R. J. Myers and the Crucifixion of Mary Shelley

Robert J. Myers is a study in contradictions. A veteran CIA operative, he became the publisher of The New Republic. In the mid-1970s, Myers authored two sequels to Mary Shelley’s classic, Frankenstein. Having a longstanding interest in literary pastiches, I tracked down these two long out-of-print titles and recently read the first, The Cross of Frankenstein (1975). The prolific nature of the Universal and Hammer Frankenstein movies was understandable, but the original novel has always seemed more challenging to extend – even more so than Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Neither story demands literary sequels, nor did their authors choose to pursue them – a fact that makes the ambitions of prospective continuation authors all the more difficult to realize with any degree of success.

Mary Shelley’s original reads like a modern fable. The scientist who transgresses nature’s laws is destroyed by the abomination he brought into existence with his own hand. It is the same fable Michael Crichton fashioned nearly 200 years later into Jurassic Park. Shelley’s alternate title for the book, The Modern Prometheus is frequently forgotten, but it is critical to an understanding of how the novel differs from the 1931 Universal horror classic that imbued itself in the public consciousness. The monster of Shelley’s novel may be lacking a flat head and neck bolts, but he makes up for it in spades with his philosophical yearning for his own place in the universe and with the father/creator who abandoned him.

Once the artificial man resolves to destroy his creator, his unrelenting thirst for vengeance leads us to the dire ending where the monster watches his creator expire on his death-bed and resolves to commit suicide thereafter. No matter how many times I’ve read the story, I never doubt the monster’s resolution to end his miserable existence. His purpose has been exhausted. God creates man. Man creates Artificial Man in an attempt to become God. Artificial Man destroys his Creator and then ceases to have a reason to exist. This is more than a re-statement of Michael Crichton at his most didactic; it is also an accurate summation of the theological, moral, philosophical, and bioethical issues the nineteen year-old Mary Shelley wrestled with in her amazing novel.

It is with some sense of discomfort that I found when reading the author’s preface to The Cross of Frankenstein that it was this very conclusion that Myers found so unsatisfying that he felt a sequel was not only possible, but necessary. Myers writes that “it seemed out of character for such a monster, however, to have simply finished himself off. There were still worlds to conquer, and his most determined antagonist was dead.” I was intrigued by this simply because Shelley’s ending seemed so complete. What story did Myers believe still had to be told for the Monster? Knowing the author to be a man of intelligence and learning, my interest was piqued to learn where he would take the story. Sadly, the results make Universal’s 1939 potboiler, Son of Frankenstein seem positively inspired in comparison.

The Cross of Frankenstein is narrated by young Dr. Victor Saville, the illegitimate son conceived by Victor Frankenstein with an anonymous wench during his final pursuit of the monster near the climax of Shelley’s novel. Right there, I was stopped in my tracks. Had Myers contrived to have Frankenstein father the child earlier in the narrative, it might have been plausible. Shelley goes to great pains to show how both creator and creation sublimate their desires in their all-consuming quest to destroy one another in the story’s third and final act. Additionally, Frankenstein had recently seen his wife and best friend murdered by the monster and yet Myers asks the reader to believe Frankenstein set aside his single-minded obsession that led to his death from physical and mental exhaustion for a quickie with a barmaid. Of course, Myers also later tells us the Monster was out sodomizing animals in the woods so perhaps they both agreed to a break from trying to kill one another for a couple hours to help relieve the tension.

Victor Saville grows up ignorant of his heritage. He shares many traits and interests with his infamous father and so the reader is not startled to learn he is, in fact, the latest of the numerous Frankenstein heirs fated to walk in their ancestor’s unhallowed footsteps. The Saville household is made up of Victor’s doting Aunt Margaret, their creepy butler William, and his aunt’s beautiful and innocent ward, Felicia. All appears set for a traditional Frankenstein tale, albeit one that seems to owe more to Frankenstein movies than Shelley’s book. The sinister Mr. Greene shows up unexpectedly just after Young Saville has learned of his parentage. Greene sets the tale in motion by tasking Dr. Saville with finding a fluid that can function as an alternative to blood to complete a mysterious experiment. This is where the story begins to fall apart as Saville is immediately convinced that this strange request must mean that his father’s creation still lives and is behind the mysterious scientific cabal Greene is said to represent. I was left scratching my head at the logic of this conclusion and sadly, not for the last time.

