The Fantastic Island

Doc Savage (Bantam) #14

by Kenneth Robeson (House Name), Lester Dent, W. Ryerson Johnson

WHO IS DOC SAVAGE?

To the world at large, Doc Savage is a strange, mysterious figure of glistening bronze skin and golden eyes. To his amazing co-adventurers - the five greatest brains ever assembled in one group - he is a man of superhuman strength and protean genius, whose life is dedicated to the destruction of evil-doers. To his fans he is one of the greatest adventure heroes of all time, whose fantastic exploits are unequalled for hair-raising thrills, breathtaking escapes and bloodcurdling excitement.



It looked just like any other deserted island. But hidden under its tropical sands was a monstrous slave empire, a vast underground network of death pits, giant carnivorous crabs and prehistoric beasts,, ruled by the blood-crazed Count Ramadanoff. Blasting their way into this nightmare of horror, Doc Savage and "the fabulous five" embark on their most daring adventure.

Genres: Adventure, Pulp, Science Fiction, Fiction, Mystery, Fantasy, Action

135 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 1966

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

[Steve Libbey · Rating 3 out of 5]

What I learned from this book:

1. Train your body and mind to be perfect
2. Master all languages and sciences
3. Hide a hundred secret spy devices in your clothes
4. Master every weapon and martial art
5. Team up with five weird, violent geniuses of various specialties
6. Defeat _________
7. Repeat for 181 adventures.

I have a lot of catching up to do.

[Tobin Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

A middle of the road adventure, not horrible, not *ahem* fantastic.

The big strength here is, for the first time in a long time, the whole band is back together, all five of the aides are here, as well as the, as usual, completely underutilized Pat Savage. Honestly, I don't even know why she's included in these adventures, as she very typically has no influence on the plot.

This one was a touch more grounded than the last one, but the method of the villain murdering his foes was...absolutely ridiculous. And the promised dust up between Romanov and Doc? Yeah, it was over in a paragraph. Total let down.

So, as per usual, enjoyable in spots, silly in others.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Fantastic Island is a "Doc Savage" novel by Kenneth Robeson. Kenneth Robeson was the house name Street and Smith Publications used as the author of their popular Doc Savage novels. 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, and W. Ryerson Johnson.
I love reading these old pulp novels from time to time. I read about 80%+ of the Doc Savage novels when I was a teenager but that was a very long time ago. I have been trying to find them again in the Bantam editions I read in my youth. I have found several of them in used bookstores and have bought several from online aftermarket bookstores.
In this one, Doc Savage and his men are in the thick of it again. The action is classic Doc Savage, filled with good old-fashioned adventure and gadgets that always seem to be there when the hero needs them. You can relax and escape for a little while. A good read in the Doc Savage series.

[Michael Emond · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thanks to another reviewer I found out this book was not written by the regular writer Lester Dent (whom I had assumed wrote all the Doc Savage pulp stories under the pseudonym "Kenneth Robeson") but by the writer Ryerson Johnson.

This is my second Doc Savage book and I am reading them out of historical curiosity. Doc Savage was one of the big pulp heroes of the time and his adventures gave rise - in some part - to the comic book heroes that followed. I knew going in they would not be great literature but they could still be fun. I do appreciate they are all ~130 pages so a quick read.

This was a readable adventure but man there was a lot of padding and not a lot of clever plotting to the story. I will spoil it a bit so be warned.

I understand you have to get right into the story and man this one does that at the cost of any logic. We start off with the fact one of Doc Savage's team of 5 was lost in sea so 2 more of the team are out to look for him. But actually there are 6 on his team because Pat (Doc Savage's female cousin) is along for the ride. So right away it is a very small world where 1 member happens to be on the missing ship and 2 of them happen to be searching for him. They get lured to a Mysterious Island - get captured and are put to work digging for the Devil's Honeycomb. When they get captured they meet up with Count Ramadanoff who has been luring ships for years to his island to put the captured people to work digging for the Devil's Honeycomb. Also - there is the thumbprint of death that befalls people. A sudden death where a welt the size of a thumbprint appears in their head. Also the Count likes to show people the 100 foot tall Iguana he has to freak them out. So we have established the three mysteries - what is the Devil's Honeycomb? What causes the thumbprint of death? and should we be freaked out about the iguana being so big? And let me tell you - I was NOT intrigued.

