I recenty found that Sinister Cinema’s Armchair Fiction line has added six more to their “Lost World-Lost-Race Classics” series. This brings it up to 30 volumes.
These works are a mix of stories I know, along with several I have never heard of. And I was thankful that two volumes were ones I was hoping they would reprint.
This next set of works are:
- #25 The Land of the Lost, Roy Norton, #B-74
- #26 The Great Stone of Sardis, Frank R. Stockton, #B-75
- #27 Troyana, S.P. Meek, #B-76
- #28 The Golden Fetich, Eden Phillpotts, #B-77
- #29 The Glyphs, Roy Norton, #B-78
- #30 The Devil-Tree of El Dorado, Frank Aubrey (Francis Atkins), #B-79
Roy Norton (1869-1942) was an author of mainly westerns, but did write a few science-fiction works. The Land of the Lost was his second sf novel, serialized in The Popular Magazine in 1909, then reprinted in book form as The Toll of the Sea that year, then again in a cut form in 1925 as The Land of the Lost. This edition supposedly reprints the original work. In this tale, an earthquake causes a change to the Pacific Ocean, inundating coast towns and revealing the lost world of Azonia, made up of advanced desendants of Atlantis.
The Glyphs is from The Popular Magazine in 1919 and was cover featured. It has a sequel called The Secret City that was serialized later that year in The Popular. Both were reprinted together in bookform as The Caves of Treasure in 1925. I wish AF had reprinted the full work, as I’d like to read the sequel. Hopefully we’ll get the sequel in a future volume.
Set in South America, The Glyphs is about a group of explorers in search of a lost civilization that apparently has hidden records, or glyphs, they are looking for. Their biggest threat is the jungle itself, almost a living force.
Frank Stockton (1834-1902) was an author best known for his children’s fairy tales that were very popular in the late 1800s. He is famous for the story of “The Lady, or The Tiger.” He did a few works considered sf or fantasy, and The Great Stone of Sardis is one of his rare novels, serialized in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in 1897 before appearing in bookform in 1898, and has been reprinted several times. This edition used the cover artwork from the Belmont-Tower paperback book. It tells of an expedition to the North Pole in 1947 by an inventor in his super-submarine, who also wishes to find out what is within the Earth. He is up against an evil scientific rival who is trying to stop him.
I’ve posted on S.P. Meek (1894-1972), specifically another in this series, The Drums of Tapajos, and wanted to see its sequel, Troyana. And this is it! In the first novel, a quartet of Americans find a super-science city in the South American jungles. After some conflict within the city between different groups, the quartet decide to leave, but one then returns for his love. The other three, after getting back to the U.S. try to re-establish contact with the city via radio, and when they succeed, two of them decide to return with needed supplies. This story tells of what happened to the one who stayed, and the conflict that went on, and I hope we learn about it and the others who return as well. While Drums used the cover artwork from the Avalon paperback in the 1960s, the cover they did for Troyana wasn’t used, but we get it on the back cover, along with the interior illustrations from its appearance in Amazing Stories.
Eden Phillpotts (1862-1960) was an fairly prolific English author, and a guy, by the way. He put out about three or four books a year for about 50 years (around 250), mainly set in Dartmoor. He did a few works considered sf or fantasy. In The Golden Fetich, a young broke English lord discovers in his home a pouch with a golden fetich (fetish) and a note, giving directions to a fabulous lost treasure in the wilds of Africa. So there is no other thing to do then for this lord and his boyhood friend to go searching for it and restore his fortune.
I noted in the last set of volumes in this series about Francis Atkins (1847-1927), who wrote under different aliases. Under his “Frank Aubrey” one, he had a trilogy of works known as the “Monella” trilogy, so named after a major character in the works, a mysterious 8-foot giant who may be immortal. The first is The Devil-Tree of El Dorado (1896), which tells of a group on an expedition to the lost city of Manoa, which sits high atop the seemingly unscalable Mt. Roraima in British Guiana (a real-life location). But also on this mount is a man-eating tree! Monella helps the expedition.
It’s followed by A Queen of Atlantis (1899) and King of the Dead (1903). Queen is a prequel, about finding a lost race of telepaths in the Sargasso Sea. King is a sort of retelling of Devil-Tree, but the characters have different names. While King has been reprinted by Armchair, Queen hasn’t been, and I hope they will. I’ve held off reading King until I could at least read Devil-Tree.
One change I saw with this set was the addition of showing the original books covers on the back cover or in the interior of the book (several of these covers are dull, so aren’t used as the front cover), along with other artwork from the original publications. Already I want to see them reprint A Queen of Atlantis and The Secret City. What other lost-world/lost-race works could or should they reprint? Expect more detailed reviews on these as I read them.
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