Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, May 1934

Here's another pith helmet cover, this one by Duncan McMillan. I like the colors on this one. This issue of ADVENTURE has some excellent writers in it, including Gordon MacCreagh with a Kingi Bwana story. Also on hand are W.C. Tuttle, Albert Richard Wetjen, Gordon Young (with a serial installment), and a couple of lesser-known writers, Andrew McCaffrey and James Stevens.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, March 1939

An abundance of work and some real-life issues have caused me to neglect the blog in recent days, but I hope to get that squared away soon. In the meantime, here's a great cover by Raphael DeSoto. The diving suit, the treasure chest, and the revolver all promise us adventure, and I'm sure this issue of, what else, ADVENTURE delivers on that promise. Inside are stories by Erle Stanley Gardner, Frank Gruber, William E. Barrett, Anthony Rud, Gordon MacCreagh, and Robert E. Pinkerton, top pulpsters, every one. The Gruber story is an installment of the serial "Peace Marshal", and I remember reading one of the paperback reprints of that novel when I was in junior high. Little did I dream I'd be writing about its pulp incarnation more than fifty years later. There's a certain appealing continuity that good fiction provides in a person's life . . .

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, August 1942

For Fourth of July weekend, a patriotic cover from one of the longest-running and most iconic pulps, ADVENTURE. That painting is by E. Franklin Wittmack, and I really like it. Inside are stories by Gordon MacCreagh, Tom Roan, Bill Gulick (Hey, I've met him! Jackson, Wyoming, at the 1992 Western Writers of America convention. ), Samuel W. Taylor, and Barre Lyndon. Not the most star-studded line-up of authors ever, but some solid writers there and I'll bet it's a good issue.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, March 1939

Clearly, deep sea diving was considered adventurous during the pulp era, because such scenes show up fairly often on pulp covers, such as this one by Rafael DeSoto from the March 1939 issue of ADVENTURE. The scene depicted may not actually be underwater, but you can tell the guy just came from there because of the chest of doubloons he's holding. I don't know if this cover illustrates one of the stories inside or is just a generic adventure image; the latter, I suspect. But I'm sure the stories in this issue are good, considering that they were written by Erle Stanley Gardner, Frank Gruber, Gordon MacCreagh, William E. Barrett, Anthony Rud, and Robert E. Pinkerton. Looks like a solid issue all the way around.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Short Stories, February 10, 1933

A classic "red sun" SHORT STORIES cover by Frank Spradling, and inside can be found stories by H. Bedford-Jones, Gordon MacCreagh, James B. Hendryx, Cliff Farrell, Jackson Gregory, Bertrand W. Sinclair, Bob du Soe, and more. Classic is nearly always the right word to describe an issue of SHORT STORIES. 

Forgotten Books: The Lost End of Nowhere - Gordon MacCreagh

First of all, isn’t that a great title? “The Lost End of Nowhere” . . . That really makes me want to read the story, which in this case is the third Kingi Bwana yarn by Gordon MacCreagh, originally published in the January 15, 1931 issue of ADVENTURE. At upwards of 37,000 words, it’s really more of a novel. As it opens, the American adventurer named King is hired by a German university to locate a scientist who disappeared in what was then German East Africa fifteen years earlier. The university has received a letter from the missing man claiming that he has made an earth-shaking scientific discovery, but there’s no way of knowing how long ago the letter was sent or whether there’s any truth to it. At least, not without sending in King to find out the truth.

King is intrigued enough to take the job, and along with his friends and sidekicks, the Masai warrior named Barounggo and the Hottentot known as Kaffa, he sets out to find the lost scientist, who had been studying gorillas and chimpanzees. King discovers clues to an eccentric white man who “married a monkey” and disappeared into the jungle. While he’s on the trail of his quarry, he and his safari clash with a couple of different tribes and hear even more mysterious stories about the missing scientist.

