The Lost World & Other Stories- Part 2

Having read part one, you will have been left in no doubt that Professor Challenger and his scientifically-questionable methods had a large influence upon my youthful self. So I simply couldn’t wait to crack into this new book which promised more Challenger adventures. I was rather disappointed then, to find them, on the whole, brief and unremarkable. Perhaps the story When the World Screamed comes the closest to recapturing some of that Challenger magic. The Poison Belt, however, feels like a second-rate take on a H. G. Wells scenario.

Other factors rankle also. Challenger had held unconventional and unpopular views before in The Lost World, but then he had had solid proof that his crazy ideas were true. His continual ranting about having the correct scientific attitude held up, because he had good reason to know that he was right. In these new stories, Challenger continually leaps to incredible conclusions, and he’s proven correct just because the author makes it so. If Challenger claims that the world is a giant echinoderm (a sea urchin, to the zoologically-challenged) based on no evidence at all, then he’s right. Just because. I know it’s anal to berate fantastic fiction for lack of scientific rigour, but Doyle had got that mix just right before (he was a trained doctor with an above-average understanding of science), and in this volume I feel he does the good Professor an injustice by slighting it. Challenger is supposed to be a genius who’s unafraid to go against the status quo, but in The Lost World he would never propose these kinds of ideas without evidence. And in fact, this idea turns out to be more relevant to this article than I had first supposed…

No matter, I thought. There was one final story left in the collection, and it was a whopper. The Land of Mist. The only story in the book of comparable length to The Lost World. Ah yes, I thought. Doyle has been holding out on us, but here’s where the real meat is. This is where he’s been hiding his aces. Everything’s going to be okay.

So Lord Chelmsford may well have thought before the battle of Isandlwana.

See, between writing The Lost World and The Land of Mist, Doyle became pretty heavily involved with Spiritualism. This interest had begun to bleed, more than a little, into his writing. He turned his considerable talents of propaganda-writing towards promoting his new religion, giving lectures to packed halls on sell-out tours all over the Empire. This happy thought is never more than the length of a silver-cord from your mind as you peruse the pages of The Land of Mist.

Now, one of the chief pleasures of reading turn-of-the-century fantastic fiction is the wealth of bizarre ideas which were still taken for granted at this time- ether, spirit-writing, mesmerism, the hollow Earth, social Darwinism and the like. Science was in its adolescence, and was confidently expected to finally prove things that everybody already knew- that God was in his Heaven, white men were fit to rule the world, and that the lower classes were happy with their lot. Souls could be weighed and fairies and spirits could be photographed (because the camera never lies, right?) Of course, it didn’t quite turn out like that. It's a fascinating period, and in a way, I find Arthur Conan Doyle to be an apt representation of it as a whole.

As a young man, Doyle turned his back on his Catholic faith. No-one in this day and age could believe such nonsense, right? Science (and Darwin in particular) had banished the age of superstition, right? The future creator of Sherlock Homes declared that he would never again believe anything that could not be proven. But fast forward to the end of the Great War, and the picture is very different. With Europe in ruins, with every last Victorian ideal of decency and honour lying strangled and mashed in the muck of the Somme, and with his beloved son dead from Spanish flu, Doyle discovered (as much of the world did) that the gap left by religion has to be filled by something else. But not just anything- for once you embrace rationalism, there’s no going back. Traditional Christianity would clearly not do. Some new idea that could return meaning to life, but which was amiable to the new mechanistic nuts-and-bolts universe that science was revealing was in order.

Over the course of the 20th century, many people would come to fill this hole with UFO’s, automatic writing, electronic voice phenomenon, new age-ism, star people, Scientology, creation ‘science’, intelligent design, and dancing statues at Ballinspittle. But Doyle filled it with Spiritualism.






















In The Land of Mist, Professor Challenger examines this strange new phenomenon. Of course, he begins as a sceptic. He applies the correct amount of caution. He is a scientist, after all, and he knows that Spiritualism is a mine-field rife with cads and charlatans. After attending several séances and witnessing the manifestation of his dead wife, he decides that the phenomenon is genuine. Doyle then gets up on his soap-box, and allows Challenger to make the case clear- death is not the end, spiritualists and mediums are really in contact with the dead, and a new and better world is around the corner for those of us who accept that this is really happening. Challenger (and thus Doyle) believes that this is the most important breakthrough in history. As you are reading this, remind yourself- this guy was knighted for his ability to create propaganda (which he did during the Boer War and the Great War).

