The Golden Amazon #1-3

I previously posted on the overall Golden Amazon series by John Russell Fearn.

He first created a character named Violet Ray, known as the Golden Amazon, in a quartet of stories in Fantastic Adventures, from 1939-43. This pulp-version Golden Amazon is more of a Tarzan story, with Violet a child of Earth who survives a crash on Venus that kills her parents. She becomes a sort of superhuman thanks to the Venusian environment and grows up among the natives to later fight the bad guys who caused her ship to crash on Venus.

Fearn revamped the character of Violet Ray for a series of books starting in 1944. This version of the Golden Amazon is what I will be looking at here. As I noted, as I read the series, I’ll be posting more detailed write-ups on them.

I have read the first three books in the series, but I’m not certain when I’ll be able to get the next three, as they aren’t easy to get a hold of in print. I don’t care for ebooks. The rest of the series from #7 on is easily available, but the first six were skipped over by Wildside Press. Due to changes with the publisher, only the first three are available in book form, and the others are only available in ebook form. Hopefully this will change.

So, the first part of the Golden Amazon series is:

• The Golden Amazon (1944)
• The Golden Amazon Returns (1948)
• The Golden Amazon’s Triumph (1953)
• The Amazon’s Diamond Quest (1953)
• The Amazon Strikes Again (1954)
• Twin of the Amazon (1954)

Please note the dates. The first book was written during World War II, and this affects things. In fact, the story starts then, around 1940. During the war, a doctor has perfected a method to affect the glands to be able to produce someone with increased strength, intelligence, vitality, and more. He plans on operating on a young girl, no more than age 3, who will lead the world into peace. The doctor will also decrease her sex drive, so she can’t be swayed or distracted. With the help of an associate doctor, he operates on a girl found at a bombed-out orphanage. From a scrap of a name tag, and due to her eye color, he names her Violet Ray. She also is blonde, now with a yellow skin hue due to the operation. I have to admit that I keep wondering if Doc Savage was some kind of influence on the author.

The two doctors die, but before they do, she is handed off to a man who will adopt her and raise her with his daughter, naming her Violet Ray Brant. The story jumps ahead to around 1960, when she is 20. We met her foster parents, her foster sister Beatrice, and in an interesting incident, pilot Chris Wilson, who becomes a love interest for Beatrice (and thus an ongoing character in the series). And under strange circumstances, the Amazon meets her real mother.

The world of 1960 is not quite what you’d expect. WWII is over, but is referred to as the “United Nations War.” Clearly the Allies won. England is fine, led by a prime minister. There is no mention of the royal family or the House of Lords, though the prime minister is a “Sir.” Europe is “Federated Europe,” and mention is made of Canada and the United States, but only in passing. Air travel is widespread, such that many have their own aircraft and land at their homes. There are video phones. Atomic power does not exist. Yet.

Violet, who is also a brilliant scientist, has been working in secret. She has built her own flying machine, more advanced than any other. And she has learn to transmute gold. Violet is also pretty arrogant, and frankly, unlikable as a character at this point. In this first story she’s more villain than hero. She has also decided to strike out on her own and begin her plans. She starts building up an organization to help take over Britain financially and, soon, politically.

This brings her to the attention of a trio of industrialists, who try to stop her, but she stops them first, with deadly action. Before one dies, he provides her with access to atomic power! He has built bombs with it, never before used. These, however, do not have the issue of radioactivity or fallout, probably not something people were aware of at the time the story was written.

With this power, the Golden Amazon tries to take over the country. First by forcing an election where she can be elected as premier. When that goes array, she takes over by force, using the threat of atomic power, which she even uses against London to devastating affect! Once she takes over, she starts imposing her rule, separating families and even planning on having the government raise children without their parents. Behind the scenes this upsets many of her followers.

