Pulp of the Week - The Explorers Guild Vol.1

The Explorer's Guild Volume One

by

JON BAIRD

with

KEVIN COSTNER

and

STEPHEN MEYER

 Illustrated by RICK ROSS

The 2015 novel, The Explorers Guild is a beautiful book written by Jon Baird with input and collaboration by actor / director Kevin Costner. It is extensively illustrated by Rick Ross. The book is a 770 page hardcover and a thing of beauty. The story follows a young Corporal Buchan in the waning days of the Great War. He is in the Cavalry, and sent on a mission that goes far beyond anything he could have imagined. There are secret cities, treacherous voyages, dashing flappers, secret passages, majestic airships and villainous rogues.

The book mixes images and text freely is a wonderful way. The text and art really do support each other well and both are used to drive the narrative forward.

While the book is thick at 770 pages, the narrative moves at a breakneck pace and the art is used brilliantly to save text and enhance the experience. It is not either a graphic novel or a traditional novel, but it is a wonderful book. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I picked it up on the discount table at Barnes and Noble, autographed!

Savage Tale - Seven Tigers

SEVEN TIGERS

Art - Mike Fyles

July 17, 1934

The first tiger surprised Helene Vaughn. The young aviatrix was trying on outfits in a small dressing room at the Robinson’s department store in Beverly Hills. She put on a cute Tartan plaid skirt and short-sleeved white top she hoped to wear to her pal Martha Mansfield’s birthday party. She opened the dressing room door to get the sales girl’s opinion.

The girl wasn’t there.

A tiger looked up at Helene and snarled. Helene screamed, jumped back, and slammed the door in the beast’s face. 
Moments later she heard the sales girl come running, “What’s the problem, Miss…?” The young woman screamed - apparently she saw the problem - screamed again, and ran off.

Helene grabbed her purse, stepped up on the dressing room bench and peeked over the thin wall. The tiger sniffed at the crack under the door. Helene’s eyes were as big as saucers. She moved to the side and looked over the wall into the neighboring changing room.

An older woman looked up at Helene indignantly, “Do you mind?”

Helene said, “No, not really.” She looked back in her changing room and saw tiger paws pulling at the flimsy changing room door. Helene turned back and smiled at the woman below her and said, “I’ll need your room for a minute…”

The Clark Tyler

In the spirit of my pulp adventure hero, Clark Tyler, I have created a cocktail in his honor. Try one next time you're reading a pulp or listening to your favorite radio drama.

Juice 1/2 a Grapefruit
Juice 1 Mineola Orange (3 Tangerines may substitute)
Juice 1/2 Lime
1 Tablespoon Raw Sugar
2 Shots Tequila

Put 6 Ice Cubes in a Shaker
Pour in all the liquids and the sugar
Cap the shaker and shake like Capone is on your tail.
Pour into a tall glass and enjoy!!!

Goes great with Mexican food and Film Noir

Pulp of the Week - Doc Savage - Nov 1936

November 1936 - Resurrection Day

Resurrection Day is a unique Doc Savage adventure for many reasons. The tale begins when Doc's five men print an announcement in all the nations' morning newspapers. The message urges the nation to look to the next day's papers for an announcement from Doc Savage. The next editions include an announcement that Doc Savage will address the nation on radio that evening. Finally, the bronze man himself speaks directly to the American people: "It is in my power to bring a dead man back to life. Only one man may be brought back to life." One person from all of history is to be chosen. Doc Savage has come forward to the public to let them have a say in who is to be resurrected.

While the public debates which person would be most worthy, and the choices are wide ranging, Doc must make the final decision. Due to the nature of creating this elixer of life, it has taken Doc 10 or more years to make enough to revive just one person. A blue ribbon panel has been chosen and after lengthy discussion, they have selected Soloman.

Well, as can be expected in a Doc Savage story, things go awry and a nefarious party swaps mummies for one of their choosing - an ancient king who's vast treasure has spent millennia hidden from even the greatest of treasure hunters and this is the man resurrected.

