Black Horse Express

The latest edition of Black Horse Express, the on-line magazine about the Black Horse Western line of novels in particular and Western fiction and history in general, is now available. As always, this is an excellent issue, with the lead feature being a lengthy interview with the extremely prolific author Keith Hetherington. There's also an article by I.J. Parnham about the titles of Black Horse Westerns, a historical article by Daniel Stephensen about a famous wild horse tamer, and other Western-related pieces by various authors. And you can find information there about the latest contest to win a free Black Horse Western.

New Project

Yesterday I finished the book I'd been working on, so today I was able to get started on something new, which is always a good feeling. In this case it's a little different, because I'm writing a short story (or maybe a novelette, I don't know yet how long it'll turn out to be), and it's on spec (I'm targeting it for a particular anthology, but there's no guarantee at all that it'll sell there), and it's science fiction. I've been a reader and fan of SF for more than forty years, but I've written very little of it in my career -- a couple of stories that sold to small press magazines and a handful of stories and novel proposals that never sold. I'm a believer in the theory that different types of stories use different writing muscles, though, so I thought it was time to give SF a try again. I think I've done a pretty good job on my research, I've come up with the sort of plot that I can write effectively, and I like the characters I've put in that plot. So far -- and I estimate that I wrote between a third and a half of the story today -- I've had a very good time with it. So we'll see what happens.

Jongor Fights Back/Frazetta Cover

Fantastic Adventures, December 1951

The Return of Jongor/Frazetta Cover

Fantastic Adventures, April 1944

More Jongor and Frazetta

In his comment below, Aaron Larson mentions reading three Jongor books, and sure enough, there are two more besides the one I wrote about a couple of days ago. "The Return of Jongor" appeared first in the April 1944 issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, and it was followed more than seven years later by "Jongor Fights Back" in the December 1951 issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES. Both stories were reprinted in paperback by Popular Library in 1970, with Frank Frazetta covers. I don't own copies of either of them, but even with my reservations about the first Jongor novel, if I ran across copies of them for a decent price, I'd probably buy them and read them.

(I tried to put the covers in this post, but Blogger doesn't want to cooperate, so it appears I'll have to post them one at a time.)

The Cimmerian Blog

I recently discovered that Leo Grin, editor and publisher of The Cimmerian, the fine journal devoted to the work of Robert E. Howard, is also writing a blog. The emphasis is on Howard and Howard-related news, but there are also items of interest pertaining to fantasy fiction in general. Well worth checking out.

Jongor of Lost Land/Robert Moore Williams

After a couple of weeks of doing a lot of research reading, I decided to take a break and read something just for fun. “Jongor of Lost Land” by Robert Moore Williams first appeared in the October 1940 issue of the pulp FANTASTIC ADVENTURES and then was reprinted in paperback in 1970 by Popular Library. That’s the edition I read.

I had heard of the Jongor series before but had never read any of the novels. The series is a Tarzan pastiche, and the plot of this first entry is passable imitation Burroughs. Beautiful Ann Hunter has come to Lost Land, an isolated, unexplored wilderness somewhere in the interior of Australia, to search for her missing brother who disappeared there during a previous expedition, the first to actually reach Lost Land. She is accompanied by a companion of her brother’s from the previous expedition as well as a vaguely sinister guide. When their aboriginal bearers turn on them and try to kill them, Ann and the two men are forced to flee deeper into Lost Land, which it turns out is populated by dinosaurs, pterodactyls, and other forms of prehistoric life. It’s also the home of the mighty warrior Jongor, who spends most of the book rescuing the explorers from various dangers, falling in love with the beautiful Ann, and fighting the evil Murians, survivors from a long-lost colony established by the ancient and long-since-vanished civilization of Mu.

As you can tell from even that short description, Williams had certainly read his Edgar Rice Burroughs. Unfortunately, he didn’t possess much of Burroughs’ storytelling talent. The dialogue is stilted even by pulp standards and the narrative is clumsy and repetitive. Another problem is that there’s not even a hint of mystery concerning Jongor’s origin and true identity. All the details are laid out for the reader in bland, boring fashion by Williams. (No, he’s not Ann’s missing brother. That’s established right away.) There are a few nice scenes here and there, such as the one where Jongor leads a herd of tame dinosaurs on a charge against the bad guys, but mostly this is a pretty bad book.

And yet it rated not only a paperback reprint in the Seventies but also a cover by the legendary Frank Frazetta. Not a particularly good Frazetta cover, in my opinion, but still . . . A lot of old science fiction and fantasy was reprinted in mass-market paperbacks during the Sixties and Seventies, and a lot of pulp fans, myself included, are bothered by the fact that most of the vintage stuff is no longer readily available except in small press editions. But a lot of it probably doesn’t deserve to be, and I’d have to put poor old Jongor in that category.

I still enjoyed the break from all the research, though.

From Outer Space

I've now watched the first episodes of all three of the "alien invasion" TV series that debuted over the past couple of weeks. Even given the similar concepts, there's a surprising amount of sameness to them. Couldn't one batch of aliens have invaded in, say, the southwestern deserts rather than the ocean?

"Surface" started first on NBC, and to be honest, I slept through part of the premiere, so I can't really judge it fairly. But what I saw seemed awfully predictable and the script didn't have any lines that really jumped out at me. "Threshold" came next on CBS, but I taped it and didn't watch it until tonight, so I'll postpone comment on it until after I've talked about ABC's "Invasion". "Invasion" was probably the most hyped of the three series, and it was the one I liked the least. I didn't find the domestic drama angles interesting and again, everything seemed really predictable.

So is "Threshold", but now that I've seen the first two episodes, I sort of like it. It seems a little more science-fictional than the other two series, the cast is better, and I like the "alien invasion procedural" approach. I'll probably watch it again, and it seems like something I might follow on through the season. We'll see.