Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life

Rating:
Summary: A lot of fun
Review: Doc Savage is one of those enduring pulp icons who will always have a cult following no matter how many years pass since his heyday. The creation of writer Lester Dent, Doc Savage was a combination private eye/crusading scientist/super hero who, with the help of his loyal assistant, managed to defeat some of the most evil threats that mankind has ever had to face. Certainly a bit corny but always a great deal of fun, the Doc Savage tales were always amongst the best of their type and, as the world continues to get more and more complicated, there's something wonderfully reassuring about entering into Doc Savage's world and discovering that evil can always be defeated by one bronze skinned genius. For this reason, Doc Savage continues to maintain a loyal fan base into the present day. One of these fans was the late science fiction writer Phillip Jose Farmer (creator of the Riverworld series and several other underground classics). Farmer wrote Doc Savage, His Apocalyptic Life as an obvious labor of love. While he goes out of his way to try to accurately document the mythos of Doc Savage (though some critics are correct when they point out that he sometimes draws conclusions that are far more Farmer than Dent), Farmer does so with a welcomed tone of uptmost (if still bemused) seriousness. Treating this book as not just a long fan letter but instead as an actual biography of an actual man, Farmer affords Doc Savage fans a dignity that others who have attempted to write about classic pulp icons haven't.

The book to a certain extent acts as a sequel to Farmer's better known (but, to me, of lesser quality) Tarzan Alive. As in the Tarzan book, Farmer concludes with lengthy and imaginative geneaology in which he manages (with not too many excessive liberties taken with their established canons) to show that every pulp hero was in some way related. Along with Tarzan, Doc Savage is soon to be related to Bulldog Drummond, James Bond, Nero Wolfe, The Scarlet Pimpernil, Prof. Challenger, the Shadow, and just about anyone else you could think of. No, its not meant to be taken seriously but, like the original Doc Savage stories themselves, its still a lot of fun.

Rating:
Summary: Really fun to read and think about...
Review: I first read Doc Savage's adventures in the 60s, as did many others. I found the books to be of varying quality, and that they were very dated. They might have been good for kids of the 1930s, but by the 60s, there was much more sophisticated fare available. However, there is something about Doc and his crew. That "something" is the fact that anybody can see their favorite superhero in there...somewhere. Superman, Batman, Hercules, Bruce Lee, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, even Mr. Spock. They are all there. Farmer does a wonderful job relating literary characters to one another and linking their superheroness to radiation exposure experienced by an ancestor. This book follows Doc's life and attempts to thread the adventures togther, biography fashion, with illuminations here and there. It is a wild adventure, and one to be savored. Read "Tarzan Alive", sort of a companion volume, for Tarzan's "genealogy". I, for one, would love to see Doc Savage given a more adult treatment by a good writer. Farmer attempts this here, and in "Lord of the Trees" and "The Mad Goblin", but falls short, for reasons that should be clear to anybody that has read those books. Anyway, I only gave this four stars because one should be a Doc Savage fan to really get the meat out of it. It is a good, fun read.

Rating:
Summary: this is a fun book
Review: This book is the biography of a fictional pulp hero of the 30's and 40's, and farmer has a lot of fun with the concept. He brings into the book references to almost every heroic character of the first half of the century from tarzan to now obscure figures like g-8 to the shadow. But focuses on doc savage and his team of helpers. It' a glimpse into a bygone era of pulp magazines and movie serials in which your parents and grandparents grew up.

Rating:
Summary: must have primer for doc savage fans
Review: whether a long time fan or if you've only recently discovered the Man of Bronze, this is a must have. While Farmer does take some liberties with (supposed) origins and fates of characters, neo- and longtime fans will find this book invaluable.