Although pulp as a format may be long gone, pulp as a genre will never die … at least as long as it continues to be cared for, in good hands like those of Joe R. Lansdale and Keith Lansdale. The father/son team has a strong hold of the editing reins of Subterranean Press’ SON OF RETRO PULP TALES, a sequel to the 2006 original.
‘Tis fitting the elder Lansdale open the collection of 11 stories, covering everything from Westerns and jungle exploits to cold-blooded revengers. His “The Crawling Eye” is the weirdest — and arguably the best — of them all, with a well-armed reverend befriending a presumed half-wit kept caged in the aptly named town of Wood Tick. Involving rancid horsemeat and dimension-hopping monsters, it’s a joy to read, with dialogue as brisk as it is biting.
Christopher Golden goes soft on us — in a good way — with “Quiet Bullets,” a kindhearted ghost story (no, such a thing is not an oxymoron) about a fatherless, poor boy who finds the spirit of a cowboy haunting his home. It’s a sad tribute to how little a kid can feel in such a big, bad world.
David J. Schow’s “A Gunfight” is just that, and a tribute to Donald E. Westlake’s Parker character. It’s a post-robbery exchange of bullets in a cheap hotel, with $119,000 up for grabs. Using only two or three lines of dialogue, it’s all action, all the time, sporting a narrative simplicity that cuts right to the chase: “Some guys had tried to kill Proctor and Proctor had killed some guys.” What more motivation do you require?
From the get-go, William F. Nolan earned my good graces by giving the single mom at the crux of “The Perfect Nanny” a job at the late, great Whitman Comics — purveyor of many a dog-eared Disney comic of my childhood. Then he surpasses it by delivering an electrifying story of old-school possession that recalls the similarly fun Sam Raimi film DRAG ME TO HELL.
What to do with a box you’ve been told can never be opened, lest it have devastating consequences, and you have no idea what’s inside? I don’t know. But you’d certainly be driven mad, as those unfortunate souls in Cherie Priest’s beguiling “The Catastrophe Box” do. To her credit, she eventually shows you its mysterious contents, and the reveal is worth the wait and worry.
Keying off a real-life event in which African-American boxer Joe Louis defeated German boxer Max Schmeling in 1938, Matt Venne imagines what happened after the momentous event, in “The Brown Bomber and the Nazi Werewolves of the S.S.” As the title teases, embarrassed Nazis throw Louis into a castle’s pit, where he’s forced to fight a lycanthrope in a makeshift barbed-wire ring. Yes, it’s just as much fun as it sounds.
Trying to one-up Venne in the crazed-title department is Harlan Ellison, turning in “The Toad Prince or, Sex Queen of the Martian Pleasure-Domes.” As promised, its protagonist is Sarna, a prostitute on Mars, imported from Earth. Just before one of her would-be johns is murdered, he leaves Sarna a talking “alien frog-thing” known as “the Six.” The creature needs to find its five brothers; together, they comprise an all-knowing lifeform of considerable power.
As a sci-fi satire, Ellison’s story isn’t entirely successful, but its ending sure pays off, and it’s firmly entrenched in the ol’ pulp spirit. And in an anthology like this, that’s all that matters. —Rod Lott
Buy it at Subterranean Press or Amazon.
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF JOE R. LANSDALE:
• BAD CHILI by Joe R. Lansdale
• LEATHER MAIDEN by Joe R. Lansdale
• MUCHO MOJO by Joe R. Lansdale
• RETRO PULP TALES edited by Joe R. Lansdale
• SANCTIFIED AND CHICKEN-FRIED: THE PORTABLE LANSDALE by Joe R. Lansdale
• SAVAGE SEASON by Joe R. Lansdale
• THE TWO-BEAR MAMBO by Joe R. Lansdale
• VANILLA RIDE by Joe R. Lansdale
