Paul Malmont

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Based on an incredible true episode of World War II history, Paul Malmont’s new novel is a rollicking blend of fact and fiction about the men and women who were recruited to defeat the Nazis and ended up creating the future.

In 1943, when the United States learns that Germany is on the verge of a deadly innovation that could tip the balance of the war, the government turns to an unlikely source for help: the nation’s top science fiction writers. show more Installed at a covert military lab within the Philadelphia Naval Yard are the most brilliant of these young visionaries. The unruly band is led by Robert Heinlein, the dashing and complicated master of the genre. His “Kamikaze Group,” which includes the ambitious genius Isaac Asimov, is tasked with transforming the wonders of science fiction into science fact and unlocking the secrets to invisibility, death rays, force fields, weather control, and other astounding phenomena—and finding it harder than they ever imagined.

When a German spy washes ashore near the abandoned Long Island ruins of a mysterious energy facility, the military begins to fear that the Nazis are a step ahead of Heinlein’s group. Now the oddball team, joined by old friends from the Pulp Era including L. Ron Hubbard (court-martialed for attacking Mexico), must race to catch up. The answers they seek may be locked in the legendary War of Currents, which was fought decades earlier between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. As the threat of an imminent Nazi invasion of America grows more and more possible, events are set in motion that just may revolutionize the future—or destroy it—while forcing the writers to challenge the limits of talent, imagination, love, destiny, and even reality itself.

Blazing at breathtaking speed from forgotten tunnels deep beneath Manhattan to top-secret battles in the North Pacific, and careening from truth to pulp and back again, The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown is a sweeping, romantic epic—a page-turning rocket ship ride through the history of the future.

My Review: The Philadelphia Experiment, a real project that took place during WWII and produced a long-lived tale of a whole ship that *poof* vanished from Philadelphia Navy Yard, was seen in Norfolk, Virginia, then *poof* reappeared in Philadelphia in far less time than it would take to sail there, is the backdrop of this fantabulous beast of a Franken-novel. Facts are here aplenty, stitched to the imaginitive suppositions of the author, and the tale enacted by the great science fiction writers of the First Golden Age: Robert Heinlein, ex-Navy man and scientist; Isaac Asimov, unfit for combat service but a chemist earning his PhD at Columbia when roped into the Philadelphia Experiment; Lester Dent, Walter Gibson, L. Ron Hubbard (blech)...and their wives, their lesser lights, and a seemingly endless cast of characters famous if you know who they are, like Lyman Binch, the only person to work for both Tesla and Edison.

The author propels his cast from pillar to post and back again. He puts them in incredibly perilous situations, he makes it impossible for them to survive, and then rescues them via last-minute coincidences and harum-scarum action. And in the end, after assembling the dramatis personae via the most unsubtle ruse of them all, he actually solves Tunguska, Wardenclyffe, and the Philadelphia Experiment, with a side order of conspiracy theory, in ~30pp.

I'm exhausted.

Fairly happily so, I admit. The dialogue bears down a little much on the side of "As you know, Bob..." and "the reason I've brought you all here tonight is...", but for most people under 60 that really is the only way he can tell his story and make it even faintly believable.

What's most appealing about the novel is its true-to-the-pulps feel. I like the way it honors the genre of the dear, dead pulp science fiction mags of the 30s through the 60s by using--with a wryly arched eyebrow--their every convention, technique, and trope, then with a short coda, bringing the modern sensibility int harmony with the pulpish piffle that has quite enjoyably rollicked on before.

Mr. Malmont sent me a very nicely inscribed ARC of the novel when I won it in a contest on his website. It struck me that he's a lot like the old pulp writers. He's an advertising copywriter who clearly loves popular fiction in the SF genre, and is at home telling tales to entertain you, his reader, as he entertains himself. He's good at evoking mood and atmosphere. He's happiest when busiest, too.

My god...wouldn't surprise me a bit to find out he was a robot. o.0


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. show less

Ughh -- more and more, as I was trudging toward the finish line, I could not wait to be done with this book. Such a slog. Too bad, too, because the concept sounded interesting, and I love a good adventure story. I was envisioning something along the lines of Indiana Jones unspooling in my head while I read -- dastardly ne'er-do-wells and dashing heroes in exotic locales battling mind-blowing booby traps, and the like.

Instead, I got a bunch of writers as lead characters - with dual names show more (confusing) - and dual narratives (in the United States and China) which are eventually tethered to each other, but by that time I really didn't care. The adventure scenes were, at best, mildly stirring and often confusing (or maybe my attention simply kept drifting, unable to focus, didn't care, just wanted it to be over).

