Prehistoric Pulp

A Turok, Son of Stone movie?!

2007-10-17T19:16:00.000-07:00

Before Turok was a video game, it was a relatively successful comic published in the 1950s. I never had the opportunity to read it, but I'm hoping that it one day gets republished, because I desperately want to.

Well, color me surprised because suddenly a trailer for what appears to be a full-length cartoon movie based on the comic has turned up on YouTube. And judging by the amount of gore in the trailer, this ain't no Disney movie:

Wikipedia reports that Turok, Son of Stone is a 70-minute straight-to-DVD feature film being produced by a company called Classic Media. What excites me about the trailer is that the movie appears to be based on the original material rather than the various video games most people are familiar with. In the comic, Turok was an American Indian who was trapped in a lost valley with his young companion Andar. The video games completely scrapped the storyline to substitute cybernetic dinosaurs and aliens, which I always thought was a poor trade-off.

Why a Turok movie now? I'm sure it has nothing to do with the highly anticipated Turok video game for the Xbox 360, hitting stores early next year. *cough* Ironically, that game also scraps the original storyline for a less-original plot about space marines and dinosaurs.

I have no information about when Turok, Son of Stone is coming out, but when I do, I'll make sure to post it.

An explanation why I've been so silent lately

2007-10-17T19:04:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of activity on this blog lately. What happened? Basically it was a perfect storm of events that has been eating up all my time. First, I'm dealing with some medical problems in the family, so that's been on my mind. Second, I'm in talks about possibly taking a new job that would require moving across the country, and I've been spending the last five days or so getting prepared for that move, if I get the job. And finally, we're a little short-staffed at the place I work at the moment, so I've been putting in extra hours to help take up the slack.

I haven't had time to read let alone write reviews, so please bear with me as I try to get everything in order. I will probably be pretty silent over the next two or three weeks if I get the job, given my moving preparations will need to go into overdrive. It may take four days just to drive from where I am now to the new location!

Don't worry -- this blog will go on. I'm really looking forward to having some free time again.

Classic dinosaur movie trailers

2007-10-08T19:31:00.000-07:00

This post is the result of me being lazy, and other bloggers have surely done this before, but I thought it would be interesting to post some old theatrical trailers of classic -- and not-so-classic -- dinosaur movies. We can thank YouTube for these.

First up is The Land That Time Forgot, a 1975 film starring Doug McClure. I plan to start reviewing the series it is based on later this week.

Gwangi! Gwangi!

Here is the trailer for The Land Unknown, a 1950s movie that is itself virtually unknown.

Kong! Kong!

And finally, the original The Lost World.

Beyond the Gap by Harry Turtledove (2007)

2007-10-07T20:43:00.000-07:00

Hardback cover blurb

Count Hamnet Thyssen is a minor noble of the drowsy old Raumsdalian Empire. Its capital city, Nidaros, began as a mammoth hunters’ camp at the edge of the great Glacier. But that was centuries ago, and as everyone knows, it’s the nature of the great Glacier to withdraw a few feet every year. Now Nidaros is an old and many-spired city; and though they still feel the breath of the great Glacier in every winter’s winds, the ice cap itself has retreated beyond the horizon.

Trasamund, a clan chief of the mammoth-herding Bizogots, the next tribe north, has come to town with strange news. A narrow gap has opened in what they'd always thought was an endless and impregnable wall of ice. The great Glacier does not go on forever--and on its other side are new lands, new animals, and possibly new people.

Ancient legend says that on the other side is the Golden Shrine, put there by the gods to guard the people of their world. Now, perhaps, the road to the legendary Golden Shrine is open. Who could resist the urge to go see? Not Hamnet Thyssen or Trasmund. Not Ulric Skakki, Hamnet’s old comrade in arms: a good man to have at your side, although perhaps not at your back. And not, damnably, Eyvind Torfinn – a scholar, a very knowledgavle man but, alas, the husband of Hamnet’s former wife, Gudrid: a troublemaker if there ever was one. She’s decided to come along, too.

For every one of them, the glacier has always been the boundary of the world. Now they'll be traveling beyond it into a world that's bigger than anyone knew. Adventures will surely be had...

