Books and Such

I was listening to a series of podcasts earlier this year about the Pulp Heroes from the 1930s. I found the idea of the pulp novel to interesting and so I set out to grab some and read them.

I started with the first John Carter of Mars book entitled Princess of Mars. This was by Edgar Rice Burroughs who is most known for Tarzan. John Carter also stared in a Disney movie that flopped earlier this year due to the horrible marketing campaign attached to it. Check out the movie, it was a really good watch. Anyways, I really enjoyed the book. It was an easy read and it was easy to see the impact it had on sci-fi as a whole. I felt like I had missed out on not reading John Carter when I was younger.

I moved on to Doc Savage after I finished John Carter. These were less refined than the John Carter books. There were roughly 180 Doc Savage pulps from the early 1930s to the late 1940s. The books are what they are. Mass produced serialized fiction. Sometimes poorly written, sometimes poorly thought out and sometimes rushed to fit the story into the 120 page limit that these pulps required. You're not getting classics of literature with these novels. But, they are incredibly fun books. There's good action and a great sense of adventure that comes with the Doc Savage novels. You can really see the seeds that he planted in other characters like Superman, Dirk Pitt and Indiana Jones. You can probably polish off a Doc Savage novel in a couple of sittings and you might remember the story if you're lucky. I've started reading these between books to kind of reset for the next big read. They work well in that capacity.

Then I tried the Destroyer novels. There's about 150 of these and they've been coming out since the early 1970s. He is not considered to be a pulp hero but he shares a lot of similarities to them. The main character is named Remo Williams and it's about his adventures as a government agent. These books are a little more developed than the pulps of the 30s. There's attempts at characterization. You come to know Remo and are expected to see the human side, not necessarily just the adventurer/hero. The books also pack a decent sense of humor. Again, these aren't classics of literature. They're just fun romps to kill a few reading sessions with. These also run $2.99 for the Kindle.

I also acquired some of the Shadow's pulp novels. I am a huge fan of the radio show from the 30s and 40s but I have yet to dig into these very much. The Spider is also on my radar but I just have too much to read to give him serious consideration at this time.

If you want something fun and simple, give Doc Savage, Remo Williams or John Carter a look.