I recently looked at the “Argosy Library” Series VI from Steeger Books (previously Altus Press). Now it’s onto Series VII. Again we get 10 books of great, and sometimes overlooked, fiction that appeared in the early pulps. We get some stand-alone works, as well as volumes of various sub-series.
As always, most are taken from the pulps started by Frank A. Munsey, who converted his fiction magazines to pulp paper and reduced their price, making them more profitable. He published the well-known Argosy magazine, which got its start in the late 1800s, and several other popular magazines such as The All-Story and Flynn’s Detective Fiction Weekly.
Series VII consists of:
- Kingdom Come by Martin McCall
- Henry Rides the Danger Trail: The Complete Tales of Sheriff Henry, Volume 3 by W.C. Tuttle
- Z Is for Zombie by Theodore Roscoe
- The Bait and the Trap: The Complete Adventures of Tizzo, Volume 2 by Max Brand
- Minions of Mars by William Gray Beyer
- Swords in Exile: The Rakehelly Adventures of Cleve and d’Entreville, Volume 2 by Murray R. Montgomery
- Men With No Master: The Complete Adventures of Robin the Bombardier by Roy de S. Horn
- The Torch by Jack Bechdolt
- King of Chaos and Other Adventures: The Johnston McCulley Omnibus by Johnston McCulley
- The Blind Spot by Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
More specifically we have get the following.
Kingdom Come, by Martin McCall, is yet another work about a takeover of America, this time by an internal fascist group. It’s interesting how many of these stories appeared in the pulps before WWII. I knew about some of the pulp hero series that dealt with this theme, such as Dusty Ayres and Operator #5, but to come across stand-alone novels points to an underlying fear of this.
We get another volume in the long-running Western series by W.C. Tuttle of his Sheriff Henry series with Henry Rides the Danger Trail: The Complete Tales of Sheriff Henry, Volume 3.
From Theodore Roscoe is Z Is for Zombie, which is another mystery dealing with Haiti and zombies. This is the second one reprinted in the Library, so how many did he do?
The second and final volume of Max Brand’s series about the 16th-century swashbuckler Tizzo is The Bait and the Trap: The Complete Adventures of Tizzo, Volume 2.
The Mark Nevin or Omega series is about a modern man who awakes in the far future, and has a disembodied mind named Omega who guides him in rebuilding the human race. Minions of Mars, by William Gray Beyer, is the second in the series of four. The first already appeared in the Library, and hopefully we’ll also get the other two, as I don’t think they’ve been reprinted before.
Swords in Exile: The Rakehelly Adventures of Cleve and d’Entreville, Volume 2 by Murray R. Montgomery is the second and final volume of adventures set in the 17th-century France.
A stand-alone collection of stories set during the Hundred Years War is Men With No Master: The Complete Adventures of Robin the Bombardier by Roy de S. Horn.
Another SF tale set in a post-apocalypse Earth, The Torch, by Jack Bechdolt, shows a divided society in a New York after the Earth is devastated by a comet hit.
Better known as the creator of Zorro, Johnston McCulley wrote many stand-alone novels as well. King of Chaos and Other Adventures: The Johnston McCulley Omnibus is a collection of five of these, which I think haven’t been reprinted before.
An interesting early sf tale that makes use of the idea of parallel worlds is The Blind Spot by Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint. Hall wrote a sequel to this, and I wonder if it will be reprinted as well?
So it’s another eclectic collection of works. Some I plan on getting soon, others maybe later, and some I’m not interested in.
There are a few items I would have liked to have seen in the most recent set of Argosy Library works. The final Captain Norcross volume would have been nice, as would the next Jigger Masters collection. I also question reprinting works that are already available from others versus reprinting works that haven’t been reprinted before.
I look forward to the next set of the Argosy Library, but I also look forward to the continuation of several other series that Steeger Books has been reprinting.
