Pulp Heroes: More Than Mortal & The Khan Dynasty by Wayne Reinagel

Originally published Tuesday, June 5, 2012 7:51:27 PM

I’ve chosen to review these two epics together because I read them closely together and for these two related novels, what I’ll say about one will mostly be repeated for the other.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned my love for Philip Jose Farmer’s A Feast Unknown in the past where Lord Grandith (a Tarzan stand in) and Doc Caliban (Doc Savage stand in) meet and discover some shocking revelations about their histories. Wayne Reinagel takes Farmer and goes beyond, throwing in some Wold Newton speculations for good measure and adding some of his own theories.

Both stories features analogues of many of hero pulps but focuses on Doc Titan (Doc Savage), The Darkness (The Shadow with a smidge of Marvel’s The Shroud), The Guardian (the Avenger) and The Scorpion (The Spider).

More than Mortal in essence is an epic adventure that reveals that Doc Titan, The Guardian and several other characters (or their analogues) are shown to have a connection in case that serves as grand finale for a number of pulp heroes – that’s not a spoiler as the opening of More Than Mortal is the death of one of minor pulp heroes.

The Kahn Dynasty is an earlier tale that serves as the semi prequel to The Avenger Justice Inc and a sequel to Doc Savage: Brand of the Werewolf (the introduction of Pat Savage) revealing more interconnections between the great heroes as an earlier adventure in the 1880’s impacted on our heroes today.

I enjoyed these two adventures and it was fun to read these as alternate versions of heroes I know and love with some surprising revelations.

If I had any complaints, Reinagel could do with some tighter editing – there is a tendency to reuse some of the phrasing. Two examples spring to mind from The Kahn Dynasty.

In one scene Pam Titan is packing her belongings to travel to New York and she describes her grandfather’s gun in detail to the friend helping her pack. A couple of chapters later, the story has Simon Titan getting the gun as a gift with nearly the same description.

In another scene Henry Jekyll is talking with his father and he thinks about their relationship, the point of view then changes to Jekyll’s father and he describes his relationship with his son in the exact same terms.

Crossovers Expanded Volumes 1 & 2 (2016) by Sean Levin published Meteor House

A few years back Win Scott Eckert published Crossovers: A Secret History of the Universe which made connections to many different characters through the links of crossovers. 

I reviewed these back on the old blog (which will have to be reposted here soon)  and found them to be excellent works that were well researched.  However, by its very nature such a work is incomplete - new crossover stories are written all the time and older ones await rediscovery.  Win handed the title of Crossover Chronicler to Sean Levin who after several years of work has published these two new volumes.

Levin has taken Win's format and built two new volumes that have the same breadth and scope of history as Win's works.  Indeed if all four volumes were to reedited into one giant sized telephone sized work I may have some trouble identifying which entries were by which author but this is a good thing it makes Crossovers Expanded feel like an organic outgrowth of the original volumes.

 Looking through both volumes I was frequently surprised by crossovers I was unaware of and pleased to see some familiar authors and names appear in this book.  Full disclosure, several of my stories are referenced in this work and Sean has done a great job at spotting the connections I have sprinkled through my stories. 

I bow to Sean's knowledge of pulp and adventure fiction.  I must also compliment the artwork that littered the work that provided a visual link to the works.  Keith Howell has done a great job on the covers illustrating several heroic archetypes.

As a fan of pulp and adventure fiction these are invaluable reference works.

Death Comes to Pemberley (2011) novel by PD James

After reviewing the TV adaptation I was asked if the story fit with Wold Newton Continuity.  I said yes but I'd want to read the novel first.  So off to the library I go and borrow a copy of the novel.

Not surprisingly the TV by and large follows the plot of the novel with some changes.  For example the novel has two doctors present at the examination of the body where the TV has just one.  The Darcys have one son on TV (Fitzwilliam) and two in the book (Fitzwilliam and Charles with Elizabeth announcing that she is again pregnant at the end of the novel)

James sets the novel in 1803 - 1804 and states that in 1803 Darcy and Elizabeth had been married for six years making the events of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE in 1797.  According to Win's Crossover Chronology P&P takes place in 1793.  The dating is irrelevant to the plot offers no problem in adding the story to the Wold Newton continuity. 

I've previously mentioned Magistrate Selwyn Hardcastle from the TV adaptation and the likelihood that he may be an ancestor to Judge Milton C Hardcastle .  The novel adds a coroner name Makepeace (his role was taken by Hardcastle in the TV adaptation)   one wonders if he was an ancestor to Sgt Harriet Makepeace from the 1980s British TV Series Dempsey and Makepeace.

