Wesley Britton's Blog - Posts Tagged "simon-templer"

When you think of Simon Templer—Leslie Charteris’s The Saint—odds are you don’t think of science fiction. However, over the decades of his print, radio, TV and film incarnations, sci fi was indeed one of many genres where the “Robin Hood of Modern Crime” found himself involved with strange and bizarre adventures.

In fact, in 1966 author Leslie Charteris claimed he worried about issuing new editions of his older Saint books capitalizing on the fame of Roger Moore whose picture would adorn new TV tie-in paperbacks. In his “Forward” to the new re-publication of his 1931 Alias The Saint, Charteris wondered if he should update the old tales. He admitted the archaic telecommunications and transportation technologies in The Saint’s early adventures had changed significantly. In a similar “Foreword” to his 1965 edition of The Saint Overboard (1935), Charteris said his Jules Verne-like machines used by mad scientists were outdated as quickly as the books went to print, making his futuristic aqualungs and bathyspheres commonplace and uninteresting thirty years later. So Charteris said he was reluctant to bring out new editions thinking readers would be better served by new books with new settings and new topical references. He decided to advise readers to consider his older books “historical fiction” because of the dated references.

He had a point. As chronicled in the opening pages of The Saint in New York (1934), The Saint’s first adventures included thwarting political assassinations and destroying mad scientists who'd created diabolical weapons Templer feared would instigate rather than deter war, situations that often foreshadowed actual historical events culminating in World War II. According to SF editor Martin Greenberg’s introduction to The Fantastic Saint (1982), Templer’s battles with such mad scientists began with 1930’s The Last Hero (a.k.a. The Saint Closes the Case), published just two years after the character’s debut in Meet the Tiger (1928). In The Last Hero, Templer stumbled upon a secret British government installation where he witness the testing of a deadly and mysterious weapon—the electroncloud machine. The machine created a vapor capable of turning anything it touches into ash. As the plot unfolded, Templer discovered the inventor is insane and determines the scientist must die and his formula destroyed to keep it from falling into the hands of “the ungodly”—Templer’s term for his criminal adversaries.

The 1982 Fantastic Saint anthology of six short stories edited by Greenberg includes the most overt sci fi/supernatural Templer adventures originally published between 1932 and 1959 in various magazines. The collection opens with “The gold standard,” which is mostly the usual Saint fare with Templer matching wits with Inspector Teale of Scotland Yard and a criminal who’s kidnapped a gullible scientist who can transform base metals into gold. That machine is the only real sci fi trapping for this quick and rather predictable read. Likewise, the second story, "The Newdick Helicopter" deals with an inventor who purports to have created a helicopter capable of feats no other flying machine can, but this rather unsatisfactory short, short story is really all about a small-time flim-flam.

"The Man Who Liked Ants" is the first of the yarns that really fits the sci fi label with a deranged biologist who has created a race of giant ants the professor believes will inherit the earth and replace man. The story is full of scientific jargon from the professor before Templer steps in to end the frightening and deadly menace.

“The questing tycoon” veers into the supernatural when the Saint rescues a voodoo priestess with prophetic powers before he meets a tycoon who wants the power to create zombies to be his laborers. He tries to make Templer into a zombie not knowing the priestess has created a charm that prevents this before she turns the table on the evil tycoon, the very definition of the “ungodly.”

"The Darker Drink" is perhaps the most difficult tale to categorize except perhaps as a dream within a dream. In it, Templer is alone in a cabin when a strange man named Big Bill Holbrook—maybe that’s his name, he’s not sure--stumbles in, claiming he’s trapped in a dream he cannot escape and the Saint must be part of his dream. Then an entrancing woman joins the mix followed by three gangsters who seem to kill the Saint.

But Templer awakens in the cabin unscathed and finds his way to Holbrook’s home and discovers he has died in bed talking about the Saint. An odd story that’s certainly fantastic and very atypical of the usual Charteris story with a logical conclusion with all loose ends tidied up. Not this time.

Appropriately, the collection concludes with "The Convenient Monster," in which a Scottish policeman asks the Saint to help investigate murders of animals that might be committed by the Loch Ness monster. Templer thinks a bit of human trickery might be involved; in the end, he’s proved half correct. A very human killer is discovered with the device she thought would cover her crimes, but “Nessie” makes a dramatic cameo that Templer witnesses. It’s the monster that takes out the scheming woman who’s been trying to frame him. Or her. Or it. In short, it’s a conclusion with both a plausible solution blended with the fantastic.

The Saint and Science

Once The Saint became a regular TV series, Charteris relied on many other authors to craft new stories, both teleplays and print adaptations he edited for publication. For example, in 1964, sci fi author Harry Harrison wrote Vendetta for the Saint that became a TV movie starring Roger Moore and the novelization of that story. Then, in 1978, Terence Feely wrote a teleplay for the Return of The Saint series, “The Imprudent Professor.” It was a story adapted by Graham Weaver for The Saint in Trouble, a book of two such adaptations. I mention it here as that story focused on a professor who had perfected solar panels long before their common use. The professor’s work was opposed by energy companies not eager for this new technology that would erode their profits even as the Russians do all they can to lure the scientist to work for them in Moscow.

“The Imprudent Professor” is by no stretch of the imagination a sci fi story. The solar panels are merely a MacGuffin in a straightforward Soviet vs. Western intelligence power play, a very typical espionage plot. Still, there are things of interest here. For one matter, clearly, Charteris approved of Weaver’s interpretation of the Saint character which included some interesting thoughts on what Templer thought of scientists.

In the first pages of “The Imprudent Professor,” Templer muses on his distrust of scientists, believing most important discoveries were stumbled on to by accident. For every useful breakthrough was an offsetting discovery that brought with it disastrous consequences. On a personal level, Templer remembered it was a mad scientist who destroyed his anonymity in The Last Hero. He admits his knowledge of science wouldn’t fill the back of a post card.

What these notes might tell us about what Leslie Charteris felt about scientists is probably negligible, although it’s fun to speculate about why he was among so many 20th century writers who found egotistical or power-hungry masterminds frequent adversaries for their earthier heroes. The Saint first appeared in the aftermath of World War I and many of his adventures took place in the decades leading up to World War II where Charteris could show his prescience for what was coming. Of course, many of his later stories were set in Cold War contexts where agents of the East and West vied for technological advantages whenever opportunity was laid before them.

So seeing The Saint in fantastic situations, especially when cutting-edge technology could be dangerous to humanity, shouldn’t be surprising, especially for a writer who used a wide palate of plotlines and circumstances to create variety in his yarns. On one side, giant ants and the Loch Ness Monster; on the other, technology that could tip the outcomes of both hot and cold wars. No wonder, from 1928 to the present, we’ve always needed a Saint.