Under An Outlaw Moon » Doc Wilde

I’m The Answer (Song of the Week, 9/26/2011)

Tim Byrd — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:00:11 +0000

Tim Byrd's Doc Wilde, Art by Gary Chaloner

Pete Townsend’s brother, Simon, with my theme song. Of the week.

My Pulp Pit Column at IMJ Returns! Pulp Pit #2: “I Am Not Doc Savage”

Tim Byrd — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 11:41:04 +0000

After many travails, my second column at Inveterate Media Junkies is now finally online:

I AM NOT DOC SAVAGE

Introducing My New Monthly Column on Pulp Adventure: The Pulp Pit

Tim Byrd — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 14:35:19 +0000

A Typical Pulp Hero...

As I mentioned in the Song of the Week post yesterday, I have a new monthly column over at Inveterate Media Junkies. The first installment is now live and you can read it here:

I Am Doc Savage

The column is called “The Pulp Pit,” and as you might deduce, its subject is pulp. I’ll be covering whatever pulpy topics tickle my muse (or maybe cuddle my muse, since she’s not that fond of tickling), pointing out cool pulp stuff for people to enjoy, and reviewing books, comics, movies, games, TV shows, and whatever else as appropriate.

For those with possible review materials they think might be on-topic for a pulp column, please drop me a line at thepulppit at gmail.com (just connect the two parts up with an @). I’m interested in any sort of pulpish media, old or new. I don’t want people just sending me things that stack up and I never get to, as that costs you money and both of us time. So tell me what it is, and if I think it’s something I might actually make time to read/watch/play/etc., I’ll tell you how to send it to me.

Regular readers of this blog might have noticed a recent password-protected entry titled I Am Doc Savage (Pulp Pit # 1). Two weeks after a column appears on IMJ, I’ll remove the password and make the post public, so it’s available to readers here.

I Am Doc Savage (Pulp Pit # 1)

Tim Byrd — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 15:04:18 +0000

[This is a Pulp Pit column, originally published at Inveterate Media Junkies. These columns are exclusively available at their site for two weeks, then I make them available here on my blog.]

I am Doc Savage.

If you know me, you know that to the world at large, I am a strange, mysterious figure of glistening bronze skin and golden eyes. A man of superhuman strength and protean genius. My life is dedicated to the destruction of evil-doers. I am the greatest adventure hero of all time.

Now hear me out. Sure, I lack the bronze. My eyes are blue, and I tend toward what you might call an Irish tan, which is to say, freckles at best, charbroiled melanoma at worst. So, I’m not literally the original superman, standing tall with a tropic tan and eyes of swirled gold.

Nor do I live in the Empire State Building, have a team of action-packed scientist aides, or play a mean violin.

Plus, I don’t live in the early twentieth century.

So where do I get off saying that I’m Doc Savage?

Well, as you may know from reading Insideman’s awesome summary of the character, Doc Savage was a popular pulp hero in the magazines of his own name back in the thirties and forties. He was second only to the Shadow in popularity. He was very cool.

Alas, as is often the case, something that’s cool and popular over time loses its cachet. And in time, Doc Savage too lost popularity, and ultimately the magazine died in 1949. The pulp era was over, replaced by comic books and TV.

But during this period, the primacy of the paperback arose. And into that mix, Doc Savage clawed his way back from the hell of obscurity (indeed, he’d actually gone to Hell in his last adventure). Bantam Books started reprinting his escapades in trim little paperbacks with incredible new cover art by master painter James Bama. And these books sold well.

The reprinting started in 1964. I was born in 1964.

But I’m not just Doc Savage because of this accident of timing, this literary synchronicity of reincarnated energies.

I’m also Doc Savage because I read Doc Savage. I was one of the kids who spotted those awesome Bantams on the rack, with Doc all mighty and bronze and thewed (I think my first was The Munitions Master), and I bought one and couldn’t stop. These were incredible books. I enjoyed their cliffhanger adventure, their quirky characters, and the ethics and intelligence of the hero.

