Hok, Part 5

 

cover art by Malcolm Smith

Read/Watch 'em In Order #158

In "Hok Visits the Land of Legends," (Fantastic Adventures, April 1942) Manly Wade Wellman brings the pulp-era adventures of Hok to an end. We will be covering one last Hok story, published posthumously in 1986, but our caveman adventurer is about to take a four-decade break from adventuring.

In this story, Wellman also overtly identifies Hok as the source of the legends of Hercules. In fact, Hok is going to accomplish at least two of Herc's Labors in this story.

The story begins with Hok hunting a mammoth. He invents what is more or less a primitive ballista to injure the beast, then follows it. It is rumored that there is a mammoth graveyard--a place the creatures all go to die. Hok pursues the wounded mammoth through the snow for three exhausting days.

Finally, the mammoth tumbles into a verdant valley where the temperature is warm. Here, Hok finds the mammoth graveyard. He also encounters a tribe of people living in the trees. They live in the trees because there is danger both on the ground and in the air.

On the ground is a creature the locals call a rmanth. In a footnote, Wellman lets us know this is a dinoceras. 

In the air are pterodactyl-like creatures called Stymphs. Hok soon has his hands full in dealing with all this stuff. In addition to the dangerous fauna, he gets on the bad side of the tyrant who rules the tree people. So Hok has to arrange a coup to get rid of this guy while also taking care of the local monsters.

It's a great story, with Wellman expertly weaving together the various plot threads. It's in a footnote admidst all this that he tells us that Hok is indeed the origin of the Hercules myth. (I'm enough of an annoying traditionalist that I wish he had used the name "Heracles," but no one ever does. Sigh.) Between the Rmanth and the Stymphs, Hok gives the world the source of two of Hercules' Labors--the Stymphalian Birds and the Calydonian Boar.

As I said, this ends the pulp-era adventures of Hok and, with the overt parallels Wellman makes to Hercules, this would have been a solid ending for the series. But we will eventually get one more Hok tale. We'll talk about that one soon.

You can read this tale online HERE.