Doc Savage: The Lost Radio Scripts Of Lester Dent

by Lester Dent, Tom Roberts (Artist)

Doc Savage is a physician, surgeon, scientist, adventurer, inventor, explorer, researcher, and musician - a renaissance man. A team of scientists (assembled by his father) trained his mind and body to near-superhuman abilities almost from birth, giving him great strength and endurance, a photographic memory, mastery of the martial arts and vast knowledge of the sciences. Dent described the hero as a mix of Sherlock Holmes' deductive abilities, Tarzan's outstanding physical abilities, Craig Kennedy's scientific education, and Abraham Lincoln's goodness. Lester Dent, a serious man of adventure himself, contributed to the legendary Black Mask Magazine some hard boiled/noir crime tales as well. This edition sports a cover by the also legendary Doc Savage cover artist Bob Larkin!

Genres: Action

447 pages, Paperback

First published July 29, 2007

About the author

Lester Dent (1904–1959) was born in La Plata, Missouri. In his mid-twenties, he began publishing pulp fiction stories, and moved to New York City, where he developed the successful Doc Savage Magazine with Henry Ralston, head of Street and Smith, a leading pulp publisher. The magazine ran from 1933 until 1949 and included 181 novel-length stories, of which Dent wrote the vast majority under the house name Kenneth Robeson. He also published mystery novels in a variety of genres, including the Chance Molloy series about a self-made airline owner. Dent’s own life was quite adventurous; he prospected for gold in the Southwest, lived aboard a schooner for a few years, hunted treasure in the Caribbean, launched an aerial photography company, and was a member of the Explorer’s Club.

Reviews

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

These were fun little short adventures. They really amount to vignettes, but then what can you expect from 15-minute adventure scripts. Too bad that there are not any recordings left of these so readers today could to listen to them.

[Stormcrow Hayes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, it's certainly a novelty for any hardcore Doc fan and really not for anyone else. It wouldn't even make for a good introduction since there are times the characters don't act like their more famous pulp counterparts. Doc can be a little pushy and impatient, Monk a little cruel, and... well, that's it. It's mostly Doc and Monk for the vast majority of these adventures.

The upside is that each adventure is really quick and I did enjoy them as the perfect short story before bed. They take about five minutes so you can read one or two and they read quickly, but there's little enough going on that your mind will easily drift to sleep when you're done.

These adventures are so short, they're sometimes just scenes from the books. For example, episode 4, The Sniper in the Sky, it just the opening of the very first Doc novel when someone attempts to kill Doc. It has all the same elements and the sniper is actually named Sniper. No, I'm not kidding.

The majority of the scripts, those that aired, are very short, involve Doc and Monk, and are all kind of the same. The start of each script lists the characters and more often than not, there's only four. So there isn't much mystery as to who is going to be behind the scheme (since two are our leads).

The book also has two versions of the first novel, both never aired, but interesting to see the different adaptations. The final script is a pitch for a regular series of cliffhangers instead of just a short episode. The adaptation is for The Polar Treasure. We have the first four parts before it just becomes a summary, but it includes the introduction of a new member of Doc's crew, a boy named Jimmy. Yes, they added a child sidekick and he's about as annoying as you'd expect. Actually, he's not too bad, but he keeps forgetting another character is blind and they go on about that too often.

All in all, the best part is the introduction that discusses the radio show which I didn't know existed. There are no known recordings that exist so all we have are these scripts. There's not even a record of who acted out the different voices! But if you're a Doc fan looking for something simple and easy to read before bedtime, you could do worse.

Oh, the Bob Larkin cover is fantastic.

[Keith Bowden · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amazing how Dent could actually pull off self-contained stories in about 12-13 minutes of air time. They may not always have been the smoothest of stories, but they served their purpose and some of them were quite good indeed.