And, another review of my novel Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, this time from Sandy Amazeen at Monsters and Critics:
Rock’em, sock’em cliffhanging adventure…Action adventure is just the tip of the iceberg because this book is actually crammed full of interesting and dare we say it, educational tidbits…Parents, don’t be surprised if you find yourselves enjoying this fun pulp fiction just as much as your kids.
And that, of course, is the idea.
A few days ago, I blogged about the latest review of Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, from Bruce Grossman at Bookgasm.
I left a comment for him at their site, thanking him for the great review, and received a message back:
You can thank the people of National Grid for such a super fast review. Since last Wednesday night, right as LOST was about to start, power in my neighborhood went out. So I started reading your book by flashlight since it seemed it would pass the time till the power came back on. Throughly loved it as you can see from the review.
Author Quentin Dodd, whose blurb made the cover of the book, wrote that it’s “a book to be read under the covers, with a flashlight, way past bedtime.”
Bruce Grossman may be the reader who has thus far gotten closest to the pure Doc Wilde experience.
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Monday morning, groggy with no coffee in the cupboard, eating my oatmeal without raisins (you may figure out it’s shopping day), checking email and Facebook and Twitter…
And finding the latest review of my book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom! It’s by Bruce Grossman at Bookgasm (“Reading material to get excited about”), and it has made up for my caffeine deficiency this morning.
…Growing up, being turned on to a series like Doc Savage opened up a new world to most readers, but the problem is that those books — even reissued so nicely — might not appeal to this new generation. Kids will look at the covers and just go, “Oh, that’s old.”
Byrd has come up with a perfect idea to showcase what pulp reading is all about. He does not hide the fact one bit that he is reworking the Doc Savage template for the character of Doc Wilde. There are so many nods and winks to the old series that we oldsters will enjoy this “ribbiting” read.
Byrd’s writing never talks down to its young readers, and all his characters are well-defined, not relying on the old stereotype of children who constantly fall into danger. The kids in this book come off as little adventurers who are ready for action and smart enough to quote H.P. Lovecraft, while Wilde is a second-generation adventurer totally in the Savage vein. Wilde’s father is a version of Doc most of us read growing up, still living at the Empire State Building on the 86th floor…
I love it that people are really getting what I tried to do, and enjoying it. Read the whole review here.
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Children’s author Gail Gauthier read Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom and offered up some interesting thoughts about it on her blog. She seems to have had trouble pigeonholing it as she read the first part of the story: Continue reading
The latest review (I started to say latest good review, but so far they’re all good!) of Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom is from Tracy Farnsworth at Roundtable Reviews:
To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book, but I was pleasantly surprised. I did find it reminiscent of old Johnny Quest with the snappy dialog, unusual foes and general camaraderie between the kids, their father and their father’s assistants.
I can’t say that all girls will love this series, but I know quite a few who will. Meanwhile, I know for certain that boys, especially those who like Indiana Jones, Johnny Quest and adventure movies like National Treasure and The Mummy will love it!
I’m glad she made a point of saying that quite a few girls will love the Wildes, because it’s very easy for folks to slot the book into a “boys’ book” category, when actually it’s good for both genders by design. Wren Wilde is as involved and smart and capable as her older brother, Grandma Wilde is a strong and powerful woman (though exactly how strong and powerful will be revealed in later tales), and female readers thus far have enjoyed the wit and action of the book, but also the closeness and warmth of the Wilde family.
Additionally, it’s written to be sophisticated enough for adult readers, operating on multiple levels the way something like The Incredibles does, so it’s meant for everybody who can read.
The rest of the review is here.
Uber-reviewer Harriet Klausner has posted a review of my novel Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom. The first part of it is a plot summary that contains some major spoilers, but the meat of the review is all good:
DOC WILDE AND THE FROGS OF DOOM is a fun pulp adventure that pays homage to Doc Savage while targeting the tweener crowd. The story line is fast and lighthearted as the heroes battle mutant frogs. With literary quotes ranging from Seuss to Lovecraft and beyond, Tim Byrd avoids dumbing down his novel. Young readers will relish the escapades of the Wilde family and friends as they struggle to save the world one croak at a time.