Both are speculative and can be ignored if so desired.

However James does make references to the Elliot Family from Persuasion and Mrs Knightley from Emma both other novels by Jane Austen.

The book is a good read and I wouldn't object to more of  the Darcys as investigators, James sets this ups nicely as Mr Darcy is a local magistrate (it is only due to his connection to the crime that Darcy did not investigate this crime) and the TV series gives Elizabeth more involvement in the investigation.

Wold Newton Day: Death Comes to Pemberley (2014) TV mini-series

More by luck than good management the final episode of this miniseries aired on December 12 here in Australia so I sat down and binge watched all three episodes together on Wold Newton Day.

I'd heard of the P.D. James novel it was based on but I hadn't read it.  There are hints that someone was aware of Farmer's theories,  The Darcys have a son named Fitzwilliam after his father and during Wickham's trial there is mention of his service in the late 1790s which lines up with Farmer's dating

As a fan of the Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle six episode Pride and Prejudice Miniseries from 1995, I was a little disappointed that the cast from that didn't return for this follow up but I can understand the difficulty with that given that Colin Firth seems to be in a heap of movies (especially excited for Kingsman: The Secret Service).

Matthew Rhys made a good Mr Darcy, older and wiser.  I wasn't as fond of Anna Maxwell Martin as Elizabeth Darcy, that comes more from the fact that I was madly in love with Jennifer Ehle than any problems with Martin's acting.  Jemma Coleman was a fun Lydia Wickham as was Matthew Goode as her husband.  And it was a pleasure to see Penelope Keith as Lady Catherine.

The idea of a murder in Pemberley isn't new (The Wild Hunstman by Win Scott Eckert, The six Mr & Mrs Darcy Mysteries by Carol Bebris) but I liked this story bringing Lydia and Mr Wickham back into the lives of the Darcys.  There was an extra darkness to some of the characters from the original novel but the events of the intervening years makes sense.

I also liked the new characters, Henry Alveston, a suitor for Georgiana Darcy and Sir Selwyn Hardcastle the magistrate and coroner investigating the murder with a history with the Darcy family. (one wonders if he was an ancestor to Judge Milton C Hardcastle from the 1980s TV series Hardcastle and McCormick). 

I'll have read the book now but this was a nice way to spend Wold Newton Day.

The Scarlet Jaguar (2013) by Win Scott Eckert Meteor House

Previously posted Tuesday, August 27, 2013 3:51:31 PM

Evil In Pemberley House, Wold Newton, Novel, Win Scott Eckert ...

 

This is the sequel to The Evil in Pemberley House which I reviewed earlier

Let me start by saying that the cover is beautiful. Pat Wildman looks amazing. Mark Sparacio does an amazing job on the cover that pales compared to the piece he did for the signature page which took my breath away. Meteor House has done an amazing job on this book (just as they did for their previous novella Exiles of Kho).

So to quote the proverb, you can't judge a book by its cover. So how does the book measure up to the cover? For me, the cover is a great ad for the book that hints at the awesomeness that we find in the book. When the book arrived, I was in the middle of The Complete Domino Lady (which reprints the seven pulp stories and a new story by Steranko who also provides some amazing artwork). I put it to one side to read The Scarlet Jaguar, fully intending to go straight back. I finished The Scarlet Jaguar with a big grin on my face and proceeded to reread the whole thing again. That's how much I enjoyed the book.

When we left Pat Wildman at the end of The Evil in Pemberley House, she had founded Empire Investigations with Charles Peter Parker. The Scarlet Jaguar opens a year later with Empire Investigations being hired to investigate the disappearance of a British Diplomat in a South American country that was moving towards democracy. What follows is a slam bang pulp ride with Wildman and Parker joined by Helen Benson, the daughter of The Domino Lady and The Avenger. Our trio of heroes face a weapon that can turn people and objects into red glass and The Scarlet Jaguar has threatened to use the weapon on the Panama Canal. Pat Wildman and her team race to stop this from happening.

