The Remarkable Exploits of Lancelot Biggs, Spaceman

The Remarkable Adventures of Lancelot Biggs, Spaceman (sometimes referred to as Lancelot Biggs: Spaceman) is a collection of humorous science fiction stories by Nelson Bond, published by Doubleday Books in 1950. It compiles the fourteen stories in Bond's "Lancelot Biggs" series. Sometimes described as a novel, it presents the stories in a sequence of twenty-seven numbered chapters. The collection was reissued in trade paperback by Wildside Press many years later; no mass market paperback edition was issued.

Contents

• "F.O.B. Venus" (Fantastic Adventures 1939)
• "Lancelot Biggs Cooks a Pirate" (Fantastic Adventures 1940)
• "The Madness of Lancelot Biggs" (Fantastic Adventures 1940)
• "Lancelot Biggs, Master Navigator" (Fantastic Adventures 1940)
• "The Genius of Lancelot Biggs" (Fantastic Adventures 1940)
• "Honeymoon in Bedlam" (Weird Tales 1941)
• "The Downfall of Lancelot Biggs" (Weird Tales 1941)
• "Where Are You, Mr. Biggs?" (Weird Tales 1941)
• "The Ghost of Lancelot Biggs" (Weird Tales 1942)
• "The Return of Lancelot Biggs" (Amazing 1942)
• "The Love Song of Lancelot Biggs" (Amazing 1942)
• "Mr. Biggs Goes to Town" (Amazing 1942)
• "The Ordeal of Lancelot Biggs" (Amazing 1943)
• "The Scientific Pioneer Returns" (Amazing 1940)

Twelve of the fourteen stories, excepting "Genius" and "Return", were revised for this volume.^[1]

Reception

Time magazine received the book rather skeptically; its reviewer commented that "Author Nelson Bond, who used to write westerns, has merely put a Space Age icing on the old Wild West conventions" and that "to those who have never exposed themselves to the comic strips, the pseudo-scientific gobbledygook that spews forth from every page of Lancelot Biggs: Spaceman may cause some confusion for a while [although] [t]he persistent will get the hang of it."^[2] P. Schuyler Miller gave the collection a somewhat mixed review, saying that "Bond lacks few of the tricks of the born storyteller, and uses them all blandly and shamelessly."^[3]

References