The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Get to the dinosaurs already
The Land That Time Forgot, a science-fiction novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, was originally serialized in Blue Book Magazine in 1918 and first published as a book in 1924. The story opens with a narrator, presumably Burroughs himself, describing how on a fishing trip off the coast of Greenland he discovered a manuscript in a bottle which serves as the text of this novel. The narrative is written in the first person by Bowen J. Tyler, the heir to a shipbuilding firm in Santa Monica, California. After enlisting for military service in World War I, he finds himself on a passenger ship out of England, bound for the battlefields of France. He sees action sooner than expected, however, when his ride is sunk by a German U-boat. Tyler and his spunky dog manage to end up alone on a lifeboat with a beautiful woman. Eventually, through a series of convolutions best left unrevealed, he ends up capturing the U-boat. Luckily, it just so happens that his father’s company built the craft, and Tyler himself conveniently helped design it, so he takes command of the ship and attempts to pilot it to a safe port.

The naval action goes on for four chapters (out of ten) before we finally get to what the title promises. After losing their way in the South Pacific, Tyler and his shipmates discover the lost continent of Caprona. I don’t think I’m giving too much away by revealing that they meet dinosaurs there. In fact, the wildlife in Caprona is not a frozen slice of the Mesozoic Era, but rather a spectrum of creatures from all stages of evolution, including various species of primitive man. Tyler later learns that the local name for Caprona is Caspak. While he and his crew were hoping for a short stop to replenish their supplies, through unforeseen circumstances they end up stranded in this strange and dangerous land.

I’m an enthusiast of vintage adventure fiction, so I’m receptive to what Burroughs has to offer, but I’ve never been fully satisfied by the few works of his that I’ve read. The original Tarzan novel struck me as hacky and foolish. The Land That Time Forgot fares better, but not much. It’s not hacky, but it isn’t great either. In Caspak, Burroughs has created a fantasy world with the potential to be fascinating, but he doesn’t do anything interesting with it. Too much time is spent on the U-boat, and not enough time among the prehistoric wildlife. The plot is often driven by miraculous coincidences rather than heroic ingenuity. The prehistoric creatures are too easily killed to engender much suspense. Later in the book Tyler informs us that he has discovered “the miraculous, the gigantic truth” of Caspak, but he doesn’t let us in on the secret. This book is incomplete in and of itself and essentially acts as a prologue to another novel. Like The Empire Strikes Back, its purpose is merely to set up the next installment in the series. That would be The People That Time Forgot, the second book in a Caspak trilogy.

One can’t help but compare this book to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The Lost World. Each is flawed in its own way. Doyle’s novel is laden with racism and genocide while Burroughs manages to work in an anti-Bolshevik message sympathetic to the German Empire. In the political correctness department, I’ll give Burroughs the edge, but I still like The Lost World better for its sense of humor and interesting characters. As a hero, Tyler is as dull as dishwater, and his romance with the requisite damsel in distress Lys is insipid and cloying. Perhaps the entire Caspak trilogy adds up to a good novel, but The Land That Time Forgot by itself is a disappointment. Even so, I might just find myself reading the second book, in hopes that it will live up to the potential that this volume squanders.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R37DZRGQN8SZOW/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

Gladiator by Philip Wylie

If Dreiser wrote Superman
Gladiator, a 1930 novel by Philip Wylie, is rumored to be the inspiration for the comic book character Superman. It features a protagonist who is incredibly strong, virtually indestructible, and bears a head of “hair so dark as to be nearly blue.” At one point he even builds his own fortress of solitude. The likeness ends there, however. I approached this book expecting typical pulp fiction fare, but I got much more than I bargained for when it turned out to be a surprisingly profound and intelligent work of literature.

Abednego Danner is a biology professor at a small college in Indian Creek, Colorado. Ridiculed by his academic colleagues, mild-mannered Danner is the last person anyone would expect to make one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time. That’s exactly what happens, however, when he develops a biochemical serum that holds the secret to superhuman strength and invulnerability. Having testing his formula on animals, Danner requires a human test subject. Exercising questionable ethics, he injects his pregnant wife with the serum, thus creating a superhuman son, Hugo.

