Type Like Gordon’s Alive

In Which Our Typist Plasmas His Pulp

One of the dumbest movies ever made is also one of the most fun. The 1980 film Flash Gordon is a hoot to watch. The retro Art Deco aesthetics, the over-the-top nonsense plot, the cast of celebrated veteran stage-and-screen actors all chewing the scenery, the earnest aw-shucks likability of lead actor Sam Jones.

But perhaps the movie’s defining moment is Shakespearian actor Brian Blessed belting out “GORDON’S ALIVE?!?”

It was in that spirit that the pseudonymic Lawdog, publisher of Raconteur Press, put out an anthology of like-minded over-the-top classic golden age sci-fi stories. He’s even coined a term to describe this subgenre of “Gordon’s Alive”-type sci-fi: Plasma Pulp. He named the first volume after it and I was very happy to have an over-the-top gonzo story included in its pages (“One of our Plutos is Missing” ).

That story features (you guessed it!) a missing planet Pluto (remember folks, Pluto is a planet!) as well as handwavium science on steroids, a daring do-gooder, a bumptious bureaucrat, an evil Galactic Overlord, and a whole lot of skullduggery-do.

Once is not enough for some fun ideas, so Lawdog and Raconteur Press are back with a second helping of plasma pulp. This time it’s Plasma Pulp: Lost Worlds. And once again I’ve a story in it.

“Fettermen of the Planet Mingo” takes up where my previous tale left off. The purloined planet Pluto might have been returned, but the Evil Overlord himself—Pin-Yin the Pitiless, Supreme Galactic Overlord and Monarch of the Magellanic Clouds Major and Minor—is Still Up To No Good and must be thwarted. Stopped, even.

Once again, our do-gooder and our bureaucrat enter the fray, armed with more handwavium science and even wilder plans. They aim to beard the bad buy in his imperial lair. To do that, they sneak into his pocket dimension through the stratagem of strapping their rocket ship to a convenient comet and from there they along the Earthian mad scientist and the beautiful alien space princess proceed to--but that would be telling.

Suffice it to say that they have to contend with the Evil Overlord’s army of evil minions, the Fettermen. (Of course a merciless mogul who enslaves entire planets is going to name his enslaved, en-collared janissaries fettermen. After all, such an obvious plasma-pulpy name doesn’t require genius or even, say, a stroke of genius on the Emperor’s part.)

I hope you’ll give “Fettermen of the Planet Mingo” a read. I had a hoot writing it and I hope you have a hoot or two reading it. Just remember: Gordon’s Still Alive!

With over a hundred professional publication credits, Lee Allred’s award-winning fiction has appeared in Asimov’s SF Magazine, anthologies, online magazines, and various other venues. He’s also scripted for DC (Batman ‘66), Marvel (Fantastic Four), IDW (Dick Tracy), and Image Comics (Madman Atomic Comics).