If you’ve been following my reactions to Joss Whedon’s new show Dollhouse, you know I was luke-warm toward it at first, then really annoyed with it, then after seeing episodes 6 and 7, I really started to like it and said it was good, but not quite Joss good yet.
Well, now I’ve seen episodes 8 and 9, and I’m loving the show.
Since episode 6, “Man on the Street,” they have fixed the anthology-show weakness that plagued the first five episodes, and each episode has focused on the Dollhouse and its people rather than on the misadventures of their clients-of-the-week. The evolution of Echo as a character is fascinating to watch, considering there’s not supposed to be a character there, but there most definitely is. Those are some still waters running very deep. And the development of relationships and character backstory gets more and more compelling; in this latest episode, “A Spy in the House of Love,” we find out the major secrets of a couple of characters, one of which is a complete surprise and leads to a much deeper understanding of that character, leaving incredible potential for the stories ahead.
There are many themes at work here. This latest episode played brilliantly with matters of trust, from the first conversation between Echo and her handler Boyd, to the implications of their final scene. And seeing the Tabula Rasa Echo step forward as an instigator of significant action was a masterstroke of storytelling and character; I literally got goose bumps.
That a character with no agency develops agency through her own innate strength, even while devoid of her past and identity, is an incredible dramatic device. This show is all about how people use people, and issues of power and responsibility and all that, but the most important thing it’s about might just be the re-enfranchisement of the disenfranchised.
Who on earth could be more disenfranchised than the dolls? Their very selves ripped out of them, programmed and reprogrammed to serve the desires of others, they are the ultimate slaves. And here we have one of them somehow growing as a person right before our eyes, and you just know there are big things ahead.
And hopefully we’ll get to see all of the big things Whedon wants to show us. Fox is playing its usual bullshit games with the show, and now for some reason has decided to show this entire season (and a tenuous “kudo” to them for doing that, at least) except the thirteenth and final episode. Apparently the 12th wraps up the season tidily, and the 13th is sort of a coda after the fact…but still. It doesn’t indicate that the network is supporting the show, and doesn’t bode well for a second season.
But, hopefully they’re watching the reviews, which have been excellent since episode 6, and will recognize they have a gem on their hands and will allow it to grow. This is not just a damn good show, after all.
This show is Joss good.
[NOTE: As of this writing, you can watch episodes 5-9 at www.hulu.com. The show started really getting good in ep. 6, but 5 is pretty good and has some impact on events in later episodes. If you haven’t seen them, catch ’em while you can.]
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Another rave review for my book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, this time from Barry Hunter at The Baryon Review. Here’s a taste:
If you remember the pulps and Doc Savage, you need to pick this one up. It’s a true delight and will be something your children will enjoy as well…
[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 over the top, at times, rip roaring adventure that returns us to the days of yesteryear and leaves us wanting more. I hope to see more from Tim Byrd and Doc Wilde in the future.
The rest is here.
Got an actual copy of the book yesterday, a great review today…feeling pretty good.
I had my eye on this book on Amazon for ages before I decided to take a chance on it. I’m a bit skittish, having bought small press and self-published books before that turned out to be utter crap…heck, I recently bought a very popular YA adventure novel by a writer whose books sell millions of copies and it was one of the worst written tomes I’ve cracked open in years.
So, yeah. Skittish.
But I finally bought Warren Stockholm’s The Sting of The Scorpion, allegedly the first issue of Scorpion Magazine, though this was published in 2006 and there’s still no sign of a second issue. But things happen, and it is the product of a small press.
The Scorpion is a pulp hero in the tradition of The Shadow, but even more in the tradition of The Spider (both of whom I wrote about here). He’s dark and deadly and armed and dangerous, clad in a black-veiled fedora and a black leather trench coat, brutally taking the fight to the criminals that plague his city, Steeltown.
While the hero is fashioned from a very readily recognizable pulp archetype, Stockholm does some interesting things with The Scorpion and the world he inhabits.
For one thing, the tale takes place in an alternate history in which Germany won the second world war and occupied America for sixty years. America has only recently booted their wretched asses out and is rebuilding itself. The milieu is an intriguing amalgam of the thirties and the late twentieth century, as if the culture sort of froze in place under Nazi rule, but technology moved forward.
