The Argosy Book of Adventure Stories

by Rogers Terrill (Editor), Pat Frank, Vern Sneider

An anthology of fifteen adventure stories taken from the pages of Argosy Magazine.
Includes "Forward"; "Pickles and Pearls" by Desmond Hall; "Run for Your Life!" by Rui Chestor; "The Madman" by Pat Frank; "Calculated Risk" by George C. Appell; "Murder Tavern" by Howard Bloomfield; "The Sharks Were Hungry" by Dorothy Cottrell; "A Long Way from Home" by Vern Sneider; "Passage to Kentucky" by Everett M. Webber; "Danger Wears Two Faces" by John Wells; "The Lady and the Tumblers" by Merle Costiner; "Water Is for Washing" by Robert Heinlein; "Flame on the Frontier" by Dorothy M. Johnson; "One Guy, One Gal, One Island" by William Holder; "The Skipper Played It Safe" by Davis Lott; "Burn Him Out" by Frank Bonham.

Genres: Adventure

281 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 1953

Reviews

[Benjamin Thomas]

A very nice collection of vintage tales originally published in Argosy magazine in the late 1950s. "Adventure stories" encompass everything from medieval warfare, western Indian fighting, WW1, WW2, knights in shining armor, and all the way to a man being shipwrecked on an island with a beautiful woman.

[Rafeeq O.]

The Argosy Book of Adventure Stories of 1952 edited by Rogers Terrill is a time capsule of postwar popular "men's adventure" literature. "The yen for adventure--the urge to go free-wheeling out to the far, strange places of the world--is as common a male complaint as spring fever, and just as incurable," according to Terrill's Foreword. Yet "[f]or most of us," he shrugs, "it's a kind of life-long, not unpleasant itch" that "can only be scratched vicariously; if we can't go adventuring ourselves, the next best thing is to read about the adventuring of others" (1952 Barnes hardcover, page v). This, naturally, is where the once-commonly seen magazine Argosy comes in. And though Argosy had been around since 1882, "authors, like other men, are mortal. The names change with the years, and story style changes, too," so here "no story is older than the end of World War II" (page v). This anthology thus represents some of the best that Terrill in his editorship "liked...and enjoyed reading" (page vi) over the previous mere half-dozen years.

And how to approach this work? Well, mainly, we need to take it in context. That is, the late 1940s and early 1950s are what they are--we may sigh here and there about "race" and gender relations in this book, for example, but if we actually wanted to complain about these shortcomings in indignant surprise...well, that would be, at best, very silly, wouldn't it? Downright doofusistic, I would argue. We may not, indeed should not, agree with every idea here, unthought-out and smugly unquestioned though some obviously are, such as even the idea that the "far...places of the world" are "strange," but when we purposefully chose a book of popular adventure stories from this era, we knew what we were getting ourselves into, right?

In this book we will find characters like a plucky young teenager trying to get work on a schooner captained by an "old boozer" (page 14) so that he can make the dough needed for a lawyer to clear his feckless pa from a frameup, an Australian Aborigine whose eventual entrance into the white man's world appears nothing but good, a quiet Captain of the French Foreign Legion who apparently Has A Dark Secret To Atone For, a homeless Korean orphan lured into the U.S. Army by three hots and cot to shore up shaky defenses on the eve of a big Communist push and who ultimately Finds His Place Among The GIs, a mountain climber secretly scarred by a partner's years-ago death and both intrigued by yet wary of The Icy Lady Of Mysterious Past, taciturn Western ranchers hopelessly but staunchly fighting a plague of locusts, and others--in fifteen stories, to be exact. It's easy to be a little flippant about some of these things, especially from the all-knowing Olympian heights of 70 years hence, but in general these tales are entertaining, some very much so.

