The lost-world stories of Robert Ames Bennet

A pulp author I had recently discovered is Robert Ames Bennet (1870-1954) who wrote mainly westerns and a handful of science-fiction and fantasy tales.

I went after his two lost-world stories, which are not easy to find: Thyra: A Romance of the Polar Pit (1901), which was published in hardcover at the time, and “The Bowl of Baal” (1916-17), which appeared in All-Around Magazine over several issues.

Arno Press reprinted Thyra in its “Lost Race and Adult Fantasy Fiction” series and Centaur Press planned on reprinting The Bowl of Baal in their “Time-Lost” series, but it didn’t happen. Instead Donald M. Grant published it in hardcover, using what I assume was the planned cover for the Time-Lost edition, and adding interior artwork by cover artist David Ireland. I’m not sure why this happened. Now the Donald M. Grant edition of The Bowl of Baal also included an intro that gave information on Bennet, which makes this a pretty good edition to get.

In Thyra, we have a party of four leaving Franz Joséph Land for the North Pole. They are Lt. Balderson, the black soldier (and servant) Sergeant Black, the Icelander Thorn Borson, and the narrator, Doctor Godfrey. But their trip is unsucessful, and they are trying to make their way south when they discover a wandering balloon, unmanned, and try again.

As they approach the Pole, which in real life, would not be reached until 1908-09, they see what appear to be mountains, and perhaps a volcano. This leads to a Thorn telling of a legendary expedition by Norsemen in the 900s that never returned.

Thanks to this foreshadowing, they find a lost land in this volcano near the Pole with a miles-deep pit at the center. It’s inhabited by prehistoric beasts, beast-men, and two groups of those lost Norsemen. One are the Runefolk, the main group, lead by a group of elders. The other are the Thorlings, those who wouldn’t follow the rules of society, led by King Hoding Grimeye. Our explorers help a pair of Runefolk, including the fair, Thyra of the title that one of our heroes will fall for, and her brother. Another important character is Bera, sister of Grimeye.

As always with these works, our heroes get involved with the Runefolk, helps them in their conflict with the Thorlings, as well as having to deal with a monstrous beast, the Orm. Unless my edition is incomplete, there seems to be nothing said of our heroes leaving to return to civilization.

In The Bowl of Baal, our hero is American aviator Larry O’Brien, a former student at Harvard, who had studied Arabic history and culture, and is fluent in the language. He has headed down to southern Arabia (Yemen/Aden). There he hopes to take pictures of inscriptions for his professor back at Harvard.

So he heads toward the mountains in northern Yemen/Aden, southern Oman. There he finds inscriptions that also mention Irem (a real lost city known as Iram or Ubar) and something called the “Bowl of the Baal,” which sounds like an oasis in the area. He finds a stranded falcon with a copper band with a prayer from the Bowl, which leads him to try to find it by following the returning falcon.

Flying in pursuit, he finds a volcanic caldera, and lands. There, he discovers a lost race of Assyrians/Chaldeans (who speak a form of Arabic) locked in conflict with a race of cave dwellers. Plus, there are dangerous saurians as well, the worse being the “Dweller in Irem.” There are also two priestesses in opposition to each other: Istara and Tigra, one of which he falls in love with. He gets involved with the conflict between the two priestesses that also involves the Noadites, the cave dwellers, who are violent cannibals, but things turn tragic for him.

He takes his plane and flies out. But before he can get to civilization, he runs out of gas and crashes. He awakes and finds himself a beggar standing before a British embassy, unclear how he got there. He is wearing only a dirty loincloth and is told he has been missing for a little over two months. Did he really imagine it all, or did it really happen? The British find a small idol in his loincloth, but bury it instead of showing it to him.

I’d love to see better editions of both works. If The Bowl of Baal is reprinted, I’d love to see it include the artwork from the Grant edition as well as the intro, and I understand that Thyra had interior artwork as well, which I’d love to see.