: Philip Ketchum, Laurence Donovan, Giff Cheshire, John Reese (as John Jo Carpenter), and Jhan Robbins, along with house-name Randolph Barr. Looks like a solid issue. 

Sundance #6: The Bronco Trail - John Benteen (Ben Haas)

I recently read a couple of books that weren’t terrible, but ultimately, they were disappointing and I wished I had the time back that I spent reading them. With that bad taste in my mouth, I wanted to read something that I was absolutely certain would entertain me and make me glad that I’d read it.

Enter Ben Haas.

Over the years I’ve read most of the books in the Fargo series that Haas wrote under the name John Benteen, but there are still quite a few of his Sundance series that I never got around to. The next one I hadn’t read was #6 THE BRONCO TRAIL. This one opens with Jim Sundance, the half-British, half-Cheyenne professional fighting man, hunting down an outlaw gang in Utah and dealing with them in an explosive confrontation. When Sundance reports to the Mormon leader who hired him, he finds an old friend waiting for him: General George Crook. Sundance has worked for the army before, and now Crook wants him to find out who’s trying to stir up a new war between the Apaches and the settlers in Arizona. And while he’s at it, if he can convince Geronimo and his followers, who have fled to the mountains in Mexico, to surrender and make peace, that would be great, too.

It’s a job that puts Sundance smack-dab in the middle of danger from several different sources: the criminal ring smuggling ammunition and whiskey to the Apaches, the Mexican army, and Geronimo his own self. In addition to Geronimo and General Crook, actual historical figures who play a part in the story include scouts Al Sieber and Tom Horn. As Haas explains in an afterword, nearly everything in the book except Sundance’s involvement is based on documented history. It’s interesting and very effective.

Of course, the biggest appeal of these novels is the action, and I’m convinced that except for Robert E. Howard, nobody was ever better at writing close combat action scenes than Ben Haas. Whether it’s a brutal fistfight, a deadly battle with knives, or a close-quarters shootout, Haas’s skill at describing these scenes is breathtaking. The story races along at a breakneck pace, the settings are vividly (but not long-windedly) described, and Sundance is a great protagonist, if a bit dour.

So I went into THE BRONCO TRAIL wanting a book that I would enjoy reading, and that’s exactly what I got. Copies of the original paperback (with a cover by Mel Crair) can be found on-line, and an e-book edition is available from Piccadilly Publishing. I give this one a high recommendation.  

The Savage Sword of Conan #2 - Jim Zub, Richard Pace, Patrick Zircher

For a while there, I was reading all the new Conan comics from Titan, as well as the new prose stories, and I read and enjoyed the first issue of the new SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN. Then I kind of just stopped. Not intentionally. I just wandered away as I have a tendency of doing. But it’s time to get caught up on them again, so I started with the second issue of THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN.

Most of the pages are taken up by a long Conan yarn called “Leaving the Garden” written by Jim Zub with artwork by Richard Pace. It begins with a badly wounded Conan waking up after having been buried alive following a battle. Naturally, he doesn’t stay underground. A flashback establishes that he was traveling with a merchant caravan ambushed by inhuman attackers. The rest of the story deals with him recovering and seeking vengeance for what happened to his companions.

This is a good story with plenty of action broken up by the occasional poignant moment. I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read by Jim Zub so far. My only complaint about this script is that “Leaving the Garden”, while it fits, isn’t the sort of dramatic title I’ve come to expect on a Conan story. I also have to say that the artwork isn’t to my taste at all. I suspect it’s the kind of art that either resonates with a reader or it doesn’t. It didn’t in my case.

This issue also features the second installment of a Solomon Kane serial written and drawn by Patrick Zircher, an adventure that finds Kane battling a supernatural menace in his native England. Art and script are superb on this story. So far it’s one of the best Solomon Kane comics stories I’ve read.

Despite the reservations mentioned above, there’s enough to like about this issue of THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN that I don’t hesitate to give it a strong recommendation for Conan and Robert E. Howard fans. It’s available in both print and digital editions.

Now Available: Fear on the Fever Coast - James Reasoner

The Snakehaven saga continues with FEAR ON THE FEVER COAST! Young adventurer Jorras Trevayle is back, penetrating deeper into a dangerous world of giant serpents, sorcerers, pirates, and madmen. A deadly plague is laying waste to the land, and the secret to its cure lies within the sanctum of a vengeful wizard. Together with a group of brigands and cutthroats, Trevayle sets out to obtain that cure, but the real question is which is the biggest threat to his continued survival: the sorcerer who wants to settle a score with him, the swamp surrounding the old plantation house known as Ophidionne, or the giant serpents that roam the night searching for prey!

