The Ghost Hunters (2013) by Neil Spring

Borley Rectory is, for me, the ur-haunted house. The original. The most 'pure' manifestation of the idea of the 'haunted house.' When I close my eyes and think of a haunted house, it's that Victorian red-brick monstrosity I see, its twin front windows staring malevolently. Before there was Hill House, before there was the Belasco House, there was Borley Rectory. I can't even hear those two words without being forcibly yanked back to my childhood: a childhood filled with 'real-life' books about ghosts and hauntings that I collected obsessively.

And those books were filled with Borley Rectory.


Colin Wilson and Peter Underwood had a lot to say in their books about Borley Rectory, but the one that first introduced me to that rambling Suffolk mansion was the Usborne supernatural guide Haunted Houses, Ghosts & Spectres. I've still got my copy, and the painted illustrations in it still give me the creeps. I remember reading it on a sunny summer's day, aged about ten, and within minutes being so terrified I couldn't bring myself to took out the window, lest the ghostly nun of Borley Rectory be there, looking in at me, as she looked in on the Bull family so frequently. Eventually, I read, the rector was forced to brick up the dining-room window.

Brr.

So I think it's fair to say that I was pretty excited to find that someone had finally dramatised the story of the Borley Rectory haunting. Neil Spring's book The Ghost Hunters tackles the haunting of the house, and it's investigation by Harry Price. Price was one of my heroes as a child; the books I read painted him as a heroic man of science who investigated the most unusual unexplained phenomena the pre-war world could muster. He was a psychic investigator; a ghost-hunter. I must have thought the man had the best job in the world. To this day, I still believe that ghost-hunting ought to be done by English men in tweed who are scrupulous scientists and sift through their evidence in wood-paneled libraries, and not by fat, uncritical middle-aged American southerners who listen to too much Coast To Coast Am.

Great cover.

The story of Price's investigation of Borley Rectory has always been one of my favourite stories of 'scientific' paranormal investigation. As a kid I was mad for the idea of the time between the wars being a world in which intelligent men of science could properly investigate - and maybe just prove - the existence of the supernatural. Price investigated spiritualists, mediums and ghost reports, talking mongooses and even magickal demon-summoning. But his most famous investigation, the one with which he would always be associated, was the haunting of Borley Rectory.

The nun - THE NUN!

Spring rightly focuses on Price in his book, mixing fact and fiction skilfully throughout. His narrator is the fictional Sarah Grey, Price's assistant during his investigations at Borley Rectory. Sarah is a young woman who begins working with Price in 1926. Gradually her life comes to revolve around Price and the Rectory. It's a clever way to make a study of the man, and though Spring doesn't stick scrupulously to the historic record, and isn't afraid to bend the facts to fit the story he's crafted, I feel that he paints a portrait which is correct in tone if not in detail. Harry Price was a showman as well as a scientist; as much P. T. Barnum as he was Sherlock Holmes, and was in reality frequently accused of faking the phenomena he was supposed to be studying. My early fears that this aspect of his character would be glossed over in the book in favour of a more clean-cut, heroic version of Harry Price, were thankfully unfounded.

Harry Price - who you gonna call?

When Sarah first meets Price, he's a confirmed skeptic who delights in exposing false mediums. But when they hear stories about 'The Most Haunted House In England', they wonder if Borley Rectory just might be the case that changes Price's beliefs. Price and Sarah meet the various inhabitants of Borley Rectory (who are frequently not what they seem) and become involved in the haunting - and Sarah comes to wonder if the horror at the Rectory has come to take over her own life.

There were a few little things that didn't quite work for me in this book. The story takes place over many years, with years sometimes passing in just a few lines. This has been done to follow the true story, but it does result in some occasionally odd plotting. Also, there are just a bit too many plot twists, with Price's character flipping and flopping quite a lot as to whether he's a skeptic or a believer, some of his revelations happening off the page and some of his behaviour being a little inconsistent. And there's some clunky dialogue in the opening chapters that didn't sound like anything any real human being would ever say, including a cameo by a historical character who basically turned up and name-dropped a bunch of things that he's famous for.

Borley Rectory

BUT, having got the bitching out of the way, I can say that The Ghost Hunters is a fantastic book. I can't remember the last time I devoured a book as quickly as this one. It took me three days to read, but that's just because real life kept getting in the way. If I'd been left to my own devices, I would have read it in one sitting. And it's not a small book either. It captured my interest and filled my mind. Granted, I was already fascinated by the subject matter, but Spring does the subject proud.

Spring's greatest skill is in his treatment of the supernatural. Just as he straddles the boundary between fact and fiction, he leaves us ever unsure as to whether human agencies are causing the 'haunting' or whether something fantastic is really happening. Like the actual reports of the haunting, the manifestations are mostly low-key but extremely disturbing. There are some real scares to be had in this book, and had without forgetting the complex reality of the Borley Rectory story. The line between truth and lie becomes so tangled that it'd hard to know what to believe or what to expect. many characters have reasons to make up stories about the house, but some of the phenomena remain inexplicable. The sense of mystery, rather than in-your-face horror, is masterful. The nun chilled me just as she did years ago, the seance scenes tapped into my sense of wonder, defeated the cold, logical part of my brain and left me wondering if it was just possible that communication with the dead wasn't all just smoke and mirrors. And it's this dichotomy between belief and skepticism, between the real and the fake, that fuels the plot of the book.

