PulpRack

Hard Case Crime; New York (Dorchester Publishing Co.: 2009), originally published 1951.

Bison Frontiers of the Imagination; Lincoln, Nebraska (Bison Books: 2011), translated and edited by Peter Shulman.

Jules Verne is probably familiar to you. If not, gargling the Internet will result in virtual reams of information.

No, I’m talking about Robert Bogardus Parker, a World War 2-era newspaper correspondent and undercover OSS operative. He is the author of Passport to Peril, a post-war thriller republished in 2009 by Hard Case Crime.

The hero of Passport to Peril is John Stodder, an American traveling to Hungary. Like many of the heroes in Hitchcock films, Stodder is an innocent caught up in evil events by seeming coincidence.

Parker tilts the reader’s expectations right off the bat, by introducing doubt about the novel’s narrator, Stodder. Did he kill Blaye? Why is he traveling under a dead man’s passport? And why is Stodder suddenly so desperate to escape the men stalking the woman with whom he is sharing a train compartment?

Spies, doublecrosses, underground Nazis, and devilish Soviet agents and Mata Haris.

Another view of Budapest appears in Jules Verne’s Secret ofWilhelm Storitz. This novel was apparently the last the author finished before his death in 1905; it was remarkably altered by his son, Michel, before it was published in 1910:

In the 1980s, Verne’s original manuscripts were made public, and the extent of Michel’s fiddling in the posthumously published books was made very apparent. The 2011 Bison Books edition is the first authentic English translation that has been made available.

He leaves Paris by train to Vienna, where he boards a steamship to travel the Danube all the way to Ragz.

Verne’s Vidal describes his arrival at Budapest:

Vidal devotes several passages to his explorations of Budapest. This is a colorful, vivacious city that demonstrates a dynamic and vigorous culture. This portrait is far different from the picture drawn by Parker’s narrator, Stodder.

After Vidal’s arrival in Ragz, a number of inexplicable events beset the wedding couple and their families. For example, an engagement party in the bride’s home is invaded and ruined by an apparent ghost.

The psychological terror Storitz renders the wedding couple is in many ways greater than the physical damage he threatens. In both Parker’s novel and Verne’s, evil is introduced by the presence of unwelcome foreigners: Germans and Russians for Stodder; the German Storitz for Vidal.

Labels: David Dodge, Jules Verne, Passport to Peril, Plunder of the Sun, Robert B. Parker, Secret of Wilhelm Storitz

I wasn’t much interested in alternative history as a genre (subgenre?) until I read Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula a few years ago. The mixing of historical personages with an array of fictional characters from the vast stretches of vampire literature, including those from Bram Stoker’s influential and most famous novel -- was clever, the plotting deft, the writing and characterizations, the mix of personalities were all spot on.

I still haven’t read widely or deeply in this particular subgenre, but it seems to have caught my attention recently.

But I’m here to examine Newman’s novel. I don’t typically stray into the horror field in this venue, but there is plenty in this book to entertain pulp fans.

Second, alongside the literary vampires -- Lord Ruthven, Count Dracula -- and the historical folks -- Churchill, Edgar Allan Poe (who happens to play a particularly interesting role in the narrative), the eponymous Manfred von Richthofen, British ace Albert Ball, German novelist H.H. Ewers -- are plenty of recognizable pulp magazine characters, and characters of interest to pulp fans, such as Conan Doyle’s Mycroft Holmes, Jules Verne’s Robur, and H.G. Wells’ Dr. Moreau. In Chapter One, we’re introduced to a number of fliers tied to Allied Intelligence, among them Kent Allard (who, after the war, would be better known to pulp fans as The Shadow), Bigglesworth, and Jim “Red” Albright (better known to OTR and comic book fans as Captain Midnight, traditionally associated with WW2).

There are numerous other pulp characters making cameos and more detailed appearances within Newman’s pages: Lovecraft’s Herbert West (aka The Reanimator) and Monk Mayfair (Doc Savage’s simian-looking scrappy aide). Even non-genre literary figures appear in the novel, such as Christopher Tietjens, the primary character in a foursome of novels by Joseph Conrad’s contemporary and sometimes collaborator, Ford Madox Ford. (The collective name for the four books is Parade’s End.)