James Reasoner, the bestselling author of DOOM OF THE DARK DELTA, returns with the second daring exploit of Jorras Trevayle, revealing more about the perilous land known to some as Snakehaven. FEAR ON THE FEVER COAST is a tale packed with excitement and eerie thrills for readers of sword and sorcery.

(So far I've really enjoyed developing this series. I plan to write several more of them over the next year or so.)

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Super-Detective Stories, May 1935

This early issue of SUPER-DETECTIVE STORIES sports a nice dramatic cover by H.J. Ward, and there are some fine authors inside: Richard Sale, James P. Olsen, Emile C. Tepperman, the mysterious Margie Harris (has any of Harris's work ever been reprinted?), and lesser-known Sam Kellman, John Mallory, and Charles Molyneaux Brown. This was Kellman's only credit, so it's possible that was a pseudonym. Sale, Olsen, and Tepperman are enough to make this issue worth reading if I owned a copy, which I don't.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Lariat Story Magazine, August 1934

(I came across this post from January 26, 2008, several years before I started the Saturday Morning Western Pulp series, so I thought I might as well get some more use out of it, modified slightly and with some comments added.)

Since I had this pulp out a couple of weeks ago to look something up, I decided to go ahead and read it. I believe it’s the first issue of LARIAT STORY that I’ve read; I own only another issue or two of this particular pulp.

It doesn’t start off particularly well. The lead “novel” (actually more of a novella) is “The Ranch of Hidden Men” by John Starr. Originally, John Starr was the pseudonym of Jack Byrne, who was the editor of LARIAT STORY at the time this issue was published. At some point, though, it became a house name, probably a year or so later when Byrne left Fiction House (the publisher of LARIAT STORY) to become an editor at ARGOSY. Byrne may be the author of “The Ranch of Hidden Men”, or he may not. Either way, it’s not a very good story. It’s the old “drifter saves the ranch from the bad guys” plot, and while there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s so stereotypical that a story using it needs either an unexpected twist, good writing, or both. This one has neither. It has a very tired, by-the-numbers feel to it, with a lot of florid writing that just pads the word count. Even that sort of prose can be effective (see the work of A. Leslie Scott, for example), but I don’t think it works here.

The novelette that follows, “Red Chaps” by Walter Clare Martin, is even worse, a humorous Western that’s not funny at all. I have a low tolerance for humorous Westerns; I like those by W.C. Tuttle (and Robert E. Howard), but that’s about it.

Things pick up, though, with “Whispering Knives” by C.K. Shaw, a novelette with another old plot, the hunt for the pieces of a treasure map that was split up among the prospectors who discovered a mother lode of gold, but Shaw has a nice hardboiled style that makes it a readable yarn. (C.K. Shaw was actually Chloe Kathleen Shaw, one of the most successful female Western pulpsters. I need to read more of her work.) 

The four short stories that follow are even better: “Old Renegade” by Earl C. McCain concerns the hunt for a wild, killer bull in the South Texas brush country, with some rustling thrown in for good measure; “The Six-Gun Payoff” by the always-dependable Gunnison Steele (really Bennie Gardner, father of the late Barry Gardner, who was known to many of you) is an effective short-short about the redemption of an old outlaw; “Snake Sign” by Walt Coburn (one of my favorite Western pulp authors) is a murder mystery, not too hard to figure out but fun; and “The Water Cure” by E.B. Brunt is a fairly realistic cattle baron vs. small ranchers yarn set in the 1920s.

The issue is wrapped up by another “novel”, “The Fifth Horseman” by James P. Olsen. Olsen, under the name James Lawson, wrote spicy, hardboiled detective yarns about Dallas Duane, a PI who works in the Western oilfields, and I really like the stories I’ve read from that series. (I wound up reading all the Dallas Duane stories and writing the introduction for a collection of them called DYING COMES HARD, published by Black Dog Books and still available.) “The Fifth Horseman” is a little more serious. Again, the plot is one that had whiskers even in 1934: a gang of old outlaws get together again to help an old friend from the owlhoot trail who has reformed and settled down. The hero is a young outlaw who had fallen in with them. Anybody who has read very many Westerns will know how this one is going to play out, but Olsen spins his tale with such enthusiasm, including a number of over-the-top action scenes, that I found it pretty entertaining. This is the first Western story I’ve read by him, but I wouldn’t hesitate to read more.

