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.
This is the first installment of an occasional feature we’re calling “Earth-Adapted Recipes,” featuring our attempts to cook and eat dishes from various geeky sources – not just Dune, Redwall, and A Song of Ice and Fire. Some of them will even be from my own books! Hope you enjoy.
We’ve instituted a new tradition around chez Mathieu – on Saturdays, your resident Shabbos goy (me) prepares lunch. This means that both my wife and daughter can rest on their holiest of holy days, and as a Quaker, I find cooking no less holy than anything else. Last Saturday, I looked around the contents of our fridge and freezer as Melissa asked, “so, what do you have in mind for that Trader Joe’s seafood mix?” It was already two weeks old and would need to be all-dressed to serve.
Then I said “…what if I served it ancient Roman style?”
Pictured: Probably not Apicius, but a pretty awesome image anyway
I popped open a copy of Apicius and prepared a marinade (because at the end of the day, I still learned to cook out of a wok, marinade the meat in the cooking sauce, and add vegetables “in order”). I waited an hour, chopping vegetables and doing dishes in a desultory manner, turned on the flame, hoped for the best, and half an hour after “le feu vive!” I had a meal worthy of Augustus’ table on my own. Even Lyra loved it – though Lyra loves Papa’s cooking generally.
Photo credit: Melissa Mathieu
It doesn’t look like much (most European food didn’t before the Columbian Exchange), but it tasted amazing. It was sweet, peppery, rich, filling, and rustic. Bread and oleogarum and wine, and the beautiful, beautiful seafood stew.
Ingredients:
The fish marinade
1 Trader Joe’s seafood medley
About a cup of Sangiovese (cheap)
Olive oil
Lea & Perrin’s Worcestershire sauce (or South Asian fish sauce)
Dry sherry vinegar
Salt
Pepper
1 clove shallot
Italian spices (terragon, oregano, marjoram, thyme, and rosemary)
The rest:
1 onion
3 stalks celery (reserve leaves)
Chicken (or fish) stock (about three cups, ideally homemade)
Can of Great Northern or other white beans
The sides:
Homemade sourdough bread
Oleogarum (oil & Worcestershire
The Sangiovese
Instructions
Prepare the marinade – pour some oil, a few splashes of wine, and two drizzles of Worcestershire sauce into a largeish glass bowl. If you’re using south Asian fish sauce instead, make it one drizzle. Mince a shallot clove and throw it in. Add sherry vinegar, salt, black pepper, and Italian spices to taste.
Take out the frozen seafood mix and run under cool water until everything is separated and at least half-thawed. Add to the bowl of marinade, cover, shake, and store for at least one hour – longer is better.
Chop an onion roughly and three celery stalks into half-inch lengths (reserving the leaves). Drain and wash the beans. Slice your sourdough bread and prepare an oleogarum for the table.Oleogarum was a common “mother sauce” and condiment at Roman table – pour a splash of olive oil into a wide bowl (for dipping) and add two drizzles of Worchestershire sauce (or one drizzle of Asian fish sauce) and sprinkle in some salt and black pepper.
When ready, remove the seafood and marinade and any stock you have from the fridge (I’m the kind of person who saves chicken bones and makes stock when the chicken is starting to look dodgy, I happened to have some homemade on hand).
Heat a little olive oil in a deep saucepan (the one you make pasta in) on medium heat and add the onions. Stir fry until they’re pearlescent but not brown, then pour in a ladle-full of stock. Let that come to a boil and add the marinade, but not the seafood. Throw in the beans and the celery. Cook until everything is warm, melded, and cooked through – about ten minutes – stirring occasionally.
Add the seafood back in and cook for two or three minutes or until everything is opaque. Turn off the stove.
Serve the mare cibus apicianum in a big communal bowl on the table with the ladle in, reserving a regular soup (or salad) bowl for each person. Place the oleogarum where everyone can reach it.
Serve with the sliced sourdough bread and the Sangiovese and water (of course wine and water, what are we, barbarians?).