As for the hero, in classic pulp fashion, The Scorpion by day is a wealthy paragon, living in the tallest building in the city, assisted by a mysterious Asian woman, dedicated to his mission against evil…but he’s not just a hero with a dark past, he’s a hero with a really dark past. And he’s not really human, in some very interesting and dangerous ways. Richard Wentworth dressed as The Spider to scare criminals into thinking he was a monster; Kurt Reinhardt becomes The Scorpion because he is a monster.
Reinhardt is a compelling protagonist, the action frequent and brutal, the city a violent and noirish place, and the plot interesting. Not only that, but Stockholm can actually write very well (though this is possibly the worst copy-edited book I’ve ever read all the way through). I do have to warn readers of delicate tastes away, however, because this is a very grim and blood-splashed work.
I enjoyed the hell out of this story. I wish there was a Scorpion Magazine #2, I’d buy it in a heartbeat. Unlike some other attempts at modern pulp I’ve read (or tried to read), this one’s going on the shelf with my Doc Savages, Shadows, and, of course, that other arachnid, The Spider.
Earlier, I was pretty hard on Joss Whedon’s new show Dollhouse, which airs on Fox, the network too stupid to make Firefly a hit.
My basic problem with the show was that, while it had a great premise with huge potential, the active structure of the show shoved the things that were interesting about it into the corners and filled the space with bland stories that had little permanent importance to the history the show was building. In other words, the intriguing people running the dolls, and the intriguing things starting to happen to the dolls (especially Echo), were serving as a framing device for stories that were a hell of a lot less interesting.
I wasn’t alone in my response. Many other Whedon fans (and I am, very very much, a Whedon fan) were finding themselves really not liking a show they’re preconditioned to root for. The ratings started weakly, and dropped. Messages came forth from Whedon headquarters, implying that Fox had been too heavy-handed and interfering at first (easy to believe, all things considered), but had loosened up after a while and allowed Joss and his team to start doing things the way they really wanted to.
Give us till the sixth episode, they pleaded. It’ll start to get good.
Well, the sixth and seventh episodes have aired at this point. Major things happened, game-changers. Echo went off-task a few times, which seems to be her hobby. The banal storylines that were unrelated to the main story arc went away, and the stories that replaced them had significant impact on the characters and the arc.
Know what? It’s getting good. It’s getting real good. It’s not quite Joss good, just yet, but I do see that coming, and I’m now enjoying the journey.
Unfortunately, the show probably won’t get to explore its full potential. It is on Fox, where shit thrives and great shows die young, and the slow crawl out the gate and low ratings won’t help. I read that Fox is committed to showing the full thirteen episode season, then won’t rerun the show during the summer. I’m thinking that also means they won’t be picking it up for the next season.
That’s a shame, as I think it has the makings of a great show. But at least we’ll have the thirteen episode story arc to enjoy…or the latter half of it, at least, since the first half kinda blew. And Joss can move on to other things, and those things will hopefully be Joss good. Maybe someday we’ll get to enjoy one of his creations for a bunch of years again. But it probably won’t be on Fox.
Last week, I watched the Swedish independent horror film Let The Right One In. It’s an unusually smart little film, particularly for the horror genre these days, and it’s probably the best vampire film I’ve seen since Guillermo del Toro’s Cronos (1993). Or maybe Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark (1987). Its approach to horror is to come at us through character rather than through gore or trickery (which is not to say it doesn’t have some of those too), and in ways it reminds me of the works of Val Lewton in the 1940s.
I recommend it highly. But that’s not the point of this entry.
No, the point of it is, turns out I was fortunate to see the movie on the original Swedish screener DVD. The US release of the film on DVD/Blu-Ray last week turns out to have been something even more scary than the movie itself: a dumbed down version of the movie itself. Continue reading
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I just received my first HUGE review for Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, from Kirkus Reviews (Wikipedia: “Kirkus has long been a respected, authoritative pre-publication review source within the literary and film industries”). And it’s, quite frankly, a rave:
When their scientist grandfather disappears again, 12-year-old Brian, his ten-year-old sister, Wren, and their world-renowned father, Dr. Spartacus Wilde, are off on an adventure to kick off Byrd’s debut novel and the first volume in a new series. The high-tech Indiana Jones-type tale takes the adventurers to the uncharted South American jungles of Hidalgo to find Grandpa Wilde, who had researched dark matter and the possibility of traveling to other universes. The problem is that Frogon, a dark god from another universe, wants to take over ours. Besides finding Grandpa, the Wildes must face a glut of frogs-spy frogs, man-frogs, saber-toothed frogs and the dark elder god frog-and save the universe.
