Adventure Tales #4

Adventure Tales #4

by John Gregory Betancourt (Editor), Robert E. Howard (Contributor), Seabury Quinn (Contributor)

The fourth issue of Adventure Tales is a special "Weird Tales" tribute issue, featuring stories from contributors to the classic magazine, including Robert E. Howard ("Son of the White Wolf"), Seabury Quinn, John D. Swain, E. Hoffmann Price, Edwin Baird, and more!

92 pages, Paperback

First published February 22, 2007

About the author

John Gregory Betancourt is a writer of science fiction, fantasy and mystery novels as well as short stories. He has worked as an assistant editor at Amazing Stories and editor of Horror: The Newsmagazine of the Horror Field, the revived Weird Tales magazine, the first issue of H. P. Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror (which he subsequently hired Marvin Kaye to edit), Cat Tales magazine (which he subsequently hired George H. Scithers to edit), and Adventure Tales magazine. He worked as a Senior Editor for Byron Preiss Visual Publications (1989-1996) and iBooks. He is the writer of four Star Trek novels and the new Chronicles of Amber prequel series, as well as a dozen original novels. His essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in such diverse publications as Writer's Digest and The Washington Post.

Reviews

[Paul Cornelius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another collection of classic pulp adventure stories. This edition carries a good mix of detective stories, historical fiction, mystery, and wartime action. Opening with an intricate murder mystery, "The Monkey God" scatters a bit of disconcerting alien atmosphere within the closed setting of an isolated murder locale. "Double Shuffle," meanwhile, offers up a wry twist on the fate of the rich and the poor and how circumstances trumps nature. The least appealing tale might be "Every Man a King," a story about Tamerlane that really seems to plod along for the most part. Art, aspirations for success, and love dominate the storyline of "Blind Man's Bluff." "The Mad Detective," is a predictable, albeit very enjoyable crime story set amidst the forests and coasts of Maine, where a journalist and his wife find intuition flipped on its head and the wife proves the cleverer of the two. Robert E. Howard's World War I adventure in Turkey is the final story in the edition. It may be the most engaging of the lot, too. It's been interesting to read in these pulp magazines and adventure books about the war. There many more stories set in and around Turkey and the Arabian peninsula than I had ever imagined. I think the war in that theater lent itself to more romantic imagining than did the grim, bloody trenches of the Western Front. But whether reading Mundy, Buchan, or Achmed Abdullah, it's clear that landscape drew adventure writers to it. Howard's story is graphic and bloody, for its time, but also filled with notions of frustrated honor meeting head on with betrayal and self serving greed. I think I'll look for another of these adventure compilations.