This IS the definitive version of the Borley Rectory story; not the true story, but the legend that Borley Rectory has become. There will never be a better fictional take on it. This book is the closest you'll ever come to spending a night in a haunted house with the first ghost-buster, Harry Price, back when people believed that science was going to prove the existence of life after death. And not just any haunted house, either:

The original.

The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes (2008)

The Age of Wonder sat on my to-read pile for over a year. I go in and out of periods of enjoying non-fiction, and it wasn't until this December that a Christmas reading of Treasure Island got me interested in the18th century again, and I thought that it was time to dust off this tale of Enlightenment science. It's a setting that's a bit earlier than my usual period of interest. Traditionally I've been fascinated by the Victorian period, partly because I love their dress sense, and I've always been turned off by anything involving powdered wigs and ridiculous-looking breeches and high socks. But I remembered reading through the first chapter previously and being struck by the tale of the first Europeans visiting Tahiti, so I cracked into the book for real this month.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

Descend, bold traveller, into the crater of the jokull of Snaefell
Which the shadow of Scartaris touches before the Kalends of July
And you will attain the centre of the earth.
 I did it. Arne Saknussemm

I've been harsh on Verne before. Like, really harsh. For years I typified him as the antithesis of Wells: stuffy and scientific where Wells was fun and lyrical. Well, I'm here now to take it all back. Journey to the Centre of the Earth is one of the greatest adventure novels ever written.


And actually, I have no idea why it hasn't always sat in my head as a classic, as I was fascinated by the illustrated Ladybird version as a child. The images in this book were in a really weird style, but they've stuck with me for years. Despite not having read the book since the Jurassic, I still remembered vividly the mysterious message of Arne Saknussem, the Liedenbrock Sea, the plesiosaur vs icthyosaur battle, and the lonely caveman.

Here it is. Weird, eh?

More recently, I picked up a Wordsworth edition for just a few pounds in a favourite late-opening Charing Cross bookshop during an otherwise bleary-eyed night in central London. What strikes me, reading the book again, is the sense of awe and wonder it evokes. I've felt nothing like it since reading The Lost World years ago; it's enough to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. As usual with Verne, there's tonnes of infodumping, though on this occasion the inclusion of barrel-loads of barmy 19th-century geology and zoology is handled far more entertainingly than in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

I don't suppose I have to tell you anything about the plot, but here goes anyway: the eccentric German Professor Liedenbrock finds a book containing a note in code written by the historical Icelandic explorer Arne Saknussem. The note includes a description of how to get to the centre of the Earth by traveling through the Sneffels volcano in Iceland. This opening, of course, set the template for a thousand lesser adventures and thrillers ever since, but the original is still thrilling. Imagine...every single lame movie you've ever seen that opens with the hackneyed 'coded map to adventure' trope... this is where it all started (with apologies to Mr. Poe!).

After decoding the message, Liedenbrock immediately packs and departs for Iceland, despite the whines of his nephew Axel. Along the way, they pick up a 'stoic' Icelandic guide named Hans. Now in terms of characterisation, Verne does a little better here than he did in Leagues. Liedenbrock is one of your classic 'eccentric scientist' characters, though of course without the sinister edge of satire that Wells gave to the likes of Professor Cavor. Verne's work remains nigh-on free from satire of any kind, and though this bothered me previously, I find his gee-whiz optimism rather refreshing now. Liedenbrock is genuinely likeable; positive, knowledgeable and exciting where Axel is dour and cowardly. Axel's character arc from yellow-belly to adventurer is also enjoyable in its own simple way. Hans, however... I don't know what Verne was thinking with Hans. You've only got three characters in your book, Mr. Verne, and you chose to make one of them mute? At least we can be thankful he's a mute Icelandic guide and not an African one. Sometimes its blessings for small mercies with 19th-century fiction (Frycollin from Robur the Conqueror, anyone?). A running joke involves Hans silently demanding his payment at exactly the prescribed time each week, regardless of their circumstances. Ha.

Anyway, these three travel to the Sneffels volcano, which they find has got three 'chimneys' leading into it. They have to get there by a certain date (no I'm not fact-checking what date it was) so that the shadow of the cone will touch one of the entrances, letting them know which leads to the centre of the earth. It's a great touch, and Verne wrings out the tension by having the sky remain clouded until the last possible minute.

Remind you of anything?

I really love the use of a natural phenomenon (in this case, the movement of the sun) as a necessary part of finding the trail. It's been used hundreds of times since, most famously in Raiders of the Lost Arc of course, but this must be one of its earliest uses in fiction. It gives the impression that Saknussem must have been a very clever man indeed.

