Sunday, February 15, 2015

New book roundup: Dinosaur cowboys and lost worlds galore

I’ve spent the past few days battling a malfunctioning computer (boo!) but now it’s fixed and I have several new paleofiction titles to report. (Yea!) The first three titles were brought to my attention by blogger Eccentric Cowboy, who penned the first one.



Primal Frontier: The Hunter from the Red Hills by Austen Confer

Here’s a self-published title for those of you who like your Wild West a little wilder. From the description:
Only the boldest and bravest of men dare to explore the dinosaur-infested interior of Magna Terra, The Wild Continent. Ansgar Tapio is one of those few. Raised in the rugged Red Hills and having explored the land he is well prepared for the challenges that lie before him.

But when he and his best friend Jandar are chased into the dreaded Vangor Mountains by a hostile tribe, they make a discovery within that neither ever dreamed existed in the mountain range. Menaced by new foes their every step is fraught with danger as they seek to escape the Vangor Mountains, and perhaps bring a stranger out with them.

The Hunter from the Red Hills is the first installment of the Primal Frontier series, an alternate history setting taking place on a super-continent where ancient wildlife still rules supreme in the 1800's as colonists from Europe seek to exploit its resources. Many other adventures and discoveries await with different characters.

Stay tuned for future releases!


The Zanthodon Megapack by Lin Carter

I was surprised to see this one. Lin Carter was an editor and author whose main claim to fame was helping keep the works of several early 20th century pulp writers in the public consciousness. Most of his own novels were pastiches of those earlier works. I had previously only known Zanthodon from its entry in the Dictionary of Imaginary Places, where it was described an underground lost world in the vein of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pellucidar. Anyway, this digital bundle brings together all five Zanthodon novels in a single ebook:
Beneath the trackless sands and shifting wastelands of the Sahara lies a world unknown to modern man: the underground world of Zanthodon. In its vast unmapped terrain are great jungles, strange seas, and forbidding mountains...and here can be found many of beings long since vanished from the surface of the Earth: dinosaurs, flying monsters, and primitive cavemen. Join Eric Carstairs as he explores the strange world beneath the Earth's crust, discovering monsters and marvels of eras past!

"If you have an appetite for weird and curious marvels -- a thirst for swashbuckling derring-do; if you enjoy a story that pits a long adventurer against uncanny dangers -- a princess in peril, and a hero to battle ruthless foes to rescue her -- then come, join Eric Carstairs!" -- Lin Carter, from the Foreword.

This volume assembles the complete 5-volume Zanthodon series, by Lin Carter:

JOURNEY TO THE UNDERGROUND WORLD
ZANTHODON
HUROK OF THE STONE AGE
DARYA OF THE BRONZE AGE
ERIC OF ZANTHODON


The Lost World Megapack

This ebook collects several lost world and lost civilization stories that are now in the public domain, including Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. Technically you can find these stories online for free, but $1 will give them to you as a single file already formatted for your e-reader.
The Lost Worlds MEGAPACK™ explores strange lands and peoples lost from the rest of civilization—strange continents, hidden valleys, microscopic worlds, and underground kingdoms are just the tip of the iceberg! With classic stories from well-known authors like Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Arthur Conan to more modern works by Lin Carter, Don Wilcox, Eando Binder, and many others, this is the lost world collection you've been waiting for. Even if you're a connoisseur of lost world fiction, you'll find stories here that you’ve never encountered before. Or if you’re new to the genre, you will find this collection a treasure-trove of fantastic fiction from cover to cover! Included are:

THE LOST WORLD, by Arthur Conan Doyle
PEOPLE OF THE PYRAMIDS, by William P. McGivern
KING SOLOMON’S MINES, by H. Rider Haggard
LAND OF THE SHADOW DRAGONS, by Eando Binder
JOURNEY TO THE UNDERGROUND WORLD, by Lin Carter
THE MOON POOL, by A. Merritt
THE METAL MONSTER, by A. Merritt
A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH, by Jules Verne
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING, by Rudyard Kipling
THE DEVIL-TREE OF EL DORADO, by Frank Aubrey
TERROR ISLAND, by Alex Shell Briscoe
AT THE EARTH’S CORE, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
PELLUCIDAR, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
OUT OF TIME’S ABYSS, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
UNDER THE ANDES, by Rex Stout
THE MAN WHO MEASURED THE WIND, by Harold Lamb
DWELLERS OF THE DEEP, by Don Wilcox
VRIL, THE POWER OF THE COMING RACE, by Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton
SYMZONIA: VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY, by Adam Seaborn
A STRANGE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN A COPPER CYLINDER, by James De Mille


The Dead World by F. Paul Wilson

Here’s something you don’t see every day: An officially authorized sequel written by a well-known horror and fantasy author. The Dead World is a novelette about an expedition to Pellucidar’s moon, which hangs in stationary orbit over the surface of the Inner Earth. F. Paul Wilson is best known for his Repairman Jack novels.
A Pellucidar novelette written with the approval of the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate.

A plague is spewing forth from the Dead World, the stationary moon that hovers over the Land of Awful Shadow in the land within the Earth. David Innes, Emperor of Pellucidar, and the eccentric inventor, Abner Perry, rig a balloon to carry them to the Dead World. But Pellucidar's mysterious moon is not what it seems, and far more bizarre than they ever dreamed. It holds the answer as to how Pellucidar was formed - and how it will be destroyed. Can they stop the plague before it wipes out all life in the Inner World?


Other titles

Beyond the Great South Wall by Frank Saville: A lost civilization novel that may have been the first long work of fiction to feature a dinosaur. The Kindle edition is illustrated, but you can also read the text online for free.

Savage Island by Alan Specter: Environmentalists and evil corporate types clash on a dinosaur-infested lost island.

The Hollow World by Michael Kace Beckum: A modern-day take on the underground lost world theme.

Cry Havoc by Jack Hanson: Dinosaurs with big guns. That’s about all I can make out from the rambling description.

1 comment:

Eccentric Cowboy said...

GASP!!! A new Pellucidar story!? I am so there!

And that is why I keep coming to this blog like a child to a candy store! Every time you make a post I find something to pique my interest. :)

Thanks for the shout out sir, it means a lot! And now to read the Zanthodon Megapack I just purchased. ;)
Keep up the good work for us paleo-readers! :D