In short order, Victor has sex with Felicia on the front lawn in broad daylight, gets reprimanded by his prim and proper Aunt (so much is made of her hypocritical Bible-thumping opinions that one wonders what sort of lawn games the neighbors observed at the Myers household), snickers through Sunday services with his new girlfriend (even though they should be heartbroken that their actions have led to her being kicked out of the house), and then promptly gets himself shanghaied to America by Greene while seeing Felicia off at the wharf. Victor, gagged and bound in the cargo hold of a ship with Greene’s fierce German Shepherd, Prince, guarding him; fears his sphincter will not hold and he will “beshat” himself. If the reader’s mind isn’t left reeling with that jewel of a phrase, Victor then is convinced for no apparent reason that Greene must have abducted Felicia as well. As before, Victor’s peculiar conclusions are later proven correct. As the narrator, Victor never questions his own logic, so why should the reader carp?

Once in America, who do you suppose turns up as a member of the scientific cabal? Yes, it’s Aunt Margaret’s creepy butler, William. Now at last the plot begins to make sense. William obviously learned of Victor’s parentage and contacted Greene and the others that Frankenstein’s son would be useful to their mysterious experiments. A bit far-fetched maybe, but at least it’s basically sound, right? No such luck. It is a matter of sheer coincidence that William ends up among their rank and the reader never learns how Greene discovered Victor’s identity as a Frankenstein.

We soon quickly learn that there is no scientific cabal and Greene the flunky is actually the ringleader of this group who were only posing as scientists to dupe Saville. Having lost the dotty old religious fanatic, Aunt Margaret, we quickly meet the dotty old religious fanatic Reverend Ritter (who’s also a comic drunk, for good measure). Ritter is the spiritual leader of what now turns out to be an odd mish-mash of socialist revolutionaries and a religious cult. Greene and William (one of only four members of this supposed army to be given names and dialogue) plot to use the Monster to overthrow America’s fledgling government in the early nineteenth century while Ritter and his followers believe the Monster’s promise of a Resurrection Day in which their Savior (once Victor makes more of the blood-substitute fluid) will be able to restore their departed loved ones to life. Myers has an inspired bit here where the corpses of the congregation’s deceased family members are used as raw materials for further Frankenstein experiments in reanimating bodies that have been stitched together patchwork-style. This has the potential for genuine ghoulish chills when one imagines what the Resurrection Day will look like to the congregation. Sadly, Myers squanders this opportunity as well by only having Victor discover the truth. After building up Ritter as a major supporting player, Myers has him turn up crucified by either Greene (his political rival) or the Monster – the author never explains which one is guilty of Ritter’s murder.

There’s also a nice juicy role for Jenny, Greene’s attractive young wife (never mind the fact that they’ve been married for years and yet she is still described as young while her husband is now middle-aged). Jenny is the congregation’s nurse. She grew up in poverty and graduated from barmaid to wife to nurse and yet is Victor’s equal in understanding the scientific genius of his father’s notebooks. Of course, Jenny knows a good thing when she sees it and wanting a better biological father for her child, she jumps Victor’s bones as fast as you can say “Nineteenth century morals, my ass!” Victor is quite the lucky guy in that a preacher’s daughter like Felicia and the wife of a jealous and abusive man like Greene require no seduction whatsoever from our hero. These women are willing and eager and Myers, it must be said, exercises surprising restraint in detailing their couplings. Of course, that’s because he’s saving it up for the Big Bang later on in the narrative.

Victor considers his infidelity to Felicia and in the span of a single paragraph rationalizes that the love of his life would understand the casual sex with Jenny that he believes has produced his own illegitimate heir meant nothing and so concludes there is no reason to even tell her. What happens to Frankenstein stays in Frankenstein, apparently (or words to that effect). However, Jenny’s scheming of parental selection is all for naught since she ends up murdered the next morning — how convenient for Victor, casual sex with no strings attached. Of course, a short time later Victor witnesses the congregation follow Reverend Ritter’s drunken homily with an all-out Rite of Spring orgy with Benediction of the most base nature imaginable granted by the monster’s monstrous member which Myers describes in such awe and with such loving detail that it reads more risible than Richard Jaccoma at his worst. Who is the Monster’s mate for the orgy? You guessed it – Felicia herself.

