Receive Zarkon, Lord Of The Unknown In The Nemesis Of Evil: A Case From The Files Of Omega Penned By Lin Carter Script

homage to the Doc Savage novels, but without all their mind numbing complexities, : In other words, fun but extremely light weight, Fun, emptyheaded pulpy goodness. Zarkon and his pals are a blatant ripoff/homage to Doc Savage and his gang right to down to Monk/Ham style bickering best friends, If you've already read allDoc Savage novels and are still hungry for more this will do the trick, Imagine that someone spent way too much time thinking about magicandmysticism elements and decided to form a secret cabal based on those ideas, And then decided to pay Lin Carter to write about their adventures, That would be funny, right Only kind of tiresome because Carter's prose is so heavyhanded, and at this time his emulation of Robert E, Howard was entrenched. When you're reading something and thinking that Howard wrote so much better that's probably not a good sign, Grade C. Book A. Nice homage to Doc Savage and pulps in general, It's an okay book, i would recommend if you like stories of good against evil where both try to outsmart each other but is like ''oh i already knew about your trap'', 'Ah, but already knew and prepared another trap'', stuff like this got kinda boring halfway through the book.
Someone once described Lin Carter as specfic methadone his knockoffs of Burroughs and Howard don't have the same kick, but they'll save you going cold turkey, So it is with his Doc Savage pastiche, Zarkon,
It's fun enough if you want a Doc Savage pastiche, it's just not a very good pulp adventure, After the initial murder an informant inside a sinister cult we go five chapters before we see more action lots of exposition, investigations and phone calls instead, And Carter's style makes Lester Dent look like Raymond Chandler an Irish supporting character seems to have learned dialogue froms Bmovies, Time is also out of joint it appears to be contemporary adventure i, e. ,s but one character mentions performing with Houdini, which would make him extremely old other books fudge the timeline similarly,
Carter drops a couple of Easter Egg references herein most notably to the radio/TV series Big Town but they got much more prominent in later books.
Lin Carter writes a very good modern version of a pulp style character and story, If you like the pulps, this series will interest you, These stories are similar to the Doc Savage and The Avenger pulps, If you enjoy the pulps you will love the tons of pulp references in this volume, Nice quick enjoyable read. Recommended This is the first tale of Zarkon, and as such comprises a bit more of the origin of the hero and his band of adventurers, This story set Zarkon against a villain who he apparently had faced before at some point in the past prior to the telling of this story, Having now read two of Carter's Zarkon tales, they comprise an homage to Doc Savage due to their similarity in composition of the group, etc, The story was entertaining and would make a great cartoon series , like Jonny Quest, basically resolving itself within a half hour or maybe an hour of TV time.
Just like

Doc Savage there are cool scientific gadgets, and ridiculous supporting cast characters and thrills and chills, just like the pulps of the old days, I did like that the traps put together by the villain did not seem too easy to get out of, and Carter spends a bit more time explaining escapes from traps than maybe he had to, but it was nice to see it explained a bit more fully, as opposed to "presto he escaped!" Oh well, not bad, but then again, maybe not as fun as the original, Doc Savage, either.
The first in Carter's Doc Savage takeoff series, I was a big Lin Cater fan in thes, buying everything he wrote and scouring the used book stores for his out of print work, I was also a Doc Savage fan, having read the Bantam reprints in thes and earlys,

From that perspective Zarkon was a real treat, I cant say I remember much about the book, except that I enjoyed it, a lot, Three Zarkon books were published inandand I always wanted more, A fourth finally came out in, And Ive read that a fifth exists, published in, but I've never seen a copy,

I enjoyed this series one of my favorites of Lin Carters but Im not sure how much appeal it would have to readers not familiar with Doc Savage.

If you know what you're getting into with this book and that is something you actually want, then this is a great little book, Linwood Vrooman Carter was an American author of science fiction and fantasy, as well as an editor and critic, He usually wrote as Lin Carter known pseudonyms include H, P. Lowcraft for an H. P. Lovecraft parody and Grail Undwin, Carter had a marked tendency toward self promotion in his work, frequently citing his own writings in his nonfiction to illustrate points and almost always including at least one of his own pieces in the anthologies he edited.
The most extreme instance is his novel Lankar of Callisto, which features Carter himself as the protagonist, As an author, he was a member of the all male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of Isaac Asimovs fictional group of mystery solvers the Black Wi Linwood Vrooman Carter was an American author of science fiction and fantasy, as well as an editor and critic.
He usually wrote as Lin Carter known pseudonyms include H, P. Lowcraft for an H. P. Lovecraft parody and Grail Undwin, Carter had a marked tendency toward self promotion in his work, frequently citing his own writings in his nonfiction to illustrate points and almost always including at least one of his own pieces in the anthologies he edited.
The most extreme instance is his novel Lankar of Callisto, which features Carter himself as the protagonist, As an author, he was a member of the all male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers the Black Widowers.
Carter himself was the model for the Mario Gonzalo character, He was also a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America SAGA, a loose knit group of Heroic fantasy authors founded in thes, some of whose work he anthologized in the Flashing Swords! series.
Carter is most closely associated with fellow author L, Sprague de Camp, who served as a mentor and collaborator and was a fellow member of both the Trap Door Spiders and SAGA, Carter served in Korea, after which he attended Columbia University, He was a copywriter for some years before writing full time, Carter resided in East Orange, New Jersey, in his later years, and drank and smoked heavily, It may have been his smoking that gave him oral cancer in, Only his status as a Korean War veteran enabled him to receive extensive surgery, However, it failed to cure the cancer and left him disfigured, In the last year before his death, he had begun to reappear in print with a new book in his Terra Magica series, a long promised Prince Zarkon pulp hero pastiche, Horror Wears Blue, and a regular column for the magazine Crypt of Cthulhu.
Despite these successes, Carter increased his alcohol intake, becoming a borderline alcoholic and further weakening his body, His cancer resurfaced, spreading to his throat and leading to his death in Montclair, New Jersey, in, sitelink.