One man's life, a.k.a. Doc Savage, Nudist.

I'm sure we could find stories like this in newspapers today, but I'm equally sure the reporters would make it sound much tawdrier:

From a British paper, reprinted in the Straits Times of Singapore, 21 September 1932:

IMPRISONMENT FOR "SUN GOD"
Remarkable Career
Pushed Policewoman Into Water

Described by the defence as a "sunbathing enthusiast," and known to his followers as the "Sun God," a man who pushed a policewoman into the Serpentine was sent to gaol by Mr. Mead, the Marlborough Street magistrate.

Incidents that occurred on the bank of the famous stretch of water in Hyde Park were referred to in court, it being revealed that accused, prior to the offence with which he was charged, had threatened the officer with a ducking if children were not allowed to bathe in a prohibited area.

In the course of a remarkable career the man, who looked like a bronzed giant in the dock, has held scholastic positions in South Africa and England, and rose to the rank of captain in the War.

He has often been in connict [sic] with the authorities in the course of campaigns advocating sun-bathing, and was once evicted from a piece of land where he built a hut to practise the cult.

Over six feet in height with his skin bronzed to a deep copper hue through continual exposure to the sun, Harold Hubert Vincent, 51, described as an engineer, of Edgware Road, W., who was accused of obstructing Policewoman Annie Matthews, assaulting her, and damaging her uniform, presented a striking appearance in the dock at Marlborough Street. He wore a tennis shirt open at the neck, grey flannel trousers, and canvas shoes with no socks.

Vincent, who was educated in South Africa, has had a remarkable career. After taking a degree in science and arts, he became a teacher at a native school, but soon resigned this position. In his early teens he enlisted in the South African Constabulary, as a trooper, and when the Boer War broke out volunteered for active service, taking part in the relief of Ladysmith.

After that war he returned to police duty, and it was he who arrested Gandhi and sent him to gaol at Durban. He next worked as an engineer in connection with gold mines in Rhodesia, and subsequently came to England.


Served As Transport Officer
During the Great War he served as a transport officer, holding the rank of captain, in France. After Vincent had been found guilty of the offence with which he was now charged and senteneced to three months in the second division, several convictions were proved against him, a police officer stating that none of them was for a similar offence. Some of the offences were for "indecency" connected with sun-bathing.

Vincent has been an advocate of sun-bathing for many years, and has founded a number of organisations. He is known to his followers as the "Sun God." His activities in Hyde Park brought him into conflict with the police, and, indignant at what he deemed to be injustice, he once visited the House of Commons, and from the Strangers' Gallery threw a bundle of documents to the floor of a startled House.

Abandoning Hyde Park, Vincent next moved to Hendon, where he built a hut on a piece of derelict land. This he considered as "No Man's Land," but the authorities had him removed and the hut demolished.

[the rest of the article is just testimony from the trial].

[Roz Kaveney notes that Vincent served in the tanks in WW1]

Why don't people listen?

I've been saying for years that robots are evil, and nobody listens. Just you wait, feckless meatbags. The robots are coming for you. Just you wait.



Full article here.

The mean streets of pulp Reykjavik

One of the enjoyable aspects of the pulp era is how global many of its basic elements and tropes were. We tend to think of the worldwide penetration of our culture as being a modern phenomenon, but it was a feature of the pulp era. (You can blame colonialization for that). Zeppelins were a common sight in Indonesia during the pulp era. Hardbitten ship radio operators were as common in Chile and Peru as in the Yellow Sea. England had its mad scientists; so, too, did French West Africa, though that's a post for another day. The craze for celebrities and especially movie stars was as heated in Rumania and Poland and Brazil as it was in the U.S.

And, of course, there were private detectives. The larger agencies, especially the Pinkertons, dominated the field, but there were always independent operators, and they could be found everywhere: Iceland, as you can see; Dakar; even (as I'll post here some time soon) in Tokyo in the 1920s.