Written in fast-paced, intelligent prose laced with humor and literary allusions ranging from Dante to Dr. Seuss, the story has all of the fun of old-fashioned pulp adventures. A tale “terrifying and dark, of indescribable horrors and eldritch mysteries,” this is sure to be Wilde-ly popular, and readers will anxiously await future installments.
So far, everybody likes it. The Wildes are off to a good start.
Just a reminder: the book comes out May 14th, but can be ordered already at this link. If you plan on getting it, please pre-order, because a book’s initial sales are crucially important in building its success.
Author Will Murray just gave a short review of my upcoming novel:
Over the weekend I read Tim Byrd’s young adult Doc Savage pastiche novel. Let me say that DOC WILDE AND THE FROGS OF DOOM is a pulp-pounding ribbiting croaker of a tale! It mixes a 21st century version of the Man of Bronze and his extended family of adventurers with evil Lovecraftian frogazoids infiltrating our reality via the South American republic of Hidalgo.
This particular review is significant. Murray is one of the most renowned and knowledgeable pulp scholars in the world, so he knows good pulp adventure when he sees it. But more importantly, among the fifty-plus novels he has written are seven official Doc Savage novels, published under Lester Dent’s pseudonym “Kenneth Robeson,” and he is the chosen executor to Dent’s literary estate.
Doc Wilde is my tribute to the Doc Savage stories I loved as a kid, and Will’s comments are basically official validation by Lester Dent’s direct literary descendant. That’s pretty cool.
Will Murray's PYTHON ISLE
Do you know Cthulhu?
If you knew Cthulhu as we know Cthulhu, oh, oh, oh what a god…
I’ve always loved scary stories. One of the few positive memories I have from my childhood was staying up with my father and watching classic Universal monster movies in a rocking chair. I loved scary comics like Creepy and Eerie and monster comics like Marvel’s Werewolf By Night (I remember, when I was about 9 or so, scrambling around the desolation of our suburban neighborhood by moonlight in a torn shirt pretending I was the werewolf). I could quote Edgar Allen Poe, and read all the horror I could get hands on, from Dracula to “The Monkey’s Paw” to Something Wicked This Way Comes. Well, I read most things I could get my hands on. But horror was among my favorites. Continue reading
I’m in a pulpy mood this week (like most weeks, but even moreso) so over the weekend my son and I rewatched The Mummy Returns. It’s a film that gets a lot of flack for some reason, but I loved it (and the first in the series). As I wrote in a mailing list thread back in 2001:
Put me in the love-it camp.
I think it may actually be the best pulp flick since Raiders, and probably the best PURE pulp flick ever.
It’s nowhere near as good a movie as Raiders, and it IS derivative as hell…but it’s so conscious and playful in its stealing that I can’t fault it. The writer/director clearly loves this sort of material and runs with it.
It’s also flawed in a lot of ways that have to be deliberate attempts to capture the shoddy (yet lovable) consistency of the pulps. For example, Frasier’s character now has a tattoo he’s apparently had since he was a kid. Did they put this tattoo somewhere where we couldn’t have seen it in the first film, like on his calf (to be seen when he’s pulling on his boots) or his shoulder (to be seen when his shirt rips in Doc Savage-style)? No. They put it on top of his wrist, which was plainly seen NOT to have a tattoo in the first film. Such an easy “flaw” was an easy one to address without problem, yet the tattoo is right there in all its glory, screaming INCONSISTENCY!
Or, rather, pulp-like inconsistency. The pulps are full of this sort of thing, as writers reached and dug for any new nugget to twist a story on. I’m a stickler for consistency — I’m the guy who watched carefully in each LETHAL WEAPON sequel to make sure Riggs’s tattoo (plot device in the first film) was still in place. It was. But this stuff is clear and playful homage to the source material, and I loved it.
