According to Philip Jose Farmer, Doc. Savage and Tarzan are related - cousins, as well as The Shadow, The Spider and Sherloc Holmes, G - 8 and several other Pulp Heroes. In his book, (circa 1970s), he creates an entire Family Tree tying in just aout every hero in the past two hundred years.
It is a thick book but enjoyable. In his "Tarzan Alive" he also shows this connection, read it...you"ll like it.
It was Tarzan Alive which got me started on Doc.
I disagree with you, but I'm pretty sure you're not Hitler.
- Jon Stewart
"Tarzan Alive" was one part of a double paperbook, the other part was "Doc. Savage, his Apocaliptic (or something like that) life. I think it is fantastic how Farmer worked everything into a family tree.
I have read both so many times my coopy is faling apart, that, and the fact that it, the book, was written in the 1970s.
Would love to discuss books with someone.
I remember reading the publisher asked Lester Dent to base Doc Savage on both Tarzan AND Sherlock Homes. He was supposed to look like Clark Gable. I'm personally turned off by the geneology fan-fiction that barely passes for cleverness.
shareUh, Phillip Jose Farmer, cited by the OP, was a pro of the highest caliber. Both Tarzan Alive, and Doc Savage, His Apocalyptic Life are great reads and fine references to the book series. His Wold Newton geneology has inspired some great stories, with people like Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Kim Newton, Winn Eckert, Rick Lai, and many others. The wonderfully entertaining Tales of the Shadowmen anthology annual wouldn't exist without his influence. Farmer also wrote a meeting between Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes (The Peerless Peer), and an "unofficial" meeting between Doc Savage and Tarzan, in his books A Feast Unknown, Lord of the Trees, and The Mad Goblin. He also wrote the Doc Savage novel, Escape From Loki, which features the first meeting between Doc and The Fabulous Five. His Riverworld series brought together many characters, influencing things like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. He won three Hugo awards and was a runner up for several more.
"Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!"
Exactly right, and well said. The whole Wold Newton Universe game (or literary sub-genre, or however one chooses to characterize it) isn't everyone's cup of tea, but many of us find it to be great fun. The semi-serious business of treating literary characters as though they were real persons began, I believe, while Conan Doyle was still writing the Holmes stories, with letters published in the Times of London treating him as such, though there may be even earlier examples. I think the Wold Newton Universe is something of an extension of that idea.
One of the very best examples of doing it in a down to earth and convincing way was the book 'Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street' (1962) by William S. Baring-Gould, followed by Baring-Gould's 'Nero Wolfe of West Thirty-Fifth Street' (1970), in which is confirmed what many Sherlockians always suspected: that Wolfe was Sherlock's son by Irene Adler. Baring-Gould's works were a major influence on Philip Jose Farmer.
BTW, someone mentioned that Ely had played two Universe-related characters, Tarzan and Doc Savage. Another actor who did likewise was the late Gordon Scott - one of the finest screen Tarzans, who also played Zorro in a ridiculous Italian movie called 'Zorro and the Three Musketeers'.
I failed to mention a hero-to-hero family connection that was established right from the start. In 1933 a Chicago radio executive named George W. Trendle created one of the most beloved popular culture icons in American history - The Lone Ranger. The show was an instant sensation and was broadcast for more than twenty years. Three years later, Trendle wanted another show, set in the present, also to feature a masked man fighting crime and corruption - only this time in the big city. He decided to make his modern day hero, Britt Reid, aka The Green Hornet, be the son of the character known in the Lone Ranger radio (and later t.v.) shows as "young Dan Reid", the Ranger's nephew and son of his slain brother.
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