A suitably-educated baby or toddler can eat the crumb of the bread and the bits of the dish if they’re chopped small enough for their teeth. Mine certainly enjoyed Papa’s cuisine.
I went virtual. Again. So in between panels on branding and the state of 2022 short fiction, I changed Lyra’s diapers and discussed dinner plans with Melissa. For the awards, we put the Sprout to bed and gathered around Melissa’s iPad with glasses of wine on the couch in our pyjamas.
I not only sat on my first panel, I hosted my first panel. Unusual Short Story Formats was the highlight of my weekend
I took extensive notes on all the panels I attended (including effectively livetweeting the Exploring Possibilities with Legal Systems in SF/F to my personal Discord) and came away bursting with ideas. I’m already enjoying the ongoing benefits of my attendance, catching up on the panels I wanted to see but missed (Latine SF and Queer Imagination first and foremost). You’ll be seeing some changes around here and in the newsletter based on the Branding and Marketing panel, and seeing more experimental flash and poetry out of me based on Unusual Short Story Formats.
We had a wide-ranging and fascinating conversation, from applying the forms of poetry to how close to hew to other types of writing when writing in that milieu. Whether it’s the wiki edits of “Wikihistory” or the forum posts of “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather”, we coined the term “neo-epistolary” to cover those short stories that come in the form of chat logs, court proceedings, even archaeological EIRs. A partial list of the stories that Ann LeBlanc, Carina Bissett, and I discussed is available here, including Nebula finalist Oghunechevwe Donald Ekpeki’s recommendations.
As mentioned, we put Lyra to bed and curled up on the couch together. Melissa wept at Robin McKinley’s speech, her age and grace, her insight and her pain. All of my predictions lost, and, frankly, they lost for all the right reasons. I voted for “Give Me English”, expected “Destiny Delayed,” but nodded over my wine glass when “Rabbit Test” by Samantha Mills won the short story Nebula. Because that was the right choice. Most of them were like that – and certainly all the ones I’d read. They were right, and it gives me hope for science fiction that we are able to discern which stories really are the best of the year.
(Also, Uncanny had a really good year at the Nebulas this year.)
And on Monday, I sat down, and started working on “Doña Ana Lucía Serrano y el sanctuario de Asherah.” Because I didn’t get much chance to write with all the publishing work I did over the previous four days, and the writing is what it’s all about. Stay tuned to this frequency, there’s going to be a lot of interesting stuff coming over the waves.
This is officially the 200th post on R. Jean Mathieu’s Innerspace! I can’t believe it any more than you can!
A final confrontation between Old China and New in the mad depths of the Cultural Revolution, come meet “The Man Who Shot Lü Dongbin.“
The Old must go that the New may come.
So the Great Helmsman said.
We must eliminate the Four Olds.
So his generals and ministers said.
But there were more than four. There were so many more than four.
Bi Yadie’s grandmother had believed Lü Dongbin, wise leader of the Eight Immortals, was a saint, a being of compassion that would intercede when she begged hard enough. Bi Yadie knew better. Bi Yadie’s mother had believed Lü Dongbin was merely a story, told to delight the simple and the childish. But Bi Yadie knew better. He knew that Lü Dongbin was a capitalist-roader, an old-style feudalist of the worst kind.
The year is 1964. Bi Yadie, Group Leader of the Heaven-Earth Harmonization Task Force, has tracked the last of the Chinese gods, the Taoist Immortal Lü Dongbin to his mountain fastness. His mission is simple: to eliminate Lü Dongbin from the new Liberated Era of the People’s Republic of China.
But old legends do not die so easy. Lü Dongbin has prepared for this moment, and armed himself…with a cup of tea.