Presumably their jobs were much the same as American detectives'--the same tawdry divorce cases enlightened by more unusual situations. But there's something much more interesting about a p.i. in 1919 Reykjavik than 1919 New York, don't you think?

From the pulp era of flying.

Now, admittedly, the following wouldn't make the average contemporary flight any more soothing, and the last thing you want while crammed into your seat is to see this happen, but it certainly would make flying more exciting.

From the Straits Times of Singapore, 21 April 1932. The headline and subhed got cut off, so--

Headline: EAGLES DEFEAT AN AEROPLANE

Subhed: Woman Pilot's Story of a Fierce Attack

Dime novel spreadsheets.

What I'd thought would be a relatively quick diversion--putting together spreadsheets of pulp magazine data as an analytical tool--has turned into something of a prolonged ordeal, since simply inputting the data took a while, and I had to ask others to put the data together in table form. And, even worse, after completing the pulps, I decided I had to do the dime novels--'cause, well, if I left it at the pulps the data would be incomplete, right?

So I finished up the dime novels. The data isn't complete, because I'm not sure a complete list of dime novels is possible any more, but this is the best that can be put together at this remove.

• Total Dime Novels
• Bandit Dime Novels
• Detective Dime Novels
• Frontier Dime Novels
• Hero Dime Novels
• Historical Adventure Dime Novels
• Non-Genre/General Fiction Dime Novels
• Romance Dime Novels
• School Adventure Dime Novels
• Sports Dime Novels
• War Dime Novels

Initial observations:

• Interesting, how long the dime novels lasted. I had the vague sense that the dime novels survived a lot longer than the popular image of them has it, but as late as 1932, well into the pulp era, there were still 11 dime novels. I think we can say with some confidence that, as with the pulps, the "death" of the dime novel was a prolonged thing with significant overlap into the pulp era.
• Even more interesting to me is a comparison of number of magazines versus duration between the pulps and the dime novels. Many more pulps lasting a much shorter period of time, while the dime novels tended to be fewer in number but have a lot more endurance. 14 dime novels had over 1,000 issues, and look at New York Weekly: almost 3,000 issues, 1858-1915. A smaller market with fewer publishers leads to less overall competition and more monopolization, I guess. Certainly fewer dime novel subgenres than with the pulps.
• I imagine that the feelings of the dime novel publishers in the 1920s and 1930s was something like the feelings of the Neanderthals when they watched Cro Magnons running around.
• I thought romance dime novels would be stronger. Conversely, I'm surprised (though I shouldn't be) at the strength of frontier/Western dime novels.
• My surprise is not that there are relatively few sports dime novels, but that there are as many as there are. The British influence is particularly noticeable here.
• I suspect an analysis of the war dime novels published around the time of the Spanish-American War would make for interesting reading.

Now that I'm finished with these, I'm starting on European pulps, which may take me a few days to complete.

The Air Pirate.

The "air pirate"--the pilot-bandit who uses his plane to rob other planes or, occasionally, ground targets--was for the most part solely a product of the imagination of pulp and radio writers. (There was the robbery of the cathedral in Barcelona, which I'll get around to describing one day, but that was a unique event).

More often, the "air pirate" of the 1920s and 1930s was something like this, which while not as exciting as the air pirate of the pulps is, from a certain perspective, plenty full of potential for writers and gamers:



(This was from the Tyrone Daily News of Tyrone, Pennsylvania, 7 December, 1926).

It's not that I want to go back to the pulp era, exactly...

...it's just that the Now seemed so much more...entertaining and futuristic, I guess, than 2010 does. (Even granting John Scalzi's Mark Twain-esque observations about modern computers).

For example, this news article, from the Straits Times of Singapore, 23 July, 1928:



Yes, yes, new Apple trackpad and possible cures for Bubble Boy syndrome are all very nice. But...talking robots at the War Department! Tell me something inside you doesn't thrill at the thought of that.