The Return of Jongor by Robert Moore Williams

In his editorial in the April 1944 issue of Fantastic Adventures, editor Ray Palmer, in introducing the second Jongor tale, "The Return of Jongor," relates to us SF fans a behind-the-scenes story about the first tale of Robert Moore Williams's ersatz Tarzan.  According to Ray, whom I practically called a liar in my last blog post, in late 1940 Fantastic Adventures was about to go out of business.  Only one more issue would be published!  That issue, the October issue, had a dinotastic cover by famous illustrator J. Allen St. John, bringing to life the cover story, Williams's "Jongor of Lost Land."  Williams, St. John, and Jongor saved Fantastic Adventures--the publisher decided to continue putting out the magazine when that October issue sold twice as many copies as the previous issue.

Besides the second Jongor caper, in the April '44 ish of FA we have a long letter from outspoke SF fan Chad Oliver, who would go on to produce many SF stories, of which I have blogged about quite a few.  Chad criticizes Fantastic Adventures with some asperity ("a succession of dull issues, that were inadequate to say the least,") sparing neither fiction nor art, even complaining that the covers too often depict women.  It's not unrelieved pans, though; like all of us, Chad loves J. Allen St. John and Virgil Finlay, and he has kind words for recent stories by Wallace West, Leroy Yerxa (writing under the pseudonym Lee Francis--Chad denounces with venom a story Yerxa published under his real name), and David Wright O'Brien.  He also expresses admiration for a story of Palmer's, "Doorway to Hell," which was published under the pen name Frank Patton--did Chad know about Palmer's and Yerxa's pen names?  Are some of his spirited assessments, in part, in-jokes?

This issue also includes a story by Robert Bloch, "Lefty Feep Does Time," but I can't bring myself to read a joke story today, even one from a series so popular that isfdb lists over twenty installments (among them, "Stuporman," "Time Wounds All Heels," "Jerk the Giant Killer" and "Son of a Witch."  Bloch loves puns.)  So we'll be sticking with Jongor, and give the rest of the fiction in this number of Fantastic Adventures a pass.

"The Return of Jongor" by Robert Moore Williams       

I had hopes that we would see Jongor in New York or on a steam ship or something, but "The Return of Jongor" starts up shortly after "Jongor of Lost Land," with Ann Hunter, her twin brother Alan, and their savior, Jongor, an American who was born in an Australian jungle full of pterosaurs after his parents' aircraft crashed there, marching away from Lost Land, towards whatever counts as civilization in Australia.  When they stop to drink from a pool, they see moving images on the surface of the water--Jongor says this is a message from one of his friends, Queen Nesca.  Her system of sending messages seems like magic, but for some reason Williams and/or Palmer want to maintain the perception that  "The Return of Jongor" is a science fiction story, and so in a footnote it is explained that there is a technological apparatus and a psychic element behind this medium of communication.

Alan spent months in a dungeon in a city of monkey people and only just recently escaped, a half-starved wreck, but he's not depressed or mentally scarred or anything.  I make this armchair diagnosis based on the fact that Williams spends much valuable ink describing Alan teasing his sister for being jealous over Jongor's having received a secret message from another girl.  I didn't sign up for this trip down under to hear the saccharine juvenile banter of two New York socialites, so I was relieved when Ann and Alan were captured by aborigines and tied to stakes alongside two white men captured earlier by the natives, Schiller and Morton.  These guys claim they are kangaroo hunters who got lost.  

I would have moved Alan to the head of the line, but instead the aborigines start torturing Morton.  Before Morton suffers any permanent damage, and before they even start on the New Yorkers, Jongor, riding a dinosaur, rescues the four prisoners.  Jongor announces that his trip to civilization must be postponed, as he is duty bound to return to Lost Land to answer Queen Nesca's plea for help her; after all, Nesca saved him from a pterosaur years ago.  The Hunter twins and the two 'roo hunters decide to go along, seeing as they will probably get killed if they aren't within rescue range of the indispensable Jangor.  Jongor, an expert judge of character despite the hermit's life he has lead, thinks there is something fishy about Schiller and Morton, but he lets them come along anyway.

