Forgoteen Books: The Dark Heart of Time, A TARZAN Novel by Philip Jose Farmer

Not long ago I was going through a dark time when nothing I read seemed to satisfy. I read several bad books in a row - even giving up on one (a rarity for me). Seeking something sure-fire, I poked around on my shelves until I spotted Philip Jose Farmer’s The Dark Heart of Time, a book I’d been saving for just such an emergency.

Farmer and Tarzan. How could I go wrong? Let me count the ways.

The trouble starts on page 1. Tarzan has just grabbed a liana growing on the side of a big tree, when a spear cast by hunters severs the vine. This passage follows:

     Just as the severed part of the vine struck the ground, Tarzan reached a projecting part of the trunk, a massive tumor on the side of the forest giant. Kando the ant had been biting him while he was on the liana, and they continued their attack. One foot on the tumor, his hands gripping the rough parts of the bark, he got around the tree to its opposite side.
     Though he left behind the ants on the tree itself, he couldn’t yet brush off those still on his limbs and body. To use even one hand to get rid of the savagely biting Kando would mean to lose his precarious hold. As it was, his fingers were starting to slip from the crevices.
     But by him there was another liana growing on the tree. So Tarzan did release one hand. Even as he dropped, his free hand closed about the liana. Then, the other gripped the rough-surfaced vine. After that, he easily pulled his two-hundred pound body up the liana to a point above and to one side of a large branch.

Snore. If you’re still awake after reading that, you have far more stamina than me. Sheesh. Persons unknown are lobbing spears at our hero, and before we even get a look at them, we take a three paragraph detour into meaningless details. Sadly, this was only the first of many such passages that failed to nudge the story forward.

And - assuming you're still awake - you couldn’t fail to notice Kando the ant. That’s problem number 2. We all remember Tantor the elephant, Numa the lion and a handful of other jungle residents Burroughs put names to. Nothing wrong with that - in moderation. But here it becomes a nightmare.

Along with Kando, we meet Usha the wind, Manu the monkey, Wappi the antelope, Kudu the sun and Pand the thunder. And that’s just in Chapter 1. They just keep on a’coming: Goro the moon, Histah the snake, Thub the heart, Pamba the rat, Busso the beetle, Nuso the fly, Horta the boar, Ungo the jackal, Sheeta the panther (or leopard), Meeta the rain, Gimla the crocodile, Hul the stars, Duro the hippo, Malskree the golden cat, Pisah the fish, Kota the turtle, Ska the vulture, and Umpa the caterpillar. I guess I should be thankful we didn’t meet Pee-Poo the dung beetle.

Problem number 3 is the Tarzan’s motivation. At the beginning of the story, we learn Jane has been kidnapped by Nazis, and is being held somewhere to the north. The Tarzan I know would make a beeline for the north, and nothing short of amnesia or equally dire straits would slow him down. But Farmer gives us none of that. His Tarzan just dawdles around, mildly curious why these hunters are after him. And while he occasionally frets about Jane, he never once makes a serious attempt to move in the right direction. Instead, he heads south, with no clear motivation why.

Problem 4 is Tarzan’s supporting cast. Early on, he senses he’s being stalked by a mysterious creature - something he’s never encountered before. This critter is intriguing while it remains a mystery, but once revealed it quickly becomes tiresome, and we’re stuck with it for the rest of the book. As a second sidekick, he takes on an equally tiresome native. These three find themselves driven by circumstance toward the south. Along the way, we get more of their back story than we want, and learn that both his companions have mates who are being held by different enemies for different reasons. I never really cared about their problems, but the fact that Farmer raises them is sort of a promise they will be resolved. Instead, at the moment of climax, Tarzan and his two musketeers are separated, and we never see them again.

Problem 5 is maybe the most serious of all. If the loose ends of Tarzan’s two buddies was a broken promise, consider this: All through the book we hear talk of a mysterious civilization to the south. Everything connected with this civilization is so stupendous it must be spoken of in capital letters. To wit: The Voice of the Ghost Frog. Rafmana the Toucher of Time. The More than Dead. The Masked One. The River of the Color of Death. The Eye of the Glittering Tree. The City of God. The Shadow Land. The Great Mother of Snakes, The Great Dog-Man, The Uncaused Causer, The Unwilling Giver of the Unwanted, and The Feeder of the Dark Heart of Time.

Farmer was world-building here, something he was very good at. But he dished out enough stuff to fuel a trilogy, if not a mega-series, and ran out of space to make dramatic use of it. By the time Tarzan and his pals reach this mysterious territory, there are only about 30 pages left, and most of that is wasted with meaningless jabber. Not a single one of those Capital Letter Concepts are satisfactorily explained. Was Farmer laying the groundwork for a series that never materialized? For his sake, I'd like to hope so. But for my sake, I wouldn't want to read it.