I am Doc Savage because I read Doc Savage, and he made me aspire.

My father was an abusive drunk who tore down my sense of worth and made me feel more like a loser than any horde of bullies my age could have done. But Doc Savage, and other heroes and superheroes and sleuths and adventurers, gave me something to lean on, something to build on, to construct the notion that evil could be overcome and that men could rise above the limitations of the world they were thrust into and become something better, something nobler, something great.

As a kid, my efforts to become great varied from the noble to the ridiculous. On the noble end of things, I tried to keep to a regimen of daily exercise, doing pushups and laps of our small suburban yard, sitting and meditating to try to hear or smell things I normally wouldn’t notice, and I read everything I could get my hands on (though that compulsion came naturally on its own).

On the ridiculous side, I got my hands on a tube of the sort of tanning goop that was created in the seventies, which made people as citrusy and ridiculous as John Boehner, and I coated myself in it, even rubbing it in my hair to try to get that bronze hue of Doc’s. This didn’t actually make me as awe-inspiring as intended.

Also not too impressive.

My stack of Doc Savage books had its own corner in my room. In my memory it was about four feet tall, though that’s not possible because that many paperbacks hadn’t been published yet.

I didn’t grow up to be a pulp hero, or an inventor, or even a scientist (which was the dual desire I had along with being a writer). But I did grow up to be a better man, a more noble man, a more learned man, and ultimately a better father than my father had been. And at least part of the reason I could do that was because I read Doc Savage.

So I’m Doc Savage.

Maybe you’re Doc Savage too. If not, there’s still hope for you.

◊

This column is about pulp. If you’re not familiar with the term pulp, it refers to a broad spectrum of fiction that rose to popularity in the pulp magazines of the Depression era, called such because of the cheap pulp paper they were printed on.

The pulps evolved from the dime magazines and penny dreadfuls of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wove tales for a popular audience. While many people tend to think of heroic action tales when they think of pulp (and indeed I’ll be focusing largely on them), in truth most of what we consider genre fiction was born in the pulps.

The pulps brought us science fiction via writers such as Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and Ray Bradbury. They brought us fantasy from writers like Robert E. Howard, who created Conan, and Fritz Leiber, whose heroes Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser defined the genre of sword and sorcery. They brought us mystery through Raymond Chandler, John D. MacDonald, and Elmore Leonard, horror from H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch, and Richard Matheson, westerns from Louis Lamour and Max Brand. And many pulp writers wrote extensively across genre lines, becoming prominent in multiple fields.

And yes, the pulps gave us heroes. Lester Dent’s Doc Savage. Walter Gibson’s The Shadow. Norvell Page’s The Spider. Zorro, Tarzan, Buck Rogers, Jirel of Jory, Solomon Kane, The Avenger, The Black Bat, John Carter of Mars…

The pulps inspired the creation of Batman and Superman, James Bond and Indiana Jones. Their literary DNA is neon-bright in Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. And when I was looking for, and not finding, contemporary books to share with my son which captured the old pulp magic, they inspired me to write my first novel, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, the first of a series from Putnam, itself a love letter to Doc Savage and H.P. Lovecraft.

My mission here is to share cool stuff from the world of pulp. In that spirit, to close this introductory column, I want to point you to three of pulp’s modern children that you might enjoy.

First, writer William Preston has begun a series of tales that are pure pulp channeled through a very contemporary filter, focusing on “the Old Man,” who, though not explicitly named, is very clearly Doc Savage. The first story, “Helping Them Take the Old Man Down,” originally appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, but can be had for free at this link from the author’s blog. It’s a very well-written, smart, ultimately moving tale which explores the place of heroes in the post-9/11 world of government-encouraged paranoia and police state tactics.

Then, for fans of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos stories, there’s Kenneth Hite’s wonderful Where The Deep Ones Are, illustrated by the awesome Andy Hopp. This clever parody is a mashup of Maurice Sendak’s classic Where The Wild Things Are and Lovecraft’s (greatest, in my eyes) story “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” Hopp brings unspeakable, colorful gloppiness to his aping of Sendak’s art, and Hite echoes both his inspirations in clever verse. The book is available in hardcover from Amazon for $19.95, but is now also available as an app for iPhone and iPad for just a buck.

