This week, something different – the teaser for a documentary on the long forgotten pulp hero, Dr Obsidian!
Judging from the teaser, the the planned documentary will cover both the movie serials and the pulp novels, and will feature commentary from well known luminaries in the field of pulp collecting and pulp writing.
This is really worth a look – and thanks to my friend Story Foru, back at Miskatonic University, for suggesting it!
Enjoy!
A pulp moment.
Thanks to my friend Germano “Hell” Greco of Book and Negative for pointing this picture out to me.
There’s precious little pulp on TV these days – and in the past it was not better.
But sometimes I get lucky.
Summer has brought back to the Italian airwaves The Lost World, and I am a happy viewer again.
Now, I know many that do not like the series – not to the point of despising it, but let’s say it is not high in their appreciation where fantasy shows are concerned.
I’ll get to the main objection I registered later, because it is interesting.
Now, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (that’s the complete title) is an Australian/Canadian show which takes its lead from the classic novel, and soon ditches most of the Conan Doyle plot and develops as a dinosaur-infested, lost-civilizations-laced, weird-science-loaded feast of pulpy goodness.
The basic premise – a band of heroes gets trapped on a plateau in South America, a lost world filled with… yeah, dinosaurs, monsters, lost cities, mysterious strangers, weird civilizations, relics from other times, crashed aliens, magic…
There’s even an access to the Hollow Earth!
The writing is fairly good, the effects are cheap but fun, the cast is competent, and adequate to the over-the-top premises of many an episode.
The main characters are a fine sample of pulp clichés…
. omni-competent scientist
. fearless big game hunter
. two fisted journalist
. unreliable femme fatale*
. fierce jungle queen*
Earlier seasons feature a second scientist character (as per original novel), sparking scientific and philosophical debate, acting avuncular and more importantly allowing the screenwriters to split the team.
And I’d welcome such a team at my gaming table, as it is the kind of ensemble which just sparks off stories: such a bunch of individuals would turn a jaunt down at the supermarket for snacks into an adventure.
Some of the recurring elements in the series are also highly entertaining.
There’s a civilization of lizard-men mimicking the Roman Empire.
There’s the afore-mentioned access to the Hollow Earth.
There’s the growing idea (actually turned into a solid plot element in the later seasons of the series) that the lost world plateau is sort of a time-distortion crossroads.
And then there’s everything else – including the kitchen sink.
Which is where many friends of mine start groaning.
There’s too much stuff, they say.
C’mon – dinosaurs today, aliens last week, yet another lost civilization next week…
How comes the science guy is able to build almost any kind of gadget, and yet he can’t telegraph home for rescue?
How comes they never run out of ammo?
How comes the women are always gorgeous, the guys alway handsome and athletic?
And yet, that is exactly what I like – because it’s in line with the classics.
Well, my kind of classics, anyway.
If it was good enough for Tarzan, or Doc Savage, why shouldn’t it be fine for a team of adventurers trapped on a plateau in South America, surrounded by dinos and weirdness?
Are we really counting shots and dissecting dinosaurs for plausibility?
All in all, to me, The Lost World remains a competent, fun, lightweight fantasy show – with some hidden gems lost among the many episodes.
Maybe it’s a guilty pleasure – but it is a pleasure indeed.
NOTE
* Yes, I know there’s no femme fatales or jungle queens in Conan Doyle. There should be.
Female fans of Tom Jones used to throw their hotel room keys (and sometimes their bras) at him, during concerts.
My fans sometimes throw books at me – and thank goodness for ebooks, because some of the things they throw at me – often selected from my Amazon wish list – would be hefty, and potentially dangerous, paper volumes.
The Achmed Abdullah Megapack, for instance, which landed on my Kindle last night, courtesy of a kind reader of mine (thanks!!), is a 20-stories collection of vintage pulp goodness that would run to 420 pages in the material world.
Enough to knock me senseless.
Achmed Abdullah was not his real name – his name was Alexander Nicholayevitch Romanoff, and was connected bybirth with the Czar of Russia.
After his mother – an Afghan princess – tried to poison his father – a Russian, cousin to the Czar, and with a penchant for adultery – the resulting divorce caused Alex to move to England.
He studied in Eton and Oxford, joined the army and served for seventeen years in Asia and Africa.
Captured and interned as spy by the Germans during the Great War, he then moved to the US of A, where he started a carreer as a pulp writer and movie scriptwriter.
He wrote the script for Douglas Fairbanks Jr‘s 1924 The Thief of Baghdad.
And he wrote a lot for the pulps – fantasy, horror, adventure, mysteries – mostly with Oriental or African settings.
He wrote for Adventure, for Oriental Stories, for Weird Tales.
