FORGOTTEN BOOK: THE BIG BOOK OF ADVENTURE STORIES

The Big Book of Adventure Stories edited by Otto Penzler (2011)


Yes, you're right.  This is not really a forgotten book.  But it is a fantastic book loaded with great stories, many by writers unjustly forgotten.

Over the past few years, Penzler has compiled a number of large themed doorstop anthologies (The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories, The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulp, The Vampire Archives, The Big Book of Ghost Stories, The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories, The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked Room Stories, among others) -- measuring nearly a thousand pages or more and containing a wide variety of mainly unfamiliar stories.

The Big Book of Adventure Stories contains forty-two stories, covering 874 pages of double column small type -- enough excitement to keep the reader up into the wee hours for many nights. Here are The Cisco Kid and Hopalong Cassidy, Tarzan and Sheena, Bulldog Drummond and The Scarlet Pimpernel, Zorro and Allan Quatermain, and so many more...

It's hard to pick favorites, but I'm leaning toward toward two stories by George F. Worts, a mainstay of the pulps -- one a Peter the Brazen story under the pseudonym "Loring Brent," the other a tale of Singapore Sammy under Worts' real name.

Here's the line-up:

Sword and Sorcery

• "The Golden Snare" by Farnham Bishop & Arthur Gilchrist Brodeau [a Lady Fulvia story]
• "The Devil in Iron" by Robert E. Howard [a Conan story]
• "The Mighty Manslayer" by Harold Lamb [a Khlit the Cossack story]
• "The Seven Black Priests" by Fritz Leiber [a Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story]

Meglomania Rules

• "The Master Magician" by "Loring Brent" (George F. Worts) [a Peter the Brazen story]
• "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Cornell
• "The Man Who Would Be King" by Rudyard Kipling
• "The Wings of Kali" by "Grant Stockbridge" (Norvell Page) [a Richard Wentworth "The Spider" story]

Man Versus Nature

• "The White Silence" by Jack London
• "Sredni Vashtur" by "Saki" (H. H. Munro)
• "The Seed from the Sepulcher" by Clark Ashton Smith
• "Leiningen versus the Ants" by Carl Stephenson
• "The Sea Raiders" by H. G. Wells

Island Paradise

• "Hell Cay" by Lester Dent [first publication]
• "Off the Mangrove Coast" by Louis L'Amour
• "The Golden Anaconda" by Elmer Brown Mason [a Wandering Smith story]
• "Shanghai Jim" by Frank L. Packard
• "The Python Pit" by George F. Worts [a Singapore Sammy story]

Sand and Sun

• "The Soul of a Turk" by "Achmed Abdullah" (Alexander Nicholayevitch Romanoff)
• "Pease Waits at Marokee" by H. Bedford-Jones
• "Nor Idolatry Blind the Eye" by "Gabriel Hunt" (Charles Ardai) [a Gabiel Hunt extract from Hunt Though the Cradle of Fear]
• "The Soul of a Regiment" by "Talbot Mundy" (William Lancaster Gribbon)
• "Snake-Head" by Theodore Roscoe (a Thibault Corday story)
• "Suicide Patrol" by Georges Surdez
• "A Gentleman of Color" by P. C. Wren [a Geste Brothers story]

Something Feels Funny

• "After King Kong Fell" by Philip Jose Farmer
• "Moonlight Sonata" by Alexander Woolcott

Go West, Young Man

• "The Caballo's Way" by "O. Henry" (William Sidney Porter) [a the Cisco Kid story]
• "Zorro Deals with Treason" by Johnston McCulley [a Zorro story]
• "Hopalong's Hop" by Clarence E. Mulford [a Hopalong Cassidy story]

Future Shock

• "The Girl in the Golden Atom" by Ray Cummings [a Golden Atom story]
• "To Serve Man" by Damon Knight
• "Armageddon -- 2419 A.D." by Philip Francis Nowlan [an Anthony "Buck" Rogers story]

I Spy

• "Women in Love" by Geoffrey Household
• "MacHinery and the Cauliflowers" by Alistair MacLean
• "Wheels within Wheels" by H. C. McNeile [a Bulldog Drummond story]
• "A Question of Passports" by Baroness Orczy [a Scarlet Pimpernel story]
• "Intelligence" by Rafael Sabatini

Yellow Peril

• "The Copper Bowl" by George Fielding Eliot
• "The Hand of the Mandarin Quong" by "Sax Rohmer" (Arthur Sarsfield Ward)

In Darkest Africa

• "The Green Wildebeest" by John Buchan [a Richard Hannay story]
• "The Slave  Brand of Sleman bin Ali" by "James Anson Buck" (house name; author not known) [a Sheena, Queen of the Jungle story]
• "Fire" by L. Patrick Green [an Aubrey St. John Major story]
• "Hunter Quatermain's Story" by H. Rider Haggard [an Allan Quatermain story]
• "Bosambo of Monrovia" by Edgar Wallace [a Sanders of the River story]
• "Black Cargo" by Cornell Woolrich
• Tarzan the Terrible by Edgar Rice Burroughs [a Tarzan novel]

A few familiar stories, some familiar characters, some unfamiliar faces, and a goldmine of great reading!

Recommended.