The Wall Street Journal recently ran this fascinating story about pulp writer Harold Lamb, and about the volumes of his short stories that the University of Nebraska Press began publishing three years ago. Lamb’s stories were fixtures in the pulp magazines of the 1950s, and his stories were usually set in Asia and on the Russian Steppes. His stories pure adventure, without the sorcery and science fiction elements of many pulp stories of the day. The author of the WSJ article, John J. Miller, wrote this about Lamb’s writing:
"Lamb ... didn't stick magical or supernatural elements into his historical settings. The Asian backdrop probably seemed exotic enough, with its khans, yurts and mare's milk. The first Khlit story takes place on the banks of the Dnieper River, which runs through Ukraine and drains into the Black Sea. By the third tale, the hero has gone into an unwarranted exile. He spends the rest of his days wandering among Muslims and Mongols.
"Long before multiculturalism became a byword for political correctness, Lamb appreciated an authentic form of it. He once described why he wrote on the people and societies of Asia: 'It all came out of an intense irritation over the fact that all history seemed to draw a north-south line across Europe, through Berlin and Venice, say. Everything was supposed to have happened west of that line, nothing to the east. Ridiculous, of course.'"
Recent Comments