The opening chapters of Gladiator have a slapstick comedy feel reminiscent of some of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s more humorous tales. Once Hugo Danner grows into a man, however, the tone becomes much more serious, even frightening at times. Far from seeing his powers as a great boon, Hugo views them as a curse. Every public display of his prodigious strength is met with fear, contempt, and hatred. He drifts from place to place, struggling to find a way to put his unique talents to some worthy use, but all his efforts end in destruction and/or ostracism.

Despite its sensationalistic science fiction trappings, Gladiator has some serious philosophical undertones. Hugo Danner is a literary manifestation of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the superman. However, Wylie deliberately contrasts his well-intentioned hero with Nietzsche’s predatory “blonde beast” in order to challenge the inherent authority of might and examine the ethical exercise of power. Hugo has to contend with the fact that he is a god among mere mortals and must face the moral dilemma of whether he has the right to dominate his fellow men. This was at a period in history when fascism was rising and eugenics was taken seriously. Wylie alludes to both as fearful possibilities looming on the horizon.

Hugo’s journey can also be seen as everyman’s struggle to find a meaning to life in the modern world. At times Wylie’s writing resembles a Theodor Dreiser novel in its examination of interwar social conditions. Hugo’s life is a naturalistic reflection of his times. Income inequality, the class struggle, political corruption, labor strife, the First World War, and the Sacco & Vanzetti trial are all thoughtfully scrutinized from Wylie’s liberal perspective. Gladiator is also admirably forward in its frank depiction of sexuality. Though devoid of graphic details, Wylie discusses recreational sex in a matter-of-fact and nonjudgemental manner that’s unusual for its time.

Though never proven, it seems unlikely that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman with no prior knowledge of Wylie’s novel. The similarities are just too glaring. Even so, this pleasant surprise is far superior to any pulp strongman action tale. Gladiator is an excellent work of early 20th-century American literature that deserves to be widely known and respected.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R1A4ZR4Q76MSZD/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

The Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola

Cadaver’s eye view
Emile Zola’s novella The Death of Olivier Becaille was originally published in 1884. This short work consisting of five chapters can be read in its entirety in under an hour. The very first sentence tells you that the story is narrated by a dead man. The title character, always somewhat sickly and frail, has finally succumbed to illness. Nevertheless, he still maintains some awareness from within his immobilized corpse. He can hear what’s going on around him, and for a while can even see out of one eye. He listens to the cries of his grieving wife and her discussions with the neighbors as to his funeral arrangements, all the while wishing he could reach out and comfort her, but being unable to do so. Though the experience of death that Zola presents is certainly unconventional, who’s to say that he’s wrong? In this engaging work, dead men do tell tales.

The grotesque subject matter is reminiscent of Edgar Allen Poe, and Zola proves he can find entertainment in the macabre just as skillfully as the American master of horror. Zola was often labeled a literary bad boy for concentrating on the repulsive or loathsome aspects of life, and here he clearly revels in that role. Frequently accused of wallowing in the gutter, here he wallows in the grave. Zola probably wasn’t the first writer to approach a story from this angle, and he certainly wouldn’t be the last, but in his day this tale would likely have been shocking to all and offensive to many. Beyond the chills and the shock value, however, Zola applies his naturalistic sensibility to the proceedings. Much like he did in his collection of short stories entitled Death, he uses the funerary subject matter as an opportunity to depict the living conditions of the lower class. At the time of his demise, Mr. and Mrs. Becaille are new arrivals at a shabby boardinghouse in Paris. Down on his luck, Becaille has come to assume an unspecified “petty appointment.” Through the first-person narration, the reader is privy to Becaille’s memories and dreams. As he recounts the events of his life, his joys and disappointments are revealed. Zola’s social consciousness adds an extra dimension to the narrative that elevates what could have been merely a sensationalistic penny dreadful to a moving work of realist literature. Like Zola’s novel Thérèse Raquin, it combines gruesome thrills with pathos and poignancy.

