I’ve gotten it several times over the past few weeks, each one a smiling opportunity to make a new fan and a new friend. But, just in case I’m not standing in front of you (or on the other side of a Zoom call), I’m putting together this post to explain a little of where I’ve been and where I’m going.
And, who knows, even those of you who’ve been on the journey with me might find this useful!
In 2016, of course, I discovered solarpunk, humans solving human-size problems with human gifts after a solid decade of Singularity or Apocalypse. It was a breath of fresh air, fresh green air, and I’ve been inhaling the stuff ever since. Almost all of my traditional sales since have been solarpunk, from turning the sunken city of Surat to new life to defining one’s own gender on Mars. By far the best example of pure solarpunk in my history, though, is “Glâcehouse,” from the moment Mackenzie beholds the dome that holds winter within it and it takes her breath away.
Cover art Melissa Weiss Mathieu.
But over the last few years, a certain vigor has been creeping into my fiction. I’m not afraid to draw on the tradition of Lester Dent and Doc Savage, of Jack London’s muscular, Progressive prose, of Indiana Jones and the serials that inspired him. These new stories are drawn to larger-than-life dimensions, with characters who stand for their ideals more than Dostoevsky-certified realism and aren’t afraid to take direct action to act on them. These are the stories I’ve dubbed solarpulp. Doña Ana Lucía…
Credit to Kim Schmidt, as always.
…springs from this new impulse, in all the novels and stories I’ve written of her to date, but she’s hardly alone. Gooch pulls his gun and uses his fists and some of the heroes of my new Cheminéc cycle, growing out of “Glâcehouse,” are just as red-blooded. But, by far, the best example is “Fire Marengo,” the free story you get when you sign up for my newsletter.
We passed, a shadow inside a shadow, beneath the broad lip of the Sheikh’s isle of Valhalla. Tchang reefed our sail, for we had to maneuver slow in that sliver of darkness. Far above, the sirens sang and men shouted, but us two stories below, our ears were keen on the lapping of the water. The slightest sound different could mean life or death there beneath the Sheikh’s pleasure-grounds. I kept the gaff off our starboard bow, to push Valhalla away from the little Sacramento lest we dash ourselves to pieces on the beautiful, deadly coral.
The sound that broke us was the terrible splash. You’ve all heard it, you’ve the faces for it – the sound of a man hitting the water. Tchang clapped his hand over my mouth to stifle my shout, and in my surprise I let the gaff slide off into the dark waters. Tchang and I looked to each other – the Law of the Sea demands we rescue the poor devil. Even if it might expose us. A rescue within a rescue! But I’d want a good sailor to do the same for me if I hit the drink. Even so…
I craned my neck out to get an eye of the situation. The man was floating there, buoyed by his close-necked shirtsleeves, pale and washed out in the mighty lights.
“Game overboard!”
Game? Man overboard surely.
“Is the game dispatched?”
The man shifted in the water, and here I saw illuminated the red blossom of the hole in the back of his head. It was impossible not to see.
“The game is dispatched! Tally to the Sultan of Valhalla!”
Game…now I got it. He meant hunting game. Not like you or I rustle up the occasional cougar for our supper, but as rich men do. And these weren’t no mountain lions, he was hunting men. He was hunting the entire third watch!
And more of that to come in the future – I’m wrapping up edits on the next No Time novel, No Time for the Killing Floor: The Second Hour, and querying Doña Ana Lucía Serrano …to the Future! to traditional publishers. I’ve a fistful of novelettes featuring her, from heists to heiresses to meditations on sexuality and the Peace Testimony. And, if you’re in a more sedate mood, more visionary solarpunk (with a hint of satire).
Well, there it is – where I’ve been, where I am, and where I am bound, as of 2023. But as Hope Hopkinson says, you can only plot a trajectory from where you are.
If adventure has a name, it must be Indiana Jones.
Well, I kind of had to, didn’t I? Look at my author photos. Look at my major in college. Look at what I named my company. Look at my years in China. Indiana Jones left a deep and permanent stamp on me, and I’d be remiss not to send him off in style.
This week, my childhood best friend Kane Lynch invited us all out to the Sunset Drive-In. We piled into our tiny Prius, all four of us together, for my belated birthday celebrations and for Lyra’s first theater experience. It seemed only just – her first movie experience (her first anything on a screen) was Raiders of the Lost Ark for my birthday last year, why not Dial of Destiny this year?
Mathieus are a fish-eating people. We take our meat from the sea, from Morro Bay oysters to farm tilapia to Maine lobster to Italian anchovies to delicate nori and dashi of Japan. The first meat Lyra ever tasted was her mother’s pan-fried salmon. We both grew up in a little drinking village with a fishing problem where every restaurant except the Chinese place offered clam chowder and the soupe du jour.
The Platonic ideal of Morro Bay. PICTURED: clam chowder.
I love a good rare steak as much as the next man, and as much as my father does, but we live on the sea.
Mathieus are an educated people. My mother, Nancy Castle, went back to school at 38 after she bore me, and the memories of sitting next to her as we did our homework together are a bulwark of my childhood memories. Her library card was open to me to evade school board censorship. Even my father, Steve Mathieu, a proud working-class hippie who missed his college years counting parts for Control Data, is worshipful of Jack London and a handful of writers of the 60s, and watched my grades like a hawk.
Mathieus are a civic people.
Let me tell you some of our stories and myths, some of the stories we tell to explain who we are. These are the stories I will tell Lyra, to show her what kind of people she comes from.
Keep these three weirdos in mind the rest of the article. FUN FACT: This is the only time in my life I have seen my father wear a suit.
Today is my daughter’s first birthday, and our shared birthday party, and I am spending time with her. This is a post I wrote originally in 2011 for the Learning to Think cycle. It seems appropriate to the day. I still stand by the philosophy that imbues it.
“I cannot be overcharged for anything. I always get my money’s worth out of life.” – Lestat de Lioncourt, The Vampire Lestat
This is one of the little side benefits of learning to think. You’ve learned to focus, you’ve learned to notice the world around you, you’ve learned to split off a part of your brain for one task and do another. Individually, all very useful. I’ve been stressing the utility so far. Taken together, they could be quite powerful. This is what I’m hoping for.
But they are not merely useful.
Let’s suppose that you have had no experience of the beautiful stillness during your meditation, found no answers there. Or that the feeling of brain split is not as intriguingly eerie to you as it is to me. I’m speaking of something a bit more down-to-earth: putting your thinking talents to the sensual world.
Focus on that first bite of fettuccini alfredo that your friend made, the way you focus on your breath. Note the particular flavors, feelings, sensations. Use words or work wordlessly, your choice. Now take the second bite, compare it with the first. Is there more sauce in this bite? Perhaps a caper? How is it different? How has it changed? Leave off quality judgements, ‘good or bad,’ ‘better or worse,’ ask how they are simply different.
Wring every last ounce of experience, of pure sensual indulgence, out of the moment. It only comes this way once.
Ah, but why bother stopping that lovely conversation you were having? Take a moment and split your brain, and put one train of thought on the moment, and let the other follow the conversation.
There it is: Meditation, simulflow, petit perception, wound together, in service of no greater goal except joy.
Or, if you are an adventurer like I am, take your next adventure. Harry Lorayne bemoans the sort of traveler who goes and knows they have wonderful memories, but cannot recall anything about them. I’m sure they bemoan themselves, too. And I’m equally sure you don’t want to be one.
Wander the streets of your home town, and take in all the smells (florid and fetid) and the glittering of towers, while keeping a weather eye out for pickpockets. When you go to Egypt, you may be worrying about how long it will be until lunch, or how much you hate that fat loud woman behind you, or how crowded it is. But you can spin off a part of yourself, and let it gaze in awe and wonder at the Pyramids and the inscrutable Sphinx. Let it drink in every detail, take a snapshot behind your eyes, assemble a vast room inside your skull full of nooks and crannies stuffed to bursting with this one moment, where you stood and faced the Pyramids, and were amazed.
Grand adventures, lonely walks, exhilarating races, new cocktails, new faces, massages, meals, sex…take it all, and drink deeply. Drink as deep as you want. You have given yourself the ability to drink deeper than ever, and the world is Thor’s great drinking horn, and cannot be bottomed.
Some of my more spiritually-inclined friends have reproached me for this focus on the sensual. Shouldn’t our minds be focused, not on our food, but on higher things?
I have a few answers to this. First, do Christians not witness the transubstantiation, and know communion from a bite of bread and a sip of wine? My mother calls it “the Mystery,” and it is for her what great books are for me, a tall drink of cool water when I did not know I was thirsty. I cannot imagine how the spiritual nature of the mystery could be diminished by acceptance of and focus on the reality of the moment, the sound of the choir and the taste of the wafer and the wetness of the wine, all at once.
However, most of my detractors here are not Christian. Some are Buddhist, and I can only answer them that this is why I am not Buddhist. I cannot accept any spirituality that does not delight in the world. Whether it is knowing God through His work, or appreciating the ineffable, formless pattern that is and undergirds all things, or respect for the gods of the trees and grasses (and cities and automobiles), I feel that a true spirituality must embrace the world we can see as well as the world we cannot. To delight in that world is no crime, if you can let it go as well.
