I LOVE the old Pulps. Some of them are the last glimpse at a world before it all changed. I don't mean the ads for pickling frogs or men's girdles. I mean, think about it. If you were reading a new Robert E. Howard story in a 1934 issue of Weird Tales, you would be living in a world without television, without nuclear bombs, without computerized anything, without all the juice of seven decades. No Hitler, no Belsen or Dauchau, no Pearl Harbor, no McCarthyism, no Cold War, no Kennedys, no rock and roll, no space race, no Middle Eastern oil or movie star presidents. It's a world that might seem as fictitious as some of the fantasy realms in this book.

But people back in that distant age--still remembered by some of our oldest readers--liked heroes. They liked them simple and strong and exciting. No shades of gray. Doc Savage could do operations on criminals' brains without the specter of Joseph Mengele tainting his mojo. Doc was amazing. Criminals were bad. There were no hippy protester types to drag him down, no papparozzi to hound him day and night. His wealth was free of the IRS (being based in the banana republic of Hidalgo.)

And the villains were simpler too. Gangsters bent on ruling the world with a single invention. No drug dealers, child molesters, white collar computer criminals. Just Italian-looking guys who spoke like this, "Hey youse guys!" Pretty easy to spot. Even the supposed "inside mole" wasn't hard to pick out either. He always gave himself away.

The stories in this book aren't Pulp pastiches. You won't find Doc Savage and his five amazing aids here, disguised as Zarkon 3000 or Doc Phoenix. What you will find is the offspring of those days. After the Second World War, the Cold War, Rock and Roll, Flower Power, Disco Duck, Punk, Rap, what have you. These are fully modern amazing heroes. (You'd never see a title like "Ramses Ain't Shit' in old WT. Nor would you have seen zombie cannibal ocelots! Well, maybe.) So, go ahead and imagine it with some Vincent Napoli or Boris Dolgov artwork if you like. (I'll make mine Lee Brown Coye, thanks.) The time machine's about to leave ... Destination 2004!