Naturally, the reader expects a sexually-liberated-before-his-time character like Victor not to harbor any petty jealousy, right? It’s not like he hasn’t enjoyed his own on the side, too. Nope, deep down Victor is as much a traditional nineteenth century guy as the next. For the entire remainder of the book, he is tortured by Felicia’s callous betrayal and the image of her ecstasy while mounting the Monster stays in his mind and the reader’s (although evoking a considerably different reaction than the author evidently intended). Shortly before this book was published, Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder wrung puerile anatomical humor about the Monster out of Young Frankenstein, but Myers takes it to a level that approaches Kurt Vonnegut without the knowing satire to salvage it’s dignity. Witness the climactic description of a thunderstorm: “the autumn rain released every fluid ounce, like a primitive orgasm.”

There’s also plenty more lapses in logic along the way, too as Victor poisons Prince’s dinner and then has the German Shepherd turn up later in the story inexplicably alive (no suggestion of any Frankenstein resurrection for the pooch, either). Felicia gets what’s coming to her though and ends up with Greene bashing her skull in with a rock on the final pages of the book. See, boys and girls, the lesson is guys are allowed to cheat, but bad girls always get killed – Ian Fleming was right. The 1970s seemed to bring the porn out in pulp fiction in a misguided and juvenile attempt to achieve literary sophistication with the genre. Once the reader gets past the shock value, you’re left with the fact that authors like R. J. Myers end up looking pathetic as if the world just caught them playing with themselves. The Monster is almost an oversight in the story since what Myers does to poor Mary Shelley’s classic is the real horror story.

Robert E. Howard: Peering Behind the Veil of Life

“The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune” is Robert E. Howard at his most poetic. His writing had made a quantum leap forward in quality compared with his earlier Kull stories as he transitions from working in familiar genres to blazing a trail none had attempted before him. More than his gift for well-turned phrases and imagery so powerful, it literally sears itself in the reader’s mind; Howard reaches for a depth of character and achieves a work that is both psychologically and philosophically rewarding. Sadly, as the author would later tell his friend, Clyde Smith that he was disappointed in the result and had resolved to never attempt anything so deep again.

The tale starts off with Kull, plagued with ennui and yearning for something more substantive than riches, power, and transient beauty. The brooding king rejects the company of loyal Brule, the Pict who won the king’s respect and friendship in “The Shadow Kingdom,” but foolishly takes the advice of an alluring Eastern female. In Howard’s world view (and in truth, a pulp convention of the day), the exotic female generally proves untrustworthy and the nameless beauty who appears at the beginning and the conclusion of “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune” proves no exception.

The girl appeals to Kull’s desire for spiritual sustenance. She promises him that the wizard, Tuzun Thune possesses hidden knowledge of what was and will be and is able to converse with the dead. The allure of the occult is enough to send Kull, whose pagan faith in Valka is apparently as unfulfilling as his earthly riches, in search of the hidden knowledge promised by the Eastern wizard. Yet when Kull visits the house of Tuzun Thune, he finds the wizard interested in little more than verbally sparring with the barbarian king.

Just as Kull appears to tire of the wizard’s bantering, Tuzun Thune tempts him into gazing into his mirrors with the promise of wisdom for “mirrors are the world.” Kull gazes and is bewitched by his own reflection and is immediately confronted by the thought that his reflection might in fact be the real him and that he is only the reflection. This is more than just a passing primeval fear, but the recurring thought that keeps Kull mesmerized day after day even at the exclusion of viewing the distant prehistoric past or the far-flung future.

Kull is momentarily distracted to see the world map of the present radically altered in centuries to come. The wizard responds with what might be the author’s own code of existence,

“Time strides onward, we live today, what care we for tomorrow or yesterday? The Wheel turns and nations rise and fall; the world changes, and times return to savagery to rise again through the long ages….The nations pass and are forgotten, for that is the destiny of man….I brood not over the lost glories of my race, nor do I labor for races to come. Live now….The dead are dead, the unborn are not. What matters men’s forgetfulness of you when you have forgotten yourself in the silent worlds of death?”

Recognizing the barbarian’s fears, Tuzun Thune asks him the very thought Kull fears to voice, “…is it in truth you?” Kull expresses his deepest fear when he replies, “Which of us is the ghost of the other? Mayhap these mirrors are but windows through which we look into another world.” This is indeed the truth of fiction rendered in terms of pure poetry. As much as Kull may be Howard’s alter ego, so too is Tuzun Thune for it is the wizard that, like the author, draws readers into other worlds of both dream and nightmare and dares to make us question who we are and what is real.