Sacré Dieu, the time is upon us! It’s time for the Nebula Awards again! Yesterday, I shared with my patrons my predictions for the winners this year, and I’ll be going “off the verandah and into the field” to see how my predictions turn out. I’ll not only be in (virtual) attendance, I am moderatingthe panel on Unusual Short Story Formats! May 13, 10:30AM. With Oghunechevwe Donald Ekpeki, Carina Bissett, Ann LeBlanc, we’ll be discussing some of the beautiful, strange little ways short fiction can come out that novels simply won’t support, like single scenes where nothing happens and fictional forum threads.
And here’s where I’m going to be…
May 12
Sauúti: An Afro-centric universe
Prep Tips for Your Debut Indie Book Launch
The Queer Imagination: Using SFF to Explore LGBTQ+ Identities, Relationships, and Experiences
May 13
Beyond the 99¢ eBook: Producing Quality Indie SFF Novels
Unusual Short Story Formats
Writing and Publishing in English as Second Language
Navigating Short Story Markets
For The Love of Short Fiction 2022
Exploring Possibilities with Legal Systems in SFF
May 14
Branding and Marketing: Finding That Return on Investment
This is a new feature I’ll be doing for the future – Philosophy (in a Teacup) – interviews with interesting and up-and-coming authors, especially (but not exclusively) interesting folks in short fiction. My first interview is with the always-experimental Ai Jiang (江艾)!
Ai Jiang (江艾)
Thank you for joining us! Tell us more about your book/ series/ short story work.
LINGHUN: A modern ghost story set in a town called HOME, where people go to buy haunted houses to live with the ghosts of their dead loved ones. [R. Jean Mathieu’s review]
I AM AI: A cyborg posed as an AI struggles to stay alive in a tech dominated city threatening to leave those like her behind.
Both timely and employing Ai Jiang’s useful playfulness with language.
SMOL TALES FROM BETWEEN WORLDS: Smol tales that will take you from world to world, genre to genre, featuring many of my less known works.
In terms of my short fiction work in general, I’d say I like to experiment with different genres and cross genre work (though this is similar to my long form as I move into more book-length projects). I tend towards more unconventional perspective use in writing and concept-driven stories. Many of my current long form works-in-progress draw on bit of experimental I had tested through my short stories.
Why do you write speculative fiction? / What is speculative to you?
I think speculative to me is not just having fantasy, science fiction, horror, etc, elements, but it is almost a philosophical musing about the self, the world, and humanity as a whole, as well as the political and social makeup of society—the ways in which things can be different from how it is now, the way our world might evolve or devolve, how humanity might look like if in a world outside of the one we know and understand, exploring our reality through a different lens.
What is your favorite sci-fi, fantasy, or horror trope? / What is your favorite subgenre?
I suppose “The Chosen One” is my favourite trope because I find chosen one stories quite inspirational. In terms of subgenre, I like dystopian fiction. Although bleak, I feel like it’s a genre that really gets us to interrogate humanity and our society and reflect upon it more thoughtfully.
What is your favorite speculative fiction book (besides Linghun)? / What is your favorite speculative short story?
Toni Morrison’s Beloved. My favourite speculative short story is “Flowers for Algernon” — Daniel Keyes.
Where do you find inspiration for your stories?
I suppose it might be cliché to say, but I find inspiration everywhere, in everything, and in everyone.
Bonus question: Novels or short stories? Which do you prefer to read? Which do you prefer to write?
Oh this is a tricky one, but I’d also like for novella to be a choice here!
Sacré OUAIS!
Ed. note
I like novels when it comes to broad, sweeping worlds and narratives but short stories for contained moments in time and within a character’s life. And of course, novellas for all the in-betweens, and for its succinct nature but ability to still experiment and create layered worlds within its word count limitations. If I’m tight on time, I like to read short stories, but when I have longer quiet moments, I enjoy novels. I’d say this is similar for writing, though as they say, novels are where the money is—but I have high hopes that novellas will quickly join its ranks.
And that’s our first Philosophy (in a Teacup)! Merci beaucoup, Ai Jiang, for kicking us off. LINGHUN and Smol Tales are available for sale now, I Am Ai is available for preorder.
