Here is another review of one of the “Big Book of” volumes edited by Otto Penzler of Mysterious Bookstores and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, part of Penguin Random House.
This time, it’s The Big Book of Adventure Stories (2011), which is about 875 pages with almost 50 stories broken up into 11 sections. About half the stories are pulp or pulp adjacent. There is a forward by Douglas Preston and an overall intro by Penzler, and each story is prefaced by a short intro on the author. And the cover is taken from a men’s adventure magazine, though none of the stories come from a MAM. Go figure.
So the 11 sections are: Sword and Sorcery, Megalomania Rules, Man vs. Nature, Island Paradise, Sand and Sun, Something Feels Funny, Go West Young Man, Future Shock, I Spy, Yellow Peril, and In Darkest Africa. Each section has from two to seven stories. Authors include Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jack London, H.G. Wells, Alistair MacLean, Louis L’Amour, Johnston McCulley, O. Henry, Rudyard Kipling, and more.
First up is Sword and Sorcery with, of course, a Robert E. Howard Conan story. We also get a Khlit the Cossak story from Harold Lamb, and a Lady Fluvia story, an early series from Adventure by Farnham Bishop and Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur that has yet to be fully reprinted. Brodeur was a college professor. Finally, a post-pulp story from Fritz Leiber, a Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser tale.
In Megalomania Rules, we get four stories, only two from the pulps. Those are a Peter the Brazen story by Loring Brent (George F. Worts), and a Spider short story by Grant Stockbridge that gave his origin. This is one of two such stories that actually ran in The Spider pulp. The other two stories here are close. One is the classic “The Most Dangerous Game,” from Collier’s, made into several movies, and Rudyard Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King.”
Man vs. Nature has five stories, two from the pulps: one from Jack London and the other from Clark Ashton Smith. Other stories include one by Saki, who was considered a master of the short story, and another by H.G. Wells.
However, Island Paradise is almost all pulp with five stories. We have “Hell Cay,” an unpublished story by Lester Dent, best known for Doc Savage. From Frank L. Packard, better known for the Grey Seal, is “Shanghai Jim.” From George F. Worts is a story of his other major pulp heroes, Singapore Sammy. This series has been reprinted. There is a story from Elmer Brown Mason from Popular. From Western author Louis L’Amour, who started in the pulps, is a story from a book collection.
Sand and Sun, which is set in the desert, we get seven stories, again mostly pulp, and many Foreign Legion stories. We get works from H. Bedford-Jones, Talbot Mundy, Theodore Roscoe (Thibault Corday), and P.C. Wren (Beau Geste). From pulp author Achmed Abdullah is a story that appeared in a book collection. And Georges Surdez is another pulp author.
Then we have Something Feels Funny, which are more satirical pieces, but only two. One is Philip José Farmer‘s “After King Kong Falls,” which includes cameos of pulp heroes Doc Savage and The Shadow.
Westerns are the focus of the section Go West, Young Man, which gives us The Cisco Kid, Zorro, and Hopalong Cassidy. O. Henry’s “The Capallero’s Way,” from Everybody’s Magazine, introduced The Cisco Kid. For Zorro, we get a later story of his from the 1930s in Argosy. Clarence C. Mulford‘s “Hopalong’s Hop” is from Pearson’s Magazine in 1912. Pearson’s went from being a slick magazine to a pulp in that year, so I’m not sure about this issue.
Science fiction is the focus of Future Shock, with three stories, two of them pulp. We get Ray Cummings‘ “The Girl in the Golden Atom” from All-Story Weekly in 1919. He would later do a novel-length sequel, and the two stories together would be published as a book. From Philip Francis Nowlan is “Armageddon-2419 A.D.,” which, with its sequel, introduced Anthony “Buck” Rogers, better known due to the comic strip.
The next section, I Spy, is about, of course, spies. But only a few of the stories are borderline pulp. We get a Bulldog Drummond story from The Strand, a short Scarlet Pimpernel story from one of the books, and a spy story by Rafael Sabatini, better known for his swashbuckler tales, from the Grand magazine, which was a British pulp with a U.S. edition.
There is also a section devoted to Yellow Peril, which existed in fiction in the first half of the 20th century. We have two. From pulp author George Fielding Eliot is the horror tale “The Copper Bowl” from Weird Tales in 1928. And, of course, we get a story from Sax Rohmer, creator of Fu Manchu. But it’s one of his other stories, rewritten for Munsey’s Magazine.
Finally, we get In Darkest Africa, with several pulp and borderline pulp stories. Hopefully, people are aware of the movie The 39 Steps, which is based on the novel of the same name by John Buchan. It introduces the hero Richard Hannay of British Intelligence, who appeared in several further novels. Here we get his only short story, taken from Pall Mall Magazine.
One of the rare comicbook characters who got a pulp magazine is Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and we get one of the stories from her pulp. We get one of L. Patrick Greene‘s The Major story from Short Stories in 1930. We have to have a story from H. Rider Haggard, and we do with a short Allan Quatermain story.
I’m aware of Edgar Wallace due to his “Four Just Men” series of novels, but didn’t know he also had a series set in Africa about Commissioner Sanders of the British Foreign Office, which were reprinted in American pulp magazines. This one appeared in Harper’s Weekly. From Cornell Woolrich is a story from Argosy, reprinted for the first time. And finally, a Tarzan tale, in particular Tarzan the Terrible, the eighth novel.
Overall, it’s a pretty good collection. I’m sure there are some selections people will question. I know I did in a few instances.
This is another nice collection of stories, though I prefer jumping around and reading different stories rather than trying to read it cover to cover. I look forward to checking out other volumes in this loose series.
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