Super-Detailed Gun Descriptions Piss Me Off...

[PMP Webmaster]

So I'm reading more of "The Survivalist" series by Jerry Ahern lately, and while the books are reasonably entertaining, I am getting really, really tired of Ahern CONSTANTLY noting every-single-thing-about-the-guns-every-time-we-see-them.

I swear we must hear about his "stainless Detonics .45 autos in their double Alessi shoulder rig" about fifty times a novel, never mind his "Colt Government Mark IV Series '70 .45, Metalfied, with the Colt Medaliion Pachmyer grips and the Detonics competition recoil system installed", the "CAR-15 with scope and elastic attached lens covers", the "A.G. Russel black chrome sting 1A fighting knife"...the list just goes on and on and on. I almost gave up when Rourke and Rubenstein got into the survival shelter and we had to hear a name-brand specific description of EVERY SINGLE DAMN THING that Rourke had tucked away there, even to the point of noting the names of the companies that built or customized every gun part added to the stock weapons he had.

This just gets compounded when we have to hear about every single motion Rourke makes when he gets into a fight - from exactly how he draws every weapon he uses, to how he holds it, takes the safety off, lines it up, how he ejects each empty magazine and exactly how he reloads each gun...It's just mind-numbing.

Here's an exerpt from book three of the series, detailing Rourke's gun cabinet, or at least part of it (there's a gun detailed on the eariler page).



Yes, yes we have indeed had enough...

[Skaramine]

I hope my work never got that boring.

[PMP Webmaster]

As long as you only make reference to someone's twin Stainless Steel Detonics .45s in their double Alessi shoulder rig ONCE per novel. Any more than that and we take away your computer, Doug.

Oh, and with the move I had briefly deleted that passage, but it's back up now.

[philb]

I agree that the over-description can get very tedious...especially if it occurs more than once per book. However, I can tolerate excessive gun descriptions more than I can the exact opposite...little or no weapons descriptions at all.

This happens quite a few times in certain Bolan books, depending on who wrote them, of course. There's one author, (sorry, I can't remember his name) who constantly uses the phrase "stubby automatic pistol"
as a description whenever Bolan removes a sidearm from an enemy he has just dispatched. This phrase is usually used more than once per book...and I'm sorry, it just annoys the hell out of me.

I know I'm being picky....and that this is just a pet peave of mine...but when an author is writing an action-oriented pulp novel, in which firearms figure prominently, I don't think it's asking too much to at least say what kind of pistol Bolan takes from the guy. I mean, just say a name of a handgun, instead of using the same....annoying...phrase...every...time!!!!
To be fair, I know it's not important to the plot to say what kind of pistol it is, and I don't expect authors to be weapons experts... but it's just a small point of detail I like to see in these books. It tells me the author actually has an idea of what he's talking about, whereas the phrase "stubby automic pistol" makes me think he doesn't.

I guess one of the reasons I like William Fieldhouse so much is that he's able to achieve a good balance between not enough and too much weapons information. He's able to describe what weapons the good guys and bad guys are using without boring the reader to death. Rosenberger is also pretty good at describing weapons without overdoing it. One thing that I find interesting is the sheer number of different firearms he will make reference to within one book...although sometimes his descpritions are inacurrate...and other times I swear he's making stuff up!

OK, that's enough nitpicking and complaining for now...I hope I didn't bore anyone...

[Mark]

I come from the old school gun-culture, where any kind of gun in the hands of somebody who knows what they're doing is deadly.

I find the fixation on "BFG" on the part of some Executioner writers kind of creepy.

In the Matt Helm novel, The Poisoners, a part-time fellow agent is murdered by an assassin using a .44 Magnum.

Helm and his superior, Mac discuss who they know who uses such an unwieldy firearm and Helm states, "I remember just one manwho lugged around a cannon that big, but he was pretty stupid and I know he's dead because I killed him...with a little .22 target pistol."

[PMP Webmaster]

Personally, I like an author who understands guns and shooting and can describe them accurately, but who can keep most of the information as "show", not "tell".

In other words, know how many bullets a gun holds, and have the character reload when necessary, but avoid going on about the "super-custom 20-round mags with beveled feed lips" etc. etc. Know that your .357 fires a 125-grain jacketed hollowpoint, but don't say "he fired two 125-grain jacketed hollowpoints" ever time the character drops the hammer.

