{"id":972,"date":"2017-04-08T16:49:08","date_gmt":"2017-04-08T20:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=972"},"modified":"2017-06-13T18:18:53","modified_gmt":"2017-06-13T22:18:53","slug":"bring-em-back-alive-by-frank-buck-a-short-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2017\/04\/08\/bring-em-back-alive-by-frank-buck-a-short-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Bring \u2018em Back Alive by Frank Buck – A Short Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m going to reference this post under both Science Fiction and Fantasy<\/em> and Current Events.\u00a0 <\/em>Under either category an error is being committed.\u00a0 But that\u2019s the great thing about being the proprietor.\u00a0 You can break the rules when it suits you.\u00a0 Frank Buck was a wild animal importer back in the nineteen twenties and thirties.\u00a0 He brought back never before seen creatures to Europe and America for zoos and circuses and other exhibitors.\u00a0 He brought in the first Indian rhinos out of Nepal when that country was as isolated and inaccessible as the Moon is now.\u00a0 His stories are full of hair-raising escapes from tigers and cobras and he fills them with exotic people from India and Southeast Asia.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The language and the characterizations of these non-western people is extremely politically incorrect even by the standards of fifty years ago.\u00a0 But they are probably closer to reality than the current over-sensitive portrayals of non-western customs in the \u201cthou shalt not offend the non-westerner\u201d popular press.<\/p>\n

Now the case for putting this under sf&f is because it ties into the movies King Kong, Son of Kong and Mighty Joe Young.\u00a0 These movies are demonstrably some amalgam of sf&f.\u00a0 The fantasy of an adventurer heading off into the uncharted jungles of the still partially untamed world and bringing back some fantastic and almost mythological creature is in part based on the popularity of Frank Buck\u2019s stories in \u201cBring \u2018em Back Alive.\u201d\u00a0 He goes into these jungles and using contacts with the local inhabitants locates and captures these legendary creatures.\u00a0 Now granted, capturing a verified man-eating tiger or the largest orangutan is a lot less spectacular than fighting dinosaurs or shooting a fifty-foot gorilla off the Empire State Building.\u00a0 But in the imagination of kids in the 1930s both were more exciting than going to school or working at a shoe factory.<\/p>\n

Reading these stories recently, I am struck by the certainty that many of the details have been exaggerated to make the story more exciting.\u00a0 This is especially true of the poetic justice that catches up to a cruel Maharajah in the story Tiger Revenge.\u00a0 Also, it is amazing to see how primitive the methods for transporting these amazing creatures were back in the 1920s.\u00a0 Tropical primates like orangutans were loaded onto freighters that took weeks to cross the Pacific Ocean and the conditions in the hold or on the deck were pretty bad.\u00a0 Add into this equation storms or even typhoons and it\u2019s amazing that he got anything \u201cback alive.\u201d \u00a0If any of the practices employed in those times were used today the ASPCA and the local animal welfare agencies would call for the death penalty for the importers.<\/p>\n

But the stories are interesting and exciting on their own terms.\u00a0 In one story a tiger trapper is caught in his own leg trap.\u00a0 He is trapped out in the jungle at night with mosquitoes torturing him, ants attacking his wounded leg and the threat of jungle predators all around him with nothing to defend himself with if they attack and no way to escape.\u00a0 Is the story true.\u00a0 I doubt there is any way to know.\u00a0 But the tale is compelling.<\/p>\n

There are about twenty of these stories.\u00a0 Most linked only by the presence of the author and a few other supporting characters like Frank\u2019s Malay \u201cboy\u201d Ali (actually a man in his fifties) who assists him in his adventures and the directors at the zoos and circuses that were his clients.<\/p>\n

My father read this book in the 1930s. \u00a0He gave it to me in the 1960s.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve given copies to my grandsons and nephews in the 2010s. \u00a0It seems to have a universal appeal to the male animal.\u00a0 I recommend it highly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m going to reference this post under both Science Fiction and Fantasy and Current Events.\u00a0 Under either category an error is being committed.\u00a0 But that\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,5,237,4],"tags":[172,26,68,105,171,175,176,173,174],"class_list":["post-972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-current-events","category-reviews","category-sff","tag-adventure","tag-american-exceptionalism","tag-book-review","tag-circus","tag-frank-buck","tag-king-kong","tag-politically-incorrect","tag-wild-animals","tag-zoo"],"yoast_head":"\nBring \u2018em Back Alive by Frank Buck - A Short Review - Orion's Cold Fire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2017\/04\/08\/bring-em-back-alive-by-frank-buck-a-short-review\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bring \u2018em Back Alive by Frank Buck - 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