Finally, I’ll be self-serving and tell you that my book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, is a fun pulp adventure for all ages. It’s similar to something like Pixar’s The Incredibles in that its characters and action and wit can be enjoyed by the young, while other things are going on that they won’t notice but which enliven things for older readers. Writer Barry Hunter at The Baryon Review wrote, ”It’s a true delight…Tim Byrd has taken Doc Savage, added in a pinch of Robert E. Howard, a liberal dose of H.P. Lovecraft, and mixed it all together in a well done, enchanting pastiche of the pulps that will appeal to the adult audience as well as the young adult readers. It is an over the top at times, rip-roaring adventure that returns us to the days of yesteryear and leaves us wanting more.”

I hope you’ll give it a try.

Doc Wilde: “A Rip-Roarin’, Action-Packed, Thrill Ride Of A Book”

Tim Byrd — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 19:00:34 +0000

Order Now!

I somehow missed a review of my book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, by Conan Tigard at Reading Review. Now that it has come to my attention, I’ll share it with you.

The review has a detailed plot summary of the book, therefore is loaded with spoilage. But here’s the pertinent, spoiler-free part:

Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom is a rip-roarin’, action-packed, thrill ride of a book that will leave the reader breathless. The book starts out with a bang and never slows down until the last page has been read. This book reads like an old-fashioned dime store novel from the 1940′s. It feels like a old-time thrilling radio show from the era before there was television…

I can only hope that this new author, Tim Byrd, makes an entire series with these characters. Sure, the characters are a little unbelievable with all the cool things they can do, but I loved it anyways… It’s like having multiple versions of a young Indiana Jones in this book.

Overall, Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom is an excellent story that will keep a young reader, and even an older one like me, reading this book far past their bedtime. So, grab your flashlight, boys, tell your parents you are going to bed, and stay up all night reading this adventure under your sheets, so your parents cannot see the light. You will love it.

I rated this book a 9 out of 10.

The full review is here, but remember, it’s full of spoilers…

Ken Hite on DOC WILDE: Tim Byrd has “the keen eye for the plausible impossibility shared by many of the pulp greats”

Tim Byrd — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 16:51:54 +0000

Buy Now!

Kenneth Hite is a smart man.

He’s a writer of various things, particularly in the roleplaying game field. He’s a true polymath, carrying vast stores of knowledge about a vast array of topics around in his brain. He’s one of the few human beings I have ever met who makes me feel kind of dumb.

He’s also a scholar of pulp fiction, particularly the works of H.P. Lovecraft. So it thrills me to share with you his review of my first book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, which is of course an homage to both the pulp heroes of the 1930s and ’40s and to H.P. Lovecraft’s unspeakable horror tales. It’s my first review by someone I’m not only sure gets everything I tried to do in the book, but who I suspect gets stuff I don’t even realize is in there.

Here’s a taste; the rest is here.

Despite our young heroes’ impressive abilities, the threat of the Frog God Frogon builds to a genuinely scary level by the end, with a properly Lovecraftian threat to the universe (and to one of Doc’s sidekicks, a burly Irishman named Declan mac Coul) waiting in the depths of a South American cave inhabited by the titular Frogs of Doom. Byrd plays with amphibian biology, and with plenty of other sciences from nanotech to aerodynamics, with the keen eye for the plausible impossibility shared by Dent, Lovecraft, and many of the pulp greats.

I suspect that readers out of middle school will appreciate Byrd’s tribute first and foremost as a tribute — spotting the references and shout-outs is our own little adventure mystery — but it will surprise you by engaging you with its youthful characters as well…the words themselves reel out at pulp speed, and tickle two kinds of nostalgia at once: nostalgia for reading Doc Savage, and for reading Doc Savage for the first time, when you were eleven and hadn’t yet talked yourself into being tired of heroes.