Kull asks the question that man asks today as much as in centuries past, “Tell me, wizard who are wiser than most men, tell me, are there worlds beyond our worlds?” The wizard’s enigmatic reply links us back to the spiritual yearning that gripped Kull’s consciousness at the story’s outset, “A man has eyes, let him see, who would see must first believe.”

Howard’s father was intrigued by the writings of Madame Blavatsky and the author shared his father’s interest in Theosophy. Howard expresses this here by having Kull on the verge of astral travel when Tuzun Thune tells him (sounding exactly like a student of Theosophy, himself), “See and believe, man must believe to accomplish. Form is shadow, substance is illusion, materiality is dream; man is because he believes he is; what is man but a dream of the gods? Yet man can be that he wishes to be; form and substance, they are but shadows. The mind, the ego, the essence of the god-dream – that is real, that is immortal. See and believe, if you would accomplish, Kull.”

It is fitting that it is the noble Pict, Brule who rescues Kull from dissipating into astral nothingness and passing forever into the world hidden behind the mirrors. Brule rejects belief in the occult and shuns any sign of its reality. Kull recognizes the wisdom of this, but is haunted by having come so close to answering one of man’s eternal questions. There remains a lingering regret that he did not complete the experiment. It is also fitting that Howard, who would explore similar territory in “The Tower of the Elephant,” initially determined to avoid returning to theosophical stories in the future and yet as the later Conan adventure demonstrates, like Kull, Howard longed to peer behind the veil of this life and into the next.

Blogging The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer, Part Six – “The Call of Siva”

“The Call of Siva” was the fifth installment of Sax Rohmer’s serial, Fu-Manchu first published in THE STORY-TELLER in February 1913. The story would later comprise Chapters 13-15 of the novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (re-titled The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu for its U.S. publication). Rohmer had built several of his Fu-Manchu stories on protracted paranoia and had previously made good use of a Limehouse opium den as a setting, but “The Call of Siva” sees him letting his plotline be dictated by the altered state of the waking dreamer for the first time and to great effect.
The story opens with our narrator, Dr. Petrie relating a strange dream which begins with him writhing on the floor in agony. Rohmer makes good use of Stygian darkness, Oriental tapestries, and Mohammedan paradise as suggestive imagery that Petrie’s queer dream, at once both mystifying and terrifying, is uniquely Eastern in its origin. This point is confirmed as Petrie awakens with Nayland Smith as his cell mate. Only at this point does Rohmer resume something approaching a conventional narrative with Petrie’s murky recollection of Smith and him rushing to warn Graham Guthrie that he has been marked for assassination when they are abducted by unseen assailants from a passing limousine.
Dr. Fu-Manchu makes his first major appearance in this story. His confrontation with Petrie and Smith in their cells is one of the highlights of the initial series of stories. While the previous month’s story gave the reader every reason to place Fu-Manchu in the context of the contemporaneous fears of a Yellow Peril, when the Devil Doctor finally takes center stage, Rohmer has him invoke a god of Chinese antiquity and compares him to an Aztec priest. Rohmer seems to have enjoyed pandering to the political rhetoric of the day before confounding his readers’ expectations by removing Fu-Manchu from any temporal or geographic constraints. This conceit makes the character even more menacing as he mixes Arabian Nights fantasy with real-life torture devices such as the wire jacket.

Rohmer draws a direct connection with one of his strongest influences in giving Fu-Manchu a pet marmoset to perch on his shoulder just as Guy Boothby’s Dr. Nikola (and later Ian Fleming’s Ernst Stavro Blofeld) had his ever-present pet cat to stroke while plotting some new atrocity. The chosen method of eliminating Graham Guthrie is the Call of Siva of the story’s title. Fu-Manchu knowingly references Rangoon 1908 to Nayland Smith, aware that he will recall the ghastly particulars of this cryptic remark. Once again, Fu-Manchu’s anonymous Egyptian slave girl liberates our heroes and, in doing so, helps prevent the assassination of Graham Guthrie.
Rohmer makes much of the Call of Siva, the Mark of Kali, and the presence of phansigars and thuggees in contemporary London in this story. This is where he begins to expand the secret society that Dr. Fu-Manchu serves from not merely a Chinese organization, but a conglomeration of Eastern groups banded together to serve a common purpose in dismantling the British Empire. In fairness to Rohmer, this is exactly what Nayland Smith tells Petrie at the start of “The Zayat Kiss,” but it has taken the author several installments in the series before he fully demonstrates the concept.

