The Age of Aces website recently posted the short story “Hero Stuff” by Frederick C. Davis. Since Davis is one of my favorite pulp authors, I went ahead and read it. This is from the February 1928 issue of the aviation pulp WINGS. According to the Fictionmags Index, it’s the first of 20 stories featuring high-flying, two-fisted newsreel cameraman/pilot Nick Royce. In reading the story, it seemed to me like there might have been another one that came before it, and since this was in the second issue of WINGS, I suspect that Davis may have created Nick Royce specifically for the magazine’s debut issue and continued with him for a while. But lacking a copy of the January 1928 issue, there’s no way for me to confirm that, of course. Pure speculation on my part.
At any rate, “Hero Stuff” is narrated by Art Buckley, the head of the aerial
unit for the World News Reel Company, an outfit that flies out of an airfield
located on Long Island. As this story opens, the head of the company arrives
with an unexpected guest: a matinee idol from Hollywood who’s starring in a new
flying picture set during the Great War. The movie is all in the can except for
one stunt, and the World News Reel’s pilots are going to help the star and the
picture’s director pull it off. It involves the plane being flown by the star
going into a tailspin, causing him to have to bail out over No Man’s Land.
There’s considerable risk to the parachute stunt, which the star is going to
perform himself. But he needs somebody to actually fly the plane, and that’s
the job Nick Royce gets.
Unfortunately, Nick’s vixenish girlfriend is also on hand, and the Hollywood
star makes a play for her. This leads to considerable friction and even some
fisticuffs between the two men whose lives will be entwined once they’re
thousands of feet in the air in a canvas-and-wood crate.
“Hero Stuff” is well-written, as you’d expect from Davis, and he keeps things
moving along briskly with touches of humor and action and danger. I really
enjoyed this yarn. It’s no lost classic, but I found it very entertaining,
enough so that I’d love to see somebody do a complete collection of the Nick
Royce stories. I’d be happy to read more of them.
2 comments:
I'm glad you enjoyed the story! And you're right, it is not the first of Nick's adventures, but his second. Age of Aces posted the first story, "Grindin' High," back in January. In it, Nick is mistaken for a world famous stunt flyer while trying to wrangle a job with the World News Newsreel service. And although he doesn’t make a good first impression he does come up with the goods in the end! It's also a fun, brisk read I think you'll enjoy. (if you click on the "Nick Royce" tag on the Hero Stuff post you'll find that story as well as a later one we posted several years ago.) Nick Royce is a little out of our WWI purview, but I'm hoping to collect the stories into a book some day. Until then, we'll be posting more of his adventures on the site every so often.
Thanks! I just downloaded all the other Davis stories on the site and sent them to my Kindle. I may not ever catch up on all the other authors, but I'm sure enjoying the ones I've read.
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