114b 03/45 The Ten Ton Snakes

Posted by on Mar 17, 2005 in 1945, Bantam 109-120, degrouchy, larkin, novel, pulp, stein | 4 comments

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A war hero running for his life and a mysteriously heavy cargo of exotic snake skins send Doc and his crew racing into the steaming jungles of Brazil. There, the Man of Bronze unearths a bizarre secret buried for centuries — and battles a sinister force that marks him for instant execution!


  • Bryan Bullock

    “The Ten Ton Snakes.” Hm. I think this may have been the first double I got. If I hadn’t already been familiar with Doc, it might have turned me off completely. It was a rather silly adventure, with rather silly premises. Without giving things away, the whole “mcguffin” is made MORE ridiculous, for me, by what modern science can tell us about it and similar things. Not a winner, in my estimation.

  • Andrew Salmon

    This one is a poor example of the latter Docs. A silly mystery and plodding dangers with unexciting escapes. Not the best Doc you’ll ever read but, hey, they can’t all be winners. Even bad Doc is better than a lot else you could read.

  • http://www.paulcook-sci-fi.com Paul Cook

    I have to disagree with the other posted comments on The Ten Ton Snakes. I thought the adventure was very good and the conceit of the snakes themselves (why they weighed so much) was rather clever, when you think of the efforts–hidden from the public–to develop heavy water in which to enrich uranium. But I digress. Not a bad story for the war years. MUCH better than The Talking Devil.

  • http://www.paulcook-sci-fi.com Paul Cook

    I’ve always liked “The Ten Ton Snakes” and thought that the conceit of smuggling heavy-water in the form of soaked snake skins was pretty clever for 1945. It’s clear that uranium-enrichment was “in the air” as it were at the time and Dent turned it into a nice adventure. Other readers haven’t liked this adventure much, but I’ve always thought the story readable and quite good.