There is a chase and great discovery, action and thrills, that lead to ancient ruins and danger, excitement, and death.

This is a pretty good tale and I'll give it an 8.5 out of 10.

The pulp cover is by Walter Baumhofer and the paperback cover is one of James Bama's best for the series.

Pulp of the Week - Doc Savage Aug, Sept, Oct 1936

Well - Life has interrupted this blog….

While I haven’t been posting, I still have been reading (slowly) more Doc Savage stories. Here are some mini reports…

The Midas Man - August 1936 - Bantam #46

This adventure is most notable for having a mind reading helmet that actually works.

There is a scene where a couple of crooks discuss what happened to a crook friend that got caught by Savage. “There’s a rumor that he don’t ever kill anybody,” explained the crook. “But he does something queer to ‘em. I know this guy that had a brother that this bronze guy got. My pal later met his own brother on the street. The poor guy didn’t even know him.” 

Also Doc gas bombs a building and later has the police check on it to be sure that no one is injured (he doesn’t mention that he was the one that gassed the building, however.

At one point Ham gets hit by a bullet. “Ham’s head swam. Awful lights jumped in his eyeballs.” He was ok due to his bulletproof vest, but I liked the detail.

James Bama provided an evocative cover - the helmet is wonderfully low tech.

Cold Death - September 1936 - Bantam #21

Writer Laurence Donovan brings back the Cold Light from Land of Always Night as a horrible weapon that destroys a whole city block in Manhattan.

 South Pole Terror - October 1936 - Bantam #77

Doc and crew chase down a world threatening weapon at the South Pole. A good story by Dent and the paperback has a Fred Pfeiffer cover that also graces The Stone Man.

next up - back to full reviews

Pulp of the Week - Doc Savage 41

  

July 1936 - The Black Spot

The Black Spot starts while Pat Savage is attending a costume party with a mobster theme at the ritzy Vandersleeve estate in tony Westchester. The party is so high profile and the guest list so exclusive that a newsreel cameraman is present. When the host is killed, Pat and cameraman Red Mahoney are witnesses and get involved in a real gangster mystery.

The Black Spot is a New York centered tale of villainous intentions penned by Laurence Donovan. A killer has invented an vicious and most mysterious murder technique that leaves the victim dead with only a small black spot on their chest. The killings start out in the ritzi suburbs of the Westchester hills outside of Manhattan. The black spot killer quickly moves to Manhattan and continues to target the super-rich.

This is a much smaller-scale story than Donovan's previous effort, but ultimately far more satisfying. There is tension here, and Donovan writes the team well, with a satisfying, exciting finish. My favorite non-Dent Doc Adventure thus far.

           
The pulp cover is by Walter Baumhofer and the Bantam paperback cover is by Fred Pfeiffer. I'll give The Black Spot a 9 out of 10.

Pulp of the Week - Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi

Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi
by Rob MacGregor


There is a great used book store called Movie World in downtown Burbank that stocks a mountain of books including plenty of Science Fiction paperbacks. The SF books cover a wall ten feet high and fifteen feet wide. In some spots they are shelved 3 books deep.

One day last year I decided to pay attention to the novelizations that were stacked horizontally by the door. The Indiana Jones novels caught my eye and took a look at them. They were not novelizations, but original stories. I bought a pile of them that were written by Rob MacGregor.

Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi is the first of MacGregor's books. The bulk of the story takes place in 1922, but flashes back two years briefly for some antics at his college graduation.

MacGregor's series follows graduate student Jones on an adventure that takes him from the dawn of the jazz age in Paris, to the ruins of Greece, and into an adventure and romance or two. As the title states, Indy ends up in Delphi where famous oracles in the ancient past would enter the caves, breathe in mystical vapors and emerge having received prophetic visions.

Indy has been hired (possibly just seduced) into following professor Dorian Belecamus to Greece and into a political, ethical, and potentially fatal web of deceit and betrayal.

Author MacGregor writes a great tale that despite Indy being college age, really feels like an Indiana Jones story, not a Young Indy story. He weaves in a few character building bits and by the end of the tale,  Grad Student Henry Jones, Jr is one step closer to being the Indy that we know and love.