The first two Mummy flicks were both obvious labors of love by Stephen Sommers, their writer/director. They were amazing showcases for CGI effects, but beyond that they had engaging stories full of pulp action, lots of comedy that did not descend into camp, and wonderful characters performed by perfectly cast actors. Brendan Fraser, as American soldier-of-fortune Rick O’Connell, was a perfect pulp hero, brash and cocky and capable. Rachel Weisz as Evelyn “Evy” O’Connell (né Carnahan) was the brilliant and (extraordinarily) sexy librarian who could hold her own in a scrap. Together they had incredible chemistry, crack comic timing, and the charm and natural repartee of a classic Hollywood couple (like Gable and Lombard, or Loy and Powell).
Throw in John Hannah as Evy’s sleazy but lovable brother, Arnold Vosloo as great villain Imhotep (whose ultimate fate, at the end of the second film, possesses pathos and tragedy), and a host of great supporting roles, and you have some flicks with great characters on the screen at all times. Even the kid who plays the O’Connell’s son, Alex, in the second film is brash and bratty without being annoying, a rare thing in a character like his.
The O’Connell’s adventures continued in a short-lived cartoon that was fairly good, and I remember it fondly as one of the few sources of pulp goodness I could share with my then five-year-old son.
He and I watched The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor last night. When I say it’s incredible, well, you’d darn well better believe that I am lying. Flat out full of shit. On a George W. Bush scale. Because it’s terrible. Continue reading
My day is off to a great start: my son’s out of school because of snow, and my novel gets its second review, from novelist Alex Bledsoe at Guys Lit Wire:
Tim Byrd’s rollicking Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom is part Jonny Quest, part Doc Savage and all a massive hoot…it’s a balls-out adventure that, while light-hearted, never turns to self-referential mockery…
There’s lots more of the review here. Go see.
Hiya.
For anyone who’s missed me the past week or more, it’s because I’m firmly embedded in the legalistic tar pit pooped out by the court system for those of us who get divorced. But I’m still breathing. Mostly.
On happier fronts, it seems the review copies of my first novel, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, have started to land out there in the Land of Critique. And Ron Fortier, himself an active pulp wordsmith and scholar, is first out of the gate with a review at his site Pulp Fiction Reviews:
The Wildes are old fashioned heroes in the best sense of the word and their adventure is sure to thrill pulp fans, both old and new…
Click here to read the full review. In the midst of this other business, it really made my day.
There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.
So begins The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman’s latest dark wonder, in which he kind of retells Kipling’s Jungle Book, but has the orphaned boy raised not in a jungle by wild things, but in a cemetery by things that go bump in the night.
It works. Gaiman is a master, and this book is pure Gaiman, spooky and clever and wry, written with a simple grace that belies its artful complexity. It’s one of those books that’s like drinking eggnog; it’s so good, you gulp it down, finishing it fast then immediately wishing you had more. (Plus, Gaiman’s book has no calories, so it won’t add to your gut).
The Graveyard Book is a fine book, and a great read for anyone over ten.
Interested readers should also check out Gaiman’s blog at http://journal.neilgaiman.com.
It was a long time ago, now, and there were many gunfights to follow, but I remember as well, perhaps, as I remember anything, the first time I saw Virgil Cole shoot. Time slowed down for him. He fought with an odd stateliness. Always steady and never fast, but always faster than the man he was fighting.
Last year I saw a trailer for Appaloosa, the cinematic adaptation of Robert B. Parker’s western novel, directed by Ed Harris, starring Harris and Viggo Mortensen. This trailer got me very excited, as I’ve been a huge fan of Parker’s for a very long time, I love westerns, and Ed Harris is not only a damn fine actor but a superior director as well (proven in 2000’s Pollock). And Viggo’s no slouch either, nor is Jeremy Irons, who’s also in the film.
But Appaloosa had actually sat unread on my shelf for a couple of years because Parker’s previous foray into the old West, Gunman’s Rhapsody (a novel about Wyatt Earp, one of my favorite historical figures), had been a disappointment. I’d intended to get to it (thus the fact it was on the shelf at all), but hadn’t yet. Since I generally prefer to read a book before seeing the movie it inspires, I immediately rescued Appaloosa from its lonely spot and dove in. Continue reading
Under An Outlaw Moon 