What King finally finds is not only earth-shaking scientifically, it’s also a grave threat to the safety of the world. There’s a lot of blood-and-thunder action, written in MacCreagh’s slightly old-fashioned but highly effective style, leading up to a great battle that approaches Robert E. Howard or Edgar Rice Burroughs level at times.

This Kingi Bwana stories are classic, old-school adventure fiction with an air of undeniable authenticity even when they get a little far-fetched in some of their elements, such as this one. I really enjoyed “The Lost End of Nowhere” and look forward to reading the rest of the stories in the series.

The Wrap Up

This was a rough year personally in a lot of ways, and I’m sure hoping that 2018 will be an improvement, but the reading and the writing rolled on, as they have for decades now. That’s what I’m here to talk about today.

READING

I read 117 books this year, a slight increase from last year. Here are my Top Ten favorites, in the order in which I read them.

RIDERS OF THE NIGHT, Eugene Cunningham

FLASH CASEY—DETECTIVE, George Harmon Cose

LEO MARGULIES: GIANT OF THE PULPS, Philip Sherman

NEVER SAY NO TO A KILLER, Clifton Adams

THE LOST END OF NOWHERE, Gordon MacCreagh

SAY IT WAS MURDER, Stephen Mertz

KISS AND KILL, Richard Deming

AVALANCHE!, E.S. Dellinger

PLAY A COLD HAND, Terence Faherty

THE ART OF THE PULPS, Douglas Ellis, Ed Hulse, Robert Weinberg, eds.

If you’re keeping score at home, you’ll note that my blog posts for a couple of these haven’t shown up yet, but they will soon. Also, one of them, SAY IT WAS MURDER by Stephen Mertz, hasn’t been published yet, but it’ll be out next spring from Rough Edges Press. Remember the title (like I’d let you forget!) because it’s a great private eye novel.

The older I get, the more I seem to retreat into the pulp era. Four of the books listed above first appeared in the pulps, and two more are about the pulps, at least partially in the case of the Margulies bio. But four of them are also new books, appearing for the first time in 2017, so I’m not a complete fossil yet. Still, more than a fourth of the books I read this year were either pulps, pulp reprints, or pulp-related. Another fourth were what I would consider vintage paperbacks or hardbacks. So I’m definitely beating ceaselessly into the past, boats against the current.

WRITING

I wrote a million words again this year, for the 13^th straight year. I have a tentative plan to try to hit a million two more times, then semi-retire and write about half a million words a year from then on. (I know, I know, we’ve all heard this before . . .) I spent enough years as a semi-starving freelancer that it’s difficult to turn down work, but I’ve begun to do that now and then. The million words this year included eight solo novels, six collaborations, and sizable chunks of two more novels. No short fiction at all in 2017, and only one of the novels, which probably won’t be out for a while, will have my name on it. But I haven’t worried about that in forty years and don’t intend to start now, as long as I can continue fooling everybody into believing I know what I’m doing and don’t have to take an honest job. I’m ’way too old for that. Many thanks to everyone involved in saving me from that terrible fate, from the editors and agents to the readers to Livia, Shayna, and Joanna, who make it all possible to start with.

I don’t make resolutions, but I have the vague hope that I’ll have more time to read, watch TV and movies, and just generally enjoy life. I plan to attend Robert E. Howard Days in June, I may make it to a science fiction convention or two, and I’ll definitely continue going to hockey games when I can. (I’ve become a big hockey fan and have been known to pontificate about games that I’m watching, based on my vast experience of two whole years as a spectator and never having been on ice skates in my life . . .) The blog will continue, the WesternPulps group will continue (until Yahoo pulls the plug on all the groups, which I remain convinced they will, sooner or later), and I’m sure I’ll still spend too much time on Facebook. To all of you out there who make this stuff fun, my very best wishes and the hope that 2018 is kind to you.

Forgotten Books: The Ebony Juju - Gordon MacCreagh

I enjoyed the first Kingi Bwana novella, “The Slave Runner”, quite a bit, but Gordon MacCreagh’s second novella in the series, “The Ebony Juju” (originally published in the July 13, 1930 issue of ADVENTURE) is even better.

