• Originally published in Doc Savage Magazine, July 1937
• Reprinted by Bantam as DS # 54
• Laurence Donovan writing as Kenneth Robeson
Easily the bronze man’s most absurd, off-the-wall adventure. This is Doc Savage on acid… or at least some very potent cheeba. As he did in the superior Haunted Ocean (written the year before), ghostwriter Laurence Donovan puts the fate of the entire world squarely on Doc’s shoulders. Again a mad genius harnesses a hitherto unknown cosmic force — here the “stratospheric Z-Wave” — and makes a bid for global dictatorship. Now this Z-Wave is some superduper ultra-powerful shit, y’all. By using it (in a manner completely unexplained), the mastermind attains near-godlike powers. He can block all radio transmissions worldwide. He can visually/aurally surveil any desired person on earth, vaporizing the target at will in a puff of blue smoke, leaving only a pile of ashes. The minds of people within a certain radius can be changed to whatever he desires. Guarding his futuristic fortress atop California’s Mount Shasta is an army of 10-foot tall, 700 pound giants (!) — kidnapped mountaineers and lumberjacks subjected to the Z-Wave and directed via control panel.
How can even the mighty Doc Savage hope to prevail against such an omnipotent nemesis?
Fortunately Doc is the only person who can mentally block the mind-changing force. He’s able to hypnotize Long Tom Roberts and keep him functioning, but his other aides end up either captured or actively assisting the villain. (The “brainwashed” Johnny Littlejohn actually enjoys controlling the giants as if he were manipulating characters in a videogame.) It’s also quite fortuitous that the mastermind doesn’t want the bronze man killed, which he could easily do — Doc is utterly helpless against the vaporizer. Instead he hopes to use über-scientist Doc to help run his global empire, developing even more applications for the Z-Wave. Doc plays along, eventually facing “The Master” in his Flash Gordonesque lair on Mount Shasta and immediately throwing a monkey wrench into everything. Superbaddie escapes only to get a spectacular death a page later, when his zeppelin is caught in a volcanic eruption.
Somewhere, maybe in a pulp forum, someone once referred to He Could Stop the World as "He Could Stop the World from Reading Doc Savage". I couldn’t agree more. It’s truly abysmal, one of the worst of the entire series. Donovan’s grandiose imagination goes completely off the rails as he continually pulls all sorts of ridiculous stuff out of his ass, without an iota of thought behind any of it. To wit:
• Before reappearing under the control of The Master, Johnny is presumed dead in the explosion of an advanced airship making a study of the upper stratosphere. Why is the world’s foremost archeologist and geologist a member of such an aerial expedition?
• Mount Shasta is covered in red snow which is not cold. But it is snow. This isn’t explained at all other than being some sort of by-product of using the Z-Wave.
• In a valley on one side of the mountain Monk Mayfair and Ham Brooks discover a field of cornstalks growing as tall as trees, complete with foot-long caterpillars nibbling on them. Food for the giants? Donovan doesn’t say.
• One of the giants is sent to New York to grab Doc, attacking the Man of Bronze in his own skyscraper HQ. We get an interesting scene as the monster trashes Doc’s lab and overpowers him, the first time I can recall Doc ever being rendered helpless in a purely physical fight. (Of course he manages to outsmart the dimwitted giant.) Thing is, how did a 10-foot goliath sneak onto the top floor of the Empire State Building? Donovan just can’t be bothered with that.
• The villain’s fortress, a sort of crystalline palace, is constructed entirely of a super-strong, transparent glass-like substance that permits observation of all the rooms within. Why? And where does anyone take a dump with a little privacy?
I have no problem with any writer 'going long', as it were, so I won’t knock Donovan for thinking big. But he simply doesn’t have the panache to pull it off. He Could Stop the World plays like bad camp, without the self-awareness to wink at the reader.
Grade: F
• Reprinted by Bantam as DS # 54
• Laurence Donovan writing as Kenneth Robeson
Easily the bronze man’s most absurd, off-the-wall adventure. This is Doc Savage on acid… or at least some very potent cheeba. As he did in the superior Haunted Ocean (written the year before), ghostwriter Laurence Donovan puts the fate of the entire world squarely on Doc’s shoulders. Again a mad genius harnesses a hitherto unknown cosmic force — here the “stratospheric Z-Wave” — and makes a bid for global dictatorship. Now this Z-Wave is some superduper ultra-powerful shit, y’all. By using it (in a manner completely unexplained), the mastermind attains near-godlike powers. He can block all radio transmissions worldwide. He can visually/aurally surveil any desired person on earth, vaporizing the target at will in a puff of blue smoke, leaving only a pile of ashes. The minds of people within a certain radius can be changed to whatever he desires. Guarding his futuristic fortress atop California’s Mount Shasta is an army of 10-foot tall, 700 pound giants (!) — kidnapped mountaineers and lumberjacks subjected to the Z-Wave and directed via control panel.
How can even the mighty Doc Savage hope to prevail against such an omnipotent nemesis?
Fortunately Doc is the only person who can mentally block the mind-changing force. He’s able to hypnotize Long Tom Roberts and keep him functioning, but his other aides end up either captured or actively assisting the villain. (The “brainwashed” Johnny Littlejohn actually enjoys controlling the giants as if he were manipulating characters in a videogame.) It’s also quite fortuitous that the mastermind doesn’t want the bronze man killed, which he could easily do — Doc is utterly helpless against the vaporizer. Instead he hopes to use über-scientist Doc to help run his global empire, developing even more applications for the Z-Wave. Doc plays along, eventually facing “The Master” in his Flash Gordonesque lair on Mount Shasta and immediately throwing a monkey wrench into everything. Superbaddie escapes only to get a spectacular death a page later, when his zeppelin is caught in a volcanic eruption.
Somewhere, maybe in a pulp forum, someone once referred to He Could Stop the World as "He Could Stop the World from Reading Doc Savage". I couldn’t agree more. It’s truly abysmal, one of the worst of the entire series. Donovan’s grandiose imagination goes completely off the rails as he continually pulls all sorts of ridiculous stuff out of his ass, without an iota of thought behind any of it. To wit:
• Before reappearing under the control of The Master, Johnny is presumed dead in the explosion of an advanced airship making a study of the upper stratosphere. Why is the world’s foremost archeologist and geologist a member of such an aerial expedition?
• Mount Shasta is covered in red snow which is not cold. But it is snow. This isn’t explained at all other than being some sort of by-product of using the Z-Wave.
• In a valley on one side of the mountain Monk Mayfair and Ham Brooks discover a field of cornstalks growing as tall as trees, complete with foot-long caterpillars nibbling on them. Food for the giants? Donovan doesn’t say.
• One of the giants is sent to New York to grab Doc, attacking the Man of Bronze in his own skyscraper HQ. We get an interesting scene as the monster trashes Doc’s lab and overpowers him, the first time I can recall Doc ever being rendered helpless in a purely physical fight. (Of course he manages to outsmart the dimwitted giant.) Thing is, how did a 10-foot goliath sneak onto the top floor of the Empire State Building? Donovan just can’t be bothered with that.
• The villain’s fortress, a sort of crystalline palace, is constructed entirely of a super-strong, transparent glass-like substance that permits observation of all the rooms within. Why? And where does anyone take a dump with a little privacy?
I have no problem with any writer 'going long', as it were, so I won’t knock Donovan for thinking big. But he simply doesn’t have the panache to pull it off. He Could Stop the World plays like bad camp, without the self-awareness to wink at the reader.
Grade: F
1 comments:
If you think that's tosh, you should try reading some Lionel Fanthorpe. www.peltorro.com.
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