The Evil In Pemberely House!

The Evil in Pemberley House is one of the last entries in the Wold Newton mythology which Philip Jose Farmer had a direct hand in producing. The novel based on an outline by Farmer is the work of Win Scott Eckert, a writer who has specialized in Wold Newton yarns for several years now. This is one is a hoot and full of hard-nosed action and some provocative and at times erotic sex. Patricia Wildman is the daughter of Doc Wildman, Farmer's Wold Newton version of Doc Savage. Patricia is a young vital woman and a freshly made widow who is filled with complex sexual hang-ups, many having to do with her father. Patricia's "Daddy Issues" are only part of a longer and at times complex tale of which sets its action in the estate from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. It's a scary house full of hidden passages, legendary haunts, and a gang of murderous relatives. 

We first meet Patricia as she is heading to take control of the titles and the estate which has fallen to her through inheritance. I will not even begin to try and to explain the family tree, but the book offers the reader two, one at the front which is spoiler free and another at the end which fills in those blanks. As is the case with much of Farmer's Wold Newton material most people are related to one another, if only tangentially, or related to someone you've heard of or read about. We follow the story from Patricia's perspective, and she is a young woman who is capable and astute thanks to her genetics and her upbringing. Still, she makes more than a few blunders which create some fearsome challenges. 

Like all the Wold Newton books, this one is a celebration of the myriad adventure fictions which have fired civilized imaginations for centuries. One of the problems with reading Wold Newton stuff is that the sheer complexity can get overwhelming and at times works against the momentum of the narrative. In this story for instance there is an embedded short story, which is read by Patricia over time which supplies necessary clues, but which unfortunately takes the reader out of the chase somewhat. But that's also the glory of his kind of stuff. Making the connections, getting that "Aha!" moment as the secrets unfold is pure fun, if at times a wee bit agonizing. 

Featuring a sexy painting by the late Glenn Orbik up front, this is not a book for the faint of heart. If explicit sex scenes offend you, this is not the book for you perhaps. Eckert in a forward says that Farmer was insistent that the sex stayed in the story, that those aspect of the story was as potent as possible. In the spirit of An Feast Unknown which in many ways ignited the Wold Newton universe so many decades ago, this late addition is full of blood, thunder and other vital juices. You have been warned. 

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Tarzan Alive - A Definitive Biography Of Lord Greystoke!

Tarzan is alive. Philip Jose Farmer spent decades developing this enticing notion that the Lord of the Jungle fabricated by Edgar Rice Burroughs over a century ago was not only based in no small part on a real man but a real man who thanks to African magic was still very much alive and would be for centuries to come. To that end Tarzan Alive - A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke from Bison Books is an outstanding read for anyone fascinated by ERB's legendary Ape Man like I am. Farmer was compulsive in his fascination with Tarzan and spent long hours writing up articles to explain this and that detail about his legend. He takes that compulsive power and writes a biography for all of us to enjoy which seeks to not only convince the reader that Tarzan is real but that most of his many adventures in the depths of Africa really happened (to greater and lesser degrees). 

ERB then is reduced to a role he actually creates for himself in the context of the Tarzan tales, a documenter of the events as he learns them. His information according to Farmer was by its very nature incomplete and because ERB sought like Tarzan himself to keep his real identity a secret many adjustments were made to the "facts" to hide things that might reveal just a little too much. As they say on the vintage cop show Dragnet - "Ladies and gentlemen: the story you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent." So Tarzan is real but that's not his name and neither is it Greystoke. Jane is real but that might not be her name. Opar is real but it's not quite as resplendent as ERB makes it out to be. La is real and she tempts Tarzan mightily but what happens to her is a mystery. Korak is real but he is not who you think he is. 

Mostly Farmer says the events of the first two novels in what he dubs "The Epic" are mostly true. After that it gets a bit more elusive. Pal-Ul-Don is not exactly what we think it is but there just might be dinosaurs of a sort. Lost kingdoms exhibiting traits of Crusaders and Roman Legions might be real but not on the scale we read about in the novels. The Leopard Men are real but the Ant Men are fiction. On and on it goes as Farmer deals in grand details with the events of Tarzan's life putting the novels and events into an order. The great apes which raised Tarzan are not quite what we thought they were, but neither were they civilized. Poor Jane comes in for some hard use but never does Farmer reject the essential love story which nests at the core of the Tarzan mythology. 

The book proper is followed by Addendums which add even more details to the events. One is an essay by a named Professor H.W. Starr who posits many of the connections which inspired Farmer to begin with though he reaches some slightly different conclusions. The longest Addendum, the second one is a crushingly detailed listing of the expansive genealogy of Tarzan's family including all the elaborate connections which make him a key member of the Wold Newton Family. (Briefly the Wold Newton Family is a conceit on Farmer's part that many of the world's famous historical and fictional figures are part of one elaborate family tree and that certain members were exposed as a group to nurturing radiation from the Wold Newton meteor which grants them superhuman gifts.) The Bison edition which I took great pleasure in reading this time also includes "Tarzan Lives - An Exclusive Interview with the Eighth Duke of Greystoke" and "Extracts from the Memoirs of "Lord Greystoke" which were both key elements of The Man Who Met Tarzan which I looked at last week. With both these volumes one has most of Farmer's key speculations about ERB's legendary creation.

The volume from Bison Books also includes a Foreword by Win Scott Eckert and an Introduction by Mike Resnick. These two essays serve well to put the Farmer focus on Tarzan into a working context for a new reader. Reading this work is rather like visiting the inside of Philip Farmer's hefty imagination, fully informed by robust readings and perfectly willing to take leaps of fancy which allow the whole Wold Newton enterprize to prosper. Philip Jose Farmer never broke from his pose that Tarzan was alive. If he could believe then so can I, and after you read Tarzan Alive - A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke so might you. 

But PJF was not done. His next stop logically enough was Doc Savage. More on that next week. 

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Secrets Of The Nine - The Monster On Hold!

The first three installments of the Secrets of the Nine saga were all written by Philip Jose Farmer in 1968 or thereabouts and were published as A Feast Unknown, Lord of the Trees and The Mad Goblin. These stories detailed how Doc Caliban and his half-brother Lord Grandrith battled the Nine, a secret cabal of impossibly old people who tried to run the world from the shadows. There was a fourth installment titled "The Monster on Hold" or "Down to Earth's Centre" proposed by Farmer at a 1984 convention where he shared some of the notes and early writings. It was alas never finished in his lifetime. But now it has been completed under the title The Monster on Hold by Win Scott Eckert who is an accomplished Wold-Newton theorist and has finished other Farmer fragments such as the The Evil in Pemberly House. 

The novel serves as a sequel of sorts to a canonical Doc Savage story, the last one in fact by Lester Dent entitled Up from Earth's Center. This Doc Savage finale from 1949 has the Man of Bronze confront underworld denizens who might or might not be actual devils. That the story ends without supplying the typical rational explanation for mysterious doings is unusual in the Savage canon and has led to much speculation as why this turned out the be the final outing for the good Doctor. (We know it was because Conde Nast saw that pulps were dying in the face of the new breed of paperback and the technological advance of television but don't mention that to a Wold-Newtonian scholar.)

Weirdly the story also draws upon a non-canonical Doc Savage story titled "Who Goes There?" written by John W. Campbell Jr. The "Thing" from this creepy story is suggested to have come from space and maybe that's true but maybe not, and did they kill them all really. 

Finally, the story owes a tremendous debt to H.P. Lovecraft and his C'Thulhu Mythos, the weird stories about other-dimensional supernatural overlords who are trying their damnedest to creep back into the world of men. There are also hints of Edgar Allan Poe blended in. 

The story begins in 1977 when Doc Caliban and his associates invade the North American stronghold of a member of the Nine. They are confronted with all kinds of threats, both to the body and mind but they prevail. Skipping forward to 1984 Doc Caliban again gathers his allies to descend into a vast cave network in New England (possibly around Miskatonic University) led by a man who is impossibly young and who was first encountered when these caves were penetrated in 1949. Doc and his team again face both threats to body and mind and find a weirdly bizarre world of peculiar creatures. It is a world which evokes Dante's Inferno but it's not that either. Eventually Doc sends his aides back to the surface as he goes even deeper. He's not alone though as the other-dimensional nature of this dim world allows him to connect to an "Other", a version of himself called "Lacewing". It is in fact Doc Wildman from the  Wold-Newton Universe. These two Docs acting as one encounter "Shrassk", a creature who exists between dimensions but seeks entry into our own to dire effect. There are more mysteries still to be solved but I don't want to ruin it all for you. 

 

The Monster on Hold was a rousing read and more than lived up to my expectations. It brought some closure to storylines developed in earlier "Secrets of the Nine" books but certainly left much room for more. This "Creative Mythograhpy" as Farmer called it makes for delightful reading as it mixes the new and old together with just the right blend of spicey storytelling. In addition to the story itself this volume also contains Eckert's seminal essay "The Wild Huntsman" which serves to clarify some of the relationships between characters. There are extensive original materials from Farmer himself as well as an excellent chronology to help a reader make sense of it all. The Monster on Hold can be picked up from Meteor House Press.

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The Wild Hunt!

In the rich and vivid anthology titled Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, Win Scott Eckert's story "The Wild Huntsman" tells of a most mysterious exceedingly old man who shows up from across dimensions to see to it that time follows its pre-determined course, or perhaps not. This one goes to the core of the Wold Newton concept.

It's an exceedingly well written tale which re-introduces John Gribardson, Philip Jose Farmer's hero of Time's Last Gift, who is really it turns out supposed to be a certain rather famous Lord of the Jungle. The Huntsman himself might be someone else all together, perhaps even an All-Father figure.

The next story, also a sequel of sorts to Farmer's The Adventure of the Peerless Peer, continues the Wild Hunt saga in a manner of speaking in "The Adventure of the Fallen Stone" written by Eckert for the Moonstone anthology The Sherlock Holmes Crossover Casebook. In this one an aged Holmes and Watson must once again confront their arch-nemesis Von Bork, or maybe not. The aged man who once upon a time might have been Woden himself appears in what becomes a seemingly never ending quest for true immortality.  It's a fun story with a neat twist. 

In Moonstone's The Avenger Chronicles a story by Eckert titled "Death and the Countess" begins a curious trilogy of Avenger stories in which the machinations of this same ancient villain plays a part in the murderous plans of a lethal femme fatale called The Countess, though he is only named and  remains behind the scenes in this first installment.

In The Avenger - The Justice Files, Inc. the villain calling himself Walden now makes an appearance Eckert's "Happy Death Men"  and his previous plots become connected. In a wild yarn about murderous neo-zombies that pits Richard Benson, The Avenger and Ellen Patrick, The Domino Lady together against a revived and strangely altered Countess and the ancient enemy, there's a hint that Benson himself might be connected in ways perhaps even he doesn't understand to his persistent foe.

That idea is picked up again in "According to Plan of a One-Eyed Trickster" by Eckert in the third Avenger anthology The Avenger - Roaring Heart of the Crucible. The secret of the Countess is revealed and as it turns out calls back to a vintage Farmer story about Raffles in the Tales of the Wold Newton Universe anthology where all this started. We learn more about Waldman and perhaps about Richard Benson himself as he and the Domino Lady team up again.

The next installment in this lugubrious saga is scheduled for the upcoming Win Scott Eckert and Matthew Baugh novel A Girl and Her Cat from Moonstone featuring Honey West. I'll have to get hold of that volume and check it out.

I hesitate to say to much so as not to spoil, but I hope I've keened interest in thes Wold Newton stories. The ongoing complexity of a good Wold Newton story when it plays mostly fair can be fascinating and fun as you look for clues which point to other pop culture characters. But it's the story of the Wild Huntsman which it turns out might the spine which threads the elaborate saga together, and as you can see finding all the elements of that saga can be a rather wild hunt all its own.

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