Tales of the Wold Newton Universe (3 page)

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
.

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, <
fernlea.tripod.com/woldcottage.html
>.

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

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.

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.