This yarn finds the American hunter and freelance trouble-shooter named King being asked by an official of the British government to investigate rumors of gun-smuggling and a possible native uprising around Lake Victoria in Africa. King, not wanting to get wrapped up in all the red tape of working for the government, refuses. But he plans to head in that direction anyway, since he’s on the trail of a fortune in ivory that’s supposed to be buried somewhere in the area.

Wouldn’t you know it, the bad guys, fearing King’s possible involvement, decide to kill him to eliminate that potential threat to their scheme. (Doc Savage’s enemies made this same mistake, over and over again.) The attempted assassination fails, of course, but now they’ve gotten King actually interested in what’s going on in the area. He discovers that the natives (and yes, they’re very restless) are being stirred up by a large idol carved of ebony that can move and talk when it’s possessed by the spirits. (Didn’t I see this same plot in at least one Tarzan movie?)

Eventually King figures out everything that’s going on and foils the villains. You knew he would. Along the way, though, there are a couple of very suspenseful scenes and a lot of fine, authentic writing about Africa. These Kingi Bwana stories are starting to remind me of Robert E. Howard’s El Borak yarns in the way they’re structured, which makes me wonder if Howard read them. We know he was a fan of ADVENTURE. The locations are different, of course, and MacCreagh’s work lacks the breakneck pace and action of Howard’s stories. MacCreagh’s stories move along more deliberately and seem more concerned with creating tense scenes, which they do quite well. But there’s the same element of the “Great Game”, the political and espionage manueverings between England and Russia as they try to solidify their power in what they consider a backwards part of the world.

I’m only two novellas in, but I’m really enjoying this series so far. In this story, we learn that King is a Westerner, having grown up in Dakota Territory, and if they had made a Kingi Bwana movie back in the Thirties, Randolph Scott would have been perfect for the part. I’m glad I have the entire series and will continue reading and reporting on it here.

Forgotten Books: The Slave Runner - Gordon MacCreagh

Gordon MacCreagh is an author whose name I’ve seen on many pulps, but I’ve never read his work until now, at least not that I remember. He wrote a lengthy series about an American named King adventuring in Africa. The natives refer to him as “Kingi Bwana”, and he’s rumored to be a shady character, little better than an outlaw, a slave runner, and a smuggler. Of course, in Africa as anywhere else, things are not always as they seem.

The first Kingi Bwana story is “The Slave Runner”, from the April 1, 1930 issue of the iconic pulp ADVENTURE. MacCreagh takes the unusual tack of opening this debut adventure with rumors of his protagonist’s death. Supposedly, King’s charmed life has run out, and he’s been killed by a lion. I don’t imagine many, if any, readers actually believed that, even in the more innocent era of 1930.

MacCreagh spends quite a bit of time on two British officials in Kenya, a pompous deputy commissioner and a young, earnest consul. It’s the latter who first encounters King, the former who captures the American and accuses him of slave running because King is always in the same vicinity as a notorious Arab/Spanish slave trader. The deputy commissioner is convinced the two men are partners in the illicit enterprise.

MacCreagh’s style is a little old-fashioned, as you’d expect, but his prose reads very smoothly and is packed with details about Africa and its geography, politics, wildlife, social customs, and the attitudes of its people. He manages to do this without infodumps, so the pace of this first story moves along very nicely. There’s a long, suspenseful scene where King is penned up in a lion trap, only to have an actual lion come along and try to get to him. King’s escape from both the trap and the lion make for some good reading.

My only real complaint about this 25,000 word novella is that all the climactic action takes place off-screen, making the ending considerably less dramatic and more low-key than it could have been. King is a very good character, though, and Deputy Commissioner Sanford makes for an effective foil, reminding me of Inspector Teal in Leslie Charteris’s Saint yarns.

All the Kingi Bwana stories have been reprinted by Altus Press. I have all four volumes and will be working my way through them. Based on “The Slave Runner”, this is a good pulp adventure series, and I look forward to reading the rest of the yarns.