Let me strive every moment of my life to make myself better and better, to the best of my ability, that all may profit by it. Let me think of the right and lend my assistance to all who need it. Let me take what comes with a smile, without loss of courage. Let me be considerate of my country, of my fellow citizens and of my associates in everything I say or do. Let me do right to all, and harm no one.
The Doc Savage Oath
So what does it all mean?
For the historians of pop culture (both professional fan and the kind that gets paid), there’s a mild interest in Doc Savage for all the bastards he’s ever spawned. Every cape
of screen and page is linearly descended from Doc, the “proto-superhero,” via Superman. Every globe-trotting adventurer, like James Bond, Indiana Jones, and especially Johnny Quest, owes his far-flung trips and exotic locales to Doc’s pre-jetsetting prop-wing adventures. Scooby Doo learned to unmask villains at his feet, the Venture Brothers comment on him in their grandfather’s image, even Yankee WWII movies (and all of their spawn) developed out of the squaddie camaderie of the Fabulous Five – right down to the sickly-looking radio man and the rough-and-smooth banter. Paul Atreides is Doc Savage’s son, by way of the Lady Jessica.
But, in this day and age, even Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino are vaguely aware of Doc, but don’t really care.
Pulp aficionados pay respect to the Man of Bronze, though not so much these days as they do The Shadow. The Eighty-Sixth Floor collected curiosities, and a few dozen old men collect Bama-covered reprints. But Doc’s poor showing in the post-pulp world means that the temporary reflag in interest in the 1960s has faded ever since – the more because of the terrible movie adaptation.
no, I’m not posting a picture here. We do not talk about the Doc Savage movie in this house.
Even readers grew tired of him. Doc is very much a product of the Thirties and early Forties. Later adventures such as The Terrible Stork are strange, eerie, pantomime Doc Savage with mechanical characters clanking through uncharacteristic and nonsensical actions. In Stork, Doc does parlor tricks for Renny, yells at him, and suddenly goes into his laboratory to demand “why did I do that?” He struggled during the War, and had no place in the new world born of nuclear ashes and economic superpowers.
But it’s his very Thirties-ness that makes him what he is.
If Superman is a timeless “truth, justice, and the American way,” then Doc veers closer to Captain America – a paragon, a very specific paragon, for a certain era to look up to.
Like Steve Rogers, Doc’s prison of zeitgeist, how closely he’s bound to the era he was created, is what makes him timeless. No one’s successfully taken Doc, his wonderful toys, or the Fabulous Five out of the ice yet – though some have tried. Taking Steve Rogers out of the ice into …well, whatever present day the writers feel like pulling him out in, to comment on the vast difference between their present day and the virtues of “just a kid from Brooklyn”… in fiction is easy. Confronting Doc, hardwired to the Thirties with all its bright mad possibility and looming terrors and misery and heroism, as a modern reader is hard.
That is, after all, what the world looks like now, and it can be hard to look it in the eye like that.
And what of the Thirties? This, to start with: Doc is a scientific marvel, made not from favorable genetics but from training and upbringing, touching the very limits of human physical and mental ability. You can self-help yourself in Doc’s footsteps! Doc is equipped with money and power, and uses it to cross the world “righting wrongs and punishing the wicked” because he and his friends are so addicted to adrenaline they can’t imagine a life without flying bullets. Later generations can snicker at the PTSD victims and laugh at the corny oaths and simplistic villains – Dent laid them out as he, personally, saw them.
Dent’s incredibly personal touch is an aspect of his timelessness, too. Here are masked or disguised villains, motivated by greed or pride, and here is a Man of Bronze and his closest friends to stop them. Here are the terrors of his age – economic depression, rising fascism, wars and rumors of wars, rapacious landlords and greedy bankers – and here is a face under a hood, ready for Doc to punch in and hoist by his own petard. Here are the exercises you, too, can do at home to become “better and better, to the best of my ability, that all my profit by it.” Here’s the oath that sounds a little too earnest to be a cynical marketing gimmick. Here’s increasingly-elaborate Wonderful Toys, handheld superfirers that shoot bullets that don’t kill and have tracer rounds, cars with miniaturized televisions in them, soundproofed airplanes. Wouldn’t those be nice? Here’s a delicate brain operation that makes criminals Better. And here’s Lester Dent, holding his heart on his sleeve, making exactly the paragon of virtue he wanted to see in the world…for good and for ill.