It is tempting to view this as yet unnamed secret society in a positive light, for they are only defending themselves against Western imperialism run amok. Given Rohmer’s penchant for the exotic and foreign, it is likely that he did feel the British Empire had stretched too far. There is often a mocking quality in Nayland Smith’s jingoistic dialogue. What strikes the modern reader as politically incorrect invariably springs from Smith’s mouth and not Petrie for it is Smith who is the colonial administrator for the Crown in Burma. Upon reflection, “The Call of Siva” was already heeded many years before by Rohmer, then by his characters, and finally by his now loyal readers who eagerly awaited each month’s installment of the serial.

Events are beginning to move to ahead as Smith and Petrie draw ever closer to Fu-Manchu’s path. One side must win with the reader unable to determine at this stage if the author has invested enough sympathy in the nameless slave girl to spare her falling victim to her master’s wrath or if she will help tip the scales in our heroes’ favor. The wheels are now set irrevocably in motion. Rohmer had already proven himself a master of alternately following and defying tradition, the reader would be kept guessing to the outcome as the suspense builds toward a fiery climax.

Blogging The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer, Part Five – “The Green Mist”

“The Green Mist” was the fourth installment of Sax Rohmer’s serial, Fu-Manchu first published in THE STORY-TELLER in January 1913. The story would later comprise Chapters 10-12 of the novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu [re-titled The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu for its U.S. publication]. When Rohmer incorporated the story into the novel, he added linking material intended to make the book appear timely and relevant. However, the true-life Yellow Peril news items that Rohmer has Petrie recount from actual British papers of the day strike a discordant note nearly a century on.
Freed from the exotic trappings of weird fiction, the straight journalism of the era seems dated, naïve, and offensive to modern sensibilities. This phenomenon is hardly unique to Sax Rohmer’s fiction and may also be experienced in the unenlightened views on display in the earliest of Herge’s Adventures of Tintin. Making matters worse is the current vogue for political correctness that believes in burying the past rather than learning from it. The combination of these factors stands as the most challenging obstacle facing a mainstream publisher if Fu-Manchu is ever to receive the exposure the series deserves whether from a new author continuing the series or a fresh printing of the classic originals.
A century ago, such views were secondary to the consideration of good storytelling and in “The Green Mist,” Sax Rohmer delivered the goods. The story introduces us to the blustering, bombastic figure of Sir Lionel Barton. The frequently infuriating Egyptologist is Rohmer’s take on Sir Richard Burton (one of Rohmer’s strongest influences) by way of a healthy dose of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s other immortal character, Professor Challenger. The dialogue crackles every time Sir Lionel takes center stage and the character easily is one the author enjoyed sharing with his readers. Little wonder that Rohmer would come to create so many return appearances for the character as the series progressed.

Sir Lionel has brought a death warrant upon himself for his planned second expedition to Tibet. Barton is described as having been the first Westerner to visit Lhasa and to have penetrated Mecca three times disguised as a pilgrim. His visits to Tibet are said to have political significance for Barton claims to have discovered a “new keyhole to the gate of the Indian Empire!” Barton’s estate, Rowan House is a true delight. The house is packed from ceiling to floor with exotic animals, curios, and a multicultural staff that in 1913 did not signify diversity, but thrills and danger.
Barton, it is obvious, is exactly the sort of man Sax Rohmer wished to become. Rohmer spent (some would say squandered) his wealth over the years on several expeditions to Egypt. He found the life of what was once called an Egyptologist to be one of endless fascination. The idea of surrounding himself with Oriental treasures and servants is a notion that made Rohmer’s heart race with excitement.

Even though the world is a much smaller place today and the internet, the public library, and television have peeled away the mysteries of Lhasa and Tibet, Rohmer successfully conveys the excitement of a hidden world of intrigue to the modern reader. The saving grace that repeatedly spares his work the damning indictment of racism (if one actually bothers to read him before passing judgment) is Rohmer’s evident delight in exploring foreign cultures. Despite the prejudices of the colonial era, Rohmer found the exotic East to be enticing and seductive and he infects his reader with his unbridled enthusiasm. This alone accounts for his infusing his Asian villain with an integrity and dignity that inspires sympathy in the reader. While film, radio, television, and comic strips made Fu-Manchu a racist caricature, Rohmer was busy creating a complex portrayal of the West’s political enemies as people worthy of respect and capable of open dialogue. This was heady stuff in an era where Britain was still considered the greatest empire since Rome.