The megapack is – like most Wildside Press Megapacks – nothing fancy: just a lot of great fiction, with a good introduction by Darrell Schweitzer.
This is the “I want as much good fiction as possible with me with the least fuss” approach, and I like it.
The stories listed cover the whole spectrum of genres and subgenres Achmed Abdullah wrote, and promise long hours of delight.
It’s not the key to some lady’s hotel room, but it’s great!
Thanks again!
Fact is, reality always takes you by surprise… that’s why we need fantasy.
To be prepared.
(no, not the band that did Apache)
As I mentioned a while back, in this weekend – which marks the birthday of Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Vincent Price – the idea is to do something to stress and underscore the relevance and dignity of imaginative fction.
Being chiefly a writer, I’ll write.
I call it Imaginative Fiction (using the old catch-all tag coined by Lyon Sprague de Camp).
You can call it horror, fantasy, weird, science fiction, pulp adventure…
You can call it faery tale, myth, folklore…
It is not kid’s stuff.
Oh, granted, kids love it – because kids are curious, and normally don’t give a damn about being perceived as serious, mature or respectable.
They want ideas – they hunger for ideas.
And if you are looking for ideas, fantasy fiction, imaginative tales, are the best spot in which to dig…
With this I do not mean to diss “serious fiction” – as usual my problem is not with mainstream or serious fiction, is with the fools that use it as a token of tribal belonging.
I read <put the author’s name in here>, therefore I’m acceptable.
That’s how “serious books” get sold but never read.
Now, good imaginative fiction is not normally read to fit in.
In school you are mocked and overlooked.
They call you a geek.
Desirable members of the opposite sex won’t date you.
Teachers appreciate the fact that you’re a reader but might point out to your parents that “the kid has too much imagination.”
As if it were a problem – real, serious, dangerous troublemakers are those without imagination, because they normally can think of just one solution to any problem.
And even if you, being a geek, finally find a suitable community – comic book readers, fantasy fans, roleplayers – that’s supposed to be a phase you’ll leave behind when you”grow up” and start thinking about “important things”.
Important thins seem to involve being unhappy because you want them, and then being unhappy because once you get them they are not so hot after all.
Weird.
But for a fact, imaginative fiction makes us better.
In its deviations from reality, imaginative fiction questions concepts like those “important things”.
Truly, we read these stories, watch these movies, not to escape reality, but to look at it closer from a new, fresh perspective.
We need these narratives not to escape reality, but to fight the need to escape reality.
So, during this weekend I’ll celebrate watching an old movie with dinosaurs in it, and then I’ll read some weird book full of monsters.
Not because it’s cheap escapism – but because there’s a point in surrealism, there’s a strong moral drive in adventure stories, because contemplating the strange it’s easier to understand the mundane, later.
So let’s raise a glass to our three patron saints – men of culture and intellect, that never despided imaginative fiction, and contributed making it popular, and acceptable.
Go read a book.
Go watch some movie.
Dust off the old comics collection.
And teach the younger generations that’s where ideas come from.
Cheers!
I was rather unconvinced, when I first saw the earlier episodes of Sanctuary, the Canadian TV series starring Amanda Tapping.
I think it was the rather clunky (?) CGI sets.
And yet, today – as the fourth series is being aired here in Italy – I’m a fan.
I actually like it a lot better than, say, Eureka (which bores me to death) or Battlestar Galactica.
After all, a series featuring a science team investigating cryptozoology to protect the cryptids, featuring a sasquatch as a character, involving much (computer-generated) globetrotting, an ancient race of Twilight-free vampires, a hollow earth setting, references to ancient mysteries and whatnot…?
With Jack the Ripper as one of the good guys?
And a descendant of Thor Heyerdahl as a member of the cast?
Together with that woman from Stargate SG-1?
C’mon – it’s obvious that my interest for the series should border on the fetish.
Add the slightly steampunkish feel of some episodes and of part of the premises, and I’m sold. Continue reading
Yes, just like that… sort of.
One day I’ll write a book called Mistress of Yamatai.
It will be a Burroughs-esque actioneer.
The story – a freak accident involving some ancient Japanese relics causes out hero (an anonymous orientalist) to slip back in time (and possibly sideways, too) to the ancient land of Wo, where he’ll have to face unspeakable lovecraftian horrors and shamanic magic, fight blood-thirsty barbarians and woo fiery-spirited, ample-breasted Himiko, the Mistress of Yamatai.
A classy thing, in other words.
I’ve got the story outlined, the characters sketched – the zip file including the lot resurfaced a few days back, after a slump caused a pile of old CDs to spill fan-like on my desk.
One day or another, I’ll write the book.
I made a promise.
In the meantime, here’s the story about Himiko, the Mistress of Yamatai, and about her Curse. Continue reading
Karavansara 