My thoughts

Beyond the Gap almost breaks the rules that I spell out to the right, but since it is a fantasy rather than a historical drama, it qualifies for inclusion on this blog. Anyway, after spending the last three evenings reading it, I felt it would have been a waste not to review it.

The novel is an odd mix of Clan of the Cave Bear and Dungeons & Dragons. It is a swords and sorcery tale that substitutes mammoths and short-faced bears for dragons and unicorns, and it is set in a fantasy version of North America at the end of the last Ice Age. The continent is home to a European civilization cut off from the rest of the world by a great ice sheet to the north (the Laurentide ice sheet). A warming climate has caused the ice sheet to split in two, and Count Hamnet Thyssen is charged by the emperor to lead an expedition through the gap to see what is on the other side. Problem is, Hamnet’s ex-wife has decided to accompany the group, and she delights in tormenting her former husband every chance she gets.

Beyond the Gap is far from Turtledove’s best work. The characterization is thin and the dialogue often clunky and amateurish. The whole “angry ex-wife” subplot was thrown in to flesh out the main character, but he is portrayed as so stereotypically good and his ex-wife as so stereotypically evil that their relationship isn’t the least bit interesting. The rest of the cast is composed of stock characters from fantasy fiction: A boisterous barbarian, a wise-cracking rogue, a down-on-his-luck wizard. Only the setting shows some originality.

The plot moves at a glacial pace (ha ha) with really not much happening in the 320 pages of the novel. There isn’t enough action to keep fans of adventure fiction happy, and the characters are not human enough to really care about what happens to them. Several Ice Age animals have cameos throughout the book, or are at least mentioned, but they are more for color than an integral part of the plot.

Beyond the Gap is meant to be the first book in a new fantasy series and the ending leaves room for what could be an interesting sequel. I generally like Turtledove’s works, and he has tackled the same subject matter better in the past, so there is hope this series could improve.

Trivia

Beyond the Gap clearly takes its inspiration from the theory that at the end of the last Ice Age, a corridor opened up in the Laurentide ice sheet that allowed the ancestors of the Native Americans to travel from Alaska to the rest of the continent. This PBS Nova web site has a graphic illustrating the gap and may help you visualize the world of the novel.

The author’s web site is www.sfsite.com/~silverag/turtledove.html

Reviews

10,000 B.C. poster

2007-10-07T11:43:00.000-07:00

This is not book news, but I thought it may interest anyone who likes to read about prehistoric animals. The movie poster for the upcoming film 10,000 B.C. was recently released. (Click image for a full-sized version.)

A reviewer over at Chud.com didn't like it, but I can definitely see this poster hanging on my wall. That's not an endorsement of the movie. There are numerous scientific inaccuracies in the trailer, including the construction of what appears to be the Egyptian pyramids thousands of years before they were actually built. The director, Roland Emmerich, is fond of throwing pseudoscience in his movies. His last film, The Day After Tomorrow, was based on a book written by a paranormal radio talk-show host and a writer of several "non-fiction" books about UFOs.*

That said, I have no problem with the movie as long as it's marketed as a fantasy rather than a realistic take on Ice Age society. Still, I imagine that paleoanthropologists and archaeologists are going to need to spend a lot of time separating the fact from the fiction for the public.

10,000 B.C. has a release date of March 7, 2008 "A.D." Ain't It Cool News has already posted an advance "spy" review for those of you who don't care about spoilers. The official web site is www.10000bcmovie.com

* The Day After Tomorrow was very similar to a 1979 disaster novel titled The Sixth Winter by Douglas Orgill and John Gribbin, so much so that I find it hard to believe that the writers of movie were not aware of it. The book also is about the sudden onset of an Ice Age, and both feature storms that instantly freeze people and killer wolves. Pick up the book if you ever stumble across it in a used-book store -- it's a fun little read.

Ratha's Courage out later this month

2007-10-04T22:01:00.000-07:00

Via SFrevu.com comes this news: The fifth book in a series about the adventures of a clan of intelligent prehistoric cats is coming out this month.

"Ratha and her clan, the Named, are sentient prehistoric big cats. In Ratha's Courage, the first book about the Named since 1994, Ratha extends the use of the Red Tongue—fire—to a hunter tribe. One of the hunters ignites a blaze that sets off a devastating conflict between the two clans. Now Ratha must find the courage within herself to set it right."