My copy of the pulp is coverless and I can't find a picture of it on-line, so I can’t post a cover scan. (The Fictionmags Index has that cover scan now. You can see it above.) It came from the collection of Barry Gardner, who’s mentioned above. Barry collected hundreds of pulps that contained his dad’s stories, but he didn’t care that much about the condition, so many of them are brittle and coverless, like this issue. I don’t really care, either, as long as I can read them and enjoy the stories, and I have to say that despite a couple of clunkers, the August 1934 issue of LARIAT STORY is pretty darned good.

(Now, here's the gut punch from the past. Three days after I posted this, a wildfire burned down our house and my studio and destroyed this pulp along with all my others, except for a lone issue of ARGOSY that survived somehow, as well as 40 years' accumulation of books and comics. Some of you probably remember that. Definitely a low point. However, we rebuilt a bigger and better house on the same property, I have more books and pulps, by far, than I'll ever get around to reading, and my writing career has rolled along. I still miss the cats who died in that fire, but our two dogs survived and lived another six years after that. Somebody once told me that you never really get over the things you love and lose, but you learn how to get along with that loss. Lot of truth in that. Meanwhile I think that's a pretty good cover by Fred Craft, and I'm glad to be able to bring it to you today.)

A Rough Edges Rerun: The Girl in the Golden Atom - Ray Cummings

Science fiction existed long before people ever called it that, of course, dating back to Jules Verne and H.G. Wells and quite possibly earlier. And there was quite a bit of it published in the pulps before the term came into existence. A couple of examples are the debut novelette by Ray Cummings, “The Girl in the Golden Atom”, originally published in ARGOSY in 1919, and its novel-length sequel, “The People of the Golden Atom”, published a year later, which were combined into the novel THE GIRL IN THE GOLDEN ATOM in 1923. That novel has been reprinted numerous times, often in an abridged version.

I just read the original pulp versions, which are available in various e-book editions. Sometimes these eighty- and ninety-year-old pulp yarns don’t hold up well for today’s readers. What about THE GIRL IN THE GOLDEN ATOM?

The original novelette finds five men sitting around their club (gentlemen used to belong to clubs, you know, where they would sit around and smoke and drink brandy and tell each other about their adventures): The Chemist, The Doctor, The Banker, The Big Business Man, and The Very Young Man. Yes, that’s how Cummings refers to them throughout, although eventually he does reveal their names. It seems that The Chemist has discovered by using a super-high-powered microscope that there are worlds within worlds and habitated universes within the very atoms of everything that makes up our world. He has also developed chemicals that will allow him to shrink and enlarge, so he can visit the universe he has discovered within the atoms of his mother’s golden wedding ring. In other words, Cummings was there first with the idea that sparked the plots for countless comic books and movies later on.

In the first part of the story (the original novelette), The Chemist visits the Golden Atom, falls in love with the beautiful girl he spied on there, and helps out her people in a war with an enemy city-state. He does this by growing to giant size and stomping on the enemy army. (To quote Dave Barry, I am not making this up.) Since he decides not to come back to our world, eventually The Doctor, The Big Business Man, and The Very Young Man use the chemicals he left behind to follow him into the Golden Atom. They find their friend there, but they also find a revolution, excitement, danger, and romance, along with a lot of shrinking to hide from enemies and growing to giant size to stomp them. There’s a lot of stomping, both deliberate and accidental, in this book, which at times provides it with some rather bizarre humor.

The first half of the book is pretty slow, an example of what some people call travelogue SF, where the characters walk around, look at stuff, and talk about the history, geography, and social customs of the world where they find themselves. There’s also a lot of pseudo-scientific discussion about the whole shrinking process. In the second half of the book, though, the revolution gets underway and the whole thing turns into a colorful, violent, fast-paced adventure that fits pretty well into the sword-and-planet subgenre of science fiction.

So, is THE GIRL IN THE GOLDEN ATOM worth reading nearly ninety years later? If you’re interested in the history of science fiction, definitely. If you looking for an entertaining adventure novel, it qualifies there, too, although you have to be patient and the writing style is definitely old-fashioned. Cummings isn’t nearly the storyteller that his contemporary Edgar Rice Burroughs was, and the scientific speculation seems pretty silly now, but back then it was pretty dazzling stuff, I imagine. I enjoyed the book and I think some of you would, too.

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on July 17, 2009. I haven't read anything else by Ray Cummings since then except some of his Weird Menace stories, which were pretty good.)