This brief work is not in the same league with Zola’s masterpiece novels of the Rougon-Macquart series, like Germinal or La Terre. It deserves five stars nonetheless because for what it is, it’s quite successful. Though not an incredibly profound work of literature, it is a fun read with hints of deeper meaning and a thoughtful moral lesson. The Death of Olivier Becaille is a must-read for Zola fans, and Poe fans just might like it too.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R2Y0PE9QK91XMV/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

The Hated Son by Honoré de Balzac

Evil dad persecutes preemie

The Hated Son, a novel by Honoré de Balzac, was originally published in 1831 under the French title of L’Enfant maudit. It is one of the “philosophical studies” in Balzac’s mammoth series of works known as the Comédie Humaine. The story is set in Normandy in the late 16th century. The Comte d’Herouville, a hateful and cruel man, has recently married a beautiful young heiress of delicate and saintly demeanor, Jeanne de Saint-Savin. The marriage was arranged for political and financial reasons, and Jeanne rightfully fears her brutish husband. Seven months after the wedding, a pregnant Jeanne goes into labor. The scene of the birth is a frightening ordeal in which d’Herouville treats the expectant mother with all the sensitivity and comfort of a medieval jailer for his prisoner. Given the short term of the pregnancy, d’Herouville suspects the baby is the son of Jeanne’s former lover and threatens to kill the child. In fact, the son, Etienne, is a preemie who is born tiny and frail. The Comte stops short of killing the boy because he needs a male heir to ensure custody of his wife’s estate, yet he openly despises Etienne, and banishes him from the castle, confining him to a seaside cottage where the boy grows up in solitude and isolation.

He can’t stay isolated forever, of course, or there wouldn’t be much of a story. Eventually Etienne grows up into a sensitive, artistic young man with the naive innocence of a veritable babe in the woods. I enjoyed the dark tone of the book’s gothic opening; Balzac is at his best when he’s being bad. Etienne’s idyllic existence, however, is dull and cloying by comparison. It is hard to identify or sympathize with a character who is so unrealistically wholesome and pure. If anything, the one character you end up rooting for is Beauvouloir, the “bonesetter” who delivers the baby and ends up having a prominent role in Etienne’s upbringing. The Hated Son has a few enjoyable moments, but overall it suffers from unnecessary protraction. Unlike Balzac works with large ensemble casts and convoluted story lines, this is a relatively simple tale revolving around five characters. There’s only enough material here for a short story, yet Balzac drags it out into a novel by adding lengthy descriptive passages that only belabor the degree of Etienne’s naivete or his uncommonly intense adoration for his mother.

Although this novel takes place centuries before the bulk of the Comédie Humaine, it nevertheless has ramifications for other works in the series. Later generations of the d’Herouville family would go on to figure prominently in the novel Modeste Mignon and receive mention in other Balzac works. There’s also a reference here to the family of prostitutes known as Les Marana, from the novel of the same name. Despite such connections, I wouldn’t consider The Hated Son to be an essential read for any but the most fervent fans of the Comédie Humaine. It’s perfectly fine writing when compared to other fare of the period, but in a ranking of Balzac’s works this one would likely fall somewhere in the bottom half.

If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.

https://www.amazon.com/review/RZ7T19TA283RO/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay

Pioneering, profound, and perplexing
A Voyage to Arcturus, a novel by Scottish author David Lindsay, was originally published in 1920. Given the time frame, I was expecting something along the lines of an Edgar Rice Burroughs adventure, but what I got was something far more surprising and profound. Lindsay’s novel is decades ahead of its time and presages the later philosophical sci-fi of writers like Frank Herbert or Philip K. Dick.