Jongor stories are full of treachery and trickery.  That message Jongor received didn't come from Queen Nesca, but from one of her traitorous countrymen; Nesca's people love jewels, and in return for a handful of gems, this traitor is helping a band of monkey men get revenge on Jongor--he sent the message with the aim of luring Jongor into an ambush.  This band captures Ann, but fails to snag Jongor, who tricks one of the monkey men into revealing that the message purportedly from Nesca is a trick.

Ann manages to escape from the monkey people on her own steam, but then she is chased up a tree by a lion.  As fate would have it, Ann is rescued from the great cat by Queen Nesca, who guns the feline down with a ray gun and then brings Ann to the city of her people, a city older than Babylon which, while kind of decrepit, a reflection of how her race is falling into decadence, still houses some high technology.

Her name might lead you to think Nesca is the heiress to the fortune of a coffee and cocoa magnate, but in fact the noteworthy thing about Nesca is that she, like all her people, is a centaur.  These centaurs have idiosyncratic traditions and psychologies, and that traitor who sent the bogus message is exploiting these peculiarities to overthrow Nesca.  When Jongor, who has been following Ann's trail, shows up, we get a debate between Jongor and Nesca about how the centaur government operates.  (Remember the debates about government we got in Zanthar At Trip's End?)  Nesca's dedication to thousands of years of tradition prevents her from resisting the effort to overthrow her, so Jongor cuts the Gordian knot by just murdering an anti-Nesca official in the middle of the ceremony during which Nesca is to relinquish power.  The tradition that was shackling them thus shattered, the pro-Nesca forces leap into action and Nesca, her supporters and Jongor and company fight their way to a secret passage to an underground citadel and arsenal.  Schiller betrays them to the anti-Nesca centaurs, killing Morton and opening the gates to the enemy, so the Nesca team flees deeper into the mountain, to a beautiful temple. 

Jongor thinks they are going to make a last stand, but Nesca gives a histrionic speech about how her race is doomed, and Williams contributes a whole thing invoking evolution and Darwinism without using those words, suggesting the centaurs had some "elements of greatness" but also a genetic flaw or something and so had been "passed by" in "the fight for life."  Nesca tricks Jongor and the Hunter twins into a secret boat and, as the current of a subterranean river carries them to safety, the whole city blows up, exterminating the centaurs.           

"The Return of Jongor" is quite inferior to "Jongor of Lost Land."  The plot is haphazard, just a collection of underdeveloped people and loosely connected incidents.  Williams wants us to see some kind of tragedy in the fall of the centaur race, but he doesn't make them interesting enough that we care about their disappearance from the face of the Earth; the suicidal ending of the centaur people also renders moot all the debates about politics and all the fighting Jongor engages in.  Schiller and Morton are just stuck in there; unlike the two treacherous men in "Jongor of Lost Land," they are lacking in personality and do not add anything to the plot.  Like the characters, the fights and the alien technology in "The Return of Jongor" are less interesting than those in its predecessor, and less connected to the plot--instead of being integral pieces of the plot that help drive the narrative, they are just attached to the thin and inevitable plot like barnacles attached to the underside of a sluggish vessel put-putting in a straight line to a drab destination.  

The style is weak; I complained that the style of Williams's Zanthar At Trip's End felt like that of a children's book, with simple sentences that overexplained everything, and I got that same feeling here as well.  Also, there are too many jokes--Alan Hunter is like a jester character, constantly teasing Ann and teaching Jongor the battle cry the he-man uses throughout the story: "Give 'em hell, Yale!"  All the jokes and cutesy sibling teasing undermine any tension or horror the scenes of death and torture might generate.

Speaking of Alan, Williams pulls a major boner regarding this kid.  In "Jongor of Lost Land," Alan describes how he found the treasure rooms of the monkey city.  But in "The Return of Jongor," Alan needs to have explained to him that the monkeys have all that treasure.  Very annoying--it is like Williams and Palmer didn't reread "Jongor of Lost Land" before they penned and edited and published this thing.  

I have to call this one bad.  It doesn't look like I will be reading the third Jongor story, "Jongor Fights Back," any time soon.

In 1970, Popular Library put out a paperback edition of The Return of Jongor with a brilliant cover by Frank Frazetta.  So much do I admire this painting that a few months ago, long before I actually read any Jongor, I bought an old somewhat worn poster of this image at Wonder Book in Frederick, MD, though I have yet to frame it.