My own favorites here, I believe, are Pat Frank's 1947 "The Madman," Merle Costinger's 1950 "The Lady and the Tumblers," and of course Robert A. Heinlein's 1947 "Water Is for Washing," which, since I happen to be a reader, critic, and collector of Heinlein, is the reason I purchased this book.

Frank's "The Madman" is one those then-new post-Hiroshima stories about forest tribesmen whose "Teller of Tales" recounts the familiar history about the men of the fabled past being "gods" who "lived in unimaginable splendor" inside of "cliffs that touched the clouds" (page 41). One of their fellows, though, is termed The Madman because of his iconoclasm. The restlessly inventive and philosophical Madman wants to experiment upon a strange shiny cylinder his people consider a god but which may remind readers of the mid-century vogue of burying time capsules, and then-- Well, you see. It's a tad stagy now, but the tale is hauntingly evocative of the early postwar era, when the threat of the atom bomb was shockingly new and seemingly unavoidable.

Costinger's "The Lady and the Tumblers," set in 1838, begins,

"My great-grandfather was an instructor in the backsword and quarterstaff and was known as Bone-Crusher; my grandfather, also known as Bone-Crusher, was famed for his cutlass play and skill in the prize ring. My father was a professional strong man and pugilist and took the name of Stone-Crusher. The true name of all these men, including my own, was James Thomas Smith. All were wanderers and inn players, rough, hard men, men against the world, but men fanatically steadfast in devotion to family. My mother was killed by a horse in an inn yard in Savannah; I have no clear memory of her." (page 171)

After that paragraph, I'm hooked--admitted. The story really is charming, especially because of the twelve-year-old narrator's roguishly theatrical yet fiercely principled father. Stone-Crusher can read the room with a slow sweep of his practiced eye, and know who will be trouble and who will be a coin-tossing customer. After leaving "an evil inn"--and "[r]oadmen such as [they] have many ways of telling a tavern's honesty at a glance" (page 172)--at which the narrator has stumbled upon a murder, the father quips, "Just another day... Ho-hum" (page 178). The boy then glimpses his father's black eye and bloody nose and wonders if "the innkeeper show[ed] fight"; the man admits that indeed that shady fellow and "a herd of his friends" did, "[b]ut they had a lot to learn about fighting," and in the youth's reply of "They know now" (page 178) is an endearing, masterfully understated sort of pride. There are, moreover, many wonderfully droll witticisms and situations here, along with the dogged determination of Stone-Crusher, who, after finally telling the boy exactly how his mother died, "declare[s]" flatly, regarding the lady of this story beset by villains, that he will "[n]ever again...permit a killer, man or beast, to ride down a helpless woman" (page 185).

Heinlein's "Water Is for Washing" starts with a classically Heinleinian turn of phrase: "He judged the [Imperial] Valley was hotter than usual--but, then, it usually was" (page 209). An unnamed motorist stopping in for a quick snort comments to the barkeep that his chaser is "just the right amount of water in the right place"--as a child he nearly was killed in a dam burst--but finds himself irked at the other's reminder that even this below-sea-level desert could be flooded if just the right earthquake hit (pages 209-210). Of course, you know what happens when a broad hint like that is dropped in the first two pages of a story, right? Especially if someone then scoffs about the workings of undeniable natural forces, and especially if the author is Heinlein, right?

Right. The motorist indeed is something of a jackass, but he learns--he learns. His pooh-hooing of the workings of tectonics across the sweep of geologic ages, as if The Big One could never come again, of course is anti-survival-oriented and foolish, though I confess I don't begrudge him much for the manner in which, when he finds a man with "pale, shifty eyes" and "hands and nails...dirty, but not with the dirt of work," burglarizing his glove compartment, he shoos the fellow away with a gruff "On your way, bum" rather than give the fellow a ride back to Los Angeles (pages 210-11). Later, though, as the catastrophic earthquake-released flood roars down upon them and he has just saved an injured little girl on the side of the road, when the girl says to stop for "a Nisei boy" who is "hurrying toward them," his first reaction is "Huh? Never mind. Just a goddam Jap" (page 213)... Not cool. But he does learn--he does. He does the right thing now, and he helps "the tramp" (page 219), too...and after the seeming mere bum has shown, as Heinlein will put it in his 1958 young-adult novel Have Space Suit--Will Travel, that "[d]ie trying is the proudest human thing," the motorist will make a simple, yet solemn and heartfelt gesture that is not cheesy but touching.

