In 1885 H. Rider Haggard, a 29 year old lawyer, former government bureaucrat and author of little note, published an African adventure novel. One of the first English language novels of the time to cover far off and mysterious Africa, King Solomon’s Mines had the advantage of being authored by an Englishman who had actually spent seven years working on the continent. He based his hero, English born African big game hunter Allan Quatermain, on the hunters and soldiers he had known. Even though Haggard had experience with the exotic lands and wildlife of Africa, which showed in his story, Quatermain found himself hunting not lions but missing Englishman following an ancient map leading to the source of the Biblical King Solomon’s wealth. Jungle adventure, archaeology and the fantastic combined into a sensational, and highly successful, story
Many adventure stories of the day were either of modern soldiers or historical yarns of swashbuckling and chivalry, such as Dumas’ Three Musketeers saga (1844) and Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, the 1820 story of a knight returned from the Crusades. Advances in technology, such as the steam engine and telegraph, were making the world seem smaller than ever… or perhaps they were making the faraway seem accessible (at least in the pages of a story). Tales of travel, whether true or fantastical like Verne’s 1872 classic Around the World in 80 Days, were popular as long as they were stories set in Africa, India, Asia and other mysterious corners of the world.
King Solomon’s Mines tapped into several rising trends including the existing taste for adventure, a rising interest in mysticism and a fever for the ancient world fueled by archaeological discoveries going back to the early 18th century. The uncovering of Pompeii, Napoleon’s 1798 invasion of Egypt and Heinrich Schliemann finding mythical Troy in 1870 ignited a passion for the ancient world. With King Solomon’s Mines H. Rider Haggard is considered by many to have launched the “lost world” genre, which straddles classical adventure, fantasy and science fiction.
In truth, there were already novels which could be described as lost world stories. Some, in fact, featured ancient or unknown civilizations much more prominently. Most of these, however, were not written as “serious” adventure tales but, like Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), socio-political satires. Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864, English edition 1871) saw its heroes journeying to a prehistoric world hidden under a volcano full of dinosaurs. Dinosaurs would make another appearance in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 novel The Lost World, which introduced his character Professor Challenger and (arguably) named the genre. Challenger and his party searched the jungles of South Africa for a plateau where the prehistoric world never died. Still, it was the great success of King Solomon’s Mines which, according to some, guaranteed the position of the fledgling genre among readers for decades to come.
Quatermain would appear in a total of fourteen novels and a handful of short stories. Over the course of his adventures the big game hunter would encounter African wizards, strange narcotics which unlocked fantastic mental abilities and Ayesha, She Who Must Be Obeyed. Treated as a living goddess by an hitherto unknown and mysterious African tribe, the beautiful and ruthless Ayesha (pronounced “Assha”) reigned for close to 2,000 years. First appearing in 1886’s serialized novel She: A History of Adventure, Ayesha returned in three sequels, including 1921’s She and Allan. Her stories take her from Africa to the Arab world to Tibet, span some twenty centuries and secured Haggard’s place as a master of the lost world genre.
Many other writers would try their hands at lost world tales, including H.P. Lovecraft (At the Mountains of Madness, 1931) and A. Merritt (the Moon Pool, 1918, and its sequel The Metal Men, 1920). Perhaps the most prolific, or at least the most successful, was Edgar Rice Burroughs. While probably still best known for his Tarzan stories, which are mainly jungle adventure (more on Tarzan in a second), and the Barsoom novels, John Carter’s Martian adventures which are probably best categorized as “portal stories,” Burroughs wrote two successful lost world series. First, he created Pellucidar, a world inside hollow Earth, in 1914, and then Caspak, a temperate, prehistoric world hidden at the South Pole, in 1918. There were six Pellucidar novels, including one with Tarzan, and a collection of short stories published after Burroughs’ death, while Caspak featured in three novels. He also published a one-off novel, The Cave Girl, in 1913 about a lost world of Neolithic tribes on a Pacific island.
Edgar Burroughs’ best known character, as mentioned, was Tarzan. A British aristocrat lost as a child in Africa (raised by the apes before being educated in Europe and then returning to the jungle), the Tarzan stories had many of the same adventurous notes as the lost world genre. In addition to visiting Pellucidar, five other novels focused on Tarzan’s adventures in lost worlds including a surviving remnant of Imperial Rome. Most, however, featured the long hidden Atlantean colony of Opar and its High Priestess Queen La. The quintessential lost world, Opar managed to offer mythology, mysticism and even a twisted branch of the human race.