You can get the book here.

Kicking Amphibian Butt: One Of My Favorite Doc Wilde Reviews

Tim Byrd — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 15:23:27 +0000

A Great Christmas Gift! Buy Now!

One of the most thorough and thoughtful reviews of my book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, came from writer/librarian Werner A. Lind, who posted it on Goodreads around the time the Pulp Magazine Authors and Literature Fans group discussed the book.

The review is below, but first a couple of points…

First, you may note there’s a discrepancy between the 4 star rating shown above the review and Werner’s statement grading it with three stars in the initial paragraph. Werner explained in a comment during the group discussion:

I hope you noticed that I later added a comment to say that honestly, on reflection, I’d give it four stars based on my own enjoyment of it, not just that of a hypothetical younger reader. (Sometimes it gets tiring to always have to wear the mantle of a sober academic critic. :-)) And I want you to know that once Doc Wilde and the Mad Skull is published, it’s definitely going on my to-read shelf!

The other thing is that he, like quite a few others I think, found the kids’ ability to use echolocation to navigate darkness a bit too over-the-top and unrealistic. The truth is, human echolocation is real, and it’s fascinating. Look it up on Wikipedia.

And now, take it away, Werner…

Werner A.’s review

Nov 24, 09

Lester Dent meets H. P. Lovecraft in this adventure yarn, with a sizable dollop of Eoin Colfer thrown in: in tone, style and reading level –and to a degree in essential conception, although the Wildes, unlike the Fowls, are resolutely law-abiding and ethical– this book reminded me of Artemis Fowl. Like the latter, it’s aimed primarily at pre-teen readers, and should prove equally popular with them. Indeed, my rating above is based on the author’s skillful appeal to this audience; while I did like it (and better than Colfer’s series-opener!), my rating based strictly on my own reaction would have been three stars –it lacked the amount of texture and character development that it usually takes to earn four stars from me. That wouldn’t be a problem for most kids, though.

Doc Wilde, adventurer and scientific polymath, is based on Lester Dent’s Doc Savage character from the early modern adventure pulps (I haven’t read any of L. Dent’s work myself –though this book whetted my interest in doing so). Here, the challenge he must confront is posed by an extraterrestrial, amphibious Elder God from beyond our universe, itching to break into our universe and wreak havoc, and invested with all of the Lovecraftian trappings that Cthulhu Mythos fans (like me!) will readily recognize and eat up with a spoon.

But Doc is accompanied in his adventures by his 12 and 10 year-old kids Brian and Wren, an element missing in Byrd’s pulp fiction models, but calculated to appeal to an audience of their peers. Now, even though these kids are mentally and physically trained better than most adults, they’re still kids; some readers will find it unrealistic that a parent would expose them to that degree of danger, even granting that he’s a male parent (Mrs. Wilde is dead years ago –if she were alive, I suspect she’d have enthusiastic objections!), and will feel that if he did, he should be prosecuted by social services for reckless endangerment.

Those readers have a case, but it misses the point: this is essentially a child’s fantasy, a literary daydream of what they could do with that kind of training and a parent willing to let them use it. And their identification with heroic kids who make a difference in the outcome of the situation –as Brian and Wren do here– isn’t a bad thing.

The short chapters that one reviewer complained of don’t actually make for a choppy narrative, because the story flows in a quick-moving current; the chapter divisions just correspond to what in some works would be a skipped line to indicate a scene change, and often emphasize an ominous or cliffhanger moment. (I wasn’t bothered, either, by the occasional use of unconventional typescript for emphasis –it wasn’t overused, and for me didn’t interfere with readability.)

Obviously, the one-sentence claim of a role for the book’s Elder God figure in the supposed evolution of earthly life clashes with a creationist view, as does Lovecraft’s own passing mention, in At the Mountains of Madness, of the supposed role of his aliens in the origin of mankind; but in both places, this isn’t a major thrust of the story as a whole nor essential to the plot, and so can simply be passed over. (After all, if you can accept the idea that a child could be trained to “see” in the dark by echolocation –though not as well as a bat can– temporary suspension of disbelief for anything won’t be a big problem!)