Oh-- And I enjoyed William Holder's 1946 "One Guy, One Gal, One Island" as well. On the one hand, an honest Joe coming back from the service and getting slapped with a divorce by a two-timing hussy--"She had been that kind of woman. He wondered if there was any other kind" (page 243)--can peg the misogyny-meter if you ignore both the then-commonness of the trope and also the obvious fact that Holder is going to turn this once-burned jerk into something besides his current mistrusting grouch. Yes, it may not be super-subtle, but I found it fun, and after a shipwreck caused by an old sea mine, there's a tropic island, and a great cache of guns and supplies from the war, and a unit of marauding Japanese holdouts, and friendly natives in canoes, and pearls and pigs and all sorts of "adventure" stuff. And of course there's the cover art of the original 1952 hardcover as well: The painting shows, amid palms and sand, a man aiming down the sights of a Springfield '03 while a woman in shorts and a halter, concerned but competent and similarly rifle-armed, comes to back him up. This is my kind of gal, and I was very glad to find that such cover art was not just random but indeed did illustrate one of the stories.

The Argosy Book of Adventure Stories is not a text that will help us determine whether we should defund the police, merely frown at old Confederate statues or take them down, or abolish the gender check-box on birth certificates. It is, however, when taken in the context of its time of writing and hence approached with an open mind, quite a decent 4-star read of escapist, and naturally complacent, midcentury "adventure" fiction.

[Skjam!]

This collection of exciting tales of action and bravery plucked from the pages of Argosy, the long-running pulp magazine, is most notable for only choosing from those printed between 1946 and 1952, when the collection was published. Thus it had, at the time, a more “modern” feel than many other such collections which dipped their ladle further back. Make no mistake, though; these fifteen stories are very much in the pulp tradition.

The book opens with “Pickles and Pearls” by Desmond Hall, which it turns out I have read in another collection. Griff Beard, a young man who desperately needs money to hire a lawyer for the purpose of having his falsely convicted father released from prison, has managed to get himself stranded in the South Pacific without money. A trading ship captain finally agrees to let him on board if Griff will perform a small service for him.

There’s a recluse on another island who has a stash of pearls, but is understandably stingy with them. The only things he’ll trade for are pickles and jam and then only small amounts for one pearl. But the man is a known fanatic for gambling. If Griff agrees to go to the other island with a stake of comestibles, and play cards with the recluse for a month or so, the trader captain will then give passage to New Guinea for half his winnings. Understandably, Griff agrees. He soon learns, however, that there’s some information the captain neglected to tell him.

It’s a comic tale with a punchline; enjoyable but about average in writing.

The closing story is “Burn Him Out” by Frank Bonham. Rancher Will Starrett is helping one of his neighbors deal with a plague of grasshoppers. Things are looking pretty dire, and a couple of the other neighbors suggest putting the ranch to the torch in an effort to kill the hoppers before they can move on to destroy their lands as well. Starrett objects to them trying to force the landowner into this decision. Fortunately, the wind shifts and the grasshoppers move into the wilderness before the neighbor is ruined.

Too soon, however, the grasshoppers return, this time on Starrett’s land, and it is he that has to make the hard decisions. One man’s jealousy may force his hand. A solid Western story that makes a good ending.

