Tales of the Wold Newton Universe (2 page)

History also records that several people observed the object in the sky. “Topham’s shepherd was within 150 yards of the impact and a farmhand named John Shipley was so near that he was forcibly struck by mud and earth as the falling meteorite burrowed into the ground.”
³
A contemporaneous account observes that:

In the afternoon of the 13th of December, 1795, near the Wold Cottage, noises were heard in the air, by various persons, like the report of a pistol; or of guns at a distance at sea; though there was neither any thunder or lightning at the time:—two distinct concussions of the earth were said to be perceived:—and an hissing noise, was also affirmed to be heard by other persons, as of something passing through the air;—and a labouring man plainly saw (as we are told) that something was so passing; and beheld a stone, as it seemed, at last, (about ten yards, or thirty feet, distant from the ground) descending, and striking into the ground, which flew up all about him: and in falling, sparks of fire, seemed to fly from it.

Afterwards he went to the place, in company with others; who had witnessed part of the phænomena, and dug the stone up from the place, where it was buried about twenty-one inches deep.

It smelt, (as it is said,) very strongly of sulphur, when it was dug up: and was even warm, and smoked
:—
it was found to be thirty inches in length, and twenty-eight and a half inches in breadth. And it weighed fifty-six pounds.

—Edward King, ESQ. F.R.S. and F.A.S,
Remarks Concerning Stones Said To Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Ancient Times
(1796)

What many historians fail to adequately record is the presence of eighteen other persons in the immediate vicinity at the time of the Wold Newton meteor strike. We know about these eighteen people through the extraordinary and singular work of one historian. This historian, in fact, engaged in a rather in-depth treatment of the subject in two scholarly biographical tomes. However, despite the fact that this historian’s biographies are often appropriately shelved in the Biography section of libraries, his revelations are generally regarded as fictional.

The historian to whom we refer, of course, is Philip José Farmer, and the biographies of which we speak are
Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke
(1972) and
Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life
(1973). In the course of his researches into the life of Lord Greystoke, Farmer extensively traced the jungle lord’s ancestry, and came to discover the ape-man was closely related to several other august historical personages. The nexus of this relationship was the Wold Cottage meteor strike in 1795.

As Farmer uncovered, seven couples and their coachmen “were riding in two coaches past Wold Newton, Yorkshire... A meteorite struck only twenty yards from the two coaches... The bright light and heat and thunderous roar of the meteorite blinded and terrorized the passengers, coachmen, and horses. They never guessed, being ignorant of ionization, that the fallen star had affected them and their unborn.”
(Tarzan Alive,
Addendum 2, pp. 247-248.)

The eighteen present were:
⁴

J
OHN
C
LAYTON
, 3rd Duke of Greystoke, and his wife, A
LICIA
R
UTHERFORD
-
ancestors of the jungle lord

S
IR
P
ERCY
B
LAKENEY
, and his (second) wife, A
LICE
C
LARKE
R
AFFLES
-
Blakeney is from Baroness Emmuska Orczy’s
The Scarlet Pimpernel
and sequels

F
ITZWILLIAM
D
ARCY
, and his wife, E
LIZABETH
B
ENNET
-
from Jane Austen’s
Pride and Prejudice

G
EORGE
E
DWARD
R
UTHERFORD
(
THE 11TH
B
ARON
T
ENNINGTON
), and his wife, E
LIZABETH
C
AVENDISH
-
ancestors of Professor George Edward Challenger, from
The Lost World
by Edward Malone, edited for publication by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

H
ONORÉ
D
ELAGARDIE
, and his wife, P
HILIPPA
D
RUMMOND
-
ancestors of Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond from H. C. “Sapper” McNeile’s (and later Gerard Fairlies) novels

D
R.
S
IGER
H
OLMES
, and his wife, V
IOLET
C
LARKE
-
ancestors of Sherlock Holmes, from the stories and novels by John H. Watson, M.D., edited for publication by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

S
IR
H
UGH
D
RUMMOND
, and his wife, L
ADY
G
EORGIA
D
EWHURST
-
ancestors of Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond from H. C. “Sapper” McNeile’s (and later Gerard Fairlies) novels

L
OUIS
L
UPIN
-
ancestor of Arsène Lupin, from novels and stories by Maurice Leblanc

A
LBERT
L
ECOQ
-
ancestor of Monsieur Lecoq, from the novels by Émile Gaboriau

A
LBERT
B
LAKE
-
ancestor of Sexton Blake, from the stories by Harry Blythe and countless others

1
UNNAMED
by Farmer

The meteor’s ionized radiation caused a genetic mutation in those present, endowing many of their descendants with extremely high intelligence and strength. As Farmer stated, the meteor strike was “the single cause of this nova of genetic splendor, this outburst of great detectives, scientists, and explorers of exotic worlds, this last efflorescence of true heroes in an otherwise degenerate age.”
⁵
(Tarzan Alive,
Addendum 2, pp.230-231.)