I highly recommend Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi. It also features a great cover by Drew Struzan, the fantastic movie poster artist, that did the Raiders One-Sheet and so many more. His cover contributes considerably to setting the tone that this is Indiana Jones. I give the book 8.5 out of 10.

Pulp of the Week - Doc Savage 40

June 1936 - The Haunted Ocean

The Haunted Ocean is another Laurence Donovan tale, this time with a lofty villian's goal: Defeating all the world's armies and using his own to enforce world peace. The US President (FDR at this time, although not named) telephones Doc and summons him to Washington, D.C. to discuss the disappearance of the peace commission.

At the meeting, the President stated, "The whole thing is fantastic, but it suggests such great possible calamity, it cannot be overlooked! We seem to be threatened by such a power as none of our government scientists and technicians have ever before seen."

Doc replied that science had advanced so rapidly that the threat could be genuine. "None can say what vast force can be discovered at any time. Unfortunately, the discoveries are not always made by those of balanced and straightforward minds."

The villain, The Man of Peace, seeks the same ends as the commission - to disarm everyone but themselves, although this is not acceptable to the great nations.

This was an odd story and in thinking about it, I find it is so strange that the writer and editor in 1936 would not find it strange or worry that the readers would not like the commission members to be Great Britain, France, the United States, Spain, Italy, and Germany! This is only 15 years after the Great War! William Harper Littlejohn (Doc's aide Johnny) was currently the US delegate and has gone missing.

There are plenty of planes and ships and submarines involved in the action, but I didn't find it all that engaging. I'll give Donovan's tale a 7 out of 10. The pulp cover is by Walter Baumhofer, and the Bantam paperback cover is another great James Bama painting.

 

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Pulp of the Week - Green Lama: Scions

The Green Lama: Scions  by Adam Lance Garcia

Adam Garcia's third Green Lama tale is a terrific addition to the saga. Scions (and planned future books) are published by Moonstone Books and feature the mysterious Green Lama facing off against a bizarre, monsterous, foe.

The story begins with the crash of a passenger ship into Liberty Island. All on board are dead, save one. Dead long before the crash at their own hands. A bloodbath of unspeakable horror. A portent of Lovecraftian delights to follow in this and other adventures.

The Green Lama is joined in this adventure by Jean Farrell, Lt. Caraway, Ken Clayton, and Gary and Evangl Stewart-Brown all get involved, Jethro Dumont puts in an appearance or two as does reporter Betty Dale (from the Secret Agent X stories). She also refers to fellow reporter Din from the Planet (she is the reporter in the Foster Fade stories) and to the Spider. Adam seems to be having a ball with the references and I found it fun, too.

For those interested in such things, there is a handy timeline in the back of the book that shows where Scions fits into the Lamaverse. One of the nice things about the Green Lama saga is that were only around a dozen original stories published in the pulps of the 1930s (unlike the hundreds of Shadow and Doc Savage stories which gives Garcia much less existing canon a lot of space to work in.

I will close by saying that Adam Garcia has another fun pulp tale and really gets the Green Lama and his supporting cast. I eagerly await future volumes. Enjoy this little excerpt of reporter Betty Dale speaking to Dumont's manservant, Tsarong:

    "When are you expecting Dumont back?"
    "I couldn't say Miss Dale, I am not his keeper."
    "Guess we're just gonna have to wait, then." She dropped down into Jethro's desk chair. She waved at the rows and rows of books lining the walls. "Does he read all those?"
    "Not all at once, and usually one page at a time."
    "Now that's interesting," she said, ignoring Tsarong's quip. "By every account, our friend Dumont is little more than an immature womanizer who won't crack open anything that doesn't have two legs and here he is with more books than the Library of Alexandria."

I give "The Green Lama: Scions" a 9 out of 10 and the cover is an awesome painting of Adam by Doug Klauba.

