Lester Dent's Zeppelin Tales

by Lester Dent

Lester Dent penned many pulp adventures before he created Doc Savage in 1933 under the house name Kenneth Robeson. Lester Dent's Zeppelin Tales collects five airship-themed stories published from 1930 to 1932, and includes material restored from Dent's original manuscripts! "Zeppelin Bait": Jed Day, American Great War flyer, is framed for spying for a notorious German Zeppelin Captain! Originally published in the October 1932 issue of Sky Birds. "Blackbeard's Spectre": Zeppelin pirates steal the passenger dirigible City of Oakland before its maiden flight to Japan! One of Dent's first published works, it originally appeared as "The Thirteen Million Dollar Robbery" in the March 1930 issue of The Popular Magazine. "Peril's Domain": Bill Kirgan battles a pirate band on a Zeppelin en route to the Arctic! Originally published under the title "The Frozen Flight" in the February 1931 issue of Air Stories. "Helene Was A Cannibal": What menaces the flight of Germany's newest Zeppelin, the Vaterland? Originally published as "Teeth of Revenge" in the May 1931 issue of Scotland Yard. "A Billion Gold!": A private dick gets mixed up in a Zeppelin-sized scheme in New York City! Originally published as "One Billion-Gold!" in the June 1931 issue of Scotland Yard. Lester Dent's Zeppelin Tales is nearly 100,000 words of pulpy goodness!

Genres: Pulp, Fiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2006

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

[Leothefox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Those who lived through the late 80s and 90s may remember the enduring cinematic trend of re-trying the “Die Hard” format in different settings and vehicles. For those, it may be of interest to try Lester Dent's “Peril's Domain”, which is pretty much “Die Hard on a Zeppelin”.

Like the name of the book says, this is a collection of stories by “Doc Savage” creator Lester Dent, all of which principally involve zeppelins. The idea of it made me pretty giddy, and the reality of it was alright too. There are 5 stories, 2 of which are short, the other 3 are “book length”. There's also a handy prologue to explain how Dent really loved writing about zeppelins and how it was all cut tragically short when the Hindenberg exploded.

These stories fall largely into the “two fisted” heroism pulp category. The read is always given a guy with broad shoulders and massive iron fists to punch pirates and gangsters around in passages in a zeppelin gas-bag where it isn't safe to use a gun. The longer ones always give the big guy a girl who's in trouble, so she needs the big guy around, see?

Probably the best of the lot is “A Billion Gold!” which has a private detective getting mixed up with a girl trying to get away from some gangsters, resulting in a series of escapes and a huge robbery involving a huge zeppelin. Like the other stories, this one gushes a bit about how sweet zeppelins are, but it spends less time on it because the action has to keep moving.

The book contains: five+ zeppelins, lots of gangster, smugglers, pirates, and island full of cannibals, a different island full of Eskimos, plenty of planes, a submarine, piles of loot, kidnapped scientists, Czarists on the run, traitors and double-crosses, WW1, federal agents, sabotage rats, the north pole, race-based disguises, elevator fighting, a drive-by shooting, zeppelin vs. ocean-liner, zeppelin vs. plane, Germany, and a guy inexplicably named “Click Rush”.

This is also the only reprint of pulp stories I've seen in which the editor takes the time to explain the appearance of ethnic and racial slurs. He even goes so far as to describe which were removed by the original editors and what some of their policies were at that time. Hell, there's a glossary in the back defining many of the slurs, although one of them is very conspicuously still in use.

On the whole this was an interesting read, although I wish Lester Dent had a little more interest in his villains.

[Ralph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing says dieselpunk adventure quite like a zeppelin, and here are a half-dozen of them written by master pulp fictioneer Lester Dent, who is most famous as the creator of Doc Savage (and also wrote most of the tales under the house-name Kenneth Robeson). Here, though, we have stories where zeppelins are either the center of the action or play a large part. All were written 1930-1932, and were originally published in the pulp magazines of the time. One nice thing about this collection is that editor Matthew Goodwin took the time and trouble to compare Dent's original manuscripts with the published versions, balancing Dent's own corrections with those either demanded or made by the editors to produce for this book what could be called the "author's cut" of the tale. Original titles were also restored, which in many cases clarified statements made by characters. In addition to the very exciting stories, there is a short bio of the author, Dent's airship notes, and extracts from Dent's journal about publication details. Since Dent is writing from the vantage point of another era, we have the usual now-offensive terms (and even a glossary for the ones that are now obscure), but they are not used viciously but casually, and this aspect of 1930s writing is addressed quite informationally in Goodwin's article about examining the manuscripts, shedding light not only on Dent's own writing style but on magazine practices of the time, which varied widely from publication to publication. For any fan or pulp fiction, Doc Savage or zeppelins, this is a great book.

[Maddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very gritty pulp action from the 30's, very action-packed, quick reads, good for the commute.