I enjoy Spiritualism as one of the bizarre ideas that gives the Victorian period its flavour, but this book is just sad.

It’s sad that Doyle really believed that a bunch of fakers shaking tables in dark rooms were going to change the world.

It’s sad that the creator of the most famously-logical character in history also created this misguided polemic.

And it’s especially sad that he hijacked a bunch of my favourite characters to do it!!

Doyle truly believed that he had met and conversed with the apparitions of his dead son and others. He saw, smelt and touched them. In his own head, he was completely convinced. A recent book by Andrew Norman tries to prove that Doyle was slightly schizophrenic. I don’t believe such explanations are necessary. People seem to be hard-wired to believe weird things, and that’s the end of it. We know now, of course, that spiritualism was no more than a bunch of cads and charlatans. Challenger was right. I think it’s best to leave the old fellow have the last word.

The Lost World & Other Stories- Part 1

More Professor Challenger? More stories featuring the gruff but loveable hero of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World? I couldn't believe it. But there it was- a horrible blue-covered 'classics' edition called 'The Lost World and Other Stories', placed innocently on the shelf, like a landmine of shit hiding amidst the snow-white flowers of the beautiful Bosnian landscape. I couldn't say no. How could this go wrong?

Sigh.

First, a little background. The Lost World (written in 1912) has always been one of my favourite old-time adventure novels, ever since I first stole a copy of it from a friend's house when I was in school. It features Doyle's not-quite-as-famous-as-Sherlock-Holmes character, the crackpot zoologist Professor Challenger, and his expedition to discover living dinosaurs in the Amazon rainforests of South America. He's a big, burly bear of a man with a booming voice and an arrogant, ignorant manner. His condescension towards the non-scientific world is legendary. Truly, he's a character who should only ever have been played in film by the legendary Brian Blessed, who's probably too old now. What a missed opportunity (no disrespect to Wallace Beery or Bob Hoskins).

Challenger disappears into the wilds with scant regard for personal safety like a true son of the British Empire, taking with him only a small group of those he trusts the most. Memorable characters include the brave adventurer John Roxton, and Irish journalist Ed Malone.

Roxton, interestingly, is reckoned to have been based on the British consul Roger Casement. As a thumping great Imperialist, Doyle probably had a lot of admiration for Casement's doings in the Congo, especially when he was exposing the cruelty of Leopold's Belgian Congo state. 'Bravo, Casement!', Doyle must have thought, 'show the world that those dastardly unsporting Belgians have no right to harass native citizens of foreign lands!' I wonder if Doyle saw any similarity when Casement was stripped of all honours and executed for conspiring against the British just before the 1916 Rising in Dublin. Hmm.

Malone is interesting chiefly because his involvement in the expedition is an attempt to impress his girl, Gladys. By the time he returns, she has become engaged to someone else. But that's okay, because by that time, Malone has learned that there's no bond like the bond between a bunch of lads that like to go out into the jungle together, shooting newly-discovered animals. Women in these boys-own adventures are strictly a nuisance, especially when they come between lads who just want to go out into the jungle etc...

There's plenty for the Imperialist to enjoy, too. Challenger and co run merrily amok, encountering (and shooting) incredible creatures, naming things after Queen Victoria (well, they would have if it had been ten years earlier...), and carrying out a little social hygiene on species they find to be literally 'sub-human'.

So basically, The Lost World is an absolute classic. It's genuinely thrilling, funny, has great characters, and plenty of that fin-de-siecle adventurous spirit that characterizes British fantastic fiction of the period. The comradery (a special bond within a group that is in no way erotic or homoerotic- thank you, Urban Dictionary!) between the characters is a big part of what makes the novel great. It's the old-fashioned idea that when you've got your buddies around, you can take on the world (as long as there are no troublesome women around!).