In addition to the jungle lord and the man of bronze, Farmer concluded that influential people whose lives were chronicled in popular literature were part of the Wold Newton Family, including Solomon Kane (a pre-meteor strike ancestor); Captain Blood (a pre-meteor strike ancestor); The Scarlet Pimpernel (present at meteor strike); Fitzwilliam Darcy and his wife, Elizabeth Bennet (present at meteor strike); Sherlock Holmes and his nemesis Professor Moriarty (aka Captain Nemo); Phileas Fogg; Monsieur Lecoq; The Time Traveller; Allan Quatermain; A. J. Raffles; Professor Challenger; Arsène Lupin; Bulldog Drummond and his archenemy, Carl Peterson; the evil Fu Manchu and his adversary, Sir Denis Nayland Smith; Sir Richard Hannay; G-8; Lord Peter Wimsey; The Shadow; Sam Spade; Doc Savage’s friend and associate Monk Mayfair, his cousin Pat Savage, and his daughter Patricia Wildman; The Spider; Nero Wolfe; Mr. Moto; The Avenger; Philip Marlowe; James Bond; Lew Archer; Travis McGee; and many more.

Farmer’s researches, uncovering the cosmic explanation for the almost superhuman nature and abilities of these amazing men and women, heroes and villains, are meticulous, well-sourced, and representative of all his historical endeavors. He not only studied the jungle lord’s life, but he actually met and interviewed the ape-man himself,
⁶
after spending uncounted hours poring over Burke’s
Peerage
to uncover his real name, titles, arms, and forebears. He applied a similar depth of focus when researching the life of Doc Savage, discovering Doc’s real name, ancestors, and current relatives, as well as the family arms.

After writing the two biographies, Farmer continued to chronicle previously unrevealed exploits of Wold Newton Family members in novels and short stories; often these tales have been mistaken for fiction, but they are entirely consistent with the information he had already uncovered, and many are similarly sourced from newly discovered, and unpublished, manuscripts and diaries.

Among the first of these was
The Adventure of the Peerless Peer,
edited by Farmer in 1974 from Dr. John H. Watson’s unpublished manuscript. Another,
The Other Log of Phileas Fogg,
was first published in 1973 (reissued by Titan Books in 2012), and derived from Phileas Fogg’s secret notes.

Although Farmer’s
Time’s Last Gift
(1972; revised 1977) and the related Khokarsa trilogy—
Hadon of Ancient Opar
⁷
(1974),
Flight to Opar
(1976), and
The Song of Kwasin
(2012; coauthored with Christopher Paul Carey)—are set in prehistoric times, they also recount the real-life histories of Wold Newton Family members. This might at first seem to be a contradiction, since the Wold Cottage meteor strike that gave rise to the Wold Newton Family occurred in 1795
A.D.
whereas the events of
Time’s Last Gift
and the Khokarsa trilogy take place circa 12,000
B.C
. and 10,000
B.C
. respectively.

The answer to this seeming paradox, however, may be found in
Time’s Last Gift.
In that novel, a man named John Gribardsun travels back in time as a member of an anthropological expedition from the year 2070
A.D
. to 12,000
B.C
. He appears in
Hadon of Ancient Opar
under the identity of Sahhindar, the Gray-Eyed Archer God, also known as the god of plants, bronze, and Time. As a member of the Wold Newton Family, Gribardsun introduced the mutated genes of his lineage to the prehistoric peoples of Khokarsa and other lands, and since both Hadon of Opar and Kwasin of Dythbeth—the heroes of the Khokarsa trilogy—can count him as an ancestor, this means they themselves are both members of the Wold Newton Family, despite having been born 12,000 years before the meteor fell to Earth near Wold Newton, Yorkshire in December 1795.

And thus the Wold Newton Family enters prehistory.

But who exactly is John Gribardsun? Farmer leaves plenty of clues to his true identity in
Time’s Last Gift,
although such hints are neither overbearing nor do they distract from the novel’s compelling narrative, and the reader should not feel embarrassed at having missed them. In fact, the author buried them deep for a reason. He could not risk the world knowing the truth, and, although he had come into an arrangement with “Gribardsun” to publish his memoirs in the guise of fiction, Farmer was honor-bound by the agreement to remain within certain very well-defined parameters. Gribardsun had to ensure that the author would not reveal clues that might endanger him or his loved ones. For this reason, Farmer withheld publication of the novel’s epilogue until the revised edition of
Time’s Last Gift
appeared in 1977, by which time Gribardsun must have felt he had slipped far enough off the radar that no one could conceivably follow the clues to him or his family. This newly appended epilogue (also included in the Titan Books edition) revealed that the jungle lord whom Farmer called Gribardsun was married to a beautiful blonde named Jane. The reader should also consider the account in that novel of the Duke of Pemberley, the British peer who was born in 1872 and “raised in indeterminate circumstances” in the jungles of West Africa, and who one member of the time travel expedition to 12,000
B.C
. believes is one and the same as John Gribardsun. Incidentally, the 1872 birthdate serves as both a red herring and a clue to Gribardsun’s identity, as readers of Farmer’s
Tarzan Alive:
A
Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke
are well aware.

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.