I've honestly never heard of these books, although they sound interesting. The series is set in the ancient past and features several prehistoric mammals. That creature the cat is riding on is almost certainly an Indricotherium, the largest land mammal that ever lived. Apparently several of the original books have been republished so readers can see where it all started.

The books are written for young adults, so you will most likely find them in the children's section of your local bookstore. I really can't say anything more about the novels, but the author writes on her web site that the fictional species of the series is evolved from Dinaelurus, which was a cat-like nimravid rather than a true cat.

Ratha's Courage is scheduled for release on Oct. 18, but it looks like the reissued novels may be out in stores now.

The official web site of the series is www.rathascourage.com

Saurian Safari! by Chris Peers (2002)

2007-10-04T21:11:00.000-07:00

Note: This is a review of the second edition of the rules.

Rest in peace Wade Hackett, for we barely knew you.

Wade, you see, had been my safari guide for three hunting trips to the Mesozoic. He had successfully led the first two expeditions in and out of the Cretaceous period without a scratch, racking up a nice collection of dinosaur trophies along the way. But during a trip to the Jurassic, a pair of allosaurs spotted the hunting party and charged it. Wade’s gun misfired just as one of the allosaurs reached him, and before the other party members could react, the beast was carrying away his lifeless body in its mouth.

Of course, we only know this because one of the expedition members had written it down in his journal. The surviving members of the hunting party were attacked and slaughtered by a trio of ceratosaurs as they made their way back to camp. All that was found afterward were a few bloodstains on the ground and several crushed weapons with spent casings beside them.

As you’ve probably guessed by now, Dinosaur Safari! is a dinosaur hunting game published by HLBS. It is a miniatures game, meaning it is played with little figures on a table set up to simulate a natural landscape. It also is a lot of fun, although the rules could use some polish.

Players assume the roles of Victorian-era hunters out to bag the biggest game of all time. There is a nice variety of animals to choose from in Saurian Safari!, from dinosaurs to prehistoric mammals, and the rules come with several scenarios that let gamers tailor the hunts to their own preferences.

Saurian Safari! is a cooperative game with the players working together to bag an animal instead of competing against each other. All animal moves are based on reaction tables, so there is no need for a “game master” to oversee animal encounters and the game can be played completely solo. Players will need a d20 set of dice to play the game, as well as the appropriate miniatures.

One downside of Saurian Safari! is that actions take several dice rolls that eat up time. Shooting an animal, for example, isn’t simply a matter of rolling the dice to see whether you hit it. You also have to roll to see whether your character spotted the dinosaur, whether the gun knocks your character down, whether the gun misfired and whether the bullet managed to penetrate the dinosaur’s thick hide. While I appreciate the realism, I wish these actions could be determined with fewer rolls.

The rules themselves also have a lot of gaps and players will need to make up their own rules to fill in the blanks. Luckily, there is a sizable online community dedicated to the game with many helpful suggestions.

The biggest problem with Saurian Safari! is that there are not many miniatures of prehistoric animals available. There are plenty Victorian-era figures for sale and the miniatures world is awash with fantasy creatures, but gamers don’t seem to be interested in real animals. Several internet forums suggest using plastic dinosaur models, but nearly all the models I found were either too small or way too big. I just downloaded pictures of the appropriate dinosaurs from the web and turned them into paper cutout figures, which worked just as well. Also, be warned that miniature gaming can be an expensive and time-consuming hobby. Players need to build their own landscapes from scratch, and miniature figures can cost quite a bit of money and almost always need to be painted.

That said, Saurian Safari! is a fun game once you get into it. Hunts are limited only by the players’ imaginations, and the scenarios and settings can be tinkered with so that no two hunts turn out the same. There also is a certain feeling of exhilaration in facing a rampaging dinosaur and bringing it down with a well-placed shot just seconds before it would have trampled you. Just don't always expect to make it back alive, as poor Wade found out.

Trivia

Lost World Safari is a Yahoo! discussion group about Saurian Safari! and other dinosaur hunting games. Also, the blog Yours in a White Wine Sauce! features several posts about miniature dinosaur hunting.

