Pulp Magazine Authors and Literature Fans discussion

Thoughts? I've read the first Fu Manchu book and liked it quite a bit, though it took me a bit to get into the style. Haven't read any other Rohmer, and don't really know much about him or other comparable writers.

The first one is all I've read as well, although I do have Hangover House, also by Rohmer, on my large to-read pile.

I haven't read any of them since I was in high school. I remember liking them ... liking them enough to read them all at least. The style changes with the books ... obviously for a serious written over 30+ years. The later ones are much more stream-lined. The yellow peril theme can't really be avoided, but I think on the whole Fu Manchu is presented as an honorable character within his own confines ... but having little love for the western world. One of my Chinese friends was much less forgiving however...

I like some of his short stories as well ... The Dream Detective is a short collection of psychic detective stories set primarily around museums. I also like his Sumuru series ... a female Fu Manchu type with a more 50s/Cold War feel to them.

As a starting point to get into them, you may try the two pastiches Cay Van Ash wrote in the 80s, including Ten Years Beyond Baker Street which is a Holmes v. Fu Manchu volume.... they give you a good primer for the characters...

I've been listlessly reading the first Fu Manchu novel for some time now (The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu, I think). It's an interesting document of a very different time in pulp fiction, but so far it hasn't grabbed me.

I picked up a few Sax Rohmer novels from a dollar bin after seeing the film The Mask of Fu Manchu, which stars Boris Karloff as Fu Manchu. It's great. Nearly every scene in it was lifted in some way by Steven Spielberg over the course of the Indiana Jones series. Drums of Fu Manchu, a 12-part Republic serial with Henry Brandon as Fu Manchu, is pretty good, too.

They're all insanely racist and offensive, too, which is part of the draw. There's something in every chapter of The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu to make a modern reader's jaw drop. It's not just the character of Fu Manchu, either, it's every non-white character. I can't think of any specifics now, but if I ever finish the book I'll post a review.

I haven't read any Rohmer since I was a teenager, but am about to dive back in to get in the mood because in my second Doc Wilde book, the heroes go up against a villain who's as similar to Fu Manchu as Doc Wilde is to Doc Savage.

Which is to say, very similar, but not exactly...I like to mix things up, and like my characters to walk their own walks. In other words, Doc Wilde isn't just Doc Savage with another name, and my villain won't just be a renamed Fu Manchu.

Rohmer is best known for his Fu Manchu writings (which I haven't read --I've seen bits and pieces of a couple of the movie versions). But he also wrote a good deal of supernatural fiction. The only one of his stories in that vein that I've read is "A House Possessed," which appears in a Peter Haining anthology, Great Irish Tales of Horror; but it's one of my favorite ghost stories.

Ah, on the one hand it's good to know there's so many entertaining tales waiting to be read out there. On the other, it'll be a couple years before I get the time to crank up the read engine. Meanwhile I slowly make my way through a couple books, alternating. Summer is good for reading though.

In this month issue 5 of 6 of the mainstream marvel great Incognito a superhero/noir book by Ed Brubaker,Sean Phillips, there was pulp history pages about Rohmer and Fu Manchu.

I knew of only the modern look of Yellow Peril stereotype, not that there were a rated,famous serious about that it. That was hailed by the article writer as good action/adventure.