But this isn’t a peripatetic tale of strung-together cameos, like an episode of Laugh-In featuring TV and movie stars poking their faces out of a surprise window to spout a punch line. Newman’s novel is bold, fierce, and frightening. Anno Dracula waded through Victorian gothic trappings dripping with gore. The Bloody Red Baron is about nationalistic pride, the ego of nations, the muddy and bloody horror of arrogant generals running a war in which the soldiers and their strategies haven’t quite caught up to the advances in the technologies of death. The destruction of civilization appears to be the focus of the warring minds here, particularly as epitomized in Count Dracula.

Labels: Captain Midnight, Dracula, Edgar Allan Poe, Enemy Ace, Fritz Lang, Jules Verne, Kim Newman, Louis Feuilliade, The Shadow, Titan Books

by Duane Spurlock

Awhile back, I posted about Jules Verne as the pre-pulp pioneer for pulp fiction. Let's look at this idea a bit more closely.

The Adventures of Captain Hatteras by Jules Verne, translated by William Butcher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

William Butcher, who translated this volume and provided its introduction and notes, is on a quest to restore Verne’s reputation in the United States as worthy of inclusion in the literary canon — not as a writer for children, but as a serious author for adults, deserving university recognition and academic study.

Most translations into English have not served Verne well, particularly those contemporaneous with the author: besides wooden or stilted prose, in some cases the translators didn’t have a sufficient grasp of French to put into English what Verne actually wrote; many books were actually cut by a third or more; one translation had at least one sentence added by the translator to nearly every paragraph in the story; and more than one novel had the names of its primary characters changed! (The website of the North American Jules Verne Society [http://www.najvs.org/] has links to a number of online essays by its members, several of which address the state of English Verne translations -- which continue to be reprinted more than a hundred years after their first appearance.) Butcher and others blame these less-than-accurate (and, in some cases, downright bad) translations for Verne’s reputation in the U.S. as a bad stylist, a promoter of bad science, and as simply a writer for children.

But Butcher and others — among them Walter James Miller, Edward Baxter, Frederick Paul Walter—have been translating some of Verne’s most famous works anew and bringing into English several works that hadn’t been translated before, all of which helps to repair the Frenchman’s literary reputation in Britain and the U.S. These new translations have been appearing from Oxford University Press (in affordable paperbacks), Wesleyan University Press, Universityof Nebraska Press, and other publishers.

Verne is of interest to pulp readers because, first, as one of the most translated novelists in the world, his novels take the readers to many of the locations that would later be the exotic settings for many, many pulp adventure stories. (The UNESCO “Most frequently translated authors” resource ranks Verne at # 4 in 1980 [behind V.I. Lenin, The Bible, and Agatha Christie]. In 1994 Verne moved down the list to # 7 [after Christie, Danielle Steele, The Bible, Victoria Holt, P. Vandenberg, and Stephen King]. As of 2012, he's Number Two. The reference is at this site -- click here.)

Typically, Verne’s characters were the first whose fictional feet stepped in a particular locale that maybe Doc Savage or some other pulp adventurer would later visit. This trait for exploring “strange, new worlds” gave birth to the umbrella name for Verne’s series of novels, Voyages Extraordinaires.

Second, he’s also sometimes called the grandfather of modern science fiction. That's not exactly accurate. Verne’s novels typically don’t extrapolate into scientific technology beyond what was actually available at the time he wrote them. (Okay, traveling to the moon inside a capsule fired from a giant cannon may be pushing that argument a tad.) Instead, Verne is more of an adventure writer, whose novels are grounded in the world of science.

Verne was very concerned with basing his extrapolations on existing knowledge. For instance, when someone described his work as similar to that of H.G. Wells, Verne "openly criticized Wells' novels as lacking in scientific verisimilitude:"

We do not proceed in the same manner. It occurs to me that his stories do not repose on very scientific bases. . . I make use of physics. He invents. I go to the moon in a cannonball discharged from a cannon. Here there is no invention. He goes to the Mars [sic] in an airship which he constructs of a metal which does away with the law of gravitation. . . But show me this metal. Let him produce it. (Robert H. Sherard, "Jules Verne Revisited," T.P.'s Weekly [Oct. 9, 1903]: 589; quoted in Jules Verne, Invasion of the Sea [Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2001]: 209)

Still, the SF pulp writer who wasn’t influenced in some fashion by Verne’s works was probably rare.

Further, or third, many of Verne’s novels originally saw print as serial publications in a magazine published by his book publisher, Jules Hetzel, and titled Magasin d’Éducation et de Récréation. So, Verne is linked to the pulp writers of the 20th Century by the medium his work first appeared before the public. (Ah, imagine Nemo and the Nautilus painted by DeSoto! The lighter-than-air craft Resolute from Five Weeks in a Balloon painted by Blakeslee!)