The book opens with a scene at a séance. Maskull, one of the guests at that event, is then invited by a couple of mysterious characters to take an interstellar voyage. They travel to the planet of Tormance, in the star system of Arcturus. After falling unconscious during the voyage, Maskull wakes up alone in an alien body. He then proceeds on a spiritual quest, wandering through various regions of Tormance seeking the meaning of life, death, and love. Along the way he encounters a variety of unique characters, each of whom imparts a valuable and/or cryptic lesson.

The first half of the book is classic sci-fi, loaded with ingenious ideas and impressive imagery. The voyagers’ space ship is powered by “back rays,” a form of stellar light that pulls toward a star rather than emanating outward from it. Arcturus is a binary system with two different colored stars that produce all the colors in our spectrum as well as two new colors, ulfire and jale, that have never been seen before by human eyes. Later in the book, Mazkull rides an aquatic tree with optical membranes that navigate it toward light. These are just a few examples of Lindsay’s amazing visions. Some of the book’s early scenes lead me to believe that it may have influenced James Cameron’s film Avatar. The book’s later half, on the other hand, is more philosophical and mythological, with a bizarre pantheon of characters reminiscent of a Jack Kirby comic book.

A Voyage to Arcturus is saturated with Lindsay’s unorthodox ideas on religion, drawn heavily from the Gnostics with a smattering of Norse mythology. Tormance is governed by a god with at least four names—Shaping, Crystalman, Surtur, and Faceny—who in turn is part of a more complex trinity. Like Plato proposed a couple millennia ago, Lindsay sees the “real” world of our senses as a lie and an illusion behind which true reality is concealed. The novel is the epic saga of Maskull’s journey to uncover that hidden truth. I don’t know anything about Lindsay’s sexual preference, but there’s enough gender-bending sexual transformation going on in this book to occupy an LGBT Studies course for an entire semester. Given the novel’s overwhelmingly pessimistic and melancholic tone, one also wonders if Lindsay might have been suicidal.

I’ll have to confess that there are more than a few chapters in this book where I didn’t know what the heck was going on. There is some weird, wacky stuff at play in this world. However, it’s not a senseless weird-for-weird’s-sake fantasy novel like William Hope Hodgson’s The House on the Borderland, nor does it ever descend to the so-strange-it’s-fun kitsch of an Ed Wood movie. It can be frustratingly obscure, but there is an incredible earnestness to the novel that demands admiration and respect. One could read and analyze this book ten times over and make unexpected discoveries with each reading. The best way to approach it is to think of it like a surrealist painting. Let the imagery soak into your head, and see what connections develop. This trippy voyage may just blow your mind.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R19CH14I89UAUZ/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

A Trip to Plutopia by Emanuel Haldeman-Julius

A sarcastic oligarchic paradise
A Trip to Plutopia, a short story by Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, was originally published in 1918 in the pages of the Socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason. Haldeman-Julius was editor of the Appeal, but is probably best known as the publisher of the Little Blue Books, a series of inexpensive paperbacks sold by the hundreds of millions at newsstands and through mail order. Around 1919, A Trip to Plutopia was published as a 16-page book that sold for 15 cents. It was No. 8 in The Appeal’s Pocket Series, a red-jacketed precursor to the Little Blue Books. Though Haldeman-Julius’s little books covered a variety of topics—literature, philosophy, history, science, even sex education—he often used the series to promote his socialist political views. Such is the case with A Trip to Plutopia.

Plutopia is an island nation of 50,000 inhabitants. Of these, 49,500 work like slaves while the remaining 500 enjoy the fruits of their labors. Though this may sound like a depressing dystopian vision, Haldeman-Julius sarcastically depicts it as a utopia, and thus it becomes comedy. The narrator interviews representatives of Plutopia’s two classes, both of whom seem pleased as punch with the arrangement of their ideal society. The workers labor 12 hours a day, live in communal housing, and wear paper sacks emblazoned with numbers that serve as their names. The wealthy plutocrats live in palaces dreaming up ways to cut costs while squeezing the last drop of labor out of their workforce.