We switch to Doc Savage in NY who is going to find out 4 of his friends are captured and the guy who captured them has a brother that escaped the island and might help the Doc. But first Doc escapes the worst assassination attempt ever - someone threw a poisonous centipede in the lobby of the building where he lives and it killed one of a 100 random people not him. Go figure. Later in the novel you might ask "why did Ramadanoff try to kill Doc - he lured him to the island to help him search for the Devil's Honeycomb" but you will find the author is more interested in action sequences not logic.
Also this poisonous centipede thing doesn't go anywhere to advance the plot.

What then followed is literally three scenes of Doc being captured by Ramadanoff's helpers and him escaping because he has some scientific hidden on his person to either blind them, knock them out with gas, or eat through the metal of his cuffs. Needless to say - it gets repetitive. For all of Doc's brilliance you will see he is easily captured and his 5 aides are interchangeable and useless. But two of them like to bicker a lot. And one of them has a pet pig.

I will skip ahead a bit but Doc and his remaining aides make it to the island but crash the plan because it turns out the Count's brother was still evil and only pretending to not be evil to either kill or lure Doc to the island...they can't make up their mind. Doc was needed to help find the Devil's Honeycomb - and after getting captured a few times he finds the boat that brought the Ramadanoff brother's to the island decades ago and that is good news for the brothers because IT contains a compass that will help them find the Devil's Honeycomb at last! By the way it turns out they are NOT the brothers Ramadanoff but just posing as that guy because...no reason. It is a huge twist for no reason. Turns out the read Ramadanoff fled Russian decades ago with a lot of jewels and crashed on the island but the brothers are the only ones of the crew that survived. Also - the Devil's Honeycomb is one of many jewels in the loot so it is odd they are focused on that instead of saying "we are searching for 10 chests of jewels". Also - why weren't they looking for the ship (with the compass) that was very easy to find - and why were they digging such small holes? Doc said it was because what they were searching for must be small but it turns out it was chests filled with jewels that were very large - the Devils' Honeycomb was only one item in those chests. Also the big Iguana was actually a regular iguana but the prisoners only saw it through a magnifying window...don't worry about it - the twist doesn't go anywhere. Also the thumbprint of dumb was caused by the jewel in the brother's ring be hurled at such a speed it pierced your skull and why not use a gun? Because we need mysteries!!

I guess in the end - after the Ramadanoff brothers predictably die - I felt sorry for them. They had spend decades trapping ships and working the people on those ships to death digging small holes on the island to look for jewels to make them rich but they could have just been enjoying life or done a quick tour of the island to find their missing ship and saved all those lives and decades. Doc found the ship in 5 minutes so surely they could have found it too instead of building a huge castle..with wired floors...with magnifying glass windows to freak people out when they saw regular size iguanas..training themselves to hurl an emerald so fast it pierced people's skulls (could they have been famous baseball pitchers? Probably!)...disguising themselves as Ramadanoff to impress nobody...I mean when they got the jewels they would have probably just used the wealth to buy a nice home on an island...oh wait! they already had that.

Take home message - don't become obsessed with buried jewels just because they contain one item you decided to call the Devil's Honeycomb even though nobody in their right mind would name a bunch of gems the Devil's Honeycomb unless they wanted readers to think it was something mysterious and not just a bunch of jewels. Calling it "a shit load of gems" would spoil the mystery.

Did I enjoy this book? No. Was I fascinated by how illogical it was? You bet. It gives me hope - I too could one day spend one week writing a 130 pages of a Doc Savage story that made no sense because I didn't plot it out ahead of time.

[MR MICHAEL · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a Doc Savage fan, what will quickly come across is that Lester Dent did not write this book. Ryerson Johnson did. He wrote two others. The book is fast paced with plenty of action and near death experiences. Trying to find Johnny, Monk, Ham and Pat are shipwrecked on a small volcanic island where two evil brothers are looking for a mysterious treasure. Barely escaping death in New York, Doc, and the others are lured there and things proceed at a roller coaster pace till the bad guys get their just desserts and the good guys win. A great read.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like an amped-up version of Most Dangerous Game, Doc and his team fall into the clutches of a mad Russian who's turned a small Galapagos island into a hell-hole as he hunts for the priceless treasure of the "Devil's Honeycomb." A good one in the series, though the "thumbhole death" is awfully unconvincing.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyable entry with exotic locals. Reads more like an adventure than crime fiction more like Jules Verne than the typical Doc Savage story.

