"The Golden Snare," by Farnham Bishop and Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (1918): 8.75
- would be quite a pleasant surprise if all these prewar adventure stories were told with this much economy, momentum, and vigor. The question then: how representative is this? I'm gonna guess pretty representative in terms of gender conventions, sexualization, and ethnic stereotyping/racialization, as in the unnecessary initial sensualization of Fulvia, the expectation of audience surprise at her aggression and competence, and the de rigeur assignment of national tropes (such as the Italians swarthiness and the Normans "keen mind," even though he's the most evil. Nonetheless, all of this is quite skillfully told and likely captures something truly inimitable in its presentation, which is by no means inextricable from the very "problematic" elements pervasive at the same time.

"The Devil in Iron," by Robert E. Howard (1934): 9.25
- So das Abenteuerbuch gewinnt? Of all the genres, and of all my genre knowledge coming into this stupid short story reading frenzy, ‘adventure’ -- or whatever I imagined that to be -- stories had to have the worst reputation in my mind. At least, my expectations of what they’d entail had to be the lowest, the meanest. And, in many ways, that is right. This Conan story here -- in which, in an admirably convoluted plot, an ancient god is awoken on an island with ancient ruins, at the same time that a conniving lord of a decadent people tries to trap Conan there, lured by the nubile suppleness of a “white,” as he makes sure to tell us over and over, princess. What ensues, then, is fairly breakneck action in which Conan rescues her, defeats the lord, and sends the godthing back to the Abyss with the help of a magic dagger -- exemplifies tonedeaf prewar chauvinism, racism, sexism, gender essentialism, and ingrained imperialism about as much as I’d expect: the denigration of the dark-skinned races, the constant valorization of whiteness as purity and worthiness and civilization, the forever swooning maidens, the explicit denunciation of effeminate luxuriated (Muslim) civilizations, the sexaul assault on unwilling women turning into sincere lust and acceptance on the part of those same women, among others. All of that, however, is quite digestible, given one’s previous reckoning with this aspect of the history of literature and the ability to compartmentalize one’s appreciation and recognition of anachronistic deficit smoothly enough. Not that such a reckoning should be done by all; it’s enough of a limb to stand on to even say that it can be done. That done, then, all the quite wonderful things about this text then start to become much more apparent. And this is not, on my part, I can venture to say, simply a general approving response to certain genre masters of many years ago. Holmes and Doyle left me quite cold, without a doubt. The same goes for Asimov and others. No, instead, it is something in the story itself, and maybe something more common to this kind of story than others. There’s the almost effortless mixture of so many disparate genre elements in one story -- swords and sandals; epic fantasy; horror; mythology -- blended so well, actually, that unless you think about it, it does really seem just like one large fantasy story by itself. And while Howard is by no means not a purple prose-stylist -- and the plotting sometimes strikes one as especially slapdash, esp. here that complete, almost unexplained info drop where Conan/Us learn the whole backstory of the god and the city randomly while standing in the hall, a complete perspectival narrative voice shift that is not really repeated elsewhere in the story -- there is an undeniable momentum in the tale, as a well as a fluidity of description of both character and scene that I rarely comprehend otherwise. For example, the whole big middle setpiece, in which Conan is being chased through the ancient ruins of the palace, going room to room, and seeing new things in each. Usually, I only half follow along the general description of interior and placement and action, but here I was able to understand all of these things, which was especially effective thereafter, as when the beast was beating against the massive steel door, ever so slowly breaking it open with Conan and Olivia inside. Altogether, if, again, we’re transporting that film crit credo to lit here -- how well does the story succeed at what it wants to do? -- then I can’t help but give this the score I did.

"The Mighty Manslayer," by Harold Lamb (1918): 8.5
- Das Abenteuer Buch continues its unexpected quality streak. The tone, themes, and preoccupations, truly, vary little between the 'adventure' examples I've so far been given, but it's hard to complain much when each remains as stridently wide-scoped, plains-spanning, kookily fun, and unironically bombastic as the other. Key differences: length and supernatural elements--the former not of much note beside the see-sawing tax it puts on the reader (first, bemoaning the length, and then, subsequently, getting understandably sucked in because of the mechanical way in which additional length conditions you in spite of yourself), and the latter a bit more interesting. The stories previously dealt quite unambiguously with supernatural elements. They were worked without kink into both the narrative and mythos of the worlds being described. Here, Lamb plays into the allure of the supernatural, but always pulls back at the last minute, having his speculative cake and eating the realism too (as in: the thought that a mythical beast was preying up Kerula, but actually one of Fogan's henchmen; the undead, smokemonster defenders of Genghis Khan's tomb being actually the deadly sulfur from a neighboring active volcano, etc.). The story: quiet westerner takes up with shifty merchant to find Khan's treasure-laden tomb, gets crossed and double-crossed, with many more hijinks to ensue. What makes up for the occasional slack, however -- in terms of keeping this solidly in the Adventure/Epic camp -- was the historical scope. Or, to put it more bluntly, the Orientalist tropes that would have been attractive to turn-of-the-century adv. readers, who saw grandeur in tales of the East (replete, obviously, with all the attendant racist, sexist, and literary tropes common to all such contemporary stories: i.e. the cruelty of eastern despots, the taciturn nobility of the most caucasian among them, the straightforward racializing descriptors and language; the deviant and voracious sexual proclivities of the groups [Kerula's sexual vulnerability as a slave, and her placement within the Chinese emperor's harem; the ironic valorizing -- from the inevitably settled, relatively cosmopolitan writer -- of the nomadic over the city dweller)].

I've read a great many of these stories either as ebooks or in other collections, but for anyone looking for some good solid grounding in the non-fantastic pulp stories of the past, I would happily recommend it!

Now if I could just find a dozen copies of these on the cheap, I'd happily bundle them up as holiday gifts for many folks who haven't read enough pulp but are fans of the modern genres spawned from them..... ( )

Fun, fun, fun.

Look, I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that this contains the great literature of our time. What I am going to tell you is that this collection contains a lot of fun reads. Penzler has brought together a collection of adventure stories that span an incredible gamut of genres – all under the heading of “adventure”. Westerns, sword and sorcery, science fiction, jungles, oceans, deserts, spies – it is all here.

Stories by famous authors such as Harold Lamb, Fritz Leiber, Rudyard Kipling, Saki, H. G. Wells, O. Henry, Damon Knight, Alistair MacLean, Edgar Rice Burroughs. Stories that are about famous characters (often the origin stories) such as Tarzan, Conan, the Cisco Kid, Zorro, Sheena, the Scarlet Pimpernel, Hopalong Cassidy. Stories by people you should know but probably don’t. Stories you should have read but probably haven’t. Just the wildest collection of action and adventure stories you have ever seen.

Again, I’m not going to say they are all fantastic. For example, Conan’s origin story is only so-so. But, if that is the worst I can find to say, then it must be a pretty fine collection. To put it in perspective, I was almost half way through the book before I hit a story that made me say “Wish I hadn’t wasted my time.” Again, not saying they ones before were great literature, but they were fun reads.

(Have to throw this in. I’m not sure how Philip Jose Farmer’s “After King Kong Fell” wound up in this collection, but I’m not going to complain – this is one of the great stories of all time.

I’ve said it before; I’ll say it again – this is a fun collection of stories and, if you want to remember the sheer fun of reading, you will want to read this book. You will not be sorry. ( )