There are prosaic uses for what you’ve learned here: bringing your attention back to your balance sheet, writing an email while answering the boss’ question, finding defects in questionable merchandise, remembering the price of something.
But you can also remember the value and the worth of something, find the curve of a lover’s back, listen to two great songs together, bring your attention back to your food.
And you can never again be overcharged. Go get your money’s worth out of life. Go now.
Cambermann’s Painter: A Scientifiction– The story of a disruptor with a disruptive new technology that will disrupt art forever! …I speak of photography, of course! A flash that speaks to 2023 through 1823, if you’ve been following the AI news, you’ll bust a gut.
“You mean to say that contrivance painted this…this wonderful woman’s image?!” The bewhiskered mayor stuttered.
“No paint was involved whatsoever, nor painter!” Cambermann cried. “For too long have the painters of Paris rolled like butter in milk in their sumptuous garrets and Montmartre alehouses! This technology will destroy the gatekeeping of the likes of artistic guilds and this very Institute! The whole race of painters will disappear from the face of the Earth as every man can now instantly paint any scene before him!”
(One of the few times Bama decided the original was perfect as it stands and just did his own version)
DATELINE – NEW YORK CITY/…PROSPER CITY, NEW JERSEY? – In an insalubrious roadside diner, Alice Cash, her brother Jim, and the woman they call Aunt Nora huddle over their sandwiches, watching the thick, oily raindrops fall.
Alice CashAunt Nora Boston
(No, you can’t convince me I’m wrong)
A few terse words pass between the three, words of terror and haunting “back home.” Suddenly, a bell tolls on the radio, a bell that strikes the trio utterly still with fear. And yet, they are far from Prosper City, the bell could not be tolling for one of them…could it? Nevertheless, they pile into their jalopy, which Jim assures the ladies is full of gas. As they take off for New York City, a sinister berobbed figure, all black except for the green bell emblazoned on his chest, emerges with a recently used hose and a newly-filled ten gallon tank of gas…
The jalopy breaks down in the middle of nowhere, and as Jim sets out, the women arm themselves with a pair of blue-steel revolvers. And well they should, more hooded figures of the Green Bell emerge from the woods, murdering Jim on the electrified third rail of a nearby track.
In New York, a serpentine man name of Slick Cooly meets a rotund, multi-chinned industrialist with the improbable name of Judborn Tugg. They exchange the standard Doc Savage exposition, as well as some more: they’re in league with the hooded figures who killed Jim Cash and threaten Alice and Aunt Nora, they work for a mysterious figure called the Green Bell, and they are plotting to overthrow him to secure his organization for themselves. And to do this, they are approaching Doc Savage first. No sooner said than done, Tugg solicits Doc on the eighty-sixth floor as Slick guards the lobby should the girls appear. His attempt to frame them are foiled by Monk (always out to help a lady in need), and he escorts them upstairs as Tugg departs, disappointed in Doc’s uprightness. Monk takes Slick’s money roll and donates it to the Unemployed Fund. The other four trickle in as Aunt Nora explains the situation:
A year ago, Prosper City was a thriving cotton mill town in New Jersey, but after Judborn Tugg switched his biggest mill in town to poverty wages, everyone else followed, under the sinister influence of a man calling himself the Green Bell. Outside agitators, led by Slick Cooly, pushed the workers to strike, with robed figures assaulting and killing workers that tried to scab, or, worse, driving them to gibbering madness! Yet the two are thick as thieves, and Chief Clements is none the wiser. Aunt Nora’s Benevolent Society has tried to help as she can but she’s exhausted her savings, so she, the Cash siblings, and a playwright living in her boarding house, Ole Slater, are out of options. Someone needs to take out the Green Bell and restore harmony between the bosses and the workers. But no sooner does Aunt Nora finish her grim tale when two men enter the office: Ole Slater, who’d followed out of his puppy-dog love of Alice Cash, and Ham, who brings dire news – Doc Savage stands accused of the murder of Jim Cash!
Leaving Ham behind to do actual lawyer stuff for once, Doc and the rest make a quick exit to Prosper City. Doc sneaks past Chief Clements to Aunt Nora’s boarding house, where he hands Aunt Nora a fistful of dollars to provide food for the hungry and store credit to the most generous grocers and tells her to organize an event in the abandoned circus tent just outside of town. One falls to his knees and weeps. The “skinflint merchants” get nothing. He sends Renny to make a big fat deposit in the local bank, saving it from insolvency. Despite Slick’s agitators and Chief Clements’ detectives (both real and just-sworn-in-from-the-bad-part-of-town), the event goes on and everyone in Prosper City shows up for the free food.
Well, almost everyone. The Green Bell summons his men, reveals he knows Doc is at Aunt Nora’s house, verbally castigates Tugg, and dispatches Slick Cooly to drive Doc insane using the strange device by the old barn. Slick tries to perforate the Green Bell after the meeting, but hits only air. A bundle of sticks over a tile drain! But where would it lead? Slick isn’t keen to find out. He plants the device in Doc’s room.
Meanwhile, under the circus tent…
Doc, speaking over the PA, promises he is not “insulting” those who’ve taken clothes, loans, and food with charity – he’ll be expecting it to get repaid. He promises they’ll be drawing pay and able to repay inside of two weeks, and calls up all the industrialists and bosses. However, instead of guillotining them (as we might expect in 2023), Doc offers to buy them out, lock stock and barrel, at fair market value and sell them back at the same prices in a year. His only provision is that the new wages and work-hours must be maintained when they’re bought back. The bank he deposited at is happy to extend all the loans necessary as Doc’s deposit more than covers the minimums. Needless to say, the bosses bite.
Now turning to the workers, he asks for all the ex-servicemen to come onto his payroll as guards, a fighting force against the Green Bell’s berobed minions.
“The family of any man who dies in the line of duty will receive a trust-fund income of two hundred dollars a month for the balance of life.”
Doc savage, being reassuring
The tent event is a rousing success, and Doc’s thought are on the Green Bell’s retribution as he heads back to his room.
He finds the box, and explains to Long Tom that it uses specific sonic waves (which he can detect thanks to his two-hour daily exercise) that deactivate brain centers. Everyone piles in to the room to watch it tick, and Doc got both fingerprints and blacklight video. Blacklight – is there anything it can’t do? They uncover Slick Cooly (of course), and Doc lights out to find him…at Chief Clements’ office!
Ambushing Slick, Doc informs him
“You’re going to die,” He said, neglecting to mention the mortal date.
lester dent, being clever
Doc demands the Green Bell’s identity, but Slick truthfully tells him he doesn’t know. He tries to cut a deal with Doc, but Doc worms out of him that he and Tugg killed Jim Cash…which is all Chief Clements needs to hear. No sooner have Doc and the chief shook hands than a shot rings out! Slick Cooly lay crumpled on the cell floor, having started to gibber in madness, and a stricken deputy stands there with the gun! Sadly, their alliance lasts just long enough to drive to Judborn Tugg’s and for Tugg to pull a holdout heater on the chief. Doc jumps him, and Tugg is out of ammo – but not out of friends! Green Bell minions rush Doc with roscoes flashing, and Doc is forced to retreat as fresh murder accusations fill the night air. He retreats back to Aunt Nora’s to plan, only to find out his room has been bombed. Worse, the bomb had been planted from inside the house, from the garrot of the late, lamented Jim Cash.
Said cold body has just arrived by train, and Doc and Monk join the rest of the town thence. Hiding behind a fat guy, Doc gooses Renny into expositing while threatening the cops (no mean feat!). Doc lights some firecrackers as a distraction and examines the body, finding the hidden message: IN MY FACTORY LOCKER.
Doc makes a hasty escape and crosses the train yard to Collison McAlter’s Little Grand Cotton Mill (he’s one of the good bosses). “The rods lipped flame” as the Green Bell’s men open fire. Doc manages to sneak past as they shoot each other, finding the name plate JIM CASH. Empty! Collison sticks a snubnose in Doc’s back, mistaking him for a hooded Green Bell man. He says he came to the plant in the night and hid from the Green Bell mooks as they took up arms and positions. He speeds Doc back to Aunt Nora’s in his limousine, as bosses do.
From New York, Ham confirms the suspicions of the last few chapters as the rest (Monk, Renny, Ole Slater, Aunt Nora, Alice Cash, Long Tom, Jonny, and various hangers-on, who are reproducing at an alarming rate in this book) arrive. After getting fooled by a clever and frankly hilarious ruse involving an old barrel and fake fire, the Prosper City Police suffer a couple of murders as they search the house for Doc. They don’t find him – but they do find the gun that shot Chief Clements in Monk’s spare suit! Alice manages to slip a message to Doc before her arrest…and his.