You can buy Scions in print here
 ebook here
4 wheels here



   

Pulp of the Week - The Return of Foster Fade

The New Adventures of Foster Fade - Pro Se Press - Digital and Print

I picked up this volume of pulp tales featuring one of Lester Dent's lesser known characters for a few reasons. One, I like Dent, and two, it features a couple of stories by Adam Lance Garcia. Garcia is one of the best of the New Pulp writers out there and his main story in this anthology doesn't disappoint.

For those not familiar with Foster Fade, he was featured in a number of stories by Lester Dent prior to Dent's work on Doc Savage. Foster Fade is a sort of Sherlock Holmes with gadgets. The love of gadgets is the source of any similarity to Doc Savage. Otherwise, Fade is quite different. He's tall, lanky and a bit of a prankster. He has little time for figures of authority. And he knows just how good he is.

Part of me wonders if Adam Garcia has modeled his Fade a bit after the Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock, but regardless, the character is fun and smart.

Foster Fade occupies a large space in Planet Tower, the skyscraper in Manhattan that houses The Planet, a very popular Manhattan daily newspaper. (Perhaps yet another debt that the Superman creators owe Dent.) Fade has an office, living quarters, and the laboratory where he creates his outlandish crime solving gadgets.

The Planet gives away this prime real estate to Fade in exchange for having exclusive access to the Spectacularist (great word, isn't it?) and his exploits. Also included in the deal is that writer Dinamenta Stevens has full access to Fade and is the official writer of his tales. The relationship and banter between Din Stevens and Foster Fade is the most fun part of these tales, and the stories are indeed fun. Pro Se Press should be proud of this volume.

The collection opens with Adam Garcia's mystery as Fade and Din track a cop killer that is sending Fade the murder weapons. Pro Se has put its best foot forward and Garcia's tale is the best in this collection. The other tales are good, but don't match the level of Garcia's prose. The second tale, by Derrick Ferguson is the other standout.

After reading this book of original tales, I will be seeking out the collection of original Lester Dent stories (available from Altus Press) as well.

I'll give The New Adventures of Foster Fade a 7 out of 10, but Garcia's first tale scores a 9, and finally, the cover by the Spectacular Mike Fyles scores a 10. Great work with dynamic characters. One of his best.

Pulp of the Week - Death Note

Death Note is a great Manga series written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata that has spawned anime, video games and live action movies in Japan. Shane Black and his writing partners are working on an American adaptation. The story follows Light Yagami, college aged son of a Tokyo police detective, after he has been given a strange notebook.

After touching the notebook, a strange demonic creature, a japanese shinigami named Ruyk, appears and stays by Light throughout much of the story. The holder of the Death Note is the only one that can see the Shinigami. This gives Light someone to talk to about the Death Note.

Light decides to test it out on convicted killers that are in prison. It works. He expands his tests to more and more people and finally sends a message, naming himself Kira, out to the world. Kira makes it clear that he will rid the world of evil, that good people need not fear him, and that he will rule this utopia.

Then it becomes clear to Light that there is another Kira, and the twists and puzzles mount. A task force is formed, with the mysterious L serving as lead detective. L has mysteries of his own and there is a battle of wits as L and Light serve on the task force. As this is a 12 book manga series, this is just the beginning.

I highly recommend Death Note. It is exciting, adventurous stuff that is exceedingly well written given the twists and turns of two geniuses in intellectual battle.

Death Note deserves a rating of 10. It is great. Warner Bros has optioned it for Shane Black to direct as an english language movie (Japanese versions already have been made) and I certainly thought it would make a great movie as I was reading the books. Check out Death Note.

Pulp of the Week - Doc Savage 39

The  Seven Agate Devils - May 1936

This Doc adventure has a couple of firsts - Doc in Los Angeles for an extended period and a bald femme fatale. The story involves a series of killings where a carved agate statue is found next to the victim. This is especially peculiar because the statue's face matches the victims.


After racing around Los Angeles and a faux Malibu, Doc, Monk, and Ham go to a movie location far in the desert out by Palm Springs where the trail of the agate statues has led.