Our heroic trio descend into the chimney, and make their way through the world beneath the surface of the earth, using a delightful array of 19-century devices to light their way and provide directions. Liedenbrock keeps tabs on where they are with regards to the surface world; ie which country they're currently beneath. There's a truly horrific scene where Axel gets separated and lost for several days in the pitch-black tunnels. This scene always affected me; I'm not particularly claustrophobic, but it's difficult to think of a more awful place to be lost and alone in. Despite this, Axel becomes more and more excited about the prospect of the discoveries they're sure to make. The excitement is palpable; the feeling that they're doing something no-one has ever done before (except Saknussem, of course) is ome f the main attractions of the book.

Eventually they come to the great central idea of the novel: a cavern so vast that its walls and ceiling cannot be seen. This blew my mind as a kid and it's still an amazing idea. They emerge on a beach, a vast sea stretching out before them. Above their heads, clouds have formed, and some strange electrical phenomenon provides light, though it shines from no particular direction, and thus casts no shadows. They have come to the Liedenbrock Sea.

This is an amazing scene. I don't have any smart-ass remarks to make about it.

This scene is truly one of the great feats of imagination of 19th-century literature. As the explorers traverse the beach, they come upon that mainstay of bizarre alternate worlds: the giant mushroom. I don't know why, but ever since, the presence of giant mushrooms has been used by storytellers to indicate that characters have arrived somewhere weird and alien. They then build a raft to cross the sea, encountering the very first fictional prehistoric animals in all of literature in another of Journey's famous scenes.

The idea of prehistoric animals hadn't been around for very long when Verne wrote Journey. Prior to the 1820s and the discoveries of Mary Anning, the biblical account of the Earth's history was largely accepted without question, and fossils were explained away as being the remains of animals that had failed to make it to the arc. The idea that God would have created creatures only to doom them to extinction made no sense. The Earth, of course, was thought to be no more than several thousand years old. These ideas were still changing, and still contentious, when Verne chose to pit an icthyosaur against a plesiosaur in the Liedenbrock Sea. Probably afraid to offend sensitive readers (no doubt on the advice of his canny publisher, Hetzel), Verne talks about geological ages and the appearance and extinction of different species without making any specific mention to evolution. Clever man. Hetzel certainly knew his audience, and this wouldn't be the first time he made 'political' changes to Verne's work: in the Captain Nemo books, Nemo's was originally to be a Polish nobleman revenging himself upon the Russians. Hetzel removed this background because of France's alliance with Russia.

Our trio cannot at first distinguish exactly what kind of animals are fighting in the water. There seem to be many. They then realise that there are just two, though they are massive and seem to be made up of the parts of different animals. It's a great idea - without this scene, there might have been no Jurassic Park - but it's not my favourite scene in the book.

When they get to the other side of the sea, Liedenbrock finds a boneyard full of the remains of thousands of creatures, including an anatomically modern human. They seem to be on the verge of even greater discoveries; but from here on out, Verne exercises incredible restraint, giving us only tantilising hints of the wonders that this inner world has to offer. Having created a world which would appear to be abundant in prehistoric creatures, he has his characters now skirt around the very edge of it. Instead of filling the narrative with chases and danger, or encounters with dinosaurs, Verne settles for a single clash between prehistoric beasts and merely hints at the rest. Bones, fossils and one human corpse alone hint at the living relics that populate his inner earth. These fragments are as close as the characters come for the most part, leaving Verne's world with a tremendous sense of mystery still intact. Their vision from a distance of a lonely caveman tending to a group of mastadon is perhaps the ultimate act of restraint. If only Burroughs had such subtlety! From there, Liedenbrock and co make their way back to the surface (without technically having reached the centre of the Earth) via the most ludicrous invention in the book: their raft is propelled up through a volcano shaft by rising lava. They emerge in Italy.

It's characteristic of Verne that the final loose end to be tied is a scientific one and not a personal or emotion one. Liedenbrock and Axel figure out that their compass had been polarised by a magnetic storm while on the raft, thus fooling them into thinking that they had been heading north for much of their journey, instead of south.

Overall, Journey is a surprisingly short, taut and focused novel, showing Verne at the height of his powers. It gets the plot rolling from the very first sentence, and never lets up. Highly recommended.

The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (2009) by Peter Ackroyd

Left the book in Cork, forgot to take a picture. Sorry, internet.

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 Have you ever wondered what Frankenstein would have been like if the titular character, instead of remaining in Switzerland, travelled to England in order to carry out his grotesque scientific investigations in early-19^thcentury London rather than continental Europe? Me neither – and I’m not really sure why Peter Ackroyd wondered either. I mean, it’s not exactly a massive difference, or any kind of important re-imagining that tells you things about the characters you didn’t know in the original text. Wide Sargasso Sea, this ain’t. For the most part, it’s just Frankenstein as you know it, only happening in a slightly different location.