On, then, to Captain Hatteras. This novel, the second by Verne to be published (first serialized in Hetzel’s magazine from March 20, 1864 [vol. 1, no. 1] to December 5, 1865 [vol. 4, no. 42]; first book publication in 1866), relates the reaching of the North Pole by the eponymous hero. Using the word hero might prompt a few quibbles, however; Hatteras’ monomania to reach the Pole recalls Captain Ahab’s obsession with finding and destroying Moby Dick. (Melville’s novel was published in 1851.) Most of Hatteras’ crew mutinies during the course of the novel, and Hatteras himself meets a less-than-happy fate.

Certainly Verne was influenced by the source materials he drew upon, which were the accounts of actual voyages to find the Northwest Passage and to reach the Pole; perhaps the most famous of these at the time of writing was the expedition led by Sir John Franklin, which ended badly for Franklin and most of his men. The explorers in Verne’s novel refer frequently to Franklin and other, similarly doomed expeditions. (Dan Simmons’ recent horror novel, The Terror, also focuses on the Franklin expedition.)

Hatteras is a remarkable character who could easily have walked onstage in a larger-than-life pulp novel. He enters the story as a mystery — an order and funds arrive anonymously for a ship to be built according to certain specifications, but its use is not expressed. A crew is assembled, although their destination is not named, nor is the name of their captain — they are told only that he will join them at some point on the journey. The first mate receives a final letter telling which direction to go once the ship leaves port. The crew begins to place supernatural significance on the presence of the apparently absent-but-all-knowing captain. Finally, Hatteras reveals himself as a disguised member of the crew.

Of interest to pulp fans is what Hatteras finds marking the North Pole — an active volcano. (Volcanoes also play an important role in Verne’s subsequent novel, Journey to the Center of the Earth.) Here we see a reference to many pulp-era SF/fantasy works that place a temperate zone heated by volcanic activity (or other geological reasons) and surrounded by the cold polar regions. This relates to the theory put forth in 1818 by an American infantry captain named John Cleves Symmes that launched numerous hollow-earth stories. Symmes claimed:

To All the World! I declare the Earth is hollow, and habitable within; containing a number of concentrick [sic] spheres, one within the other, and that is it open at the poles 12 or 16 degrees; I pledge my life in support of this truth, and am ready to explore the hollow if the world will support and aid me in this undertaking. (Reproduced in Jacques Van Herp, Panorama de la science-fiction (Verviers, Belgique: Marabout, 1975), 100. Shared here thanks to Arthur B. Evans’ article, “Literary Intertexts in Jules Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires” at this URL, http://jv.gilead.org.il/evans/literary.html#41)

Later, Symmes published his theory in a book (John Cleves Symmes and James McBride, Symmes’s Theory of Concentric Spheres: demonstrating that the earth is hollow, habitable within, and widely open at the poles. Cincinnati: Morgan, Lodge & Fischer, 1826). Perhaps today’s best-known stories about underground worlds are Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novels set in the prehistoric land of Pellucidar.

There is much too-ing and fro-ing through the sea, around icebergs and closing icefields that would crush Hatteras' vessel, and this very accurate recounting of an arctic voyage may be perceived by today's readers -- particularly those accustomed to the constant action and thrills that mark most pulp fiction -- as needless padding or evading the heart of the narrative. But Verne's adventure takes place in a time during which "the shortest distance between two points" is undertood but not always possible to accomplish. This so-called padding actually heightens tension and makes more realistic the events that follow.

Verne’s novel may not have all the action and thrills of a pulp novel, but it offers entertaining reading and a launch pad for many pulp-era tales that would follow it.

Links:
You can purchase The Adventures of Captain Hatteras (and other Verne novels mentioned in this article) at Amazon. Click here to learn more.

Visit the website of the North American Jules Verne Society [http://www.najvs.org/] to check out links to a number of online essays by its members.

You can learn more about Verne scholar and translator William Butcher at his home page by clicking here.

Learn more about Walter James Miller, one of the first Verne scholars to undertake correcting Verne's reputation in English, by visiting his site -- click here.

You'll find an online listing of Verne's Les Voyages Extraordinaires by clicking here. And for a look at scans of all the maps that were included in the original editions of Jules Verne’s novels, click here to visit the site of Verne collector Garmt de Vries.

