Captain Robert Folkestone and Sergeant Felix Hand serving in Her Britannic Majesty's far-flung outposts on Mars make their second appearance in Ralph E. Vaughan's Amidst Dark Satanic Mills - An Interplanetary Steampunk Adventure (#503). I love watching those classic 1930s black and white adventure movies like Gunga Din or The White Feather, and reading these steampunk novels evokes the same kind of pleasure. I can easily picture Errol Flynn as Captain Folkestone, along with some unnamed cool blonde actress as his verbal sparring partner and Section Six agent, Lady Cynthia Barrington-Welles. As for Felix Hand, I'm not sure who could play him properly; after all, he is a Highland Martian with a clockwork heart. He is definitely the heart and soul of this trio, and its comic relief, as well.
In this outing, Folkestone and Hand are unwittingly caught up in a conspiracy much more monstrous than they could have ever imagined when they are asked as a courtesy to the Red Prince's Court to follow up on an unidentified human body floating in a backwater Martian canal. What the people behind this conspiracy have in mind is no less than total domination of the Solar System with allegiance only to the shadowy organization Medusa. Even knowing the name is enough to get an entity killed. Lady Cynthia joins in the search for Medusa's base of operations, suspected to be somewhere in an asteroid belt, posing as a rich, eccentric British tourist. Suffice it to say that things do not go well for any of them as they continue to close in on the ruthless minds behind Medusa.
Of course, as I was reading Amidst Dark Satanic Mills, the hymn tune Jerusalem to which this Blake poem is set kept playing in my brain. Luckily for me, it's one I particularly like, but as an American, rarely get to sing... So there you have it - lights, camera, action and a soundtrack! All you need to do is supply the popcorn for a perfect way to spend an afternoon.
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