And, as it happens, it’s the location that’s key. Anyone familiar with Ackroyd’s back-catalogue knows that the man is obsessed with the history of London. He’s written a lot of books set in London, and with Casebook, he’s even set a story there that normally belongs somewhere else. As an aside, ever since reading From Hell, I’ve taken an interest in the architect Hawksmoor; wandering through London, I’ve tracked down most of his churches and wondered at the supposed ‘occult’ meanings that lie behind their geographical placement. Ackroyd has written a fictionalised biography of Hawksmoor which I really ought to check out, and whenever I'm looking at one of the churches I think 'I really ought to track down a copy of that Hawksmoor book'. So yeah, it's not like we've got history or anything, but I know Ackroyd.

Anyway, on to Frankenstein. The story gets underway when Victor, a boy fascinated by the power of nature and the elements, persuades his father to let him travel to England to study at Oxford. The old man reluctantly allows this, and the reader quickly figures out the real reason that the infamous scientist has been transposed by Ackroyd: so he can faff about having college-age adventures with his real-life creators (sort of) Shelley and Byron. Yes, it’s like an early-Victorian Animal House as the learned poets come to grips with college life, hanging out in disreputable taverns, gorging themselves on theatre and high culture, and having a high old time. Soon after, they move to London, where the good times continue in settings more familiar to me, given as I’ve not yet breathed the rarefied air of Oxford (though they’ve still cause to remember me in Cambridge, I’d reckon). I felt that Ackroyd was quite enjoying himself here, and could have let this bit go on for quite a while if the bloody plot hadn’t intervened, spoiling the lads’ fun.

'Away, away ye notes of woe!'

 But intervene it does, and soon Victor finds himself treading down a path that is well-worn, though it may be happening in the slums of Limehouse rather than a spooky old castle in Europe. Victor picks up a few things about science during his time at the city of spires, but it’s mostly his own work that teaches him what he needs to know about the boundary between life and death. Ackroyd of course misses no opportunity to fill his prose with galvanism, ether, magnetism and other discredited 19^th-century sciences, though he goes light on the jargon, and anyone hoping for Umberto Eco-style in-depth diversions into these arcane areas will go home hungry.

Eventually he succeeds, creating the monster we all know and love, which he subsequently abandons and fears for the rest of the novel as it begins to destroy his life. Apart from the setting – and one oddity which might just make or break the novel for some readers, but which is not as clever as Ackroyd thinks – this section of the story is very similar to the original. By now, Victor’s hanging around with Byron and Shelley’s extended circle of friends, including Dr Polidori (creator of The Vampyre) and Mary Shelley (who is of course his own true creator), and he even manages to work in the famous story night at the Swiss lakehouse where the idea for the original Frankensteinwas born.

None of which I found particularly clever – I’ve read too many books recently where it’s clear that the author is just amusing themselves playing around in a time/place/location that they love, chuckling to themselves everytime they use a historical or fictional character in a sliiiightly different way - but it’s well-written, and it’s fun. Yeah, I love 19^th-century London, and I never get bored of seeing it portrayed in different ways. In this book, I enjoyed it being used as a fun place for intelligent, artistic young men to run riot as they push the boundaries of known science and meddle with things that should not be. The writing is crisp and efficient and the story doesn’t stay still for a moment. Historically, I didn’t learn too much about life during this period – and yet somehow the actual day-to-day living of it felt real to me.

'So we'll have The Saint in there as well... God this is fun!'

 Having said all this, my final point is: what’s the point? To which I have to admit that I haven’t a bloody clue. I mean, not every book’s got to have a point. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of airport fodder, if that’s what you fancy. But Frankenstein was about lots of things; about fear of progress and the discovery of man’s place in the Universe; about tampering with natural laws; about hubris. It’s a classic story that had some very important new ideas in it, pretty much inventing science fiction and modern horror. Casebook, on the other hand… is a lark. It’s great fun, it tells an exciting story… but it’s handling such idealogically heavy material that it’s difficult to imagine that Ackroyd didn’t intend there to be more beneath the surface. It's not exactly like writing a light opera about the Holocaust, but it is an odd juxtaposition. Whatever point there might be, it’s hard to discern it beneath the cod-gothic prose and use of themes so commonplace that they’ve become almost threadbare.

So while I recommend The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein, I’ve no idea what kind of book it really is or what it was written to achieve.

The Future Eve (1886) by August Villiers de L'Isle Adam

A word of warning: The Future Eve is not a novelette that you’re going to find easily. Not in English anyway; from what I can tell, the only available English translation, apart from some rather academic and expensive-looking journals, is in a strange collection called The Frankenstein Omnibus which is almost definitely out of print. So, chances are, you’re probably not going to be reading it, which is a shame. For this reason, I may be a little more lenient with the spoilers this time.

I’ll admit upfront that The Future Eve is not really anything to do with Imperialism or colonialism, but it is choc-full of other points of interest to the nineteenth-century enthusiast. For starters, the author was a fin-de-siecleFrench bohemian who hung out in cafes writing, drinking (absinthe, presumably), being poor and attempting to get rich society ladies to marry him (a bit like my life, really. Except I'm not French, obviously). The novelette is a sort of take on the Frankenstein theme, and what makes it interesting is its distinctly romantic/decadent spin on the subject.