Haldeman-Julius takes examples of the actual atrocious working conditions of his era and exaggerates them to comic extremes. What’s not funny about it, of course, is that to some extent Plutopia is a reflection of reality. At the time of the story’s publication, big business was treating labor like slaves, and there was little protective legislation to prevent it. While the possibility of a socialist revolution or a strike in Plutopia is mentioned, the workers are too complacent to undertake such a fight or too foolish to realize when they’re being exploited by The Man.

A Trip to Plutopia will appeal to those who appreciate the labor literature of the early twentieth century, such as the more polemical writings of Upton Sinclair or Jack London. Sinclair once penned a similar satire called The Millennium, yet Haldeman-Julius’s story is funnier. In fact, A Trip to Plutopia is almost perfect for what it is, yet a mere 14 pages of text can’t help coming across as somewhat inconsequential. On the other hand, unlike Sinclair’s Millennium, Haldeman-Julius gets points for knowing when to stop and not dragging the joke out so long that it overstays its welcome.

Though penned almost a century ago, A Trip to Plutopia still bears relevance for today’s world. Though working conditions have improved, the 1% is still the 1%, and income disparity is still a huge problem in America. By depicting ridiculous wealth inequality as if it were natural and favorable, Haldeman-Julius points out the absurdity of the system that allows it to continue.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/RAAW0GYZTPXFW/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

Anthem by Ayn Rand

A powerfully preachy dystopian fable
These days Ayn Rand may be best known as the patron saintess of libertarian politics, but lets not forget she was also a writer of fiction. It’s possible to appreciate Rand’s books without buying into her philosophy heart and soul. I enjoy Rand’s work not because I agree with her political views, but because I agree with her literary views. As an outspoken proponent of Romanticism in the vein of Victor Hugo, Rand believed literature and art should depict an idealized view of the world that celebrates the human spirit. Unlike perhaps any other novelist of the modern era, Rand’s books convince you that they were written to change the world. Though such books come across as propagandistic, I prefer a novel that pushes a philosophy to one that merely shows me a slice of life. A preachy novel is better than a pedestrian one, and as far as preachy novels go, no one lays it on thicker than Rand.

Anthem, originally published in 1938, is a science fiction novella. Rand grew up in Soviet Russia, and here she presents a dystopian vision of the future that illustrates communism taken to its extreme. The hero of the story, Equality 7-2521, lives in a world where any expression of individualism is punishable by death. Though the story takes place in the future, the society depicted is pre-mechanical. Its technology is stalled at the level of horse and candle, and its moral code resembles that of colonial New England Puritanism crossed with the eugenics of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. This future world has embraced the idea of equality and brotherhood to such an extent that singular pronouns no longer exist, and the narrator is forced to refer to himself as “we.” Equality 7-2521 has lived his whole life under strictly enforced conformity. As he becomes a man he starts to realize that he is different from his brothers and begins to exhibit a rebellious spirit. Cursed with a scientific mind, he wants to explore how the world works and begins to question why things are the way they are. The powers that be, however, crush every innovative thought and will not tolerate his independent nature.

As science fiction, Anthem is brilliant. Like Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984, Rand presents a dystopian vision of the future that’s vividly conceived and disturbingly thought-provoking. The narration by Equality 7-2521 serves as a vicarious indoctrination into his brainwashed view of the world. All the “we”s, “they”s, and “our”s contribute to the authenticity of the experience, but at times the relentless plurals can get confusing and annoying. Imagine an entire book narrated by Gollum from The Lord of the Rings. Overall, however, I admired Rand’s riveting storytelling and the fervent thrust of her individualist message. In the last couple chapters she kind of lost me though, as Equality 7-2521 began to sound less like an inspirational freedom fighter and more like an up-and-coming dictator with a grand plan.

Anthem is Rand’s shortest novel and the only one of her works that’s freely available in the public domain. These two qualities make it a perfect introduction to her work for those who have never read her writing, yet at the same time it only hints at the complexity and propagandistic bombast of her more monumental works, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. While those bigger books require some deep thinking, this quick read will appeal to any science fiction fan who appreciates a good dystopian tale.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R2EE7U91NF77YD/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm