Tales of the Wold Newton Universe Read online

  Farmer continued his exploration of the Wold Newton Family in Ironcastle (1976), his translation and retelling of J. H. Rosny Aîné’s L’Étonnant Voyage de Hareton Ironcastle (1922), which includes several prominent Wold Newton references. Farmer’s The Lavalite World (1977), the fifth entry in the World of Tiers series,8 also solidly connects to the Wold Newton series. Here Farmer’s protagonist, Kickaha, aka Paul Janus Finnegan, is revealed to be closely related to both the aforementioned Phileas Fogg and to Hardin Blaze Fog, a relative of “the famous Confederate war hero and Western gunfighter Dustine ‘Dusty’ Edward Marsden Fog,” whose exploits were chronicled in fictionalized form by author J. T. Edson.

  Farmer also wrote several Wold Newton short stories and pieces in the 1970s: “Skinburn,” “The Problem of the Sore Bridge—Among Others,” “The Freshman,” “After King Kong Fell,” “A Scarletin Study,” “The Doge Whose Barque Was Worse Than His Bight,” “The Obscure Life and Hard Times of Kilgore Trout,” “Extracts from the Memoirs of ‘Lord Greystoke,’” and others more peripherally connected to the series.

  He also continued to write short biographical pieces, including “A Reply to ‘The Red Herring,’” “The Two Lord Ruftons,” “The Great Korak-Time Discrepancy,” “The Lord Mountford Mystery,” “From ERB to Ygg,” “A Language for Opar,” and “Jonathan Swift Somers III, Cosmic Traveller in a Wheelchair: A Short Biography by Philip José Farmer (Honorary Chief Kennel Keeper).”9

  Farmer returned to the Wold Newton series in a big way in the 1990s, starting the decade with the authorized novel Escape from Loki: Doc Savage’s First Adventure (1991), and rounding it out with the authorized The Dark Heart of Time: A Tarzan Novel (1999). 2009 saw the publication of the Wold Newton series novel The Evil in Pemberley House, coauthored with Win Scott Eckert, and in 2012 the concluding novel of the Khokarsa trilogy, The Song of Kwasin, coauthored with Christopher Paul Carey, at last saw print.

  Farmer passed away on February 25, 2009, after the completion of The Evil in Pemberley House and The Song of Kwasin but before publication.

  In 2010, Wold Newton fiction was authorized by Farmer’s estate, and new stories based on his research appeared.

  Those works included in the present volume are marked with an asterisk.

  The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 1: Protean Dimensions, Michael Croteau, ed., Meteor House, 2010.

  “A Kick in the Side” by Christopher Paul Carey

  “Is He in Hell?” by Win Scott Eckert

  The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 2: Of Dust and Soul, Michael Croteau, ed., Meteor House, 2011.

  “Kwasin and the Bear God” by Philip José Farmer and Christopher Paul Carey*

  “For the Articles” by Bradley H. Sinor

  “Into Time’s Abyss” by John Allen Small*

  The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 3: Portraits of a Trickster, Michael Croteau, ed., Meteor House, 2012.

  “The Last of the Guaranys” by Octavio Aragão & Carlos Orsi*

  “The Wild Huntsman” by Win Scott Eckert*

  Exiles of Kho: A Tale of Lost Khokarsa by Christopher Paul Carey, Meteor House, 2012.

  The Scarlet Jaguar, a Pat Wildman adventure by Win Scott Eckert, Meteor House, 2013.

  * * *

  Philip José Farmer’s novels of the Nine, A Feast Unknown (1969), Lord of the Trees (1970), and The Mad Goblin (1970) (all part of Titan Books’ Wold Newton series under the subheading “Secrets of the Nine—Parallel Universe”), present an interesting conundrum for followers of Farmer’s Wold Newton mythos, and may have also added to the impression among some readers that the Wold Newton biographies, novels, and stories are works of fiction. The books recount the ongoing battle of the ape-man Lord Grandrith and the man of bronze Doc Caliban against the Nine, a secret cabal of immortals bent on amassing power and manipulating the course of world events.

  These novels are sourced from the memoirs of Lord Grandrith and Doc Caliban, and cover the exploits of Grandrith and Caliban. Grandrith is also a jungle lord, while Caliban is also a man of bronze. However, unlike cousins Lord Greystoke and Doc Wildman (the real name of the man whose exploits were published in pulp novels under the fictional name “Doc Savage”), Grandrith and Caliban are half-brothers. They share a common history that is not based on the Wold Newton meteor strike. One widely accepted explanation for the discrepancy is that Lord Grandrith and Doc Caliban exist in a universe that is parallel, but very similar, to the Wold Newton Universe. As described in Win Scott Eckert’s afterword to Titan Books’ new edition of The Mad Goblin (“A Feast Revealed: A Chronology of Major Events Pertinent to Philip José Farmer’s Secrets of the Nine Series”), the alternate universe shares a common past with the Wold Newton Universe, but diverged from it circa 26,000 B.C.

  The parallel universe theory is supported by Farmer’s fragment of a fourth Nine novel, The Monster on Hold. The fragment was introduced by Farmer at the 1983 World Fantasy Convention, and was published in the convention program.10 During a series of adventures in which Doc Caliban continues to battle the forces of the Nine, he “begins to suffer from a recurring nightmare and has dreams alternating with these in which he sees himself or somebody like himself. However, this man, whom he calls The Other, also at times in Caliban’s dreams seems to be dreaming of Caliban.”

  Later, when Caliban has descended below the surface into a labyrinthine series of miles-deep caverns in search of the extra-dimensional entity known as Shrassk, a being that had been invoked and then imprisoned by the Nine in the eighteenth century, Caliban has another vision of The Other: “The Other was standing at the entrance to a cave. He was smiling and holding up one huge bronze-skinned hand, two fingers forming a V.”

  “One huge bronze-skinned hand.”

  The Other is Doc Wildman, communicating to Caliban across the dimensional void.

  The presence of Doc Wildman in the caverns deep beneath New England, at the gate held open by the Shrassk entity, as observed by Doc Caliban across the dimensional nexus, strongly indicates that there also exists a secret organization of the Nine in Farmer’s universe (i.e., Wildman and Greystoke’s dimension, known as the Wold Newton Universe). Since the two universes diverged circa 26,000 B.C., the Nine in each universe have some immortal members in common, members who were alive when the universes divided.

  The present volume’s “The Wild Huntsman” brings the two universes back together.

  * * *

  Win Scott Eckert is the coauthor with Philip José Farmer of the Wold Newton novel The Evil in Pemberley House, about Patricia Wildman, the daughter of a certain bronze-skinned pulp hero. Pat Wildman’s adventures continue in Eckert’s sequel, The Scarlet Jaguar. He is the editor of and contributor to Myths for the Modern Age: Philip José Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe, a 2007 Locus Awards finalist. He has coedited three Green Hornet anthologies, and his tales of Zorro, The Green Hornet, The Avenger, The Phantom, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Captain Midnight, The Domino Lady, and Sherlock Holmes, can be found in the pages of various character-themed anthologies, as well as in the annual series The Worlds of Philip José Farmer and Tales of the Shadowmen. His critically acclaimed, encyclopedic two-volume Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World 1 & 2 was recently released, and A Girl and Her Cat (coauthored with Matthew Baugh), the first new Honey West novel in over forty years, is due in 2013. Find him online at www.winscotteckert.com.

  * * *

  Christopher Paul Carey is the coauthor with Philip José Farmer of The Song of Kwasin, and the author of Exiles of Kho, a prelude to the Khokarsa series. His short fiction may be found in such anthologies as The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 1: Protean Dimensions, The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 2: Of Dust and Soul, Tales of the Shadowmen: The Vampires of Paris, Tales of the Shadowmen: Grand Guignol, and The Avenger: The Justice, Inc. Files. He is an editor with Paizo Publishing on the award-winning Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, and the editor of three collections of Farmer’s fiction. Visit him online at www.cpcarey.com.

  * * *
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  1 For more on this, see Win Scott Eckert’s Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World, Volumes 1 and 2, Black Coat Press, 2010.

  2 The meteorite is named after the Wold Cottage, the house owned by Edward Topham, who was a poet, playwright, landowner, and local magistrate. Apparently Magistrate Topham was instrumental in the Wold Cottage meteorite’s role in promoting worldwide acceptance of the fact that some stones are not of this Earth. The Wold Cottage is still privately owned, and is currently the site of an excellent bed and breakfast; nearby is the Wold Top Brewery, where one can procure the local brew, Falling Stone Bitter.