At the beginning of the story we’re introduced to one Professor X, who sadly is nothing to do with the X-Men, but is in fact a sort of literary stand-in for none other than Thomas Edison. That’s what the intro says, anyway; if it’s true then the general public (in France at least) must have had some pretty weird ideas about the man and his abilities back in the 1880s. We first meet Not-Edison rambling about in his mansion outside a city (presumably New York), being attended to by the disembodied voices of artificial personalities he has somehow created using ‘electricity.’

Not in this book.

One of the great joys of reading literature from this period is the almost mystical reverence that was given to electricity. I guess even this late in the century it was still seen by many people as being wondrous and a little bit mysterious… the kind of ill-understood force that could be capable of almost anything. Think of Captain Nemo in 20,000 Leagues telling his captives that ‘my electricity is not the same as everyone else’s’ in an attempt to handwave the workings of the Nautilus. Way to fluff your research there, Verne.

Electricity in Victorian novels is always a plot device for creating monsters, bringing people back from the dead or other Things Man Was Not Meant to Know, mostly based on its demonstrated ability to make dead frogs twitch. Makes perfect sense, really. In the 1950’s, its place as a magical monster creator was taken by atomic power, and later by genetic engineering, which are similarly both misunderstood by the public and misused by narrative media. Read this for a bizarre real-life example.

This is exactly what Victorian science was like.

Not-Edison’s devices are described and explained in very strange ways in the novelette. The science isn’t ignored or handwaved away like in Wells, nor is it excruciatingly and accurately thought-through like in Verne. Instead, the author does go into quite a lot of detail; it’s just that none of it makes any bloody sense. There’s lots of talk about telephone wires and reflections, vibrations and currents. Of course, none of these descriptions really address how Not-Edison has achieved artificial intelligence, no matter how long they go on for. But they do bring a wonderfully romantic feeling of science-as-magic to the story.

How did I do it? I'll never tell!

 The scientist receives a visitor: the young and handsome Lord Ewald. But despite being the very picture of virile English manhood, the lord has a problem: he’s desperately lovesick. Despite having a position and profile that would win him the heart of almost any woman he meets, he’s gone and got himself hung up on a girl who’s doing him wrong. Things are so bad that he’s considering suicide.

The girl, one Alicia Cleary, is so beautiful that she’s regularly compared to the Venus of the classical world. She is, in a way, attached to Ewald, but he is constantly disappointed by her because the silly chit’s personality is not equal to her beauty.

Ah, yes. It would be neglectful of me not to mention that The Future Eve contains more than a strain of misogyny. In fact, it’s rather famous for it: the misogyny is the main thrust of most of the literary criticism that has been written about it.

Professor X and Ewald talk over the particulars of the situation. Apparently Miss Cleary is so physically perfect that Ewald is willing to die for her, he is so in love. They also agree that her personality is deficient: she doesn’t like opera or sculpture, she’s small-minded and selfish. The two men discuss which aspects of her being are acceptable and which are lamentable, and they both agree how wonderful it could be if they could somehow keep the former while jettisoning the latter.

And then Professor X realizes that, actually, he knows just how such a thing could be achieved.

Uh-oh.

Yeah, it’s pretty despicable. There’s no getting around that. Ewald, like all romantic/decadent heroes, is so hung up on this girl that nothing else in life really seems to matter. Fair enough, we’ve probably all been there. But the explicit fact that he’s only in love with her beautiful exterior, and cannot stand her personality, makes him utterly shallow. And that the two characters coldly and rationally decide what characteristics are desirable and not desirable in a woman makes them both pretty unlikable. Also, their limits for what’s desirable, personality-wise, are offensively narrow, which I suppose was probably typical for the time.

Eventually, Professor X reveals his plan: he will create an electronic facsimile of the girl, an exact copy: an android (the first use of the term in literature, fanboys!). Ewald is at first horrified, noting that even if the physical likeness was perfect, her store of conversation and actions would necessarily be woefully limited. Professor X mentions that they’ve both observed in the past that a proper society lady is nothing more than a limited number of learned conversations and actions. Shudder.

The two then retreat to Professor X’s gigantic underground cave of electronic wonders, where he explains in fascinating (and horrifically offensive) detail exactly how one would go about making a perfect woman. He ‘proves’ to Ewald that real women aren’t that ‘real’ anyway, because they use make-up and can alter their appearance. It’s this that a man really falls in love with, he says while pointing to a drawer full of cosmetics. An illusion. So really, falling in love with an automaton isn’t that different. Again, the superficiality is staggering.

This section is fascinating, if ghoulish and ethically questionable. Again, the author goes into masses of detail about how the android will be constructed, how she will function and how perfect the likeness will be. And even though he’s despicable, I liked how Ewald’s emotions swing constantly as he see-saws between revulsion and lust at the idea of having his desires granted in this unorthodox way. By the end, I wanted to find out what was coming next as much as the lovesick Lord.