Labels: Captain Hatteras, Doc Savage, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Hetzel, Jules Verne, Symmes, Walter James Miller, William Butcher

Labels: Doc Savage, Jules Hetzel, Jules Verne, Magasin d'Education et de Recreation, Voyages Extraordinaires

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan Poe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Certainly by no means is Edgar Poe considered a pulp writer, but his work influenced many who toiled in the weird tale and detective genres, and his name is frequently linked with that of H.P. Lovecraft as a writer with a similar focus. And Poe’s stories contain elements that would later be picked up by writers for the weird menace pulps. It had been many years since last I read anything by Poe.

To be honest, his protagonists usually don’t suit me — they are typically neurotic, obsessed, overly sensitive to possible (but not necessarily potential) calamities (okay, let’s just call’em nervous ninnies), and unheroic — if not downright cowardly. They are usually at the opposite end of the heroic spectrum from most pulp adventurers.

But Pym fits our bill for winter reading for more than one reason. First, I was led to read The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838) because Jules Verne was very influenced by Poe — particularly by this story, which is Poe’s only novel-length work, and it was a particular influence on The Adventures of Captain Hatteras. As Arthur Evans notes in his “Literary Intertexts” essay, “From his article written on Poe early in his career for the Muséedes Familles (“Edgard Poë et ses oeuvres” [“Edgard Poë and his Works”] in the issue for April 1864) to his masterful Le Sphinx des glaces (The Ice Sphinx) where he completes Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Verne was a life-long admirer (and imitator) of this particular American author.”

 The Adventures of Captain Hatteras shows evidence in several places of Pym’s influence. For example, like Verne’s Hatteras, Poe’s Pym concerns a polar expedition. But while Hatteras journey’s north, Pym sails south. Second, like Hatteras, Pym evokes the hollow-earth theories of John Cleves Symmes, “who speculated in Symzonia (1820) on the existence of powerful currents produced by gigantic vortices. He also predicted an unexpectedly mild climate in the polar regions.” (Pym, editorial note by J. Gerald Kennedy, p. 289) While Captain Hatteras finds an erupting volcano at the North Pole, Pym finds a whirling vortex in the sea at the South Pole. This warmer climate near the pole is one that various pulp stories would pick up many years later. And it leads to . . .

Three, Pym features a lost race — for me, a favorite element in pulp adventure tales. (I might go out on a limb and add Four, the inclusion of adventurous character Dirk Peters, Pym’s companion during much of his adventure, and perhaps the partial namesake of that contemporary nautical pulp hero Dirk Pitt, created by Clive Cussler. Surely Peters also is a partial template for the Canadian harpoonist Ned Land in 20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.)

Pym is a typically American novel in presenting a young, essentially innocent hero moving through a series of experiences that make him a man. Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn ends with Huck lighting out for the territories. Pym opens in similar fashion, but Pym wants to go to sea rather than romp over the frontier lands to the west.

After Pym gets aboard the whaler Grampus as a stowaway, a number of calamities occur, all of which would befit elements in a gothic novel: a particularly bloody mutiny; a terrible sea storm; an episode of cannibalism. Eventually Pym and Peters are rescued by another ship, which — on a voyage of discovery to the South Pole — encounters troubles of its own on an uncharted island with a mysterious tribe.

More adventures follow, with the result that Pym and Peters are the only surviving members of the crew. In making their escape from the island, they are trapped in a boat by a giant sea vortex. The novel then ends rather ambiguously, as if Poe had tired of his efforts in the novel-length form and just threw in the towel.

Pym is ultimately unsatisfying as an adventure story — the ending is left up in the air (although the editor of the Oxford University Press edition, Gerald Kennedy, suggests that Poe may have provided an escape from Pym’s vortex in a later story, “A Descent into the Maelstrom” [1841]; however, mysteries remain unresolved from the end of the novel). However, as a piece of American fiction that influenced many other writers — outside of the United States and in the later U.S. pulp magazine industry — it does offer some interesting points.

Links:
The Oxford University Press edition of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is available from Amazon. Just click here.

Information on the actual events behind Poe's story and related matters is available at Wikipedia. Click here.

A web site by Claudia Kay Silverman devoted to a study of the story, including the early chapters that appeared serialized before Poe completed the novel, is worth a look. Click here.

The eNotes.com site offers some critical insights into the novel. To learn more, click here.

You may find yourself drawn to visit The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore web site. If so, you'll find it here.

Labels: Captain Hatteras, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Jules Verne, Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, The Ice Sphinx