Most of you know that it’s hard to go wrong with Edmond Hamilton’s fiction. THE LAKE OF LIFE is a novel of his that I hadn’t heard of until recently. Originally serialized in the September, October, and November 1937 issues of WEIRD TALES, it was reprinted in 2019 by Armchair Fiction, the edition I read.
At first glance, THE LAKE OF LIFE bears a superficial resemblance to a Doc
Savage novel. The protagonist’s name is even Clark . . . Clark Stannard, an
adventurer and explorer who finds himself in financial straits and needs money
to help his family. Because of this, he agrees to take on a job for millionaire
Montgomery Burns—I’m sorry, I mean Asa Brand, but when you read this
description from Hamilton, you’ll see why I made that mistake: “The old man was
quite bald, and his hairless, yellowed skull and wrinkled hatchet face and
scrawny neck made him look like an ancient, unclean vulture.”
Anyway, Brand hires Clark Stannard to find the legendary Lake of Life, which is
supposedly located in deepest, darkest Africa behind a range of mountains known
as the Mountains of Death. The legendary part comes in because the water from
the Lake of Life is supposed to confer immortality on whoever drinks it, and
Brand is willing to pay a high price for eternal life. In order to accomplish
this, Stannard recruits a crew of five assistants (there’s that possible Doc
Savage influence again) who are highly competent but who have suffered some
sort of setback in life: Ephraim Quell, a sea captain who lost his ship in an
accident and was stripped of his captain’s license; Mike Shinn, a heavyweight
boxer whose career ended after he was paid to take a dive; John Morrow, an
former army officer dishonorably discharged for punching a superior officer in
a fight over a woman; gangster Blacky Cain, who had to leave the States because
the law is after him; and Link Wilson, a gunfighting Texan on the run from a
murder charge arising from a deadly shootout in a bordertown cantina.
Are all these stereotypes? Sure they are. Do I care? Not one bit, because
Hamilton uses them to tell a very fast-paced tale full of colorful settings and
breathless adventure and even a little bit of philosophy. Stannard and his crew
find a way through the Mountains of Death, of course, and discover the Lake of
Life, but at the same time they also discover a war between two lost races (a
favorite plot of Edgar Rice Burroughs, as most of you probably are thinking
right now). Our heroes get mixed up in that war, naturally, and equally
naturally, there are two beautiful young women on hand, one good, one maybe not
so good. Will Clark Stannard and his men survive the epic battles between one
group that wants to protect the Lake of Life and another that wants to use it
for evil?
I had an absolutely wonderful time reading this novel. It’s a Front Porch Book,
for sure. The plot is nothing we haven’t all seen before, but Hamilton does
such a superb job of spinning his yarn that I couldn’t stop turning the pages.
I’m shocked that this was never published as half of an Ace Double in the
Sixties, as some of Hamilton’s other pulp work was. If it had been, I’d have
been right there on my parents’ front porch with it, galloping through it on a
summer day with a big grin on my face. If you’ve read this far, you already know
whether or not you like this kind of stuff. If you do, I give THE LAKE OF LIFE
a very high recommendation.
A note on the cover of the Armchair Fiction edition: That’s actually a Robert
Gibson Jones cover from the August 1951 issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES. As soon
as I saw it, I thought to myself that it must have been a FANTASTIC ADVENTURES
cover. It just has that look. But it kind of fits THE LAKE OF LIFE, too, if you
squint your eyes and hold your mouth just right. I put that image at the top of
this review because I wanted it to pop up when I share the post on Facebook. I
figured the original WEIRD TALES covers by Margaret Brundage, which you can see
below, might catch me a jail term from the censors over there.