Later, there’s an amazing scene in which Ewald has a surprise meeting with his automated lovedoll that prompts us to think about what it is that we really fall in love with. Ewald is obsessed with an ideal of Alicia; an impossible vision of her that is no more or less real than the automaton is. It’s an interesting idea, and one the author delves into in some detail, only to slightly spoil it with his underlying shades of misogyny, as well as the fact that he cheats by having the android inhabited by the essence of one of Professor X’s artificial personalities through supernatural means, thereby giving it a bona fide soul, as it were.

Large portions of the novella take place in real-time, with the Professor and Ewald having long conversations (while smoking cigars and drinking brandy, of course) that allow the writer to indulge in reflections on morality, science, and emotion. Even if some of the ideas are now repugnant to us, it’s still a good deal more interesting than the flat characters that usually turn up in Victorian speculative fiction. Ewald in particular fascinated me as a man who knowingly and deliberately buys into his delusion in the most literal way over the course of the story.

The Future Eve is not easy to come by in English, but it’s well worth looking out for.

Mmm... gentlemanly.

The Species Seekers by Richard Conniff

You are to imagine, ever-constant reader, that I type surrounded by towering columns of books, some mouldering, eldritch tomes (first editions of Haggard and Doyle, no doubt); some gharish and wrinkled (trashy, sensationalist page-turners from the 70s and 80s); some bright and shiny with embossed silver font (modern bestsellers dealing out contemporary thrills while pretending to concern themselves with the Empire of yesteryear).

You are to imagine, too, that beside me as I sip bourbon and clack the keys on my automated type-writing engine is my to-read pile. It is enormous, of course. Figuratively and literally, I will never defeat it. Try as I might to make a dent into it, I know that I will someday have to throw in the towel and admit that my literary eyes are bigger than my belly (I am speaking metaphorically of course. I don’t recommend consuming books with your belly).

A book which has recently been exhumed from the depths of this Babelian tower of unread works is The Species Seekers. It was gifted to me at the end of my stint in the jungles of Panama by an employer who obviously took note of my enjoyment of her copy of The Lost City of Z. Here’s a chap who appreciates a good tale about explorers and naturalists getting themselves killed in far-off lands, she must have thought. And she was right, though I didn’t get around to realising just how right she was until almost two years later.

The Species Seekers concerns itself with tales about individual enthusiasts from the so-called ‘age of discovery’. See, up until the mid-eighteenth century, according to the author, mankind had developed no sensible, systematic approach to cataloguing the wonders of the natural world. He admits that various non-European cultures did have a tremendous knowledge of their native flora and fauna, as well as the uses to which it could be put, but none of them had anything approaching a rational, scientific classification system, ‘though it is no longer fashionable to say so.’ Conniff, however, is far from pro-Imperial, and largely I feel that his interpretation is correct. I may disagree with how the native peoples were treated during the age of colonialism, but I still appreciate the scientific benefits that accrued during this same period.

All this changed, of course, with the ideas of Carolus Linnaeus, who invented the binomial classification system, an updated version of which we still use today. In terms of his influence, Linnaeus is undoubtedly one of the most important biologists who ever lived. Alongside a few other luminaries such as Darwin, Linnaeus helped knock modern biology into the shape in which we know it now. All in all, he’s a big hero in the scientific world, and he’s featured early on in The Species Seekers… but not quite to the extent to which you might expect.

See, Richard Conniff’s interest lies with the underdogs. He focuses instead on Linnaeus’s nemesis, a Frenchman named Buffon, who you’ve probably never heard of. Despite being a big-shot in his day, Buffon wasn’t quite on the money and his considerable contributions to our modern understanding of classification have been largely forgotten, while Linnaeus still enjoys a rosy reputation. There are some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments early on in the book as the two butt horns in a typically eighteenth-century fashion, naming reprehensible species after one another, the knowledge of Buffon’s eventual historical obliteration lending the feud a somewhat poignant air.

From there, Conniff goes on to show how the collecting and identification of species became a sort of mania within certain European countries. And he uses this mania as a starting-off point to explore Victorian attitudes towards colonialism, race and class, and many other fascinating aspects of the period. He really gives a feel for the time; as he pokes into the lives of these many forgotten heroes and lunatics, the reader comes to understand the very different ideas and expectations that controlled their lives. Class is a huge issue, of course: the difference between Darwin’s privileged upper-class world of great armchair scientists and politicians and Wallace’s grim work-house existence make it a wonder that the two could ever have contributed so much to the same field. It makes us understand too, how Wallace could have genuinely felt nothing but thankfulness that the well-connected Darwin would include him as essentially the lesser partner in a joint presentation that would bring the idea of natural selection to the world at large. As a low-class Victorian, Wallace appreciated that even thought he had stumbled upon the idea independently, and begun talking about it first, he would have been nothing without Darwin’s connections.

