If you are unfamiliar with the genre of pulp magazines, this might not make sense.
It seems that some men (mostly men) of my generation (let’s say born between 1960 and 1965) fell under the spell of a long dead medium when in their teens. This was the pulp magazine, or at least the paperback reprints of the pulps. Some went through a phase of reading and then forgetting them, some never really let them go. I fall into the second category.
The two most popular pulps of the 1930s and 40s were The Shadow and Doc Savage. These found a new life in the 70s and 80s as a series of paperbacks. As a kid I became a fan. More than a fan in some ways. I became a convert. I let these stories, often sold for a dime or a quarter, weave their way into the fabric of my morality and worldview. Not necessarily a bad thing. Although their black and white take on good and evil was simplistic, it served me well.
Pulp heroes formed a foundation for many heroes of generations to come. They were the prototypes of the fantastic characters and ideals that still persist today. I want to pass them on to my child(ren) and make them see the world through a lens of wonder and clear moral purpose.
This is all a prelude to introducing a terrific book, The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril: A Novel, by Paul Malmont. It is a good read, but it is really a book of wish fulfillment. It is a way to recapture the past, my youth, in a imaginative form. I admire the vision of Mr. Malmont.
Time to get writing, I guess.
Thinktone 