This odd and almost great adventure especially suffers from common ailment of a Doc Savage story running out of pages too fast. The authors (Lester Dent and Harold A. Davis) didn't leave enough room for an adequate conclusion.


The story has thrills and chases, Pacific cliffs and western canyon hideouts. It all rushes by too fast and misses many good opportunities. Hopefully Doc and company will return to Hollywood for a proper classic movie studio adventure. This is not that.

For this review I read the Bantam paperback published March 1973, likely purchased new a few years after that. The evocative paperback cover is by Fred Pfeiffer. I find myself liking the Pfeiffer covers more and more. The pulp cover is by Walter Baumhofer. I got the pulp image from mycomicshop.com. I'll give The Seven Agate Devils a 7 out of 10 - low due to the missed chances and the utterly unsatisfying conclusion. The scenes are exciting, but the story never gelled.

Man Litter

I saw this on the way to work today.

It seems there is a new product on the market called Man Litter... For the man on the go.


As it turns out, this is an ad for adult swim... I saw it and thought, wtf? Well, they got me to look it up... Success!

I know this is off topic, but hey...

Doc Savage Comic Series Coming From Dynamite!!!

Doc Savage Comic Books are on the way. Again. Doc has appeared in may comic book series, most recently in well meant, but not well received run from DC. Doc first appeared in comics in the 1940s from Street and Smith. Following that were runs in Gold Key, Marvel, DC, Millennium, Dark Horse, and DC again.
Now, at Baltimore Comic-Con this weekend, Dynamite Comics, in an announcement that shouldn't have shocked anyone who likes pulp comics, announced at least one Doc Savage comic book series starting in Dec 2013. (I say at least one because in the past Dynamite has run multiple series featuring the same character at the same time. These Dynamite comics will feature new stories with the Man of Bronze. The ambitious series will bw written by Chris Roberson (his last name coincidentally only an 'r' away from the original series house author name Robeson) will start with a story that takes Doc from 1933 to the present. Roberson was previously the writer of the Shadow and the multi-pulp-hero series Masks for Dynamite.

The series will be illustrated by Bilquis Evely, a Brazilian, and the samples on her page on deviant art.com look very good. I wonder if she is the first woman to illustrate Doc. The covers will be by Dynamite pulp regular, Alex Ross, and the ones for the first couple of issues (seen above) look great. Below you can see some spectacular samples of Bilquis Evely's art from her deviantart page:

 

Here are some snippets from an interview with writer Chris Roberson posted on CBRnews:

What does it mean to you to be a part of this character's history?
Roberson: ... Growing up in the '70s, it was impossible to miss the ubiquitous Bantam reprints with those amazing James Bama covers. I started reading the novels when I was still in middle school, if I recall correctly, and Doc quickly became (and remains!) my absolute favorite of the bunch.

 
Tell us a bit about the story you have planned for Doc Savage. Who are the major players and what kicks things off to start your series?
This is a big story that we're telling in these first eight issues, starting in 1933 at the point where readers were first introduced to Doc Savage, and continuing on through the years to the present day. Just because the Doc Savage Magazine ended publication in the late '40s didn't mean that Doc's adventures ended there.

Doc Savage has had many incarnations over the years. How did you walk that balance of combining the classic character that fans love with your own, unique spin on him?
I've been extraordinarily lucky in my brief comics career, in that I've now gotten the chance to work on virtually every character and concept that meant the most to me growing up. And I'm approaching Doc Savage the same way I approached all the others. Not by worrying about new readers or old readers, per se, but by taking the core elements of the character that appealed most to me when I first encountered him, and then using those as the foundation for telling the kind of story that I would most like to read.

A new ongoing series for Doc Savage opens up a lot of potential for unexplored aspects of the character and his mythology. What are some pieces of that unexplored territory that you hope to bring to light during your run?
Understandably, many readers over the years have found the whole idea of the "Crime College" a little troubling. And that's something that we're going to be exploring.