Attention is paid too to the men who helped prepare the world for the Darwin/Wallace bombshell through their earlier, preliminary thinking on evolution. Conniff impresses upon the reader that the idea of a sudden, momentous discovery is usually never so simple, and that the road to the theory of evolution was a long and rocky one. Many thinkers had proposed various systems that bordered on common descent, and the idea was very much in the public eye, though of course it was still highly contentious.

Any student of Victoriana will be well-rewarded, as old friends consistently appear alongside Conniff’s forgotten heroes. Super-hero geologists Hutton and Lyle are brought masterfully to life, ‘Dinosaur-creator’ Richard Owen’s low-down conniving merits several mentions, Chambers of the Edinburgh Journal proves that he had other things to print besides gonzo articles about spiritualism, and Charles Kingsley makes several appearances just to prove once again that he was a big ‘ol racist.

The book is a treasure trove of amazing stories. Other subjects touched upon include the remarkably late discovery of such large ‘charismatic’ mammals as the gorilla and the giant panda, the consistent attempts to justify racist delusions using ‘science’, and the link between biology and the destruction of various tropical diseases. It’s been a long time since a book so well reminded me that biology is an adventure. It quite convinced me to once again don my pith helmet and head out into the wilds, with only my wits (God help me) and a copy of Insects of Western Europe to protect me.

The Diamond Lens by Fitz-James O'Brien

It is my privilege to rescue from obscurity an unfairly-forgotten writer from the annuls of history, and a man from my own county at that- the great Fitz-James O'Brien. Born Michael O'Brien in County Cork, very little seems to be known today about him (I reckon there's a decent English thesis in there somewhere, as the chap definitely deserves a revival).

What we do know about him is that he moved to America in the 1850's, changed his name and whittled away a sizable inheritance living the lavish lifestyle of a dandy. By all accounts (not that there are many), he was a raucous, rollicking man to have at a party, and he supposedly entertained and palled with many of the famous writers of the day. Like many an Irishman, he fought with the Yankees in the US Civil War, and died after being wounded

Fortunately for my own purposes, he also dabbled with ink himself. One of my favourite of his compositions is The Demon of the Gibbet, a rattlingly good Poe-esque tale of a late-night horseride past the Gallows Tree, where a demon is said to haunt. In every alternate verse, the demon speaks to the protagonist, telling him that he's going to steal his cloak, his wine, and eventually his woman as well! The existence of various locations around Cork city named for being former sites of gallows and hangings (Gallows Green, for example) makes me wonder if he had the Cork landscape in mind when he wrote this. The nature of this poem seemed to be crying out for a melody, so I did once put it to a tune, and played it many times with my group, The Thirsty Scholars, in our haunting ground, An Spaipin Fanach. Perhaps it will end up on Youtube someday!

Anyway, O'Brien also frequently wrote proto-sci fi stories for the American Victorian magazines almost thirty years before Wells was on the scene, which is pretty remarkable, especially seeing as how well he fares against the Grand Old Man of Victorian fiction. His tale What Was It?, though not one of my favourites, is thought to be possibly the earliest use of invisibility in fiction, predating The Damned Thing by Ambrose Bierce, The Horla by Maupassant and Predator. True to my own heart, he was massively influenced by the Arabian Nights (moreso even than Lovecraft, perhaps), and liked to inject his speculative fiction with a jolt of Orientalism, setting tales in Arab or far Eastern countries.

But for today's selection, I've chosen a tale that could have slipped easily into the Wells canon, except for one twist. The Diamond Lens at first appears as if it's going to be a classic Victorian sci-fi yarn- a a story of new science gone wrong. Here's the plot: Linley is a boy who grows up obsessed with microscopy. He loves it so much that as a child, he tears the eyes out of fish and animals in order to use the lenses within. Eventually his family buys him a real microscope, but this only fuels his obsession.

In order to live his life without interference from his family (who expect him to become a doctor), Linley enrolls in a medical course in a New York university and gets himself an apartment. He never turns up for lectures and spends his parents' money on more microscope equipment. But it's never enough! He wants to see more, he wants to see deeper. He curses the limitations of physics.

On the advice of his shady Jewish roomate (Wells would have approved), Linley does what any mid-Victorian gentleman would do when he had a problem- he goes to see a spiritualist. In a rather loopy twist, she puts him in touch with the father of microscopy, the eighteenth-century Dutchman Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek. The spirit of Leeuwenhoek tells Linley that to gain the clarity he craves, he must use a certain type of diamond to make the lens.

And what do you know? Upon returning home, the Jewish roomate (he's also French, just to add insult to injury) reveals to Linley that, through shady means, he's come into possession of just such a diamond! So what's a guy to do? Linley immediately decides to kill him and steal the diamond. After all, he reasons with himself, the Jew must have killed someone himself to get it (it's implied that the Jew had some background in South-American slave-trading). And thus, a perfectly good evening of wine and tipsy indiscretion ends in murder.