Challenger himself is absolutely hilarious, and is really one of the forgotten greats of fiction. Really, for a literary character not to be as famous as Sherlock Holmes is a bit like being a scientist who's not as smart as Einstein. So, hard cheese, old chum, but it's all in good sport, what?

(more to come about Challenger in part 2)

Da Vinci Code Knock-Offs

I love obvious rip-offs- especially the ones that really don't even try to hide that they're rip-offs. I wonder if low-budget meisters The Asylum, for example, hope that some granny who doesn't know any better will buy a copy of their movie Transmorphers for her grandson, thinking it's Transformers. Perhaps one day I'll give this subject the attention it deserves and write an entire article about The Asylum, or even the endless Italian Mad Max/Escape from New York rip-offs from the 70's and 80's.

But that'll be a big job. For now, I'll just describe briefly a trend in rip-offs that I've noticed over the last few years- Da Vinci Code rip-offs. It seems that since 2003, every bookshop has been obliged by law to carry at least a truckload of these damn things. So I decided to make a list of every title I could find in the Cork area. I didn't have to look too far. Many bookshops even helpfully lump them together on the same shelf, regardless of author.

I am not including 'factual' books that have been written to cash in on the success of the Da Vinci Code. There's lots of them out there, each promising 'revelations' that will rock the Church to its very blah blah blah. They're a different, though definitely related subject. I am including fiction that was written or published before the Da Vinci Code, but was re-published with new titles or covers to cash in. These aren't rip-offs, but are being marketed as such.

So- what do these books have in common? I'm assigning a 'points' system to analyze this issue in the true depth it obviously deserves. While many of the aspects listed below are also features of paperback thrillers in general, I feel that enough of them are specific enough to help separate 'Da Vinci Code Rip-Offs' as their own sub-genre.

1) They will feature a secret or conspiracy from ancient or medieval history. (2 points)

2) The conspiracy will 'rock' the (usually Catholic) Church 'to it's foundations'. (5 points)

3) Various famous and interesting artists and scientists from history will be implicated in this conspiracy. (3 points)

4) Cutting-edge modern technology (often genetics) will be used to help uncover these secrets from the past. (2 points)

5) THE FRIGGIN' TEMPLARS. THAT IS ALL. (20 POINTS)

5) The main character will be an expert in some field relevant to the conspiracy (more often than not an archaeologist). He will be male, and an American. (3 points)

6) He will travel to various exotic locations around the world, with Rome or the Vatican almost always being on the itinerary. (5 points)

7) The prologue will take place hundreds of years in the past, usually in Rome or the Vatican (sometimes elsewhere in Italy). (5 points)

8) The cover will show
- an age-old scroll or parchment (10 points)
- a wax seal (3 points)
- some Christian iconography (3 points)
- the inside of a church or cathedral with a row of cowled monks (5 points)
-prominently-placed Templars (20 points)

9) The title of the book will have three words, including the words 'the' and 'code'. ( 10 points)

Pretty good, eh? From now on, you can rate every book you read and find out how Dan Brown-ish it is. Hell, on this scale, even that navel-gazing tripe-bucket The Secret gets an 18-point rating (largely on account of the thumping HUGE wax seal on the cover), and the Old Testament itself gets a whopping 15 points! There's a little Dan Brown in us all, I guess.

Anyway, here's the list-

The Messiah Code- Michael Cordy
The Genesis Code- John Case
The Gaudi Key- Esteban Martin & Andreu Carranza
The Sacred Bones- Michael Byrnes
The Judas Strain- James Rollins
The Gospel of Judas- Kasser & Mayer
The Last Gospel- David Gibbons
The Last Templar- Raymond Khoury
The Last Testament- Sam Bourne
The Sanctuary- Raymond Khoury
The Righteous Men- Sam Bourne
The Templar Legacy- Steve Berry
The Alexandria Link- Steve Berry
The Venetian Betrayal- Steve Berry
The Shakespeare Secret- Jennifer Lee Carrell
The Sign of the Cross- Chris Kuzneski
The Assassini- Thomas Gifford
Garden of Evil- Mayer
Crusader Gold- David Gibbins

Dios mio!