The Green Mist of the title is as fiendish a means of disposing of his intended victim as Dr. Fu-Manchu’s earlier triumph, the Zayat Kiss. Mummies, treacherous man servants, mistaken identities, and red herrings abound in this delightful entry in the series. Yet, more than successfully working his established formula, Rohmer provides surprising character development along the way.

Fu-Manchu’s still nameless slave girl who has stolen Dr. Petrie’s heart moves from the scantily-clad fantasy harem girl that owes much to Sir Richard Burton’s translation of 1001 Arabian Nights to become a realistic and sympathetic portrayal of slavery in the modern world with a depiction of the cruelty and terror of such miserable lives. This was not typical British pulp fiction of 1913, but Rohmer would certainly still be expected to comply with type by having a chivalrous Petrie rescue the fair damsel in distress. Instead, he again breaks with tradition by having Petrie respond in a realistic fashion suggesting they notify the police and let the authorities handle the situation. Petrie stands by helplessly while the woman he loves returns to her master fearing a worse punishment or death if she does not obey. In this stirring instant, all of the exotic fairy tale fantasy melts and Rohmer leaves his reader with the reality of an unjust world. It is a sobering moment that makes “The Green Mist” all the more powerful for its inclusion.

Kull and the Quest for Identity

Robert E. Howard’s “The Shadow Kingdom” is a remarkable advancement upon “Exile of Atlantis” and the “Am-ra of the Ta’an” fragments. Howard’s first published story of what will later be known as the Pre-Cataclysmic Age leaves behind the derivative world of Edgar Rice Burroughs pastiches to mine new territory in terms of character and setting as well as genre. Kull, the barbarian who has recently seized the crown and now must struggle to keep it, marks a significant break from both Howard and the fantasy genre’s past while continuing to build upon the age-old theme of the outsider as noble savage. Howard was hardly the first young man who felt a sense of kinship with such characters. It is not hard to imagine the aspiring young writer, alienated in Cross Plains, pouring his feelings into the exiled Atlantean who remains an outcast even after rising to the throne of Valusia.

The story opens with Kull making a proper royal entrance. Unsurprisingly, the barbarian king’s empathy rests not with Valusia’s finest archers and trumpeters, but with the mercenaries paid to act as foot soldiers – men who show the king little respect, but who demonstrate integrity for all their brash honesty and disdain for pretence.

This sets the stage for the introduction of Brule, the noble Pict destined to become Kull’s most loyal companion. While Brule enters the series as a figure of suspicion, Kull soon modifies his opinion of his character. Brule, like Kull, is a man of integrity. It is not hard to imagine Howard crafting his story through the eyes of his protagonist starting out with a prejudice against Brule only to have the Pict prove his loyalty. Howard the writer literally became Kull the character. This intense and unique identification between creator and creation is part of what gives Howard’s best work its strength for the author imparts to the reader his genuine surprise at unforeseen developments. The world of Howard’s stories was real to its author and this is what separates him from perhaps every other fantasy writer with the exception of Tolkien.


Kull agrees to dine with Ka-nu, the Pictish envoy grown fat and debauched from his years in the Valusian capital. Kull’s initial assessment of Ka-nu, as with Brule, is negative but circumstances again prove Kull (and thereby Howard) to be a rash judge of character for Ka-nu does behave with honor.

Tales of court intrigue were common at the time Howard wrote “The Shadow Kingdom.” The adventure stories of Alexandre Dumas, Anthony Hope, and Henry Bedford-Jones were among the staple diet of many young men and women. Howard broke with convention once again with this tale by having the duplicitous members of Kull’s court not only be likened to serpents, but actually be unmasked as serpents disguised as men. This wrinkle in the plot would be ridiculous in the hands of most writers. The difference is that Howard passionately believes in his fiction and consequently, the reader is willing to suspend their disbelief.

“The Shadow Kingdom” still inspires excitement in readers over eighty years since its publication when the story concludes with Kull vowing to hunt the Serpent-Men all over the world to destroy them once and for all. The tale which first introduced Kull to readers in 1929 was a long time coming for Howard who had taken Kull from supporting player in tribal dramas to a principled exile to an unlikely king on his arduous path to publication.