Why do you think Doc Savage as a character has managed to endure throughout the years? What do you feel is his biggest strength when it comes to character?
… You can see elements of him in Superman, Batman, and the Fantastic Four, but he also arguably was a big influence on characters like Indiana Jones and James Bond. I think one of the most appealing aspects of Doc Savage is that, in him, we get to see those kinds of adventure hero elements in their original form, stripped down and lean, without encumbering mythologies and continuities. And speaking only as a reader, those original adventures are just so much fun that it's impossible not to revisit them over and over again. Our hope with this new comic is to try to communicate some of that fun and appeal to contemporary readers.

I am cautiously optimistic. Thanks to the ever-on-it Coming Attractions for bringing this news to my attention. They provide a weekly update of upcoming pulp goodness.

Pulp of the Week - The Astounding, The Amazing, and The Unknown

The Astounding, The Amazing, and The Unknown
by Paul Malmont
 

Following up on the terrific Chinatown Deathcloud Peril (CDP), Paul Malmont has written an equally good, if not better novel with The Astounding, The Amazing, and The Unknown. In CDP, Malmont wrote a story about 1930s pulp magazine writers having a pulp magazine style adventure. The results were wonderful as real writers Lester Dent, Walter Gibson and L Ron Hubbard faced grave danger.

In The Astounding, The Amazing, and The Unknown (AAU), Malmont continues in the same alternate history universe, but this time focuses on the science fiction writers having a science fiction adventure. The main characters are Bob Heinlein, L. Sprague de Camp, Isaac Asimov, along with the returning Ron Hubbard, Walter Gibson, Lester Dent and their wives and girlfriends. The setting is New York, Philadelphia, and the surrounding area late in WWII.
 

As in real life, in the AAU, Heinlein is running a think tank at the Philadelphia Navy Shipyard. This group is composed of a mess of scientist SF writers that are assigned to dream up the future of warfare. They have some crazy ideas and some of them even work. I hate to go into too much detail, because with a book like this, discovery is half the fun. Everyone gets the chance to be a hero and everyone plays a vital part, which is quite a feat with this many characters. Kudos to Mr. Malmont for achieving that delicate balance.
 

Needless to say, I think that AAU is a wonderful book that anyone interested in the golden age of Science Fiction or adventure stories should read. If you grew up reading SF in the post War era, you will love it. I started reading SF with Lester del Rey and Ray Bradbury and Asimov in the 1970s and I loved this book. The balance of truth and fiction is great (just enough truth to get you wondering about the rest.) We need more Malmont stories. If only he would give up the advertising game and write full time...
 

The Astounding, The Amazing, and The Unknown gets a 9 out of 10. This is a great book. Except for the tragically boring cover.

Pulp of the Week - Doc Savage 38

THE MEN WHO SMILED NO MORE

APRIL 1936

The Men Who Smiled No More is a very different Doc Savage tale for a number of reasons. It takes place entirely in New York state. It does not involve foreigners. And 95% of it has no super-science. Yet the plot is entirely about two completely different aspects of super-science. Writer Laurence Donovan contributed this tale.

The story begins with a humble shoe shiner. "Smiling Tony" Talliano was the first to quit laughing" is the first sentence of the story. What follows is a wild story where even Doc himself is afflicted with a strange condition where people become emotionless, flat versions of themselves. It's like they were replaced with a robot replica. The violence is also at a high level with killings perform is a callous and brutal manner. What intrigued me about this is that many people perceive Doc himself to be emotionless like this all the time anyway. That is not true. Doc has emotions, but he rarely displays them openly. Donovan also enhanced Docs' humanity to emphasize the difference when Doc is afflicted by the strange emotionlessness.

Donovan also brings the whole cast of regulars into this adventure, so we get to see Monk, Ham, Renny, Long Tom, Johnny, and Pat Savage struggle and change into lethargic shells, with no humor, or passion in their lives. Chemistry is the only one left out.

The bulk of the tale is set in the Shinnecock Hills on Long Island in New York. Monk, it turns out, has a cabin retreat in the woods and strange things are going on in a neighboring cabin. The man there has a duck pond and gets particularly furious at anyone who comes near his ducks. Then everyone starts getting the affliction. One by one the cast loses their drive, their will to live or to be active about anything. Finally, Doc himself falls under its spell.