Eckert has given us another exciting story, liberally sprinkled with references to other stories series and characters. One of Win's great talents is that he can drop these easter eggs and not bog the story down. I was pleasantly surprised to see an appearance of another of Philip Jose Farmer's creations in a cameo role with a hint of an earlier adventure with Pat Wildman. (which I want to read now - The Midget Airplane Heist is such a tantalising hint)

If The Evil in Pemberley House left us wanting more adventures of Pat Wildman, The Scarlet Jaguar lives up to that promise and further whets our appetite. In The Foreword, Eckert tells of his 2009 meeting with Lady Patricia and how he got permission to edit and publish the Memoirs of Pat Wildman and how she gave him notes that form the basis for a number of other stories (his three Avenger stories, The Adventure of the Falling Stone, The Wild Huntsman and Honey West/T.H.E. Cat: A Girl and her Cat.)

Win's stories are like those photo mosaics; each picture is complete but when you step back and look at the big picture it is a part of the larger tapestry.

The scene on the cover does happen in the story. If I had to make a complaint it would be that Mark Sparacio didn't give us a drawing of Helen Benson (who I'd also like to see in a solo adventure).

This is a great story and well worth getting if you can. 

 

**Update: This won The New Pulp Awards Best Novella & Best Cover Art **

Exiles of Kho by Christopher Paul Carey (Meteor House 2012)

Originally published Tuesday, September 11, 2012 9:29:18 AM

Philip Jose Farmer, Wold Newton, Christopher Paul Carey

UPDATE: if you missed this when it came out.  It is now available at Amazon as an ebook.

So I had seen the cover on-line with the notices that the book was coming and I thought “that’s a nice looking cover”. The package arrived; I opened it and the cover in breathtakingly beautiful. The pictures do not do it justice.
In a lot of ways I was reminded of the Daw SF books from the 1970’s like Hadon of Ancient Opar, and Flight to Opar by Philip Jose Farmer. Of course this is intentional as Christopher Carey completed the third book in the series The Song of Kwasin (All three books were published as Gods of Opar: Tales of Lost Khokarsa by Subterranean Press 2012) Exiles of Kho is a prequel to Hadon of Ancient Opar.

If I were to judge the book by the cover alone it’d be a winner but I’m not judging by the cover alone. It’s the story and I am very pleased that the story lives up to the cover and I was pleasantly surprised that there is interior art that is just as gorgeous as the cover (I’d scan them here but I’d have to damage the spine). The artist for both the cover and interiors is Mike Hoffman. Hopefully Meteor House will use him for future volumes.

Carey tells the story of the priestess Lupoeth and her band of outcasts exiled by the new Queen of Khokarsa to build a new temple. The motley group of exiles is joined by Sahhindar, the gray-eyed God of archery and time. (gee I wonder who he might be – perhaps a certain time traveler from one of Farmer’s other works that I recently reviewed) .
The band travels to the site of the new temple facing danger from the beasts and other tribes and the different factions within the band. Carey manages to balance the political intrigue with action that makes this an enjoyable read.

I read the entire book in an afternoon and enjoyed every bit of it. The characters are well drawn and the action flows well. Carey manages to sneak in references to several other of Farmer’s other works and themes.
I hear that Meteor House has plans to issue further volumes like this and I am looking forward to future books.

Welcome to my new blog

Hello and welcome to the latest version of my blog.  It was formerly hosted over at Opera Blogs but with the decision to close those down I decided to move the blog over to Blogger.

As you can see I've changed the name of the blog from The Serial Vigilante Blog to Brad's pulpy blog.  Recently, I've felt that the scope of the Serial Vigilante Blog was somewhat too limited focusing as it was on the characters who appeared in the paperback racks of the 70s and 80s.  I'd been reading and thinking about those characters for nearly a decade and was starting to feel a little burnt out.  I found that my interests and tastes had expanded somewhat beyond that framework.

Serial Vigilantes will always be part of this blog but I want to expand beyond that especially with my involvement in the New Pulp Movement.  I was always able to justify that there was some tangential connection when I posted about New Pulp, Classic Pulp,or even Pulp Precursors (the amount of justification I felt the need to make for Don Pendleton's introduction to a Sherlock Holmes story).  With the change to Brad's Pulpy Blog if I want to post about something pulpy I can.  Something I may not have posted about on the old blog such as Katy Perry's jungle girl as seen in the videoclip for Roar is fair game here.

Hopefully for you the reader this means a more interesting blogging experience with a greater variety of material and more frequent blogging from me.

What becomes of the material on the old opera blogs?  Well I've tried to import them across but for whatever reason it hasn't worked so I'll be grabbing some of the posts off there and reposting here. Some will be posted as is (the two interviews being the first to come to mind)  others may be rewritten and new photos added but I'll make it obvious what is being reposted and what is new.