  3 See the Wold Cottage website, .

  4 It has since been revealed, by researchers inspired by Farmer’s original discoveries, that there were several more persons present that fateful day, not named by Farmer. These are named in the present volume’s “The Wild Huntsman.”

  5 Of course, not all the Wold Newton Family members were heroes. Some turned the genetic advantages with which they had been blessed toward decidedly nefarious pursuits.

  6 On September 1, 1970, Philip José Farmer conducted “An Exclusive Interview with Lord Greystoke.” (Originally published as “Tarzan Lives” in Esquire, April 1972; reprinted in Farmer’s Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke, University of Nebraska Press/Bison Books, 2006.) The interview ostensibly took place in Libreville, Gabon, West Africa, but Farmer later revealed that the interview actually occurred in Chicago. (“I Still Live!” in Farmerphile: The Magazine of Philip José Farmer no. 3, Christopher Paul Carey and Paul Spiteri, eds., January 2006; reprinted in the Farmer collection Up From the Bottomless Pit and Other Stories, Subterranean Press, 2007.)

  7 Time’s Last Gift and Hadon of Ancient Opar are both now available in Titan Books’ Wold Newton series.

  8 The Maker of Universes (1965), The Gates of Creation (1966), A Private Cosmos (1968), Behind the Walls of Terra (1970), The Lavalite World (1977), Red Orc’s Rage (1991), and More Than Fire (1993).

  9 These have been collected in Myths for the Modern Age: Philip José Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe, Win Scott Eckert, ed., MonkeyBrain Books, 2005.

  10 Reprinted in Myths for the Modern Age: Philip José Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe, Win Scott Eckert, ed., MonkeyBrain Books, 2005; and in Pearls from Peoria, Paul Spiteri, ed., Subterranean Press, 2006. An additional fragment of the novel, entitled “Down to Earth’s Centre,” has since been located in Mr. Farmer’s “Magic Filing Cabinet,” and was published in Farmerphile: The Magazine of Philip José Farmer no. 12, Win Scott Eckert and Paul Spiteri eds., April 2008.

  THE

  GREAT DETECTIVE AND OTHERS

  THE PROBLEM OF THE SORE BRIDGE—AMONG OTHERS

  BY HARRY MANDERS

  EDITED BY PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER

  This tale is unique in the extent to which its tentacles reach down into the shrouded deeps of the Wold Newton Universe. Enthusiasts of literary crossovers will be sure to revel in an adventure in which gentleman burglar A. J. Raffles takes on three unsolved cases of the Great Detective. Other readers may find their interest piqued by the reference in the story to “a worm unknown to science.” A quite similar phrase appears in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Problem of Thor Bridge” in reference to one of the aforementioned unsolved cases. It is surely no coincidence that the identical phrase crops up again in Farmer’s Escape from Loki: Doc Savage’s First Adventure.

  In that novel, the sixteen-year-old future Man of Bronze is shot down over war-torn France in World War I and seeks refuge in the abandoned chateau of one Baron de Musard (whose name also happens to make an appearance in the final tale in this anthology, Win Scott Eckert’s “The Wild Huntsman”). There, in a secret chamber dedicated to the dark rites of its former residents, Savage observes “a long whitish worm moving slowly over the spine bones” of an infant that has been sacrificed upon an unholy altar. Savage thinks that “it was, as far as he was aware, a worm unknown to science.” Exactly what one of the strange worms that Raffles encounters in the story at hand was doing in 1918 occupied France has caused much speculation among Farmer’s readers. Those interested in exploring this mystery further are encouraged to seek out Christopher Paul Carey’s article on the subject, “The Green Eyes Have It—Or Are They Blue?” (Myths for the Modern Age: Philip José Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe, MonkeyBrain Books, 2005).

  Note that according to Farmer’s Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke, Raffles is not only a resident of the Wold Newton Universe; he is also “Tarzan’s gray-eyed cousin,” making him a full-blooded Wold Newton Family member—as are Sherlock Holmes and Doc Savage, of course.