The way I see it, the characters are intimately familiar with their weapons and equipment, and there should be an air of casualness when referring to them. If a character carries a Colt Delta Elite 10mm Auto, then have them just refer to it as his "Colt" or his "Elite Ten" - please, PLEASE, don't recite in mantra-like fashion the full name and description of each gun every single time it's referenced. This is really one of my biggest annoyances with shoot-em-up fiction.

Phill, good note about William Fieldhouse. From what Phoenix Force I've read, he seems to achieve a pretty good balance of knowledge and restraint.

[Skaramine]

I think Mark hit it on the head with the Matt Helm characterization.

Helm complained about carrying a .38 Bodyguard because "it was too noisy and powerful." (Something Major Boothroyd complained about when he debated giving James Bond a full-sized .38 too...)

Me, I wouldn't write any one of my personal characters using something as clumsy and ungainly as a Desert Eagle. A .44 Magnum revolver or a .357 Magnum revolver? Sure.

But Bolan is an unusual superhuman, and thus, he gets leeway - that, and the editor in chief doesn't want to give Mack anything practical.

Ever look at photographs of a silenced Beretta 93-R with a 20 shot magazine? It's the size of a child's tricycle.

Then again, in my current pulp-noir novel, my hero carries a good old .45, hammer down, pulp style, despite being told "You're not supposed to carry it like that."

So, yeah, I think I might piss some readers off with being too gunny.

But... I like guns.

[Django The Bastard]

Damn! I was hoping the boards were getting lively again...it's just alien jibberish again...

[PMP Webmaster]

Yeah, deleted. It's very strange, because the same "spammers" keep hitting one or two different threads each time. Very odd. I would stop it, except that the only way to do that would be to prevent guest posters, and I'm too happy with the great input we get from guests to go through with that restriction.

[zanshin987]

You'll find lots of gun detail in the Survivalist Series as it's author Jerry Ahern is a writer for gun magazines, and also a manufacturer of holsters! (I found him on the net way back in the late 90s, and other bios I'd read on him mentioned he started his career as a writer for gun magazines). I've found Ahern's to be some of the absolute best of the genre, his "Surgical Strike" series, and "the Defender" was cool and realistic. The "Track" Series he did for Gold Eagle was particularly fun and different. I do agree that the technical jargon is overkill, because most of us readers aren't gun technicians and just want a story, not an entire owner's manual on the hero's guns. I agree that Fieldhouse has the balanced approach. I've always thought he was a stand-out in the Gold Eagle stable of writers.

[englishteacherx]

Ahern wrote the series THE MERCENARY series too, under the pseudonym Axel Kilgore (of all the great pseudonyms -- Kill Gore!) and his love for describing guns occasionally overpowers those otherwise excellent stories too. At one point Hank Frost and an FBI agent spend about three or four pages discussing their guns and how they've modified them and where they had the work done, etc. (Although, then again, guys like that probably would talk about such things, wouldn't they?)

Yet for all this fabulous realism the authors of pulps still make one very basic mistake: a gun fired indoors, much less an automatic weapon, is prone to causing temporary or permanent hearing damage, and I don't think I ever read an action series that had the characters all struggling to hear each other after an indoor shootout.

For an interesting article on silencers and gun noises, check this article on Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics:

www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/

[Skaramine]

One chapter I remember from the Defender series was one character judging the capability and trustworthiness of two people he never met simply by the handguns they were carrying, going on about the semi-auto version of the Tech-9 and the Browning HiPower.

As for indoor shooting, I have been working on that of late. I generally either have silenced weapons, specialized hearing protection for planned tunnel fights, or "pressure equalization" which is a tactic employed by real world soldiers where they yell loudly to equalize the pressure in their eardrums to prevent the overpressure from muzzle blasts from deafening them.

[Django The Bastard]

Hey Doug...as my appreciation for Doom Prophecy has been well documented elsewhere, I won't go into it (but if you haven't read it you can't call yourself a fan of post modern pulp at it's finest)...but I was wondering about the customized weapons used by the trio of uber bad guys...do some of the more esoteric ones have a basis in reality...?

[Skaramine]

Keller's gun is sort of based on Carbine Williams' .22 LR belt-fed machine gun, except this was upgraded to 5.7mm FN.

Haggar's twin shotguns were just extremely cut-down Striker-12's made big enough for his big hands.

I figured that Keller was design genius enough to replicate Williams' design for a more powerful cartridge.

[Django The Bastard]

Very cool ideas indeed!