Linley carves the diamond into a lens, and finally gets the view he has always dreamed of. In a single drop of water, he discovers worlds that seem like fantastic gardens of colour and splendour. But then he spies something else in this world- a creature that looks like an exquisite, miniature girl. Linley is smitten. For days he cannot leave his microscope- even seeing the drop of water she inhabits depresses him, as it reminds him of the uncrossable gulf between them. I won't spoil the ending, but if you're thinking that this unnatural love will eventually destroy Linley, then have yourself a drink.

Man, I do love this story. It's simple, creepy and effective. It's also wonderfully old-fashioned and harsh in its themes of obsession and karma. From youth, Linley's obsession is depicted as driving him to unnatural acts, viz. the mutilation of animals. And the fact the he receives the information on how to make his breakthrough by supernatural means wonderfully foreshadows its later effects on him. Via consulting with spirits, theft and murder, Linley has achieved his goal. He has broken the natural order, and what he discovers will ruin him in the most personal way possible- through love (a touch that Wells would never use).

The writing is solid and far less annoying than even much later Victorian prose (Stoker, I'm looking at you!). The descriptions of the new world that the hero discovers are stirring, and the sense of wonder-turning-to-horror is masterfully handled. Who else but a Corkman could do as well?

Read the story here, if you would.

Hollow Earth by David Standish

One to file in the 'I Can't Believe Somebody Actually Wrote This' category (alongside that study of the films of Steven Segal, Segalogy perhaps). Standish's book claims to be 'for anyone interested in the history of curious notions that just won't go away.' In his case, the notion he is referring to is the idea that the Earth is hollow, and that the inside of it is filled with lost continents and advanced civilizations.

It's an idea with some pedigree, as this book demonstrates- famous names such as Edmund Halley, Jules Verne, Edgar Allen Poe and Edgar Rice Burroughs all took up the Hollow Earth cause- some more seriously than others. If this book accomplishes nothing else, it ties together a number of disparate but fascinating characters, uniting them under the common banner of the Hollow Earth. Through this single idea, Standish gets to treat 19th century geology, age-of-exploration literature, early science fiction, crackpot science and early 20th century pulp fiction. All of which I have a serious penchant for.

The idea started because of this- in the early days of science, lots of unusual theories were floating around, because all of them were difficult to prove or disprove. If one believed that the earth was birthed from a cloud of cosmic gas that formed a hardened shell around an inner sun, well, that was probably no more outlandish than the next guy's theory. And if you claimed that the entrances to this inner world were located at the poles, nobody could disprove you. Yet. It was certainly an interesting time, during which science and religion were curiously intermingled. Edmund Halley proposed an inner world, and Isaac Newton wrote numerous volumes on alchemy (from the Arabic al keme, meaning 'of Egypt', according to some).

Then, throughout the 19th century, the idea of the Hollow Earth served as a useful location for writers, scientists and dreamers to locate their fictional utopias. Many of these utopian novels were American, and Standish covers them in some depth- a section of the book I found especially interesting. The dream of a vast, unspoiled paradise ready to be utilized by man began to appear consistantly in literature at exactly the same time as America was turning out to be anything but. This is essentially Standish' thesis here, and I found it very convincing. Of course, not everyone believed their utopias were fictional. The survival of the hollow earth idea is due largely to an American called Symme who spent his life trying to fund an expedition to the hole he believed was found at the North Pole.

Once the idea became popular, it was used for good and for ill by writers such as Edgar Allen Poe, Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs (damn his eyes) in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Standish elaborates at length on these, which is ok by me, as their high-adventure fantasies are probably about as important to the world as any crackpot scientist ever was.

Then, in the mid-twentieth century, the cause was again taken up by those who believed. A man with the improbable name of William Sharpe-Shaver began to publish stories in Amazing magazine claiming that he was under the control of creatures that dwell beneath the Earth's crust. This now being the age of UFO's and conspiracy theories, the high-adventure was replaced with sinister plots and overwhelming paranoia. Standish's overall point is how this one strange idea was recycled many times, on each occasion being used to fulfill certain time-specific longings. (For those interested in this story, click here to read Sinnott's Last Scam from Black Lagoon Comix, my fictionalization of this story, featuring a totally unrelated character called William Sharp-Shearer).


Throughout, Standish maintains a rather sarcastic attitude towards his cast of deluded dreamers. His standard technique is to allow his subjects to talk at length (via the use of very extended quotes), and then use their own words, however ridiculous, against them in a kind of deadpan sarcasm. It certainly catches the readers' attention, and can be quite funny in a dry way. But if a good book, as Holden Caulfield says, ought to make you want to meet the author and have a good chat with them over a cold beer, then I don't know if I want to meet David Standish. Granted, he is fascinated enough by the same things as I to write a book about them (and a more thorough and complete book about the Hollow Earth I challenge you to find), but I find his attitude throughout somewhat negative. He often seems to be condescending rather than affectionate towards Symme and those who followed him.

Overall, Hollow Earth covers in admirable depth many fascinating tales from history and fiction, but is undone somewhat by the author's occasionally snide tone.