Also of note:

“The Madman” by Pat Frank is post-apocalyptic science fiction that reads like a caveman story for most of the wordage. The titular “madman” invents, or rather, re-invents the bow and arrow, gaining prestige in his tribe. He’s then given access to the idol the Fish People have been worshipping for years, only to discover that it’s actually a time capsule. The ending is then his distant descendant gushing over how restoring the civilization of 1940s America, but without the bad bits, was a total success. Yeah. The ending really weakens the story.

“Murder Tavern” by Howard Bloomfield starts promisingly enough. Young Kirby Bacon becomes a slaveowner in 1820 Maryland due to the suicide of his father. By page two, he’s freed the slave, and spends most of the story trying to not have his friend re-enslaved, despite the actions of the owner of the title tavern. This is all good stuff. However, at the end we learn Mr. Bacon is not really against slavery as all, as he agrees to become the overseer on the Virginia plantation of the girl he also rescued. Eek.

“A Long Way from Home” by Vern Snider is a story of the Korean War told from the perspective of Kim Won Il, a Korean national whose village has been bombed out, and facing starvation, has agreed to work with an American military unit. He’s renamed “Patrick Tobin” and assigned a “buddy”, Mason, to try and get him up to speed during the accelerated training.

At first, Mason resents being saddled with this seemingly witless boy, who can’t even remember his “Irish” name, and things go poorly. But Kim is a quick study and more cunning than he initially appears or thinks of himself, and along with another displaced villager, “Desmond Fitzgerald”, becomes a fine soldier. Mason eventually dies after a successful mission and fully recognizing Kim as an equal. Then Kim is assigned a new “buddy” from the Americans, but now he is the capable veteran who must show the newcomers the ropes.

A nice touch is Kim’s having to deal with a book-smart countryman who understands English and rubs it in Kim’s face that he’s of a superior social rank. At the end, the countryman has not been promoted, and when he tries to humiliate Kim, our protagonist points out that he’s a “guardhouse lawyer”, much to the amusement of the other soldiers.

“The Lady and the Tumblers” by Merle Constiner has the most awesome protagonists in this collection, James Thomas “Stonecrusher” Smith III, and his son James Thomas “Pebblecrusher” Smith IV, strongmen and acrobats who wander from inn to inn giving performances in the early Nineteenth Century. (The first and second James Thomas Smiths were both nicknamed “Bonecrusher.”) The inn they’ve come to this time is frequented by men of bad character, and a young woman needs rescuing.

Feats of strength, pugilism and agility are performed, but Stonecrusher is also a man of intelligence, and of righteousness. He needs all those qualities, and the help of his strapping son, to deal with the evil at hand. This story’s a keeper.

Robert A. Heinlein is now best remembered for his extensive work in the field of science fiction, but he also wrote more realistic adventure pulp stories. “Water Is for Washing” is the example here. It’s set in the Imperial Valley of California, as the nameless protagonist is visiting on business from Los Angeles. He’s a hard-edged, “I look out for number one” kind of guy, but with a weak point. After nearly drowning as a child, he has a phobia of bodies of water, so he likes being in this desert country.

The bartender he’s talking to reminds him that the Imperial Valley is below sea level, heavily foreshadowing what’s to come. Disgruntled, the protagonist goes back to his car and is mean to a tramp. (In fairness, the tramp is a petty thief.)

Sure enough, there’s an earthquake, and the valley begins to flood. Even though he’s most interested in saving his own skin, the protagonist is forced by his conscience to stop first for a little girl, then for a Japanese-American boy, and finally the tramp from earlier, who turns out to be helpful because he knows how to get to high ground. Will any of them survive the onrushing waters?

This is good work by Heinlein, though not quite his best stuff.

Content note: There’s some period racism and sexism, though it seems to have eased up some from pre-World War Two pulps. Notable is having a couple of non-Caucasian protagonists.

This collection doesn’t appear to have been reprinted past 1953, so it may be hard to find a copy, especially in good condition. But it is an excellent example of postwar-era adventure fiction, and some of the stories can be found elsewhere. Recommended to lovers of pulp adventure.