And what about Jane? Near as you can tell from reading The Dark Heart of Time, that nasty Nazi’s still got her.

More (and hopefully better) Forgotten Books at pattinase.

Forgotten Books: Doc Savage - His Apocalyptic Life

 

A new Doc Savage novel has been published!

A new Doc Savage novel is now on sale!

To long-time Savage addicts like me, that’s BIG news. I started celebrating two weeks ago, rereading and reviewing Will Murray’s 1991 epic Doc adventure, Python Isle. Then I had the privilege to read an advance copy of the new book, The Desert Demons, which has just gone on sale from Altus Press.

I'll be reviewing The Desert Demons tomorrow. But since this is Forgotten Books day, I'm getting my Doc jollies by focusing on Philip Jose Farmer’s 1973 masterwork, Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life.

I grokked on this when it first came out in paperback in 1975, and later picked up the Doubleday hardcover shown above.

Farmer, who bought the first issue of the mag on the newsstand when he was 15 years old, admits to having read the entire 182-story series three times in the course of writing this book. Only then, he says, did he realize how truly apocalyptic Doc’s life was, and he spends the first chapter of the book proving his point. He compares Lester Dent’s work and vision with that of other “apocalyptic” writers such as E.E. Smith, William Burroughs and Henry Miller.

Over the course of the book, Farmer shares his unique perspective on Doc himself, his five aides, his cousin Pat and other major elements of the series, like the gadgets, the vehicles, the pets, the villains, and the Empire State Building.

A major part of the book is a continuation of a mythical genealogy called The Wold Newton Family that Farmer detailed in his 1992 biography, Tarzan Alive. The basic idea is that a real-life meteorite that struck Wold Newton, England back in 1795 caused mutations in the descendants of folks who got too close. Many of these descendants had powers and abilities above and beyond those of mortal men, making them fit subjects for heroic literature.

Farmer presents a complex family tree linking not only Tarzan and Doc, but such folks as Solomon Kane, Sherlock Holmes, Natty Bumppo, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Allan Quartermain, Phileas Fogg and Fu Manchu, on down to more modern descendants like Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe and James Bond. It’s a fascinating game, and the fun continues in the capable hands of such Wold Newton disciples as Win Scott Eckert, most notably in his recent two-volume work, Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's review of The Desert Demons (a joint effort by Lester Dent and Will Murray). But if you can't wait, you can order right now direct from Altus Press. Click HERE!

Just Looking: Lord of the Trees and The Mad Goblin by Philip Jose Farmer (1970)

Forgotten Books: To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer

The Riverworld series is hardly forgotten, but I’d forgotten it myself until I came across a made-for-SciFi Channel movie at the library. The movie, an unsuccessful series pilot from 2003, wasn’t bad, and reminded me of the fun I’d had reading the series.

So I hauled out this first book (first published in 1971) and gave it another go. Farmer’s concept here was a masterstroke - the idea that every person who has ever lived is reborn with 25-year old bodies and a lifetime of memories, on the banks of an endless river. Dang! I wish I’d thought of it.

This premise gave Farmer unlimited possibilities to play with historical characters and cultures, and its obvious he had a swell time with it. His choice for the hero of this first book was 19th Century explorer Richard Francis Burton, I guy I knew next to nothing about. So I learned stuff, and it made me want to learn more. The supporting cast includes Alice Lidell Hargreaves (the inspiration for the character Alice in Wonderland), Herman Goering and Farmer himself, here bearing the name Peter Jarius Frigate.

It’s great adventure, with splashes of historical detail and plenty of imagination. Because I was trapped on an airplane at the time, I finished the book in one sitting, and it was pretty much a thrill ride. But on reflection I found myself wanting something more (and I don’t mean simply a sequel, of which there are four).

The thing is, Farmer’s plots and action carry me along so fast that it takes awhile to realize I didn’t really connect with the characters. His heroes are passionate about such heroic stuff as courage, determination, imagination, revenge and a need to know, but fall a bit short on what I can only call heart. Beyond the qualities mentioned, I have a tough time connecting with them on an emotional level.

This is not a criticism so much as an observation. It’s the way Farmer wrote, and pretty much the way his literary heroes Edgar Rice Burroughs and “Kenneth Robeson” did too. The mission statement for them all might be  To Hell with Sentiment, on with the Action. And to that end, To Your Scattered Bodies Go certainly achieves its goal.

Check out the usual line-up of fabulous Forgotten Books at the always-cool blog of Mr. George Kelley.