I did, however, enjoy the descriptions of L. Ron Hubbard (one of the main characters in the story) as a gasbag ninny. Points for that. :] show less

The premise of the novel is that a cast of pulp writers find themselves entangled in a pulp-like adventure of their own, complete with evil Chinamen, mysterious islands, superweapons, monsters, opium dens, golden gods, and flesh-oozing zombies. What results is a deliberate tangling of fact and "pulp", which is the author's stated intention.

What's real: most (but not all) of the info he includes on the writers, their lives, and the industry. His cast of characters reads like the "regulars" show more list of the coolest 1940s nightclub ever: Walter Gibson (author of The Shadow series), Lester Dent (author of the Doc Savage series), Howard Lovecraft, L. Ron Hubbard (the author is clearly enjoying foreshadowing his eventual career as bad sci fiction writer and scientology founder), Louis L'Amour (aka "Lew" here), Bob Heinlein (aka "Otis Driftwood" here), Cornell Woolrich, Robert Howard (author of the Conan series), Blackstone the Magician, Orson Welles, Al Capone and more. Loved learning more about their lives, their relationships, and the pulp industry.

Ironically, however, it's the "pulp" parts of this tale that disappoint! I begin to understand why pulp magazines have to be so preposterous: it's because their elements just don't hold up to being modernized/psychologized/philosophized. Evil Chinamen (albeit horrifically un-PC these days) are wholly satisfying villains ... until, it turns out, you endow them with sympathetic backstories and passivist souls. A superhero (the Shadow) who uses "the power of his mind" to elude notice seems perfectly credible ... until, that is, you start reimagining him as a sort of trickster god, preserving us from violence and fear by selflessly absorbing them into himself. And it's hard to go wrong with zombies ... except, come to find out, when you try to provide credible scientific explanations for their oozing flesh and blood-lust.

Happily, Malmont's a much better writer than his pulp writer protagonists. With just a few brushstrokes he creates scenes, characters, conversations that feel authentic. I also like how he incorporates narrative arcs with a light touch, rather than pounding us over the head with them - to appreciate just how deftly, make a point of rereading the first few chapters after you've done and appreciating how deftly he's wrapped everything up. However, the chapters devoted to the more "pulpy" parts of the story felt sometimes insufficiently set up, overly busy, and rushed.

Perhaps the ultimate irony is that by failing to convince me that pulp can "legitimized," Malmont has inspired in me more respect for the genre than I possessed before! What writers like Walter Gibson and Lester Dent did so effortlessly - making us believe that bravery, chivalry and humanity would always be enough to triumph over evil - turns out not to be so effortless after all. show less

‘The Astounding, the Amazing and the Unknown’ is a follow up to ‘The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril’ but can be read independently. In ‘The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril’, author Paul Malmont plunged pulp writers Walter Gibson (The Shadow) Lester Dent (Doc Savage) and L. Ron Hubbard (Dianetics and Scientology, but not yet) into a deadly adventure mostly set in Chinatown New York. They were joined later by ex-Naval man who was on the run from gangsters after a failed venture with a show more silver mine. Together they solved the mystery and saved the world (spoiler).

I enjoyed that hugely and when I learned that there was a follow-up book featuring Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp and L. Ron Hubbard in another adventure I bought it immediately. I’ve heard of Gibson and Dent but I’m a lifelong fan of Heinlein and Asimov and wanted to see what Malmont would do with them, and to them. I was not disappointed.

The story takes place shortly after Heinlein, Asimov and de Camp have begun work at the Naval Yard in Philadelphia trying to develop superweapons for the war. They learn of an installation built by Nikolai Tesla that might be used as a weapon and set out to investigate. Cue a lot of running around in tunnels under New York, interference from the FBI and harassment by naval bureaucrats. There’s also some talk about pulp fiction and a few guest stars pop up along the way. When you’re having fun with famous people you might as well enjoy it so Malmont has pilot Jimmy Stewart fly Hubbard to the Aleutians when Heinlein wants to get rid of him. Sam Moskowitz and Ray Bradbury get walk-on parts.

It’s pretty clear that Heinlein is top man as far as the author is concerned, a well-rounded figure, physically, mentally and morally superior to his peers with L. Sprague de Camp second. Asimov’s physical timidity is shown but that’s something Asimov admitted himself. As in ‘The Chinatown Deathcloud Peril’, Hubbard is portrayed as a flawed character rather than evil. He was on the downhill slide from success as a pulp writer to success as a second rate Messiah.

It’s well researched and the adventure plot is secondary, for me, to the insights into the characters. As this is faction it has to be taken with a pinch of salt but I’ve read biographies of the leads and the portrayals seem fairly accurate. Asimov’s knee-trembler on a New York rooftop was going a bit far though.

Entertaining and worth a look for fans of Golden Age science fiction who like a laugh.

Eamonn Murphy show less