  EDITORIAL PREFACE

  Harry “Bunny” Manders was an English writer whose other profession was that of gentleman burglar, circa 1890-1900. Manders’ adored senior partner and mentor, Arthur J. Raffles, was a cricket player rated on a par with Lord Peter Wimsey or W. G. Grace. Privately, he was a second-story man, a cracksman, a quick-change artist and confidence man whose only peer was Arsène Lupin. Manders’ narratives have appeared in four volumes titled (in America) The Amateur Cracksman, Raffles, A Thief in the Night, and Mr. Justice Raffles. “Raffles” has become incorporated into the English language (and a number of others) as a term for a gentleman burglar or dashing upper-crust Jimmy Valentine. Mystery story aficionados, of course, are thoroughly acquainted with the incomparable, though tragically flawed, Raffles and his sidekick, Manders.

  After Raffles’ death in the Boer War, Harry Manders gave up crime and became a respectable journalist and author. He married, had children, and died in 1924. His earliest works were agented by E. W. Hornung, Arthur Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law. A number of Manders’ posthumous works have been agented by Barry Perowne. One of his tales, however, was forbidden by his will to be printed until fifty years after his death. The stipulated time has passed, and now the public may learn how the world was saved without knowing that it was in the gravest peril. It will also discover that the paths of the great Raffles and the great Holmes did cross at least once.

  1

  The Boer bullet that pierced my thigh in 1900 lamed me for the rest of my life, but I was quite able to cope with its effects. However, at the age of sixty-one, I suddenly find that a killer that has felled far more men than bullets has lodged within me. The doctor, my kinsman, gives me six months at the most, six months which he frankly says will be very painful. He knows of my crimes, of course, and it may be that he thinks that my suffering will be poetic justice. I’m not sure. But I’ll swear that this is the meaning of the slight smile which accompanied his declaration of my doom.

  Be that as it may, I have little time left. But I have determined to write down that adventure of which Raffles and I once swore we would never breathe a word. It happened; it really happened. But the world would not have believed it then. It would have been convinced that I was a liar or insane.

  I am writing this, nevertheless, because fifty years from now the world may have progressed to the stage where such things as I tell of are credible. Man may even have landed on the moon by then, if he has perfected a propeller which works in the ether as well as in the air. Or if he discovers the same sort of drive that brought... well, I anticipate.

  I must hope that the world of 1974 will believe this adventure. Then the world will know that, whatever crimes Raffles and I committed, we paid for them a thousandfold by what we did that week in the May of 1895. And, in fact, the world is and always will be immeasurably in our debt. Yes, my dear doctor, my scornful kinsman, who hopes that I will suffer pain as punishment, I long ago paid off my debt. I only wish that you could be alive to read these words. And, who knows, you may live to be a hundred and may read this account of what you owe me. I hope so.

  2

  I was nodding in my chair in my room at Mount Street when the clanging of the lift gates in the yard startled me. A moment later, a familiar tattoo sounded on my door. I opened it to find, as I expec
ted, A. J. Raffles himself. He slipped in, his bright blue eyes merry, and he removed his Sullivan from his lips to point it at my whisky and soda.

  “Bored, Bunny?”

  “Rather,” I replied. “It’s been almost a year since we stirred our stumps. The voyage around the world after the Levy affair was stimulating. But that ended four months ago. And since then...”

  “Ennui and bile!” Raffles cried. “Well, Bunny, that’s all over! Tonight we make the blood run hot and cold and burn up all green biliousness!”

  “And the swag?” I said.

  “Jewels, Bunny! To be exact, star sapphires, or blue corundum, cut en cabochon. That is, round with a flat underside. And large, Bunny, vulgarly large, almost the size of a hen’s egg, if my informant was not exaggerating. There’s a mystery about them, Bunny, a mystery my fence has been whispering with his Cockney speech into my ear for some time. They’re dispensed by a Mr. James Phillimore of Kensal Rise. But where he gets them, from whom he lifts them, no one knows. My fence has hinted that they may not come from manorial strongboxes or milady’s throat but are smuggled from Southeast Asia or South Africa or Brazil, directly from the mine. In any event, we are going to do some reconnoitering tonight, and if the opportunity should arise...”