They give him the usual strip in Aunt Nora’s basement and cart him over to the station, but are interrupted by the tolling of the green bell! Someone is to die or be driven mad. Doc takes the chance to escape as they cross the Prosper City bridge and heads back for Aunt Nora’s. He watches Tugg get himself kicked out of the house (courtesy the thick boots of Monk and Renny), and follows him to an abandoned barn where “the Green Bell’s pack” is assembling, dressed in their color-reversed Klan robes. Doc instantly discerns the underground pipe gag as he listens in. Tugg reveals a bottle of cyanide near Aunt Nora’s home and the Green Bell tells him to poison her well just as Doc opens a hole in the pipe outside. Collecting cigar butts and a match, he lights a noisesome bundle of tobacco and buries it in the pipe, trusting his well-trained nose to recognize the smell when, and where, it emerged from the pipe. His search is ended, however, by the meeting breaking up and Judborn Tugg himself headed home.
Tugg finds the Green Bell in his home, roscoe in hand, furious that Savage had tailed him and rescinding his orders regarding the cyanide. The mystery man fades into the shadows, leaving Tugg trembling in his huge, empty house.
Doc, back near the barn, pops some holes, sounds some pipes, and makes an unexpected discovery. The pipes that the Green Bell used to communicate with his men ends in an old coal shaft, going down “more than tenscore feet.” He makes his way back to Aunt Nora’s, and nearly springs the Green Bell’s Fallout death-trap, but recovers the bottle and replaces its contents with dirty water. Adjusting the tree-sitting machine gun, Doc heads for the house and summons Johnny with his eerie trilling, explaining himself using sign language through Johnny’s binoculars. Johnny passes a package, and Doc greets Judborn Tugg just as he walks in his front door.
For Doc is dressed in the peculiar dress of the Green Bell himself!
Doc orders Tugg to resume the poison plan, and swiftly escapes despite Tugg’s inept attempts to follow. Tugg’s paranoia starts to get to him, the more when he hits the tripwire on the machine gun and only Doc’s careful adjustments prevent him from getting perforated! This is too much for Judborn Tugg, and he makes for Aunt Nora’s house, offering to clear Doc’s name in exchange for a minute to appeal to the Man of Bronze. Monk calls Doc in, and a shot rings out!
It’s only a distraction, and Tugg is suddenly keen to vacate the premises. Tugg does not disclose the message the Green Bell whispered to him through a crack in the wall: “I will dispose of Doc Savage, but if I fail, I will need you as bait for the trap!”
Doc summons the boys for a meeting, and doles out each man his assigned task: Johnny to acquire geologic maps of all the myriad coal mines, Monk and Renny to protect Aunt Nora, Alice, and the house, and he himself works with Long Tom to triangulate the secret radio transmitter that jams all Prosper City signals to sound out the green bell tolling. They discuss who the Green Bell might be, and though Doc knows, he offers no confirmation without proof, and proof he has not. They also discuss public opinion and which way the police will tumble, for or against Doc. The Green Bell himself emerges to tamper with Long Tom’s car, and finds himself face to face with Doc on the other end of a flashlight. But he makes good an escape as his minions fall before Doc’s honed combat skills.
The police tear off hoods and arrest the minions, with Ole Slater declaring “just bums from around town!”, but they give no chase to Doc. Clearly, the police are tumbling Doc’s way. Long Tom gets a secret message from Doc in the trunk of his car, to play along with the Green Bell’s attempted assassination. He tosses his roadster over Prosper City bridge and into the river after emptying it of all his equipment.
Doc, meanwhile, cooks up a ruse to interrogate the prisoners stashed in Aunt Nora’s parlor, along with like half the town. Monk’s methods (mostly hairy fists) have produced nothing, so Doc looks deep into his eyes. The man can’t reveal who the Green Bell is (of course), but he coughs up Chief Clements’ real killer and the Green Bell’s murder of the hanging cop. Satisfied, Doc pays off the ambulance to run them up to the Crime College in upstate New York. Johnny returns, and Doc distracts by playing up the one shattered piece of the bombed madness-box, loudly announcing that the finger prints will damn the Green Bell! The villain kills the lights and throws the evidence in the fireplace…covering his fingers in “a certain chemical” that will turn his guilty fingers yellow…in like a week or so.
Ham arrives, with good news: “The murder charge against you in New York is all washed up!” He’s desperate for action, and gets none. In, er, a couple of ways. The factories throw open their doors and Renny dives joyously into organizing crews and ordering their miniature army to their garrisons and patrols. Doc spends his time in medicine, studying the madmen, and declares they can all be cured – in time. Alice Cash cottons that Doc is progressively “Prosperizing” his forces, retreating himself and bringing the Fabulous Five behind him out of day-to-day operations, and asks him to stay. He gives her the Spider-Man spiel about his romantic prospects, then does his daily two-hour regimen.
That night at nine is another meeting at Aunt Nora’s – a last meeting.
At eight forty, the Green Bell tolls!
Monk holds down one radio set, as Long Tom triangulates the other – to Aunt Nora’s house! The calls are coming from inside the house! But Doc doesn’t buy it, and lights out with the transmitter after a glance at Johnny’s maps. He finds an abandoned coal mine the black hoods file into, and quietly and quickly follows. In the underground cavern, with
Pillars – coal left standing to support the roof – were a forest before his eyes. In this forest, black-cowled men were clustered.
The Green Bell is present – in person! He orders his men to unmask, and all the good guys are not present, and all the bad guys are. Handy. He outs Tugg as a traitor and exposits: he planned to ruin every owner in town and buy him out for a song! Doc, of course, is unsurprised. The Green Bell further exposits that he is a millionaire from selling stocks since the Depression started. His plan will make him the unthinkable – a possessor of a billion dollars, a billion-aire, if you will. As he offers Tugg the single dollar for which he purchased every stick of Tugg’s property, he slithers a blade into the rotund industrialist’s heart! Expositing yet farther, the Bell explains that his powerful radio transmitter is in a hidden chamber directly under Aunt Nora’s house! Also the room is full of nitroglycerin. He’s got it connected to a seismograph and a smaller portion of nitroglycerin ready to cause just the earthquake needed – on the dot! It will destroy all evidence, and Aunt Nora in the bargain!
Doc quietly unsheathes his transmitter, and transmits the exposition to Monk’s rig up in Aunt Nora’s living room. But the men split early, and Doc is spotted! Some idiot fires a bullet, heedless of the nitroglycerin that the Green Bell literally just explained to them. Doc is thrown into the stone lining the tunnel as the Green Bell, the czar of fear, and every one of his men are consumed in the underground fireball. Emerging bruised and battered, Doc encounters Monk, who explains that everyone got out of the house in time thanks to Doc’s broadcast, and Alice Cash reveals, with the very last line, the true identity of the Green Bell.
AN EERIE TRILLING SOUND – This being a ’33, Doc does not have most of his toys or more exotic superpowers. As a result, he relies a lot more on the tradecraft and woodcraft, which is marginally more grounded. His command of dead drops, secret codes, tracking, tailing, and traps is as impressive here as his toe-torn shrimp-ties would be later in Fear Cay and his full The Shadow befogging of men’s minds would be in The Mental Wizard.
But it’s Doc’s benevolence, and one of the few cases of his employing his money and status as an actual power, that steals the show here. The one-man New Deal cleans up Prosper City the way Dent hoped FDR would clean up the nation. He puts not only the Fabulous Five, but Aunt Nora, Alice Cash, Colliston McAlter, the ex-servicemen, and the poor and destitute of Prosper City to use, each according to their particular talents and dispositions. Almost unique among Doc Savage novels, we see Doc here as an exemplary leader, putting everything in motion and retiring to his own wacky hijinx.
FISTS OF GRISTLE – Renny is the hidden power of today’s adventure. He acts as Doc’s first officer, getting blankets and boots distributed, work-crews and servicemen into place, depositing checks and running shows. Those fists come into play, but Renny really shines as Doc’s open palms.
SUPERAMALGAMATED! – Johnny contributes his unique eyewear to signaling Doc in the dark, and his expertise to acquiring and interpreting the geological maps of the area, identifying the coal mine near Aunt Nora’s house where the Green Bell operated.
“YOU SHYSTER CLOTHES-HORSE!” – Ham gets to be a lawyer today! And it realistically takes a long time to get the four crumbs to crumble and get Doc cleared of murder accusations in New York.
“YOU MISSING LINK!” – Monk is the heavy here, and Doc consciously uses him so. Not only does he guard, rough up, and act as Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair to the army of ex-servicemen deputized into Doc’s service, he unintentionally plays Bad Cop to Doc’s Good Cop. And makes an ass of himself trying to one-up Ole Slater for the affections of Alice Cash (politely oblivious in her pining after Doc’s Apollonian energy).
WIZARD OF THE JUICE – Long Tom is in fine form here. His triangulation of the signal is what leads directly to the climax, and the improvisation of tossing the car in the river is spectacular in a book chock-full of cunning tradecraft. He also Johnny’s bit to give us the amazing curse “Jersey curiosities!”
