These are actually "genre-related" books:
Gryphon Books, a publishing house in Brooklyn, NY that specializes in reprinting pulp-era science-fiction and hard-boiled mystery stories, has just completed its reissue of the 26 "Golden Amazon" novels by John Russell Fearn. Actually, many of these novels (written between 1945 and 1960) are appearing between covers for the first time, since they were originally published as serials in a Canadian magazine, the
Toronto Star Weekly.
The Golden Amazon is a superwoman created by an idealistic doctor in the hope that she would bring about an end to war and oppression. But although she possesses tremendous strength and a brilliant intellect, she is cold and ruthless, and even sexual desire is absent from her psychological make-up. (IMO, this is the main weakness of the series: It's hard to sustain interest in a character with such a limited affect.)
Each novel tells a self-contained story, but together they form a series. In the course of her career, the Golden Amazon is an outlaw, a dictator, an interplanetary peace-keeper, and a cosmic explorer and adventurer. (The later novels are clearly influenced by the
Skylark stories of E. E. Smith.)
Fearn was an undistinguished stylist, but an able story-teller. These are quick, fun reads -- recommended for anyone who's looking for free-wheeling pulp-era science-fiction with an ubergirl twist.
The publisher's website is
www.gryphonbooks.com
. The site doesn't get updated very regularly, and you can't even order their books on-line. But their service is efficient and friendly.