The Men Who Smiled No More itself is told far more like a mystery story than any of the other Doc Savage tales I have read so far,and it includes Doc giving a long, detailed wrap up at the end.

I'll give The Men Who Smiled No More an 8.5 out of 10. This is a fun story with a welcome stylistic change of pace - harder, more savage.

For this review, I read my Bantam paperback dated February 1970. The Pulp cover is by Walter Baumhofer and the Bantam cover is by James Bama. Interestingly, that cover seemed to have nothing to do with the story for a very long time. It is an illustration of action from the story, however. Page 124 to be precise. I'm not sure that I have ever read a story with the cover happening so close to the end. Cherie Priest's The Inexplicables is the closest in recent memory, but even that cover was not nearly as close to the end as was the one for this Doc Savage story.

Elysium

Elysium

and

The Unsustainable Future

The  following essay is not intended to be a review of Elysium (which I liked quite a bit) but rather an exploration of the themes and events in the film.

 

Do not read this if you are intending to see the film. There are spoilers ahead and specifically discussion of the ending of the film. See the movie, then discuss...

 

Elysium imagines life 150 years in the future. In the intervening years the population on Earth has exploded and the world is a crowded, dirty place. Downtown Los Angeles was wonderfully rendered with shacks on top of high rises and freeways, and in fact, everywhere. The  visual effects are very well done and the world of shanty towns seemed real.

The super-rich, the one percent of the one percent live in what is outwardly a utopia. Elysium has beautiful homes and wonderful yards with robotic servants and medical machines that can cure any ailment or repair any injury. Those medical miracle machines are not available on earth. All the citizens of Elysium are given a unique barcode which lets them onto the space station and access to all the goodies - including the medical pods. 

Enter our blue collar hero, Max, played by Matt Damon. He has been radiated in an industrial accident and will do anything to get up to Elysium. His former girlfriend is now a nurse and has a daughter. They reconnect when Max goes to the hospital.

Max takes a job from a shady fixer and attacks the industrialist (down on Earth troubleshooting)  that created the software that runs Elysium. Max has been equipped with a very low-tech cyberlink and he downloads the full Elysium software package from the industrialist's brain. 

Now everybody is after Max. He gets on a shuttle and makes it to Elysium where he and the fixer pull the software out of Max's head and permanently modify it to make all the people of Earth citizens of Elysium so that the sick little girl can use the medical pod. The Elysium government is disrupted and Elysium is now open to all. 

The End.

However... I find this ending troubling because what good would it really do to allow everyone onto Elysium? It would quickly become overcrowded and unsustainable. And what good would bringing the medical pod technology down to Earth really do? Imagine a world of massive overpopulation suddenly given a massive increase in life expectancy. There would be food wars and turf wars and end up with even worse problems. Soon enough someone would reduce the population via nuclear weapons and Elysium would likely be destroyed.

This is why I find the ending troubling and why I am not sure about the message of the film (if any) and where we go from here. Would the super rich truly be happy living quiet lives of parties and luxury?  Not being super rich I can't be sure, but a boredom level would have to take effect at some point.

I think that 25 years in Elysium's future will be a world in chaos and strife with turf wars and the world splintered into thousands of factions all fighting for a tiny piece of the pie.

I think that having Elysium there gives the people of Earth something to strive for, something to dream about, something to live for. It might even give them hope.

Hopefully we will make our future better.

Disclaimer:  The opinions expressed here are mine alone and do not reflect on those of any other person, my employer, etc. 'Nuff said.

Pulp of the Week - Doc Savage 37

The Metal Master - March 1936

WARNING - EXTRA SPOILERIFIC!

Bring on the super-science! There are no charlatans here, this stuff is all real. This supersaga begins with a young woman escorting an old man to Doc Savage's 86th floor office. The woman, Nan Tester, thinks that Seevers is a bit nuts, but she'd like to meet Savage and see if his reputation is accurate. When they get to the office, they are attacked and Seevers is taken, but Doc gets the girl and hides her in a secret room in his laboratory. Doc pursues Seevers and when he finds him it is too late. He is partially protruding from a blob of metal that used to be a car.