It’s a peculiar thing, but the more you write your own foibles, your own obsessions, your own quirks — from being raised in a hundred-year-old adobe by two loving hippie parents who shout too much, and from reading books that are always twenty years out of date because you got them at the library book sale and from chasing homeschool dreams of da Vinci and Doc Savage and orangutans and Asian philosophy and printing ‘zines and memorizing The Simpsons and Mystery Science Theater — the more timeless and “relatable” (oh that word!) your work becomes. My best stories are the ones where I wear my heart on my sleeve.
And the only author I’ve ever read who puts quite as many fingerprints as Lester Dent on every word of prose was Robert Heinlein.
And finally, Doc’s earnestness shines from everything. As a Millennial, I lived through the hipster era. I asked some friends of mine if they thought I was a hipster, as I was into homebrewing beer, foreign folk songs, swing dance, and retro fashion. “No,” was the immediate answer, “you enjoy everything too earnestly to be a hipster.” Which is why they hung out with me. In an age defined by cynicism, “fake news,” scoffing, affect, and sneers, the earnestness of Dent and of Doc stands out by way of contrast. Stands out? Bestrides like a colossus, more like. There is much every modern reader needs to take Doc to task for, to criticize and doubt him for – the Crime College, the blackface, the casual stereotyping, telling Pat to stay in the kitchen, the whole raft of Dent’s vintage Thirties values as expressed through his heroic paragon who has suddenly become a plaster saint.
And after all the criticisms are rightly levelled and Doc’s superlative goodness is cut down to a more appropriate fit…there is still that earnestness that Doc is a paragon, is what we all could be and could strive for, is ultimately on the side of justice. And it really does stand out by way of contrast from every word written, uttered, moaned, tweeted, or screamed that one imbibes from 2023.
This might be the twilight of Doc Savage. I might be the last one alive to call myself a fan of the Man of Bronze, who has ever tried to copy Doc’s Method of Self-Improvement at home, who can recite the history of how Ham got his name, and Monk’s role in it. Even if the remake gets made (with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson or whoever follows him), I doubt it will raise much interest in the books. They’re too much of their time, too idiosyncratic, too influential, and, not in the least, super objectionable to any decent human being living after the Civil Rights movement. There’s a lot of artistic, ethical, and historical distance to overcome.
But it is worth overcoming. For all his myriad bastards, no one is aggressively hopeful, deeply personal, and, in Dwayne Johnson’s words, “FUCKING WEIRDO” as Doc Savage. No globe-trotting spy or kindly alien or superscientist comes with an earnest promise of self-improvement or a sincere belief you can replicate his heroism as home. No other paragon, with the possible exception of Captain America, so completely embodies his zeitgeist or the stamp of his creator, and in embracing them so completely, transcends them. Superman stopped being a New Deal superhero before Doc did.
We have rising fascisms. We have wars and rumors of wars. We have economic depressions, bright mad possibility, and wild-eyed philosophies struggling to break free, no matter who it hurts when they escape. The Thirties came back ninety years later.
We need Doc Savage. His time comes around again, but we need a Doc Savage to fit our times. We need him to be a Doc Savage who’s striven to be better and better these last ninety years, and rights the wrongs he did then and all the wrongs we know are wrong in 2023.
We need Lester Dent to put a face behind the wicked mask, and send Doc, Monk, Renny, Ham, Long Tom, Johnny, and Pat down there to bust trouble, gum up the works, feed the hungry, smash the munitions, right wrongs, and punish evildoers. Just to show it can be done.
We need to remember it can be done – even if only on pulp paper for 10c a copy.
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.
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