My Uncle Bud gave me my first Doc Savage books in 1969. I considered them my first grown-up books, since they didn’t have pictures (of course I didn’t know that in the original pulp publication there were pictures. Hey, I was nine). Those books were Dust of Death, The Flaming Falcons and The Other World. Many books and comics and toys have passed through my hands in the intervening years, but I still have those three novels.
Captivated by those ultra cool James Bama cover paintings, I dug in to those stories and became forever mesmerized by the world of Doc Savage, adventurer supreme, righter of wrongs and archenemy of evil. I went on to collect every Doc book.
Except one.
When the Doc Savage novels were published in magazine form starting in 1933, the novels were full-length ( or at least what the pulps considered full length), so Bantam reprinted one novel per book.
Later, when the paper shortages of World War II forced many magazines to reduce in size or even shut down, the novels became novellas, and those were reprinted two to a book. In fact, the later Doc stories, most novelette in length, were packaged four or five to a book by Bantam.
But it’s the Doc Doubles that concern us here. Specifically, Double # 115/116 Pirate Isle and The Speaking Stone.
For some reason – low print run, poor distribution – this book never made it to any of my usual haunts. In that pre-eBay year of 1983, I searched for it everywhere I saw a bookstore. As the rest of the Docs were reprinted, I collected them all, along with a few of the original pulp magazines, but I could never find 115/116.
Then eBay came along and a whole new world of collecting opened to me. And I eventually found that missing book listed, for astronomical prices. Oh, I bid on it many times, convincing myself that it was worth $35, $45 or $50 to complete my Doc collection. But I always lost those auctions or balked at upping my bid to ridiculous levels.
This went on for years.
Until last Saturday, when I found a company called Blackmask Online. They’re engaged in reprinting Doc Savage novels in facsimile form (along with other cools stuff), and right there on their Doc page, they had Pirate Isle and The Speaking Stone together in one volume for $10.99.
So I ordered it. I was going to finally read those stories.
After ordering the book, I headed to work. I had a little time to kill, so I stopped by my local used paperback store.
You see where this is going, right?
There was the legendary, elusive Doc Savage Double Novel #115/116.
For $3.00.
I wasn’t sure what message the universe was trying to send me. I mean, after 23 years of scouring the book world for this Doc, it turns up twice in one day.
So I bought it.
I read it earlier today and was reminded how tight author Lester Dent’s writing became in the later years of his Doc career. Had the man not died far too young, I believe we would have been discussing him with a lot of the great mystery and suspense writers of the 1950s, like John D. MacDonald.
Anyway, my collection is now complete. It was great to visit with Doc, Monk, Ham Renny and the rest once again.
And it has me even more enthused about Pulp Nocturne. More on that any day now.
Oh, and thanks Uncle Bud. I owe it all to you.
***
I think I know why this season of 24 is so much better than the last.
After watching this week’s double episode in which we bid farewell to chunky Edgar (and let me tell you: I hate it when the fat guys die), it struck me why this season has been so much more captivating. The producers and writers have eliminated down time.
They’ve removed the boring parts.
In the last season, when something incredibly stupid happened – like, oh, say Jack having to delay a bad guy at a gas station by taking the station hostage for two hours instead just cutting the tire on the bad guy’s car – we had plenty of time to ponder the stupidity of the situation.
This year, the action and twists are so fast and furious that when something dopey does happen (and those moments mostly involve the President), we don’t have time to worry about it before we’re thrown into the next nerve gas attack/shoot out/familiar character dying.
I don’t know if this is due to a change on the producing or writing staff. But whatever it is, I like it. I just hope they can keep it up for the rest of the season.
And I hope they get Kim in a t-shirt soon. And running. That's quality TV.
4 comments:
I'd agree about Dent's writing improving with the later Docs. Some of the war storylines were very tight.
In the early '90s I made a cross country trip and made it a point to stop at every used bookstore I could. That's how I managed to get nearly all of the Bantam reprints, all except Dust of Death and Omnibus #2. I had to resort to getting those online a few years later. But it was a glorious trip I had around America camping and reading Doc Savage. I'll never forget it.
Dent was good but didn't he share some of the writing on the later Doc Savage stories?
Hi, Chris. Love what you're doing with Farmerphile.
http://www.pjfarmer.com/farmerphile.htm
Uncle Bud!!!
Dent actually had a few ghosts in the early years, when Street & Smith paid enough for Dent to hire ghost writers. When the stories got shorter, the money got smaller and he could no longer afford to farm them out.
And here's a list of the Doc novels and who wrote them:
http://members.aol.com/the86floor/novels/list.html
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