Then she starts working on creating synthetic life, with the idea of replacing humans with perfect synthetic people! This is the final straw for even her most loyal, and in a confrontation she is injured and rapidly collapses and dies. It’s thought that her glandular system was overtaxed and caused her sudden death. But dead she is, and things return to normal.

The second novel, The Golden Amazon Returns, is set five years later, in 1965. Chris and Beatrice have married and have a child, Ethel. Chris heads World Airlines. He is approached by a scientist who has been working on a rocket-ship, the V-10. Yes, this is the latest in a series starting with the V-2 used in WWII. He feels that thanks to atomic power, this will allow man to conquer space, and the scientist dreams of creating a “space line” with commercial flights to the other planets.

But before the scientist can demonstrate the V-10, a Nazi conspiracy grabs him, gets his secrets, and kills him. They hope to use this as a means to enact revenge for the loss of two world wars. But the Golden Amazon steps in to stop them. First by killing the main leader, then rescuing the scientist’s daughter when she is about to demonstrate the rocket, using duplicate models and plans. But she isn’t able to find and stop Carl Mueller, main scientist of the conspiracy, from taking over and moving things forward.

Yup, the Golden Amazon is still alive. She had created a synthetic duplicate of herself, who died in her place.

The Amazon is found at her secret headquarters in the Matto Grasso of Brazil. She is needed to help stop the scientist’s plans, as he hopes to establish a base on the Moon, from there he will bombard the world into submission. There is a bit of discussion about the Amazon now being on the side of good, but what about her past misdeeds. There is some hand-waving that since she is “legally dead,” thanks to her synthetic duplicate dying in her place. And she hasn’t given up her desire to rule the world, but she will wait until the world asks her to do so. Yup.

But she does step in, which is needed. The bad guys succeed in building a base on the Moon, and start their bombardment. Several cities are destroyed, including the Amazon’s base (killing her mother), before the bad guys’ base is destroyed, putting an end to it all.

At the end, man has conquered space. A new “space line” is created, lead by the scientist’s daughter, with the Golden Amazon as the chief scientist.

The next volume, The Golden Amazon’s Triumph, jumps ahead another five years, and centers around a colony on Venus. Carl Mueller somehow survived to again menace the world. He and his men escaped to Venus, which is a planet of jungles and swamps. They find an ancient, abandoned city, which they think was built by a race of people who built Atlantis on Earth! This will be brought back up in the later books when Abna the Atlantian comes into the picture.

So a valuable ore shipment from Earth is hijacked, as is the daughter of Chris and Beatrice. And all done by Mueller! Mueller tries to use this as leverage to get control of the new Space Line. But instead the Golden Amazon, along with her associates, head for Venus to stop Mueller. After some exploring and action, they turn the tables on him and the Amazon is able to avenge the death of her mother.

Plus, Venus is now open for colonization.

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get the next three. So my next posting will probably be on the seventh and eighth stories.

I know in the next novel, the Amazon deals with both a diamond mine on Venus and the menace of the “Chameleon Men of Venus.” In the fifth story, the Amazon deals with the adult daughter of Mueller, who is just as bad as her father, and involves a tropical valley at the South Pole. Then in the sixth novel, the Martians must be dealt with, which the Amazon does by tricking them to crash their armada into the Sun. This leads to the problem in the next volume.

Overall, the series is interesting. Kind of like reading an alternate future, as here we are in the early 21st century, and it’s funny seeing how the author thought space flight would progress, plus seeing the old debunked idea of Venus as a jungle planet. The Golden Amazon is an interesting figure. She is driven, and in some aspects is not a nice or heroic character.  Ruthless is probably the best term for her. I keep thinking back to Doc Savage and compare/contrast the two.  Both are superhuman characters, with a higher intelligence and physical prowess to the average person.  Both have a strong control of their emotions, but for the flaw of the Golden Amazon in the area of her ruthlessness.  Would she have been better if she was more Doc-like?

I look forward to seeing how the series progresses, and how the character may develop.