At their core, lost world stories allowed modern heroes (and their modern values) to face ancient dangers and ideologies. As a corollary they also allowed modern technology to square off against the brute force of barbarism and the supernatural forces of worlds without the benefit of scientific learning. Other genres rose in the late 19th century which facilitated these clashes. Oriental fantasy, for example, often included exotic locales and mysterious, ancient Asian philosophies and ideologies (or at least western world imaginations of Asian philosophies and ideologies). Although many people think immediately of prejudiced “yellow peril” stories (which definitely did gain popularity as the west occupied China and then Japan rose as a military power), there were also pure adventure stories set in the Orient and Asian heroes such as Charlie Chan, inspired in some ways by a very real bullwhip wielding Hawaiian police detective named Chang Apana, and Judge Dee. The original Judge Dee stories were actually from a Chinese folk novel about a real Tang Dynasty official named Di Renjie. The book was translated into English by Robert Van Gulik in 1949. After the successful release of The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, Van Gulik wrote a series of additional books (and a newspaper comic strip) featuring Judge Dee. These books have sense been translated in Chinese and have even inspired Chinese television series.
Another genre which brought mysterious ancient forces into the modern world was the mummy story, which mixed semi-historical fantasy with pure horror. Directly inspired by archeological discoveries and the huge amount of Egyptian antiquities moved into European and American museums, resurrected mummies confronted modern characters with their ancient magic. Haggard and Doyle both penned mummy tales, although the sub-genre predated both men. Many early mummy stories actually featured female mummies and brought a little sex into the mix, much like gothic vampire stories. In fact, Bram Stoker (an avid “Egyptologist,” to use a very 19th century phrase) wrote a mummy novel called The Jewel of the Seven Stars in 1903. The same year as Stoker unleashed the mummy of Queen Tera upon readers Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut, one of ancient Eqypt’s few female pharaohs.
Although the lost world, Oriental fantasy and mummy genres faded in literature they have never quite disappeared. They migrated, like so many fantasy sub-genres, from the pulps to comics. DC’s Warlord, for example, featured a Vietnam War-era SR-71 pilot who accidentally flew through a hole near the North Pole and found himself in the land of Skartaris, a fantastic world inside the hollow Earth. Oriental fantasy’s most famous villain, Fu Manchu, was licensed for a time by Marvel Comics. His stories coincided with a new wave and style of Oriental fantasy kicked off by growing interest in martial arts. Although Marvel eventually lost the rights to the Fu Manchu character his comic book son’s adventures continue to this day. Many fans of Shang Chi do not even realize he was originally a spin off from Fu Manchu.
Movies, and eventually television, also provided new life to lost world, Oriental fantasy and mummy stories. Judge Dee, Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan have all featured in movies with Judge Dee recently finding new popularity in China. Alan Quatermain first hit the silver screen in 1919, although that film is now lost, and has been featured in at least a half dozen theatrical releases since as well as a few straight to TV adaptations. The Lost World was first produced as a silent film in 1927, starring Bessie Love, an introductory sequence with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself and beautiful stop motion dinosaurs animated by Willis O’Brien (who would go on to animate the original King Kong in 1933). Original stories, not based directly on literature, would appear in theaters, too, such as the 1936 movie serial The Undersea Kingdom. Universal, of course, put out a series of mummy films from 1932 to 1955, inspiring a host of imitators (including four films from Hammer). Mummies are still finding their way into theaters with Lee Cronin’s The Mummy in theaters this year and a fourth film in the Stephen Sommers’ Mummy franchise expected next year (original stars Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz are even returning as Rick and Evy O’Connell).
In 1925, at the age of 68, H. Rider Haggard passed away in London. The genre he helped to define was exploding in popularity thanks to the pulp magazine boom. Four additional H. Rider Haggard books would be released after his death, including the final two Allan Quatermain adventures. Quatermain would not only inspire a whole host of fictional characters (most notably adventuring professor Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones) but, thanks to the original novels slipping into public domain, even feature in new stories.