[Randy D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Fantastic Island looks to be another fantastic Doc Savage adventure as Lester or his pinch-hitting substitute has started the story in the middle of the action. The story opens on a chartered yacht with Ham, Monk, and Pat on a mission to locate Johnny, who was shipwrecked with his scientific expedition somewhere in the vicinity of the Galapagos Islands.

The yacht is mysteriously shipwrecked as Monk with his pet hog, Habeas Corpus, Ham, and Pat are forced to abandon ship. They encounter a hostile welcoming committee and, after warding off an attack, end up prisoners in a savage jungle version of a chain gang. They learn Johnny is somewhere on this same island. These events all happen in the first two chapters. Doc has yet to make an appearance in The Fantastic Island, but I’m sure he will.

Doc made his appearance a few days later, as he arrived to rescue his imprisoned crew, and it was wall to wall action from that moment until the mystery of The Fantastic Island was solved. Doc and his crew find themselves in one close call after another, battling not only the evil Ramadanoff brothers but the fantastic island as well. Even Monk’s pet, Habeas Corpus, gets into the act, as he leads a herd of vicious wild hogs away from his friends and his owner.

The Fantastic Island has a “fantastic ending” as the loose ends are tied up, and justice is once again administered by Doc and his tired but happy crew. Lester previews the next story in the final paragraph of The Fantastic Island, and after a brief interlude, everyone will regroup and then embark on yet another thrilling adventure. *****

[James Hold · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE FANTASTIC ISLAND, a 1935 entry by W Ryerson Johnson, is not the sort of place you'd want to spend your vacation. Located somewhere in the Galapagos, it's a volcanic island inhabited by poisonous centipedes, carnivorous crabs, over-sized iguanas, wild peccaries, and the mysterious "thumb-hole death." It's run by a mad Russian count who likes to wreck ships and then put the survivors to work digging great pits in the ground. The plot looks back to 1932's THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME and ahead to 2003's HOLES. It also features "Robbie the Robot," 21 tears before 1956's FORBIDDEN PLANET. All told, it's a nasty affair and Doc has his work cut out for him.

Pat Savage is featured in this one. Johnson makes the mistake of saying she has blue eyes while other authors say her eyes are the same gold color as Doc. Pat is a bit of an anomaly. She's Doc's cousin and has the same bronze skin and hair as Doc, only Doc got that way from exposure to tropical suns, while Pat appears to have been born with them. Go figure. If I were retro-casting a movie, I'd have her played by Irish McCalla.

[Dennis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story started right in to the action. It begins with Johnny being captured on a mysterious Galapagos island. Monk, Ham and Patricia Savage, who are on their yacht, the South Seas, are tasked by Doc in NYC to make way for the mysterious Galapagos island and find Johnny. The three are soon wrecked on the island and soon captured by a mysterious Russian. Trouble reaches out to Doc, Renny and Long Tom which causes the three to travel to the Galapagos by speedy, stream-lined amphibious airplane, which is eventually destroyed. Another one bites the dust.

This was an interesting adventure with digging for treasure, a volcanic eruption threatening death and destruction as well as a charge of the peccary brigade. May it do ya. (Sorry about that last one. I am just finishing up reading the last book in the Dark Tower series.)

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

First half of the double volume published by Sanctum Books and Nostalgia Ventures back in 2008. It's been quite a while since I read The Fantastic Island when it came out in the Bantam edition displayed here. I still recall the strangeness Dent and Johnson created surrounding the hidden treasure buried on the island and the "thumb-hole" death that struck at random intervals.

I'm more jaded today than I was as a teen and my initial reading, but I can appreciate how the two authors build the atmosphere. One of the more literary Docs, but Johnson apparently did lots of research for his ghosting. This tale, along with Land of Always Night, are alway well-regarded, and justifiably so.

[Robert D · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of Doc's companions has gone missing in the vicinity of the Galapagos Islands. He has Ham, Monk, and Pat try to trace the missing ship only to have them get shipwrecked. Doc and his remaining aids, Long Tom and Renny receive a radio transmission and begin to investigate. Doc and his crew have run across the villainous plans of a the Russian, Count Ramadanoff.

