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.

Rita

Around the middle of the week, the weather forecasters were saying that Hurricane Rita was going to make landfall southwest of Galveston (right through Bill Crider's backyard, in fact) and then track up across Texas, maintaining tropical storm force winds and torrential rains all the way to the area where I live. They made it sound so bad I got a little worried, in fact. I remember Hurricane Carla in 1960, which hit Galveston and then was still a pretty powerful storm by the time it reached North Texas. Of course, that's not the way it played out. The wind blew a little harder than usual this afternoon, and I saw some clouds off to the east. That's it. So now I find myself slightly peeved that we didn't even get a little rain out of it (we're in the midst of a fairly bad drought and have already had a couple of trees die, with several others looking pretty bad). I have to admit, though, that I'm glad the worst of the storm came nowhere near here, while at the same time I'm sorry to hear about the damage to Joe Lansdale's place.

Now I'm wondering what next week's hurricane is going to be called.

Computer Woes; Hurricane

Just as my health began to improve, that of my computer got a lot worse. I've had trouble getting on-line all week and have just about decided that this computer will have to be replaced. However, I'm going to have to wait to get paid for a particular book, because I've got that money earmarked for the purpose of upgrading to a better system. Until then, I'll be limping along with the current equipment.

I don't know much about hurricanes, and I certainly wouldn't wish any more weather problems on the people in Louisiana, but I'm sure glad Rita decided not to come knocking on Bill Crider's door. Here's hoping it doesn't cause too much flooding or destruction elsewhere.