The quest to destroy the Serpent-Men is a conceit that would later inspire L. Sprague de Camp to expand the role of the Stygian sorcerer, Thoth-Amon and the cult of Set into a comparable recurring plot device in his revised and expanded Conan stories of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. That particular version of Howard’s more famous barbarian hero is one that rankles many purists today, but it is a vision de Camp borrowed from Conan’s predecessor and Howard’s original noble savage. The 1929 publication of “The Shadow Kingdom” ushered in the new era of Kull, exile of Atlantis and his alter-ego, Robert E. Howard, exile of Cross Plains.

DOWN THESE MEAN STREETS A PASTICHE-WRITER GOES

We are united by an uncommon passion for literary authors and their creations. We read and re-read their works time and again savoring each thrill as if for the first time. We read one another’s thoughts on these works in the hope of gaining a greater appreciation or, at the very least, having the intensity of our obsessions confirmed by those better able to express and justify their existence. We remain ever hopeful that we will awaken one day to a world where even more of these stories exist.
A small number of us set out on the precipitous path of making that dream a reality by adding to the existing canon of our favorite characters. Many of those who do so choose to work in the relative safety of fan fiction, content in the knowledge that none will judge their efforts too harshly. Fan fiction, however, is a double-edged sword for while it allows us to work free from criticism, we do so in the knowledge that none will treat our work as a legitimate continuation and that, at the end of the day, is what we all strive to achieve.
Established writers such as Joe R. Lansdale and Robert B. Parker have sought to finish incomplete manuscripts by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Raymond Chandler, respectively. They are not alone in having accepted such assignments and while they do us all a favor by completing that which mortality left unfinished, they do so in the knowledge that many among us will burn them in effigy for having dared tamper with the Sacred Writings of our Faith.
Less defensibly, L. Sprague de Camp re-wrote numerous Robert E. Howard stories in an effort to extend the chronicles of Conan in the apparent belief that Howard’s characters were interchangeable. An act of hubris that now renders much of the first generation of Conan pastiche writers’ work unmarketable. Lost seemingly forever are numerous stories that filled the Lancer/Ace paperback series that introduced many of us to Howard’s work in the 1960s and 1970s.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories undoubtedly have spawned the closest thing to an organized religion among its followers and yet Holmes devotees remain surprisingly open to allowing other hands breathe new life into Holmes and Watson. Holmes continuation writers have presented the great detective as a liar, a madman, a married man, a gay man, and even Jack the Ripper without ever shaking the faith of the devoted in the dogmatic truth of the canonical cases. Yet those who have taken up the pen of Ian Fleming, Raymond Chandler, Bram Stoker, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and (from my own experience) Sax Rohmer frequently find they are greeted with jeers and catcalls for doing nothing worse than giving fans what they most want – more of their favorite character.
The simple explanation is that no matter how hard any writer tries to stay faithful to the spirit and letter of the original in reviving a dormant property, they will never be the original author. Truth be told, authors who churned out numerous adventures of a popular character over the course of many years usually reached a point where the writing became formulaic and the creator’s cynicism replaced their ingenuity and enthusiasm.
The average reader (a phrase that applies to none of us who can quote their favorite book as Holy Writ) is the continuation author’s best hope for acceptance for we the faithful are too fanatical to ever accept a continuation author as anything but a heretic. Partly this reaction is one based firmly out of reverence and nostalgia for how enjoyable the originals were at our particular age of discovery and partly it is borne of the belief that there is no one among us worthy to carry on the Master’s work and anyone doing so must be a pretender to the throne.
The real truth that lies at the heart of our world is that the authors we revere so much are those that we fervently wish that we were. Their past is the reality we wish we could trade to live. For most of us, we are not monogamous in our literary loves, but highly promiscuous – even polytheistic. For those reasons alone, the continuation writer must be deemed a false prophet and worthy of our condemnation for they dare to attempt that which we only aspire to in our dreams.