WHERE DOES HE GET THOSE WONDERFUL TOYS? – Aside from the superfirers and blacklight flashes, Doc has a paucity of wonderful toys here. As noted, he relies mainly on tradecraft and ordinary items (and a few next-Sunday-AD items like the miniaturized radios and the micro-TV in the car). You could plausibly believe a wealthy man of Doc’s status and accomplishments in 1933 could have access to almost all the toys Doc deploys here.
CRIME COLLEGE MATRICULATES – The Green Bell is the textbook example of the stock Doc villain – insinuated secretly in with Doc by chapter 2, controlling his minions from behind a hood, mask, or Wizard of Oz works, unmasked like a Scooby-Doo villain by a smug Doc on the second-to-last page. “And I woulda got away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling gentlemen adventurers!” It’s notable that Republic serials would lift this type of villain wholesale, even as Dent abandoned it as exhausted by the end of the thirties.
Other, savvier readers had the exact perp fingered by about the halfway point, but I myself was left guessing until his final reveal, and had great pleasure in guessing who among Prosper City’s residents might be the Green Bell himself – if indeed there was only one of him!
Aside from the Bell himself, all I can say is that of Slick and Tugg, the wrong one got plugged.
AGED LIKE FINE MILK – Oddly enough, I think it’s Doc’s treatment of the industrialist class of Prosper City. Doc rolls into town like a one-man New Deal, and aside from giving Tugg and the other Green Bell minions justice, he treats the likes of Collison McAlter like misled, frightened fellow adults. Chief Clements, too, is not only capable of human speech but as the authority of Prosper City is well-intentioned, just dim and misled by Tugg and the Green Bell. Any author willing to tackle this kind of story, this kind of setup, in 2023 would have portrayed all of the industrialists as on the Green Bell’s payroll (assuming it wasn’t a conspiracy by the bosses in the first place, and there was no Green Bell). Doc’s (and Dent’s) portrayal of the industrialists as victims of the Green Bell just as much as their workers, and just as eager to get back to work if only they had a little help, definitely dates the work.
And I have no doubt that most of Twitter will demand an apology from Dent and try to SWAT his house for his class copaganda.
BACK MATTER – Why not explore the back matter yourself? Courtesy of The Eighty-Sixth Floor, here’s an organized collection of all the back matter available here on Al Gore’s Internet!
THE VERDICT – This is my favorite Doc Savage book ever. Doc rolls into town like a one-man New Deal, sets up lines of credit for workman and capitalist alike, infuses his own cash into the proceedings and takes over the stunted capital of the town to put everything back in motion. As fun as the Scooby-Doo antics of the Green Bell and his color-negative KKK are to watch, the capitalist tent revival (because what else do you call it?) is the real heart of the book. Just like with The Munitions Master, Dent channeled his own fears and the fears of his country and his times, gave them a face behind the photos in the papers, and sent Doc and the Fabulous Five down there to fix ‘em but good. I feel this is where Doc shines brightest as benevolent force of nature, “lending [his] assistance to all who need it” and getting the town on its feet…by putting things in motion and walking away.
Crime College aside, this is the book where I most admire Doc. And I think there’s a lot to admire here. This is an odd one (no exotic locations, no Wonderful Toys, more digression than would ever appear again) but a good one. I hope you agree with me – even if Czar of Fear doesn’t turn out to be your favorite, too.
This is the Back Matter section of the previous “Doc Savage at 90” review, for April, 1933’s The Land of Terror. Although he wouldn’t introduce it until Quest of Qui in July, 1935, I’d like to talk about the Doc Savage Method.
The Doc Savage Method is Dent, with suicidal overconfidence, trying to define Doc’s mysterious two-hour daily exercise regimen, the source of his physical and sensory powers. But it was one of Dent’s fixations, and with either masterful cynicism or genuine idealism, he wrote up a series of “modified” exercises that readers could practice at home to hone their own bodies, intellects, and senses.
What sets the Doc Savage Method apart from modern (or even contemporary) workout regimens is the focus on the last two elements of those. Integral to the exercises aren’t just the dynamic tension of your biceps and triceps, but reciting the times tables and Kipling’s “Gunga Din” as you do so and cataloguing all the green items in the room with your eyes closed while you do it. Far beyond Kim’s Game and layered listening, Dent goes into comparative taste-testing and a variety of progressive subtle discernments. Far beyond Roman rooms and funny pictures, Dent demands raw memory power.
This exercise Doc Savage usually takes immediately on rising in the morning. Standing before an open window in shorts, feet wide apart and body relaxed, he breathes deeply and slowly eight or ten times.
Then, still relaxed, he reaches down to the right foot and, bending from the hips only grasps an imaginary hundred-pound weight. Slowly and without jerking, muscles tensed, the imaginary weight is lifted above his head. It is held there while Doc inhales and exhales deeply, having held his breath while lifting.
The weight is heavy, and requires tremendous exertion of every muscle of the body. Doc’s legs are tense and quivering, and his back muscles stand out as they aid the arms and stomach tendons. This is accomplished by opposing the pull of the muscles with mental resistance.
After reaching the top of the lift, Doc sets the imaginary weight down beside his left foot, straightens up and relaxes.
At the same time while taking the above exercises, Doc also trains his powers of observation by looking out the window and mentally cataloguing everything that comes within his range of vision. He then turns his back and repeats the physical exercise, lifting the imaginary weight up from the left foot and lowering it to the right, reviewing in his mind all the while that which the eye had photographed through the window.
This exercise is usually repeated five times by Doc, and at its conclusion he lists on paper all the objects he can remember seeing outside the window.
Only at the end of seven days does Doc check one list against the other…and sees much improvement after that period; for the mind is grasping more details each day.
When possible, Doc completes these exercises in a room with four windows, using a different one each week for the test, and for the fifth week goes back to the first window. Again list-checking shows him much improvement over the first week.
(Of course he’s in his shorts, one of Dent’s other fixations was unconscious homoeroticism)
The physical aspect of Exercise II is what we now call “mental imaging,” which enjoys an occasional revival in fitness science (and “science”) every few decades or so (in the 1960s/70s among the human potential movement, in goal-setting in the 2000s). I sometimes pretend at such things myself, though usually for writing purposes. The sensory aspect here is old as the hills – Robert-Houdin would take his son in front of shop windows to do exactly this in the 1880s and 90s. Combining them is the real innovation here – and it’s why I listen to audiobooks and podcasts when I work out, or count cars out the window when I’m standing in the company gym doing my karate kata.
Let’s try another.
Exercise VI
One of the first taste exercises ever used by Doc Savage was the attempted identification of individual solutions of coffee, tea, salt water, sugar water, diluted vinegar, and mustard water. He prepared six one-ounce bottles and, after sterilizing them, filled them three-quarters full with drinking water.
Into each bottle he poured a teaspoonful of each of the beforementioned Iiquids. Each bottle was labeled, naming the contents within. Then he closed his eyes and sipped from each bottle in turn, noting on paper what he thought the flavor to be.
After reaching the stage where he could differentiate correctly, he added water to the bottles until the flavor was barely perceptible…and then tried identifying them.
During this exercise, Doc recited aloud John McRae’s poem “In Flanders Fields.”
This is a fine example of one of Dent’s many ‘discernment’ exercises. I’m given to understand the like was fairly common among the nascent self-help culture in the 1930s, but the Doc Savage Method is the only place I’ve encountered them directly. This is also a great example of Dent (either with a fig leaf or without even bothering) adapting Doc’s no-doubt highly scientific exercises to items the average 11-year-old boy would find around the house in 1935. This is also how I memorized “In Flanders Fields,” practicing a variant on this back in China in the Learning to Think days.
Exercise CVII
Through his many adventures in the far places of the world, Doc Savage has come to a complete knowledge of all countries, their climates, whether mountainous or plain, whether hot or cold, the accessibility and the means of getting there.
A study of his youth helped to gain this information, for Doc played at times a game with himself. It might have been called “expedition going.”
Doc would sit in front of a globe of the world and spin it. While the globe was turning, Doc would close his eyes and then reach forward and stop the whirling with his finger. Where the finger rested, there would be the country which Doc would visit mentally.
For example, if the country were Tibet, Doc would trace the means of getting there and the transportation to be used. This would mean a perusal of steamship schedules across the Atlantic, railroad maps, and times of train departures in India…if entrance to Tibet were to be made that way. Passing through the Khyber Pass in northern India would give Doc historical background of that bloody gash through the hills.
Study of the climate was necessary, for Doc would have to prepare mentally the clothing he would take on the trip. The topography of Tibet would come in for study, for upon that would hinge the method of transportation…whether pack mule, on foot, or by modern motor car equipped to cover the rugged country.
Study of the nature of the people would tell if guns to any number would be needed for protection. If permission from the local authorities would be necessary before entrance to the country, Doc would be called upon to study the political situation and gain knowledge of what personages to approach.
Since he was going to Tibet, Doc had to look up in archeological books that which he might search for that would be of value to mankind in explaining past civilizations.
While on these mental expeditions, Doc would name the States or provinces of the country to which he was going, the capital of each, and its present ruler.
This is my favorite one. I have a globe on my desk right now. And looking up geographic and travel information is mind-bogglingly easier now when compared to the 1930s.