This is novel has the usual of Doc's aids getting captured and Doc coming to the rescue. What is different is that rather than keeping the narrative with the captured aids the narrative returns to Doc and what his actions are in the novel. There were instances where the story shortened the action when it could have been expanded. But otherwise a more enjoyable than normal Doc Savage story.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

The mysterious disappearance of one of Doc Savage's men leads to an adventure in the Galapagos Islands, with horrific man-eating crabs, an evil count who has a palace (lending a somewhat gothic horror aspect to part of the book) and slaves, and a special plan for Doc. Very good pulp fare, as usual.

[Dale Rosso · Rating 5 out of 5]

Doc Savage and his five aids discover the most unusual island to date. A mysterious Count and enslaved minions are the norm.

[Devin Coryell · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 / 5

[Duane Olds · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now THAT is an adventure right there! Probably the best Doc Savage read so far. That Count Ramadanoff could have been the Moriarty to Docs Holmes but it twas not to be. Also with this adventure, i couldn't help notice how the author continued to describe Doc's muscles and veins as cables, it was done a few times this time around, whereas every other book would only make one refrence to it.

And as with all of Doc's adventures, this one helped uncover some more literary jewels, such as: 'Ham's sword cane darting in and out like an aroused snake.' (And the Darting snaked out and in
like an aroused cane)

'WHATEVER it was he meant to tell, or not to tell, Ham, remained forever untold.' (Ah yes, just as the prohecy forever untold)

'This man had a long, puritanical face that was shrouded in gloom, as though he had lately returned from a funeral and contemplated going to another' (HEY! Thats not funny! A funeral killed my dad!)

"What good's heavy sugar, if I croak before I can blow it?" (almost as good as blowing a carton of eggs and a gallon of milk..wait, what?) and

'The guard on top grunted, and pushed Ham roughly over the edge.' (Isn't that an Areosmith song - 'Roughly over the edge'?)


This one also gave us quite a few captain obvious moments, with the best being: "What caused that explosion, Doc?" "A bomb, obviously,"

As with all our adventures, we have to cross the superamalgamated count off our list, which came in at 6 this time around.

I also add a count of how mant times it was said 'William Harper Littlejohn' which clocked in at 9.

Like I said at the start, this was a hell of a ride and i enjoyed it more than any of the others so far. #14 down, Oh well, on to the next one...

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first Doc Savage story appeared in 1933 and the series ran in pulp and later digest format into 1949. Bantam reprinted the entire series in paperback with wonderful, iconic covers starting in the 1960's. Doc was arguably the first great modern superhero with a rich background, continuity, and mythos. The characterizations were far richer than was common for the pulps; his five associates and their sometimes-auxiliary, Doc's cousin Pat, and the pets Chemistry and Habeas Corpus, all had very distinctive characteristics and their byplay was frequently more entertaining that the current adventure-of-the-month. The settings were also fascinating: Doc's Fortress of Solitude, the Hidalgo Trading Company (which served as a front for his armada of vehicles), and especially the mysterious 86th floor headquarters all became familiar haunts to the reader, and the far-flung adventures took the intrepid band to exotic and richly-described locations all over the world. The adventures were always fast-paced and exciting, from the early apocalyptic world-saving extravaganzas of the early days to the latter scientific-detective style shorter works of the post-World War Two years. There were always a few points that it was difficult to believe along the way, but there were always more ups than downs, and there was never, ever a dull moment. The Doc Savage books have always been my favorite entertainments... I was always, as Johnny would say, superamalgamated!

[Little Timmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of all the pulp era heroes few stand out above the crowd, Doc Savage is one of these. With his 5 aides and cousin he adventures across the world. Fighting weird menaces, master criminals and evil scientists Doc and the Fab 5 never let you down for a great read. These stories have all you need; fast paced action, weird mystery, and some humor as the aides spat with each other. My highest recommendation.

[Keith B · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 for nostalgia. This is one of the looser stories. Churning them out quickly at this point and characters are just that. Shortly after this point they start to flesh out a little more and Dent (and the other writers I'm sure), let them become characters in their own right, rather than just side kicks.

[Ed Wyrd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shipwrecked on a volcanic island in the Galapagos, Doc Savage, his aids, and cousin Patricia Savage, face slave pits, man-eating crabs, monstrous lizards, a diabolical Russian Count, and the mysterious thumb-hole death. Fun pulp action.

[Marilyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one had a little of everything I like best about the series. I always enjoyed seeing Doc's tender side with his cousin Pat.

[Ronald · Rating 5 out of 5]

possibly read some time in winter 1967