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The Land That Time Forgot
Where the deer and the dinosaurs play
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The Land That Time Forgot
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By Edgar Rice Burroughs
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University of Nebraska Press
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$14.95
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Trade Paperback, March 1999
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ISBN 0-8032-6154-3
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Review by Curt Wohleber
 n a volcanic crater in the South Pacific is the lost world of Caspak.
Dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures still roam Caspak, as do various
tribes of people representing different stages of human evolution. Death is
common, yet there are no children. The facts of life on Caspak are very
different.
The Land That Time Forgot was first published as a three-part
magazine serial in 1918, then in book form in 1924. Each of the linked stories
follows a different hero while gradually revealing the mystery of Caspak's
biology. The first story, "The Land That Time Forgot," chronicles the
adventures of a young American, Bowen Tyler, marooned on Caspak with a group
of English sailors, a German U-boat crew, and the fair maiden Lys La Rue.
When Lys disappears into the jungle, abducted by a cave man or perhaps a
German, Tyler goes off in search of his lady love.
"The People That Time Forgot" tells the story of Tyler's friend Tom
Billings, who journeys to Caspak with a rescue party. He crash-lands his
biplane after a run-in with a pterodactyl. He has many brushes with death
and falls in love with a native girl. "Out of Time's Abyss" follows one of
Tyler's fellow castaways, British naval officer John Bradley, who is
captured by a race of winged humanoids called the Wieroo. In the Blue Place
of Seven Skulls, Bradley learns the astonishing secret of Caspak life. He
also has many deadly encounters and falls in love with a native girl.
Birds, bees and man-eating reptiles
In Burroughs' day lost-world stories had already been a staple of popular
fiction for decades, dating back to the works of Jules Verne and H. Rider
Haggard. Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World (1912) also featured a
hidden land where dinosaurs reigned. But The Land That Time Forgot is
not just a late entry in the lost-world genre but also a kind of prototype
of modern-day science fiction. Burroughs crafts his exotic locale by
extrapolating from an intriguing scientific--okay,
pseudo-scientific--premise.
It would be unfair to complain that Burroughs, writing in 1918, doesn't
do a whole lot with that premise. And he does have the wisdom to throw in an
anomaly, the winged Wieroo, who are biologically distinct from the rest of
Caspakian life and must resort to unpleasant means to maintain their
population.
The plots are mainly a series of rapid-fire cliffhangers as the heroes
are menaced by Germans, prehistoric creatures, belligerent natives and
finally by Germans again. This threatens to become tedious until the Wieroo
come along and things perk up again.
The rugged heroes are sexually repressed amidst a narrative strewn with
subtle titillation, innuendo and sadomasochistic undertones. These men
harbor no impure thoughts, though Bradley and Billings admit, like confused
adolescents, to experiencing "peculiar thrills" at a native woman's touch.
The characters would appeal to Burroughs' adolescent readers: as strong and
capable as any teen would like to be, but still confused about girls. It's
no coincidence that the central mystery of Caspak involves the biology of
reproduction.
Sure, parts of the book are corny and dated, but after 80 years it's still great
fun.
-- Curt
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Sex and Violence in Zero-G
All of "Near Space" in one place
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Sex and Violence in Zero-G
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By Allen Steele
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Meisha Merlin Publishing
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$16.00
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Trade Paperback, Jan. 1999
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ISBN 0-9658345-9-X
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Review by Clinton Lawrence
 ex and Violence in Zero-G collects all 15 of the short stories in Allen Steele's "Near Space" future history series. They range across the entire 21st century, and Steele presents them in chronological order, beginning with the first plans to return to the Moon and ending the century with the beginnings of the settlement of the Saturn system.
"Walking on the Moon" features a trio of retired Apollo astronauts contemplating the opportunity to return to the Moon. The Diamondback Jack quartet ("Free Beer and the William Casey Society," "The Return of Weird Frank," "Sugar's Blues," and "The Flying Triangle") are tall tavern tales about the construction of the first permanent space settlements. "Live from the Mars Hotel" tells the story of a trio of scientists in the first Mars station who form a band and have a hit album back on Earth. "The War Memorial" is the very short, poignant tale of a soldier in the key battle of the Moon War. Back on Mars, "Zwarte Piet's Story" tells of the efforts to bring the tradition of Christmas to the children of Red Planet.
In "The Weight," a reporter goes along on a trading mission to Jupiter, though he's not welcomed by some crew members. "Kronos" documents a military expedition to Titan to discover what went wrong with a scientific expedition sent there the previous year. The Captain Future duet ("The Death of Captain Future" and "The Exile of Evening Star") chronicles the adventures of Rohr Furland, who ends up as second mate on a ship run by a delusional captain who thinks he's Edmond Hamilton's space hero, Captain Future. "0.0G Sex: A User's Guide" has a self-explanatory title. "Working for Mr. Chicago" concerns a tycoon who is reviving cryogenically preserved corpses to work as indentured servants. Finally, "Shepherd Moon" examines the frustrations of a woman whose artist lover is obsessed with Saturn.
Strong stories and flawed habits
The first thing readers notice about this collection is that Steele is at his best when writing so-called "short short" stories and novellas. Nearly all of the best tales in Sex and Violence in Zero-G fall into one of these two categories, while most of the weaker stories are medium-length tales or novelettes. At very short lengths, Steele's focus can produce elegant, emotional and vivid stories like "The War Memorial" and "Shepherd Moon," both only a few pages long. Each has a far more powerful effect than almost any other piece in the collection. The novella length, exemplified by "The Weight" (probably the best story in the collection) and "Kronos," gives Steele room to develop his characters and settings without a lot of overt exposition. As a result, these stories are compelling and realistic examinations of the future of humans in space. The Captain Future duet isn't quite up to those standards, but it shares many of the same strengths.
The medium-length shorts and novelettes (with the exception of the very enjoyable "Zwarte Piet's Story") aren't bad, just flawed. Part of the problem is that the stories being told just aren't that compelling, but Steele also has a habit at these lengths of inelegantly dumping a lot of historical and descriptive exposition on readers rather than letting the information come out naturally. It's particularly a problem in the Diamondback Jack quartet, where the description of the bar is redundant and tedious the first time, but it's essentially repeated in all four stories. "Live from the Mars Hotel" has a different problem--it's basically about the contemporary music industry, with Mars used gratuitously. "Walking on the Moon" reads like an awkward attempt at mainstream fiction techniques applied to a near-future story, something Steele has done better (as "Shepherd Moon" demonstrates).
Even with the flaws, Sex and Violence in Zero-G collects some important work by an author who has become one of the finer hard science fiction writers around. It's definitely a worthwhile collection.
When I look at the copyright page, it does seem to me that the stories which are a little sloppily written tend to be his earlier stories (published before 1992), and that most of the recent stories are much stronger. I interpret that to mean we're in for some very fine work from Steele in the future.
-- Clint
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