‘Savageology’

Savageology is a new collection of works on Doc Savage by Philip José Farmer and others from Meteor House Press. It’s a sort of follow-on to The Man Who Met Tarzan, which collected Farmer’s work on Tarzan.

This new book contains more than 20 items, including pieces by Win Scott Eckert, Chuck Welch, Will Murray, Christopher Paul Carey, and others. While I have read several of the items here, a few I’ve not, and it’s great to have all of this pulled together.

I won’t go over every item here, but the ones I felt were most interesting.

On the subject of Farmer’s Doc biography, we get a piece he wrote on writing it that has appeared in a few places, as well as Win Scott Eckert’s introduction to the most recent edition from Meteor House and Altus Press.

The George Pal Doc movie was a missed opportunity. In addition to the press kit for the movie, we get Farmer’s film treatment (not a full script) for what might have been the sequel to it. Based on “Murder Mirage,” it may be known to many as Doc Savage: Archenemy of Evil. Here it is Doc Savage and the Cult of the Blue God. This has been reprinted before, but I don’t think in a manner that was accessible to the average fan.

Way back in Weird Heroes, which I’ve posted on and which was an attempt at New Pulp in the 1970s, we got the first of a planned two-part work by Farmer called “The Grant-Robeson Papers.” The completed piece appeared in volume 8.

The idea was that Kenneth Robeson, the creator of Doc Savage, meets Maxwell Grant, the creator of The Shadow. And the two authors were actually similar in some ways to their creations, and they would then write pieces about each other. The first one, “Savage Shadow,” is by Grant, and sadly, we didn’t get the second part. What we got was an introduction explaining all this, along with that first story.

The Monster on Hold was the long-awaited (too long, IMO) conclusion to the Secrets of the Nine trilogy, with Doc Caliban and Lord Grandrith fighting a secret group of immortals. Farmer never finished it, leaving it up to Win Scott Eckert to do so. Farmer did do some of the work, which was published in a few places, including here. Also related to TMOH is a piece by Eckert on finishing the work, and some hints and spoilers on it. This was included with the recent omnibus edition of the trilogy.

From Will Murray is a long interview he conducted with Farmer back in 1989, part of which was published in a couple of issues of Starlog in 1990.

Escape From Loki was finally when Farmer was able to write an actual Doc novel and not a pastiche. Related to that, we get his afterword to the final Doc omnibus from Bantam that appeared before that novel and gives his ideas for what he’d like to write involving Doc, and a piece on Escape by Christopher Paul Carey.

We also get Farmer’s short story “After King Kong Fell,” with several nods to other characters. I’m uncertain where I finally read this one. Was it The Grand Adventure?

So, it’s another great collection from Meteor House that would appeal to either Farmer fans or Doc Savage fans.

I asked the folks at Meteor House if we would ever get further collections like this, and they said if so, it would be focused on Sherlock Holmes. I know Farmer did use Holmes a few times, but I don’t know if there is enough to fill a book. Guess we’ll have to see.