The Majii / The Golden Man

Doc Savage Sanctum Editions #9

by Kenneth Robeson (House Name)

Pulp fiction's legendary Man of Bronze returns in two of his most engrossing adventures. In "The Majii" (1935), a living dead man lures Doc Savage into an Aladdin's cavern of horror. Then, "The Golden Man" tests the scientific wizardry of the Man of Bronze, exposing deep secrets of Doc Savage's strange origins. These classic pulp thrillers are reproduced with the original color pulp covers by Walter Baumhofer and Emery Clarke, interior illustrations by Paul Orban, and articles by pulp historian Will Murray.

Genres: Pulp

128 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2007

About the author

Kenneth Robeson was the house name used by Street and Smith Publications as the author of their popular character Doc Savage and later The Avenger. Though most Doc Savage stories were written by the author Lester Dent, there were many others who contributed to the series, including:

William G. Bogart
Evelyn Coulson
Harold A. Davis
Lawrence Donovan
Alan Hathway
W. Ryerson Johnson

Lester Dent is usually considered to be the creator of Doc Savage. In the 1990s Philip José Farmer wrote a new Doc Savage adventure, but it was published under his own name and not by Robeson. Will Murray has since taken up the pseudonym and continued writing Doc Savage books as Robeson.

All 24 of the original stories featuring The Avenger were written by Paul Ernst, using the Robeson house name. In order to encourage sales Kenneth Robeson was credited on the cover of The Avenger magazine as "the creator of Doc Savage" even though Lester Dent had nothing to do with The Avenger series. In the 1970s, when the series was extended with 12 additional novels, Ron Goulart was hired to become Robeson.

Reviews

[Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting Doc Savage yarn by Lester Dent. The story begins on a cruise liner with Monk and Ham aboard along with many other people escaping the war in Europe. A mysterious Golden Man appears floating in the ocean with a five pointed black star above him in the sky. Upon bringing the Golden Man aboard, he appears able to know others that he has never met and predict events that eventually happen. A great premise for a story and a believable resolution at the conclusion of the book. However, two complaints I had. One was how did the ocean liner leaving Lisbon, Portugal and heading for New York City meet a tragic end off the coast of South America? Either poor seamanship by the captain and crew or poor geographical knowledge by the author. My second complaint was how two dimensional the characters were, more so than in other Doc Savage novels. For example, Monk and Hambarely argue, their pets get passing mention, Johnny barely uses big words, I believe once and at the very end of the story at that! It was because of these examples that I could only give it three stars. It just felt like a subpar effort by Lester Dent. Despite that, the story was a good one for a Doc Savage pulp fiction.

Authored by Lester Dent and published April, 1941.

[Steve]

Nice to revisit a classic in The Majii, which I read ages ago when it was first released in a Bantam reprint. First time reading The Golden Man. Supernatural descriptions are quite effective, even though this is a straight thriller. Pales a bit when compared to the Shadow reprints released by Sanctum in a different volume -- Serpents of Siva -- but the latter benefits from the approach of its protagonist; you can't really compare the crime-fighting methods of Superman and Batman.