A gang has gotten their mitts on a a piece of gear that causes metal to liquify while it is exposed to the beam. Not good if you are in a car, for instance. The leader of this gang is, of course, The Metal Master.

In one section, Nan Tester asks Doc about the fights between Monk and Ham. He explains, "Years ago, it became evident that the only thing that will stop Monk and Ham from quarreling is for one of the other to get killed."
Nan replies, "Oh! Then they've been like this on other occasions?"
"On practically all other occasions," Doc explained.

There is a lot of good in this Lester Dent book, and really only one fault. They bring back the monkey. Yep, Ham Brook's pet ape returns, just when its seems that we forgot about him. Oh, well, it was good while it lasted. The story explains that Chemistry was quarantined for many months in with customs…

After some globetrotting and gun play, the secrets of the Metal Master are revealed. Oh, and a decent twist plays out for a good bit before being revealed.

I'll give The Metal Master a 7.5 out of 10 due to a few sections where Dent was on autopilot and the monkey. Everything to do with the melting of metal is pretty great. The Pulp cover is by Walter Baumhofer and the Bantam Cover is by Fred Pfeifer.

Pulp of the Week - Joyland by Stephen King

Joyland is Stephen King's new novel from Hardcase Crime. This paperback original tells the tale of Devin Jones, a college student who gets a summer job at a small seaside amusement park (the titular Joyland) in South Carolina. This being Stephen King, there is a lot going on, something beyond the unexpected and heartbreaking exit of his girlfriend who is transferring to another school and ultimately to another man.

There is a single, lone dark ride at Joyland, a ramshackle car in the dark called, The Horror House. Years before, a young woman was savagely murdered there by her date. People say the ride is haunted by the girl that was butchered there. The killer was never found. In the back of his mind, Devin would love to solve this horrific crime, and his sympathetic college friends pitch in to help. They are the mostly off stage research assistants.

Despite being sullen and withdrawn, Devin can't help but notice the boy in the wheel chair that sits out in the yard of a magnificent home along the beach. A boy that is whisked away at the sight of strangers by an attractive young woman. There is a moment of opportunity and the boy engineers a meeting with Dev.

 As the weeks go by his relationship with the boy grows, Dev learns how to play by the young reluctant mother's rules. He also learns how to be a carny, and speak like a carny. And, despite it being forced on him, loves his new found role playing the park's mascot. Hiding behind the mask sets him free and the kids love him.

This being a King book, not everything is as it seems and there is something odd going on in Joyland and with the people Dev meets. Something that lurks in the dark places of the heart. This story has a lot of magic to it, and a bit of 'the fog of memory' in its telling. Joyland is a really good book and I highly recommend it. Joyland is a quick read and it's funny how fast you can read a book when it is really good (and not 1500 pages long.)

While Joyland is short for a King novel, its length falls in line with the majority of books on my shelf—books accumulated during the 70s, 80s, and 90s—books I think of as a regular size, around 250 to 300 pages. I realize that those days are over and now books are much longer, but his is the length I like. Maybe that is why I am drawn to pulp and YA novels like Leviathan and The Hunger Games. The stories are fast and to the point. King fits everything needed in this book. Love. Loss. Joy. Sorrow. Longing. Redemption.

The setting along the shore reminds me of the childhood vacations at Cape Cod mashed up with the carnivals and thrill rides of the old quaint Euclid Beach Park or the early Cedar Point, before it exploded into a mega coaster mecca.

Thanks, Stephen, for still writing great, personal stories and for supporting a brand like Hard Case Crime. I'm not sure when Hard Case went to trade paperbacks (or if they always were), but despite the larger size, I still love paperbacks. The package that they have put together is outstanding, from the juicy titles and cover copy to the lurid and fantastic Glen Orbik art.

I give Joyland an 9 out of 10.