Picnic at Hanging Rock

Everybody likes an unsolved mystery. Names like Jack the Ripper and the Marie Celeste never die, but live on in infamy. Every aspect of such cases can be scrutinized, but the fascination remains precisely because we can never know what really happened. In 1969, Australian writer Joan Lindsay decided to create her own literary 'unsolved mystery', with the book Picnic at Hanging Rock.

I'd been trying to track down this now-rare book for ages (ordering it off the internet would have been cheating, obviously). Finally it turned up in my local library. About time, thinks I. But is the book any good?

The basic plot is as ingenious as it is simple. On St. Valentines day in the year 1900, a group of girls from a local school, accompanied by their teachers, visit Hanging Rock, a local beauty spot in Victoria, Australia. Three of the girls and one teacher go climbing on the Rock, and never return. That's it. In order to discuss the book in any depth, I'm going to have to release a pretty major SPOILER right here-

-WARNING! SPOILER AHEAD!-

Now here's why the book is so haunting and memorable- the reader never finds out what happens to the missing girls. Search parties scour the Rock to no avail. Police question witnesses and learn nothing useful. This aspect lends the tale a strange kind of authenticity. It reminds me of various 'paranormal vanishings' throughout history that I've read about. What a terrific (and simple) hook. It makes you scour the events surrounding the disappearance for some kind of meaning (as the characters do themselves). Clearly, such a novel is open to a lot of interpretation. Well, roll up your sleeves- here goes.

I reckon that the Appleyard School for Young Ladies (or whatever it's called) serves as a microcosm of Victorian society, except that it's been transplanted to the Australian outback (thus also serving as a metaphor for colonialism. Nice). The headmistress is a stuck-up old tart with her corset pulled too tight, there's no talking without supervision, and gloves may be removed with permission only on the most boiling hot of days. Sounds like the impression we now have of those uptight Victorians, allright.

This aspect of the Victorian psyche I find particularly interesting. They colonised the world, but refused to alter their dress or behaviour while in even the wildest of places. It's as if wherever they went, they had to pretend at all times that they were back in England. Remember in Zulu when the lance-corporal chides one of the privates for having an unbuttoned tunic as they await the zulu charge? 'Where do you think you are, man?', he says to the unfortunate private. That's what I'm talking about (gads, another Zulu reference). Stiff collars and afternoon tea remained the same whatever the situation. When the twenty girls in thick, all-covering white dresses and gloves troop out to Hanging Rock, it's clear that the contradictions boiling just beneath the surface between the wild, untamed continent and the rigid conformity of the colonists are about to come to the surface.

One of the main characters in the novel is the Australian outback itself. The human characters look everywhere for answers after the disappearance, but fail to understand that it's their relationship to this ancient, brooding land that may hold them. It's a living landscape filled with insects, lizards and birds, but this is constantly ignored by the characters. They live on the land, but remain apart from it. I guess eventually, their unwillingness to understand Australia on its own terms was bound to somehow bite them in the arse. Hence the disappearance at the Rock.


As an aside, I'm reminded of a visit I took to Kylemore Abbey in Connemara in Galway a couple of summers ago. It's a fantastic gothic building with huge, well-ordered gardens. The location, however, is an incredibly wild and inhospitable one (it sure seems that way on a rainy day, at least). The contrast between the Victorian ideal of order and the surrounding landscape said a lot about how they thought back then.

I guess another interpretation of the book could be that life is unpredictable, and sometimes weird shit just happens. The remainder of the book focuses on the attempts of the remaining characters to deal with the disappearance. Due to the single inexplicable event, the carefully calculated order present at the beginning of the book begins to descend into chaos.

I was not at all disappointed after finally finding this book. It's all very well-written, and there are enough unusual sub-plots to keep you thinking. Perhaps the answer to the disappearance does lie within the book. Perhaps not. To add to the confusion, Joan Lindsay herself was always ambivalent about whether the book was based on true events (several non-existent newspaper articles are 'referenced' in the novel). Over the years, people have tried to prove that it really is a true story, which only goes to show how we seem to need there to be some mystery in the world.