It beats “memorize the names and capitols of the countries of the world in alphabetical order” absolutely hollow.
In the course of researching for your mental expedition, each nation takes on a flavor and a color, and you discover a few salient facts to hang your hat on (putting my thumb on India many years back is how I discovered Vikram and the Vampire and the existence of the Blue City of Jodhpur and the noble knightly class of Rajputs). It becomes a place in your head.
My daughter will be practicing this for her geography lessons, when I homeschool her. Fantastic writing practice, too.
My finger landed in the Philippines. A splendid place to expedition in my mind.
This is a longer entry on the back matter than usual, but that’s because this is what first drew me to Doc Savage – this eerie, alien way to Learn to Think (and tone my body at the same time). A lot of it is nonsense. But there are some real jewels in the Doc Savage Method. For reference, I’ve included the complete Method in a document, here, as originally listed on The Eighty-Sixth Floor.
DATELINE – APRIL, 1933 – NEW YORK/VOLCANIC ISLAND OF THE SOUTH SEAS – In New York, renowned chemist Dr. Jerome Coffer gives the usual “who is Doc Savage?” speech to his incredulous co-workers, notes that he’s dining with his former pupil, the Man of Bronze himself, that evening, then steps out of his factory and explodes into a puff of thundercloud leaving only an arm behind. Two sinister men, Squint and an associate, flee the scene.
Doc, sitting in the idling car, is horrified.
He investigates the scene and puts his woodcraft to good use pursuing the two men. He chases down their accelerating car, despite deployed roscoes to dissuade his pursuit. Switching to his own roadster and a disguise of …a tweed cap, Doc follows them down to Riverside Drive. He closes on the five men, and in his anger and rage at losing a second father (after losing his own father so recently in his first adventure, The Man of Bronze) he takes the killer and swings him around like a rag-doll to drive the others into their inexplicable 18th century pirate ship in New York Harbor.
Did I mention the pirate ship? It comes up again. They have a pirate ship.
The old ship had a truculent, sinister appearance. Atop the deck house, a large sign stood. It read:
THE JOLLY ROGER Former Pirate Ship. (Admission Fifty Cents)
Doc straight-up murders a guy, then investigates THE JOLLY ROGER. It’s filled with torture equipment and death traps. Obviously. Doc maims another fellow, and interrogates him as he lay dying of dope-fiend withdrawal. The man confesses that the killing smoke is called the Smoke of Eternity, and that low-level mooks such as himself have no idea what it is. He rasps out the start of a name, “K,” but dies dramatically. Doc dispatches the remaining mooks, leaving only Squint. Doc lets him escape and follows him up Riverside Drive to his mysterious master.
Squint arrives at number ten of a “narrow street which had a long row of houses exactly alike,” and Doc tails him over the roofs. He meets with another four-pack of mook, and calls “Kar,” the mastermind. He’s authorized to spill all the beans, offering each mook a million dollars, using the Smoke of Eternity to dissolve bank vaults, trains, and anyone in their way. They’ve got two jobs to start: a train job, and to kill Doc Savage! Doc surprises them, and does the eerie trilling over the phone, scaring Kar.
Having scared off the mooks and Squint, Doc heads to Coffer’s home. He finds the typewriter ribbon with Coffer’s message to the police, mentioning the names Oliver Wording Bittman and Gabe Yuder…and a mysterious spot known only as Thunder Island. He next pays a visit to this Oliver Wording Bittman, the renowned taxidermist, a skeletal soul with a penknife. Lester Dent would like to remind you of the penknife on his watch chain. Bittman reveals he knew Doc’s sainted father, and that the Savages owe him gratitude and help. Which comes in helpful, as Oliver Wording Bittman, renowned taxidermist, realizes that whoever used the Smoke of Eternity on Jerome will come after him next, for the terrible secret of Thunder Island. Doc decides it’s time to call in the cavalry.
“Monk,” Doc suggested, “could you take on a little trouble right now?”
“I’m on my way!” chuckled Monk. “Where do I find this trouble?”
“Call Renny, Long Tom, Johnny and Ham,” Doc directed. “All of you show up at my place right away. I think I’m mixed up in something that will make us all hump.”
“I’ll get hold of them,” Monk promised.
After ducking a Smoke of Eternity bomb that takes out the George Washington Bridge, Doc meets up with the boys on the eighty-sixth floor. Well, almost all the boys…according to “the prettiest secretary in New York,” Monk has been kidnapped! The bad guys (including Squint) take him to THE JOLLY ROGER, which drops a regular smoke bomb to disguise the seaplane and submarine, the latter of which carries Monk off for Kar to interrogate. The interrogation goes nowhere, thanks to Monk’s nerves of steel, so they jam him out a torpedo hatch in a box and slowly let the sea in.
Long Tom traces the phone wire at the tenth-house address, which Dent describes in loving detail. Johnny, Doc dispatches to locate Thunder Island and tell him something of the rock formations there. They discuss the possible atomic implications of the Smoke of Eternity.
“I am not sure what the Smoke of Eternity is,” Doc explained. “But I have an idea what it could be. When the substance dissolves anything, there is a weird electrical display. This leads me to believe it operates through the disintegration of atoms. In other words, the dissolving is simply a disruption of the atomic structure.”
“I thought it was generally believed there would be a great explosion once the atom was shattered!” Johnny murmured.
“That was largely disproved by recent accomplishments of scientists who have succeeded in cracking the atom,” Doc corrected. “I have experimented extensively along that line myself. There is no explosion., for the very simple reason that it takes as much energy to shatter the atom as is released.”
…awkward.
Renny and Ham are dispatched to Monk’s penthouse place, as Doc heads down to the Hudson to investigate THE JOLLY ROGER. After investigating the ancient ship, he locates the box that Monk was shoved into and rescues the renowned chemist and ape impersonator. They take on the submarine, docked cunningly beneath THE JOLLY ROGER, and successfully round up all the mooks on the poop deck. Attempts to interrogate are interrupted by the usual bullets to silence prisoners forever. Kar escapes but not for lack of trying on Doc and Monk’s part.
Upon return to the eighty-sixth floor, Doc and Monk hear from Long Tom that the phone calls all came from the submarine, and find Oliver Wording Bittman (the renowned taxidermist) waiting! He wants to join them…for safety’s sake. Doc graciously accepts, and sketches the third man of the expedition, Gabe Yuder, from Bittman’s memory. The put out the APB, and no sooner do Ham and Renny eulogize Monk as the chemist delightedly listens in. Then they return in force to THE JOLLY ROGER.
This attack goes rather better than the first two. There is too much over-the-top two-fisted pulp action to summarize here, but suffice to say a bank gets robbed, Doc is cunning, and THE JOLLY ROGER goes up in the Smoke of Eternity, along with half the Hudson and a sizeable chunk of the dock.
A week later, Doc has sent the mooks to his Crime College and given the bank’s money to the finest restaurant in town to hand out free food to the bums, and we are treated to another installment of Doc’s daily exercise regimen, reading Braille while detecting high-frequency sounds. They get word from San Francisco that four of Squint’s crew were seen boarding a tramp liner there, bound for that most sinister and spine-chilling of countries: New Zealand! Doc, the Fabulous Five, and Oliver Wording Bittman (the renowned taxidermist) board one of Doc’s planes to follow at fabulous speeds of 300 miles per hour. They meet the liner, only to find out the four men had met a yacht in international waters and escaped! As they cannot take to the air (the liner not being equipped with the “modern catapults with which some ocean greyhounds are now equipped”), they sail to Auckland, where Kar has murdered all of the native guides who once took Jerome, Bittman, and the mysterious Gabe Yuder to Thunder Island.
There is thus only one choice: they themselves must head to Thunder Island, with Bittman as their guide. They descend into the smoke and mist of the caldera, only to be menaced by a dark shadow in the mists – a prehistoric pterodactyl! “A flying reptile of the Pterosauri order,” according to Johnny. “A gigantic, eerie thing reminiscent of a mangy crocodile clad in a great gray cape,” according to Dent.
Doc’s plane goes down this time due to pterodactyl bite, and the men resort to parachutes. The pterodactyls (plural) continue to bedevil the men, and they in turn continue to fire recklessly on endangered species in their native environment. They survive the attacks, and also the bubbling red-hot mud lake of convection-free magma. They drift to one of the cooler outer edges of the caldera as Dent explains how volcanoes work. But they are scattered, and Doc lands in “a tangle of creepers and low trees which looked like ordinary evergreens.” Out of the mist emerges “as fearful and loathsome a sight as human eyes ever beheld!”
I’M A MUTHAFUCKIN’ T-REX!
Doc says to look lively. They look lively. In the course of the T-Rex chasing Monk, they find everyone (except for Renny), and discern that the T-Rex hunts in a very peculiar way – no, not by movement, by voice! They glide silently away while Doc decoys the Tyrannosaurus away. As night falls, they scramble up into some tree ferns for safety. The night is filled with “titanic struggles of reptilian monsters” and there is not much sleep to be had. Come morning, they find Renny’s bloodied hat and parachute. In their grief, they are ambushed by a cat-dog-weasel-bear, a creodont.
MEANWHILE, WITH RENNY…
Renny had fallen into the first “terrible monster fight” the evening before, blinding a T-Rex with his parachute and springing onto her enemy – a terrifying triceratops! And spring he does – riding the trike by the horns, each “gallon of knuckles” hand wrapped around her two upper horns and cinched around her lower horn! When she finally goes down, Renny grabs hold of a vine, goes exploring, and explains how evolution works for the reader, before encountering an ordinary giant dire serpent, longer than a freight car – which on closer inspection is the colossal bulk of a brontosaurus! He climbs a tree, only to be assaulted by a miniature pterodactyl. He fires, but the pterodactyl closes its jaws around his parachute. Renny succeeds in choking the pterodactyl with his own two hands and leaves it for a charging, murderous stegosaur, running as it gives chase to him instead. He stumbles and falls into a trench, the roaring stego rushing past him, clawing his way out of the suffocating grave! But “sharp teeth sink into his body!”
MEANWHILE, WITH DOC…
Doc again pulls the sacrifice play, decoying the creodont while the others escape. This time, he takes Monk’s tobacco (Monk rolls his own. Why does that make perfect sense?) and springs on the creodont, stuffing its eyes with R. J. Reynolds’ finest! Monk chirps, “I was thinkin’ about quittin’ anyway!” as the gang are reunited. They philosophize about how this lost world could have survived and maintained itself (with some genuinely interesting musings on the fantastic ecology), and look for Kar.
“We’ve got to count every bullet. Although the weapons are virtually useless against these prehistoric monsters, they will be effective upon Kar.”
“Kar!” Ham clipped. “I had nearly forgotten that devil!”
Ham speaks for us all
They make their way past some certainly-just-scene-dressing geysers to the edge of the convection-free magma, hunting for breakfast. Ham skewers an animal “about the size of a large calf […] spongy looking antlers, two in the usual spot […] the other lower down below the eyes. It had a cloven hoof and looked edible.” This primitive deer they cook the primitive deer in a natural cauldron after taste-testing the cooled water. But Kar may not have been so clever – they spot smoke out in the mist! Not Kar…Renny! The sharp teeth had belonged to a tiny hyena-like thing that he easily dispatched after sacrificing some shoulder skin.
Yet the fires still burn!
Doc scouts ahead, and nearly gets his head shot off. But when he gets back to his men, Oliver Wording Bittman (the renowned taxidermist) has vanished! But he did not make it far before something felled him. Further shots bring Bittman around as the shooter goes down from one of Doc’s shots between the eyes. They rejoin the others and close on the fire. Closer…and closer…
Abandoned! The fire has died down, the men’s equipment scattered about, but no bushwhackers await them. Attempting to trail the missing men avails nothing, so the Fabulous Five, Doc, and Oliver Wording Bittman climb their trees for the night. Their attempts at rest are interrupted by a sinister shuffling below, as of scores of great beasts!
To Doc’s keen ears came the sound of grinding teeth at work on the base of Monk’s fern. Then big incisors began on his own tree!
Capable bronze hands working swiftly, Doc picked off a fragment of his own shirt. He put a flame to it, got it blazing, and dropped it. The burning fragment slithered from side to side as it fell. It left a trail of sparks. But it gave light enough to disclose an alarming scene.
A colony of monster, prehistoric beavers had attacked them!
This right here is why this book places so high in my personal list. I have no words. Dent was mad as a hatter and it is glorious.
Yet they have been sent by Kar, who tied and killed one of them and dragged it to where Doc and his men sleep, to take advantage of the beaver’s well-known and legendary lust for vengeance above all else! Yet they are scared off by a single gunshot, mistaking it for the tail-slap of warning. The only casualty of the dire beaver attack is Bittman’s pen-knife. After breakfasting on ground sloth, Doc lights out alone to trail the two men who had dragged the dead beaver the previous night. Dent treats this as a safari, showcasing Doc’s woodcraft and a variety of strange animals like giant prehistoric skunks, tiny horses, and more pterodactyls. Doc squares off against a T-Rex, which hops kangaroo-like across the land. Then he finds Kar’s two men…what is left of them. They were not as cunning as Doc, and met a grisly fate between the jaws of the terrible thunder lizard!
Worse, Kar has snatched his friends!
Doc follows their trail, nimbly evading each of the Fallout-style traps that Kar has left him (thanks in no small part to some cunning signals on Monk’s part). Finally, he stumbles upon Kar’s plane, and the secret hangar that shields it. He comes upon his Fabulous Five, but they’re in no immediate danger…and Oliver Wording Bittman, renowned taxidermist, has been taken away for fiendish reasons unknown! Doc stumbles over Gabe Yuder’s grave (trampled to death by a hopping tyrannosaurus), and realizes what most of us realized three chapters ago. Two expositing bad guys exposit until Doc emerges from hiding and silently dares them to shoot first, before he caps a couple of punks for raising iron in his direction. This signals the Five to make their escape.
But the plane is launching! Doc hops from rock to rock and goes into a dead sprint to catch up to the departing aircraft, catching it just as it takes to the air. Kar tries to shoot him off the wing like he’s William Shatner, but runs out of bullets before Doc runs out of vengeance. He explains how he always knew Kar was Oliver Wording Bittman, renowned taxidermist, and all Bittman can exclaim is “you won’t kill me!”
He’s right – Doc can’t kill his father’s savior. He allows Bittman to parachute out back into the crater, but casually hurls his suitcase full of Smoke of Eternity after him, narrowly avoiding crashing the plane in a great fireball in the rocky caldera while he’s at it. He watches as Bittman gets bogged down and eaten by a hopping Tyrannosaur which foolishly falls in the magma.
But greater things are afoot – the Smoke of Eternity is eating Thunder Island alive! Doc quickly picks up the Five and they watch, spellbound, as the South Seas Lost World is consumed in the terrible thundercloud of the Smoke of Eternity, every ancient horror and wonder of that choking jungle consumed by the strange stuff! Now the raw materials of the Smoke of Eternity are eternally beyond reach, as Doc nudges the plane and rises out of the steam and into the sun.
AN EERIE TRILLING SOUND – This is Doc’s second adventure, and the last that would hang on “Doc is out to avenge a fatherly figure in his life” motivation. So he straight up murders some dudes, something that would be anathema by the end of this year.
Doc has more of an internal life here, both in mourning the second father in Jerome Coffern (whose death almost in front of Doc’s own eyes clearly shakes him) and in the rising dichotomy between his father’s debt to Oliver Wording Bittman and the increasing evidence that Bittman is the mastermind Kar. One could almost speculate that it was in losing his own father and Jerome in so short a time and the way Bittman was able to manipulate him that Doc becomes the withdrawn, Stoic man of bronze that we all know, trusting only to the Fabulous Five (and later Pat) and even then, only so far.
FISTS OF GRISTLE – Renny introduces himself by smashing in Doc’s door on the eighty-sixth floor. He comports himself like a true Great War vet on THE JOLLY ROGER and throws each of those “a gallon of knuckles” left and right. But it’s on Thunder Island where he comes into his own, getting his own chapter dedicated to catching up with his independent adventures (something I’ve never seen done so extensively in any other Doc Savage novel). He RIDES A TRICERATOPS BY THE HORNS!
SUPERAMALGAMATED! – Johnny has not yet discovered that mighty thesaurus, and is introduced bantering with Long Tom in a very Monk-and-Ham manner. He’s on top of getting a hold of the rock samples, one of the early McGuffins, and comes into his own lecturing on geology on the trip to and deep within Thunder Island. Geology, evolutionary theory, paleontology, paleobotany, he’s a walking encyclopedia. He even offers up his monocle for a loupe as both he and Doc examine an outcropping of strange rock that might be the source of the Smoke of Eternity.
“YOU SHYSTER CLOTHES-HORSE!” – Ham’s sword-cane comes in spearing a deer for dinner. He mentions that he similarly captured and cooked a deer in a natural caldera in Yellowstone once. This is never elaborated upon. Mainly, Ham is here to be the straight man, offering the adventurous layman’s opinions and questions…which is interesting, as later that would be Monk’s M.O.
“YOU MISSING LINK!” – Monk drew the short straw and was the designated kidnappee today! He holds up under interrogation and survives in his water coffin long enough for Doc to come, going back-to-back badass with the Man of Bronze against Squint and his gang on THE JOLLY ROGER. His smoking habit (never mentioned again – presumably he succeeded in quitting) also saves all of their lives, after being effectively set up chapters before, disguised as a clue that he was taken from his office by force.
WIZARD OF THE JUICE – Long Tom is also here!
WHERE DOES HE GET THOSE WONDERFUL TOYS? – Aside from the soundproof plane, Doc is remarkably low-tech this adventure. Which makes sense – Dent hadn’t invented most of the toys yet. Although Doc’s superfirers are in evidence, they neither moan nor shoot mercy bullets, but very deadly real bullets, being more semiautomatic pistols than anything else. The main attraction here is the villain’s Smoke of Eternity pistols and bombs, but, eh, ya seen one chemist dissolve in a miniature thundercloud leaving only a grisly limb behind, ya seen ‘em all.
CRIME COLLEGE MATRICULATES – Oliver Wording Bittman is a fine example of the early-Doc genre of “character introduced in Chapter 2 who turns out to be the sinister disguised villain on the second to last page.” While a lot of them wore hoods or masks, Bittman-as-Kar worked exclusively over the phone or intercom and disguised his voice instead. In Bittman’s case, it’s perfectly obvious from his early manipulation of Doc, constant attendance on Doc and the Five, and hilariously over-the-top cowardice that the Lion would sneer at that he has to be the bad guy. Dent would tinker with this formula a bit to make it ever so slightly more difficult to discern who the man behind the mask (or phone line) is.
AGED LIKE FINE MILK – The statements about the lack of any explosion when splitting the atom and the hopping kangaroo T-Rexes would seem to be just ordinary pulp technobabble, but Dent was up on his science. Both were indeed the going theories at the time, and Doc is right in that scientists “proved” that splitting the atom was net-neutral in terms of energy in late 1932. Which is why I’m filing it here, under “aged like fine milk,” because the only thing that happened was that science advanced in the past 90 years. As we would hope it would.
Doesn’t make those bits any less snicker-worthy though.
The, uh, South Seas cannibals are rather less defensible. Interspersed with Johnny and Doc both delivering the finest encyclopedia entries on local geology and flora that Dent could find are the “natives” of the atoll surrounding Thunder Island made entirely of stereotypes that Moby Dick harpooned back in 1851. They have a “devil-devil house” with human skulls mounted in front, no knowledge of guns, but are incredibly impressed when Doc addresses them in their own tongue. Fortunately, other than looking menacing, they don’t act on any of those century-old stereotypes and in fact are quite hospitable to the Fabulous Five and Doc (and Bittman).
Still distasteful in a book that’s otherwise remarkably free of authentic 1930s bigotry, though.
BACK MATTER – I have split this week’s Back Matter entry into its own separate post, as this is a special entry requiring much more detail.
THE VERDICT – This is the raw, vigorous early Doc in fine form. Dent still hadn’t nailed everything down yet and was still experimenting (hence Jonny and Renny trying to replicate the Monk/Ham dynamic, Doc relying more on woodcraft and environment than on his wonderful toys, Bittman being the obvious villain by dint of being the only suspect, and Doc’s reckless waste of human lives). Some of it doesn’t work, and some of it really does. We go from a random pirate ship in the Hudson River to a lost world of hopping T-Rexes and dire beavers! Each of the Fabulous Five gets a moment to shine in his own field – even Long Tom! What’s not to love? Even the one scene of odious dirty-30s racism both surprised me with its presence and with its surprisingly light touch.
If the airship sequence from The Lost Oasis was a pinnacle of classic pulp action, and the Lost Oasis itself a pinnacle of pulp weirdness, then Thunder Island is the happy marriage of both into one package. And the New York sequence is nothing to sneeze at either.
Honestly, if you liked Fear Cay, I recommend reading Land of Terror next, “the finest and first” as it were. But next week, we arrive at my very favorite Doc Savage story of all:
DATELINE – AUGUST 1938 – PARIS/WEST AFRICA – In Paris, Doc Savage, Ham, Monk, and Ham’s pet chimpanzee Chemistry are enjoying a military parade, while a hiliariously sinister Russian, Carloff Traniv, looks on. Yet a man carrying that most suspicious of Parisian goods, a sack of baguettes, is on the move. And then, suddenly, the crème de la crème of the French National Guard have their legs…melted! Not more surprising are the attempts of the gendarmerie to arrest Doc Savage, or of the stricken Parisian crowd calling for his blood! Traniv congratulates himself on framing Doc, as radios blare that the recent shocks in China and the Soviet Union and now Paris are the fault of one man – Doc Savage!
Doc is abducted by two dancers, John and Mary, just as “Doc Savage” comes on the radio for an announcement:
“I, Doc Savage, am going to rule the world!”
obviously the real Doc Savage
He promises another demonstration on an American battleship within a few hours, which he delivers with grisly precision. In Washington, both Johnny and Renny are arrested. Long Tom gets picked up by air. In Paris, Monk and Ham are gassed trying to escape and Doc accidentally bisects a man trying to interrogate him. It was the machinations of Traniv, of course, who exposits to “Pecos” Allbellin, the South American dandy, about his plans for Doc Savage. Doc infiltrates the room, but is turned to ice!
YES! The cover REALLY DOES have something to do with the story!
Monk and Ham make good an escape, and follow Doc’s refrigerated body to an “abandoned” airport outside of Paris. Using his eyes as Morse code, Doc fills them in on Traniv, Pecos, and their attempted switcheroo. After Traniv’s plane shoots down six French flyers, they unleash Chemistry on the plane’s crew, following it up with thick hairy fists and the slashing sword-cane of Harvard. Things look bad before Doc springs into action. Traniv mocks him from afar, as Long Tom (now in London) enjoys a rescue from John and Mary (remember them?). They demand Long Tom help them locate Doc, but Long Tom hesitates – just long enough for the English Grenadier Guards to be cut down as the American battleship, the French, Soviets, and Chinese had been!
Meanwhile, aboard the transport, the three men can’t get the autopilot (or “robot pilot” as Dent calls it) off, and are being flown to the secret base somewhere in Africa. Doc advises his two men “brush up on [their] Yoruba dialect” as some kind of unmanned flying machine guns, “drone” planes if you will, carve their wings clean off! They crash near the “largest, most complete munitions factory in the world,” a “secret one” to “disrupt the peace of the world.” They are beset upon by things, dressed as soldiers, that remind Ham of nothing more than the Zombi legends of Haiti.
Like this, but better armed and with snazzier uniforms.
Doc surrenders, and they are led into an ancient stone temple turned modern munitions factory (no doubt to disrupt the peace of the world). Traniv kills his own men to establish his villain credentials, but refrains (for the moment) from his Bond Villain Speech. Doc is separated from Monk and Ham by advanced electrical field, and the two men are ambushed by Pecos Allbellin to test the nefarious belts he believes Traniv is using to cause the killings and destruction. As if in answer, Traniv demonstrates his “murderous radio waves” which take down a South African mail runner while the vast machine works assemble plans, guns, and tanks all around them.
Finally, Traniv reveals his plan – he wishes Doc’s vast surgical expertise, especially his capacity to make “slight operations” to the brains of those under his care. Traniv’s own surgeon makes the Living Dead operations of his soldiers possible, he asks Doc to perform a similar operation on “all the world’s dictators,” to follow his commands alone. When he resists, Doc is taken away to be operated on – “in ten minutes, he will be a living dead man!”
That’s when Long Tom, John, and most important, Mary crash into the place. Mary was once Allbellin’s great love (…this month…) and distracts him long enough for Long Tom to take his chance. Long Tom winds up taken to Cell 3, where Monk and Ham (who were not dead!) catch him up and they escape by mechanically altering their voices, some 60 years before Kevin McAllister was even born. Their escape is cut short by a group of gangsters, the “royal guard,” who are not so easily fooled as the Living Dead.
The operation on Doc goes smoothly, as Mary and John find out when Allbellin reveals he knew the whole time they were British secret agents. John is apparently killed, and Mary led out to meet the new Doc and get her own operation as Allbellin’s toy. John, free and unobserved, goes to the radio room. He manages to get word out, but it does Mary no good. After his sudden death, the interrupted transmission is resumed, with directions for the Arctic. Mary is brought before the revenant that was once Doc Savage, and goes under his knife.
And then Hitler walks in.
No, really.
“The little man,” “the dictator” of a Central European country “with eyes like psychological blowtorches” shows up with Martin Bohrmann in tow, gives the salute, walks into a room, goes down a trapdoor with a Goofy cry, gets chloroformed. Bohrmann (who looks and talks like Hermann Goering) frets until the “secret radiophone” of Hitler’s turns on, ordering a surprise attack on “the defenseless Great Britain!” All in the name of self-defense of course.
Traniv turns from the radiophone and observes Doc Savage giving Adolf Hitler a delicate brain operation…
(a rare sentence)
…as tensions mount across the world, supplied by Traniv’s munitions plant.
For a moment, the lights go out in the operating room. In that time, we find out that Doc had never been operated on, had instead operated on the surgeon, Koral, to restore his senses. Maddened with anger (and frankly, wouldn’t you?), Koral is out for blood…while Doc is out to bring the whole works down.
An execution is in order, to Allbellin’s great pleasure – Mary, Monk, Ham, and Long Tom are to be an example to us all. Doc makes for them, as Dr. Koral inspects every uniform in the guardroom. Note that, it’ll be important later. He’s tied up with the rest, muttering “it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter.” Chemistry (remember Chemistry?) goes absolutely apeshit on the execution squad, allowing Mary to escape, but the other four are recaptured, lined up, and shot just as Traniv departs. Mary hails the nearest plane…
…where Hitler is trying desperately to look inconspicuous. He had not been operated on, and was considering the implications. Then some rando shoots him just above the temple.
Seriously, page 109 of the Bantam paperback. Dent just casually ices Hitler in 1938.
This line would have made the scene perfect.
Ahhh. The Thirties.
Anyway, back in the execution yard, of course Doc and his men had switched uniforms with the guards. Even Chemistry gets his own uniform! Doc produces some liquid smoke from his vest of many wonders and brings the rains down in Africa.
(Blessing status unknown)
In London, the men of Downing Street are long-faced, as “a certain unfriendly power” are conducting an aërial assault over their heads. In Siberia, in Manchuria, in South America, bands of soldiers are staging sudden attacks and disappearing. “Hundreds of small, radio-controlled flying machine guns had been dispatched,” in preparation for Traniv’s cadres in every world capital to seize control on behalf of their would-boukoun master.
Doc and his men (and Chemistry) rush into the compound for the radio room, but are trapped and suffocated in the dark. Allbellin goes into investigate, and falls right into their trap. Travin smashes his desk as the message goes out: “This is Doc Savage, the real Doc Savage, speaking.” He gives their latitude and longitude for the combined fleets of the world’s naval powers (England, France, America, Japan, Germany, Russia, and Brazil) to converge on his location, down in Africa. Traniv demands they be belted, so there can be no mistake of killing them this time!
Doc’s aides are re-re-recaptured, Doc escapes across a roof. Doc locks himself in the chemical weapons room, steals a gas mask, and proceeds to do some muthafuckin’ science. He spots Allbellin, the dandy South American ex-dictator, doing himself up in one of the uniforms, feeling the fastenings with girlish glee. Making his escape, he runs into Mary (remember Mary?), loosed for exactly this purpose. When confronted with “surrender or the girl dies!” Doc has no more mettle than Indiana Jones in the same situation, and taken to …the theater of Death!
In a vast auditorium, the soldiers and gangsters watch Doc and his aides and Mary and Chemistry. Behind him, in windowed room, Traniv plays with his mechanisms as Allbellin lights a cigar. Now, now, in his moment of triumph, Traniv unleashes a Bond Villain Speech with a side of ham that would stop Auric Goldfinger cold. The belts now cinched around all their waists are listening devices and instruments of death. These are all on the same wavelength, so a single signal will kill them all. Traniv throws the lever…and is shocked as it is his own legs that melt away in pieces, along with Allbellin and the “royal guard” of gangsters in the auditorium! Too, above the capitols of the world, the “mother ships” controlling the “flying machine guns” sputter and crash, their crews bisected.
Doc, Mary, and his aides are unharmed.
Meeting with the combined admirals, Doc explains the finer points while Monk strikes out with Mary (by no small effort of Ham’s). Involving odorless colorless gasses and strange pastes and radio frequencies, the upshot (as Doc explains to Monk) is that when Koral was released, he doctored the receivers and pasted the belts of Traniv, Allbellin, and his gangsters…leaving Doc and his men’s untouched. We end on a kiss, as Mary decides to give the hairy chemist another chance.
AN EERIE TRILLING SOUND – Doc goes through more quick costume changes here than Taylor Swift. The switcheroo on the operating room table has to be the icing on the cake, though. Half the captures are on purpose (or at least can be turned to good use) and no matter how many changes of costume he has, Doc still has his utility belt.
FISTS OF GRISTLE – Renny spends the adventure punching doors in prison.
SUPERAMALGAMATED! – Next to Johnny, who no doubt spends the time catching up on his thesaurus.
“YOU SHYSTER CLOTHES-HORSE!” – Ham opens by siccing Chemistry on Monk for wearing the same outfit as himself and doesn’t let up. He and Monk do share their act of true mateship under fire in the execution yard…before going back to the hijinx.
“YOU MISSING LINK!” – …wait, had Monk even met Mary before the second-to-last chapter? You dog, you, you move fast.
WIZARD OF THE JUICE – Long Tom is also here! Mainly holding out hope for Doc no matter what the odds.
WHERE DOES HE GET THOSE WONDERFUL TOYS? – Traniv, you old bastard! Drones! Force-fields! Zombie brain treatments! That weird-ass paste/gas/radio waves killing method! This is stuff Doc never imagined even while hallucinating on peyote way back in ’34!
CRIME COLLEGE MATRICULATES – I have to wonder if Traniv’s Living Dead weren’t commentary on Doc’s Crime College (explored below) and the backlash Dent got over it.
There’s not much to say about the bad guys here, Traniv twirls his mustache like any decent White Russian with a grudge, Allbellin practically wears a black trenchcoat and specs and giggles like a girl when he tortures people. All I’m saying is, if you’re the guys who relegated Adolf fuckin’ Hitler to C-list fodder, you have got to be badder than him. And these boys…ain’t it, chief.
AGED LIKE FINE MILK – Now is a great time to talk about Doc’s Crime College. In the early days, Doc’s “Crime College,” located in upstate New York, was where he sent the unconscious and captured henchmen and lieutenants of his various enemies (as the leaders always died of petard-hoisting on the second-to-last page, as Traniv and Allbellin do here). There, a “delicate brain operation” by surgeons trained by Doc himself left them with no memory of their previous criminal lives, and job and lifestyle training meant each graduate of the Crime College had “a trade and the chance at an honest life.” No graduate of the Crime College ever reverted to criminal ways.
You might say this aged like fine milk, but the backlash was immediate and ongoing. As early as 1934, Dent felt it necessary to spell out that “this was NOT a lobotomy in any way” and by WW2, the Crime College had been quietly retired (but not before spectacularly featuring in John Sunlight’s unprecedented second attack on Doc in Fortress of Solitude). Dent tried to hang onto the concept, as it was clearly one of his fixations, like Doc’s two-hour exercise regime, ultraviolet lanterns, and Monk’s chemical skill, but even he had to knuckle under the public’s clear distaste for actual mind control via brain damage…no matter how well intentioned.
Other than that, any vaguely-serious writer after 1941 would have treated Hitler with more respect for his monstrousness and his capacity to inflict pain and death. The fact that here “the dictator” gets mocked for his stature, given a once-over like Mel Brooks on a bender, and finally casually shot by some rando on page 108 is just… *chef’s kiss*
BACK MATTER – The Bantam reissues in the 1960s (of which my copy of The Munitions Master is certainly one) dispensed with the cliffhanger endings, the letters, the Doc Savage Method, the oath, and the essays. I, for one, think they are poorer for it…though Bama’s covers certainly count for a lot.
THE VERDICT – They killed Hitler with a shot to the back of the head in 1938 in the middle of Act II. So casual, you know that bitch wasn’t even a player.
As if that weren’t enough for you, DRONES! FORCE FIELDS! SELF-AWARE BRAIN OPERATIONS COMMENTARY! All the tensions of 1938 expressed powerfully through the asides to the world capitals, the touching united front of the combined fleet, and the corking of Adolph Hitler as he leaves the story.
Did I mention he just off-handedly kills Hitler?
Sure, the biggest, baddest guy isn’t even the biggest, baddest guy, Doc’s various switcheroos border on ludicrous, the Fabulous Five have so little to do that two of them sat out, and the killing method is absolutely what Dent was thinking of when he warned of “getting too outlandish”. But what the hell, there’s enough madness to go around, and it’s not the madness of the usual pulp.
The fears and tensions that Dent was speaking to were very real, and it gives The Munitions Master a kind of poignancy your average T-Rex riding cowboy with a superfirer doesn’t quite hit. Dent really wanted the world’s troubles to be caused by a single madman with a munitions plant, so he could send down Doc Savage to hoist the man on his own petard and be done with it. He meant the allied fleet’s message to all nations and he meant the name of the final chapter – “Peace.”
Next week, some authentic T-rex riding pulp from 1933, and the week after, we conclude with my very favorite Doc Savage of all…which addresses fears and tensions of a very different era.
When Mackenzie embarked Marie-Pier Corriveau’s ancient Prius after winter finals, the muggy slurry of rain had been falling on Montréal for two weeks. A La Presse headline bubbled up in her Google-vision that it was officially the heaviest since the 2045 tipping point, and recommended some journalistic debate on whether this meant climate change was plateauing. She waved it away as if it were one of the malarial mosquitos that had plagued Quebec since she’d enrolled at McGill. Finals were over, and she didn’t have to worry about risks of the Quebec City dikes failing and flooding the Plains of Abraham, or persistent malaria outbreaks in Three-Rivers, or threats to the wine grapes in what remained of the Gaspé peninsula.
“Bonjour-hi!” she chirped, clapping the passenger door shut. Marie-Pier replied in kind. “What’s with the blue-and-white bumper sticker?”
“Protective camouflage.” Marie-Pier’s French accent was the carefully precise and internationalized sort favored by Quebec’s more cosmopolitan classes. “We are going upriver to the heart of the Republic.”
Come in out of the warm and wet into the bite of the last land that is not land, but winter. Buy “Glâcehouse” today…before winter disappears completely.
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