All of the members of the Wilde family are larger-than-life characters, as tends to be the case in adventure fiction, and they’re delineated mostly in terms of what they can do, without much attention to their interior life; but again, that’s a characteristic of the genre. Byrd writes well, giving you enough detail to bring the characters and scenes to life but not to interfere with a quick narrative pace; he keeps action scenes and physical jeopardies frequent, so there’s never a dull moment, and the situations are genuinely demanding for the characters (Wren’s long crawl through a narrow subterranean tunnel in pitch darkness, for instance, isn’t for the claustrophobic). Despite the Lovecraftian theme, he wisely eschews preaching cosmic despair — confronted by a universe-threatening ancient evil of great power and malevolence, the Wildes don’t sink into suicidal existential angst; they just set their jaws and kick some amphibian butt.

There are a number of other good touches here: I liked the strong family bond among the Wildes, their ecological concern, their preference for not killing if they can avoid it, and the positive portrayal of homeschooling; and I also appreciated the fact that Wren was an equal member of the team, not excluded from adventuring because of her gender, as was often the fate of females in the adventure fiction of the 19th and early 20th centuries. (Grandma’s no slouch at akido, either.) Byrd has just the right note of deadpan humor; and like Edgar Rice Burroughs, he’s adept at switching focus between separated characters to create cliff- hanger situations. The climax and denouement are well-done.

But where the Wildes really won my heart was when I read, “Like Doc and the kids, the grandparents Wilde liked only one thing more than adventuring: reading.” As a librarian (and fellow reader), I LIKE this family!

Get DOC WILDE & THE FROGS OF DOOM For Cheap!

Tim Byrd — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 11:21:12 +0000

I’m not sure why, but Amazon currently has some marked down copies of my pulp adventure novel, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, selling for just $6.23.

Buy Now!

This is a first edition hardback (the paperback is due out next year), and the cover price is $15.99. Amazon is also offering it at a discounted $12.47.

Considering that the hardback usually runs $11 to $16, and the paperback when it finally comes out will likely be a minimum of $8, this is a great opportunity to get the book for cheap.

For the uninitiated, Doc Wilde is my modern take on the great old adventure tales featuring characters like Indiana Jones, The Shadow, the Spider, and most importantly Doc Savage, with strong currents of H.P. Lovecraft’s eldritch horror swirled in.

It is published as a book for young teen readers, but like something like Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Incredibles, is intended for both young and old.

Frogs of Doom is the first in a series; next will be Doc Wilde and The Mad Skull.

You can check out some reviews at http://www.docwilde.com/reviews/.

Good Memories of 2009, Day 3: Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom

Tim Byrd — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:00:44 +0000

Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom

Buy Now!

In May, my first book finally came out to great reviews and sales good enough to get Putnam to contract me for the next two books in the series. An adventure inspired by the pulps of the 1930s, I intended it for both kids and adult readers. Gratifyingly, it has done quite well with both.

For those uninitiated in the adventures of the family Wilde, you can find loads of info (and an excerpt) at www.DocWilde.com.

Month 9, In Which Our Hero’s Book Is Finally Noticed By Publishers Weekly. Sort of.

Tim Byrd — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:52:12 +0000

Elizabeth Bird is one of the most respected reviewers associated with Publishers Weekly, and was one of the critics I went out of my way to try to get to review my book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom. I read her blog regularly and enjoy her insights, and looked forward to seeing what she had to say about my fledgling effort.

Well, months passed, and the magazine seemed unaware of the book, and it didn’t appear on her blog. I’d pretty much given up on ever seeing anything from her, or PW, but then she posted an entry in which she gave tiny reviews of a bunch of books she’d read last year but hadn’t gotten around to reviewing.

This is what she said about my book:

Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom by Tim Byrd – I appreciated how the book just leapt headfirst into the action, catching readers up after the fact, and also how I can now hand kids something when they come asking me for books “Just like Indiana Jones” (which really does happen).