Blogging The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer, Part Four – “Redmoat”

“Redmoat” was the third installment of Sax Rohmer’s serial Fu-Manchu, first published in THE STORY-TELLER in December 1912. The story would later comprise Chapters 7-9 of the novel The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (re-titled The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu for U.S. publication) in 1913. “Redmoat” is significant for delving into the aftermath of the Boxer Uprising. As we discussed in Part Three, this conflict leant credence to the Yellow Peril fiction that had been steadily gaining in popularity over the preceding fifty years. More importantly for our purpose, the Boxer Uprising provided a motive for Dr. Fu-Manchu’s actions.
There are two principal supporting players to the story who are worthy of greater consideration. The first is the Reverend J. D. Eltham. Reverend Eltham had earned a name for himself during his missionary days in China as “Parson Dan.” Nayland Smith tells Dr. Petrie that Eltham held off two hundred Boxers at a hospital in Nan-Yang with only a garrison of a dozen cripples and a German doctor for support. The heroic clergyman’s evangelical zeal had resulted, according to Smith, in the Boxer Uprising. While ascribing the blame for that conflict on a single missionary is more than a bit implausible, it is interesting that Rohmer, an Edwardian author, took a critical view of the British Empire and recognized that intolerance to Chinese culture not only hindered the goal of religious conversion, but sparked China’s decision to drive the foreigners out of their country by whatever means necessary.
The other supporting character of import is Eltham’s daughter, Greba. It has long been a convention of pulp fiction that supporting players who do not fit the mould of the virile hero instead play the part of the absentminded scientist or the irascible elder statesman. These characters are usually brilliant, but require the hero to defend or rescue them. Such characters are usually widowers or confirmed bachelors whose all-consuming passion is their vocation. They frequently have nubile daughters, granddaughters, or nieces in tow to soften them and play damsel in distress and, ultimately, serve as the reward for the hero upon completion of his trials. Greba Eltham fits this mould in one sense, but in another marks a definite departure for the genre.

The female supporting player in the first two Fu-Manchu stories (“The Zayat Kiss” and “The Clue of the Pigtail”) was Fu-Manchu’s as yet unnamed slave girl who has twice risked her life to save Petrie from the fate ordained by her master. Greba Eltham takes this role in “Redmoat” and for that purpose must be distinguished from her father. Rohmer accomplishes this by having Petrie note Greba’s classical beauty upon her first appearance in the story. There is no greater compliment paid in Rohmer’s fictional universe than having one’s likeness compared to a noble personage. Nayland Smith describes Fu-Manchu, the object of his obsession, as having a “brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan,” so Petrie describes Greba Eltham, the object of his attraction, as resembling “a young Diana” and notes her “clear complexion…sun-kissed arms” and her round and firm shape. Additionally, the aligning of Greba Eltham with classical beauty is necessary to delineate the essential difference in her character from her father.

Reverend Eltham’s estate, Redmoat is tellingly a former Roman outpost on British soil. Greba’s father has fortified the estate with an elaborate security system after having previously transformed its drained moat into a garden. The typical Edwardian as represented by Reverend Eltham has little appreciation for the beauty of the past. This is what separates Smith and Petrie from their fellow men and binds them as friends. It is the quality that enables them to appreciate the uncorrupted beauty of the East. They are, like their creator, men out of time. Old souls trapped in the twentieth century but wishing for a simpler world more suited to their temperaments.

Reverend Eltham makes, as Smith wryly notes, a poor evangelist. He does not understand human nature. He lacks an appreciation of foreign cultures as much as his own nation’s history. Men like Eltham can only destroy for they lack the sensitivity and empathy to preserve or respect that which exists outside their limited scope. Interestingly, Eltham is a hero in the eyes of the British Empire and yet, he is hardly portrayed as a sympathetic character. Petrie is surprised when he learns of Eltham’s role in the Boxer Uprising for he viewed the clergyman as soft-spoken and meek, yet Petrie will come to detect a fire in Eltham’s eyes at odd moments. Eltham is a man with a storied past far removed from the respectability a Man of God was expected to command at the turn of the last century.

The fact that Eltham survives his encounter with Dr. Fu-Manchu is only because he agrees to abandon his plans to return to China. Once again, Dr. Fu-Manchu acts with honor and shows himself superior to the imperialist British heroes. Fu-Manchu, like Smith and Petrie, is able to reconcile the Old World with the New. More importantly, like China during the Boxer Uprising – Dr. Fu-Manchu wants only to remove the threat to his nation, not overrun the West. The strength of the Yellow Peril myth is it appeals to fear rather than fact. It is Reverend Eltham who most clearly represents the proponents of the Yellow Peril even more than the colonialist Nayland Smith for it is Eltham who lacks the empathy that is essential to bridging cultures. It is deeply ironic that Sax Rohmer’s Fu-Manchu stories, long-derided as racist and jingoistic, actually represent a more enlightened view of the East and beneath the exotic mystery and thrills, their author repeatedly demonstrates that the differences between East and West are reconcilable.