Thursday, February 16, 2017

The Many Books Of Bronze!


Last year I accomplished a life-long goal and completed reading all of the original Doc Savage "novels" from the 30's pulp era. Thanks to Anthony Tollin's Sanctum Books I was able to get them in reasonably priced and easy to read formats which made the mission doable and pleasurable. Now after a short break from all things Savage it's time to dive into Will Murray's contributions. I've read several of these over the years but never have I read most of them and never have I read them in what approximates an order. I hope to rectify that in the next few years or so. Murray is the new "Kenneth Robeson" and a scholar of the highest order when it comes to pulp fiction in general and Doc Savage in particular. He was picked by Bantam Books to use fragments from the files of Lester Dent to fabricate new Doc adventures back in the 90's when the company completed its run of the original material after decades of publication. He produced several tomes, some of which I bought at the time, but since then he's produced many more. Some are crossovers with The Shadow and are a hoot and half. Altus Books has been reissuing these over the last several years and I've been gathering them up. Now it's time to start reading them all through again. Should be fun.

Below are the covers by Joe DeVito of what Altus has released to date as well as one novel which no one has reprinted to my knowledge. 


(Moonstone Books published this version before Altus Books.)




















Escape from Loki is the one Doc novel which has not yet been reprinted to my knowledge. Written by Philip Jose Farmer it's an origin story for Doc and his Fab Five. Copies show up on the back issue market, but we desperately need a new volume to make the Doc canon whole. Hopefully this will be accomplished soon.

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2 comments:

  1. Nice!!! I’ve read 5 of the 22 Will Murray books you depict here. The $20.00 + dollar pop for each one is something I struggle with - but I hope to read them all over time as well…I did not know there was a solo Pat Savage book – Wow!

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    1. I do think the price is high for these and luckily I'm able to swing that right now. Murray does deliver value for money in terms of page count, but I'm not completely certain that helps the pulp chops of these tales all the time. The earliest one - The Frightened Fish - which just came out was around fifteen or sixteen bucks. That's more what I'm used to.

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