Introduction   On Racism   Epigraphs   A History of the Pulps   A   B   C   D   E   F   G   H   I   J   K   L   M   N   O   P   Q   R   S   T   U   V   W   X   Y   Z   

Glossary and Character Taxonomy  Breakdown by Country of Origin   Bibliography   Table of Contents    The Best of the Encyclopedia

Parker, Fred. Fred Parker appeared in the German dime novel Fred Parker, Die Erlebnisse des Großen Unbekannten #1-152 (1921-1923); his stories were reprinted in Sweden in 1922 and in Denmark in 1923.

Fred Parker is a straight-shooting adventurer and detective, active around the world. Parker takes on U-boat pirates, finds the treasure of Agni in India, finds an underground city, gets caught in “The Claws of the Toy Devil,” answers “The Death Phone,” takes on a Mad Scientist wielding “the glowing death” as a murder weapon, another wielding “the Hell Machine,” meets his dopplegänger, fights “the Tiger of Moscow,” zeppelin pirates, the English Lupin “Monocle John,” a criminal with a Superhuman mesmeric ability, a cult of Osiris death-worshipers [sic], pirates on the Mississippi, Yellow Perils in Peking and London, the “Monster of Paris,” “the Three-Headed Hound,” “Phartu, the Devil of the Sky,” “the Manlike Beast,” and the Mad Scientist Dr. Montey.

Parker appears in stories with titles like “The Tiger of Moscow,” “Beneath the Opium Smugglers,” and “At War with the Paris Apaches.”

* I'm including Fred Parker, Die Erlebnisse des Großen Unbekannten in the Best of the Encyclopedia list because of the ideasplosions within it. On the one hand, Fred Parker is a standard heftroman adventure hero, pretty much indistinct from the mass of other heftroman adventure heroes. The characterization of Parker isn't strong enough to carry the heftroman or even lift the stories that much. It's something of a mystery why Fred Parker was reprinted in Sweden and Denmark. On the other hand, however, Fred Parker is a standard ideasplosive adventure heftroman, which means that the average story is High Pulp and the average enemy someone or something imaginative and fun--and the standard ideasplosive heftroman, whether adventure or detective/mystery or science fiction, is always going to be included in the Best of the Encyclopedia list. So Fred Parker may not be particularly exceptional in any one way, but it's good in the ways that count. 

Table of Contents / Annotations / Blog / Books / Patreon / Twitter / Contact me