Saurian Safari! features a make-believe “dinosaur gun” you can choose as a weapon for your hunts, but apparently there were real dinosaur guns made for the movie Jurassic Park: The Lost World. They were actually elephant guns, and according to this article, director Steven Spielberg is alleged to have kept one of the guns. (Thanks to Bob Mozark for pointing out this interesting little tidbit.)

Reviews

None

New October releases

2007-09-30T18:09:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the silence over the past week. I had some personal issues come up that pretty much consumed all my free time, but now I hope to continue blogging regularly. There are still plenty of books to review.

There also are three titles coming out this month that should satisfy anyone looking for paleo-fiction. The first, The Sky People by S.M. Stirling, has actually been out for a while but it is now coming out in paperback. The novel is set in an alternate timeline where Venus has been terraformed by aliens and turned into a preserve for Earth's prehistoric species. The Sky People is meant to be a homage to the pulp sci-fi of yesteryear, and it looks fun. You can read more about the title on the publisher's web site. The paperback should be out in bookstores on Oct. 2.

Next up is the comic Neozoic, which is set in a world where the asteroid (or comet) that killed off the dinosaurs missed. Dinosaurs and mammals have evolved side-by-side in an uneasy co-existence. You can read a preview of the comic here and my review here.

Last up is Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara, which was recently reviewed on this site. No need to go into any great detail about this title, since I just finished a Dinotopia week.

It is pretty unusual for so many works of paleo-fiction to be released at the same time, so enjoy it while it lasts.

Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara by James Gurney (2007)

2007-09-21T07:15:00.000-07:00

Hardback cover blurb

After many years of searching, artist James Gurney has discovered in a used bookstore a never-before-seen journal by the nineteenth-century explorer Arthur Denison. Denison’s previous travel accounts, published as Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time and Dinotopia: The World Beneath, introduced a lost island where dinosaurs and humans live together in peaceful interdependence.

Now Professor Denison and his saurian companion, Bix, set out on a perilous journey to the forbidden empire of Chandara. When their personal invitation from the emperor goes missing, they are forced to cross the border penniless and in disguise. Every step of the way, Denison documents in exquisite detail the creatures, characters, and architecture he encounters: a village composed of three ships propped up on end, a fifty-foot-tall Brachiosaurus outfitted for fire fighting, an Allosaurus tending its hatchlings, young pilots air jousting on giant pterosaurs, and a lot more.

The land of Dinotopia is conjured by a brief but vivid narrative and a beguiling variety of visuals, including maps, cutaway views, and mechanical diagrams. The lives of the humans are intertwined with those of the dinosaurs and ancient mammals, all of which are actual species portrayed according to the latest scientific research. By turns whimsical, dramatic, and philosophical, the journal radiates a life-affirming vision that will cast a new light on the overlooked wonders of our own world.

My thoughts

The Italian explorer Marco Polo made many hard-to-believe claims about his famous journey to China – some people even question whether he went at all – but the one thing he never did claim to see was dinosaurs. Only in the world of Dinotopia would such a thing be possible.

Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara is essentially a retelling of Marco Polo's travels, but set in the imaginary continent of Dinotopia. The book, the fourth in James Gurney's series, returns to the journal format of the first Dinotopia. Not only is Journey to Chandara the best sequel in the series, in some ways it surpasses that first work.

Journey to Chandara takes place not long after the events of The World Beneath, with the scientist and explorer Arthur Denison anxiously awaiting word about whether he will be allowed passage to the mysterious city. Chandara, we learn, is one of the great centers of Dinotopian civilization, rivaled only by Waterfall City. Relations with Chandara have soured because the democratic-minded people of Dinotopia objected to the city’s style of government, with the Emperor Hugo Khan ruling supreme. Chandara cut off trade and diplomatic relations with the rest of Dinotopia as a result, and it has been so long since anyone has visited the city that little is known about it.

Denison and Bix, a Protoceratops, are invited by Hugo Khan to travel to Chandara, which will make them the first outsiders to journey to the city in decades. Events take a turn for the worse when their invitation is stolen by the villainous Lee Crabb, but instead of giving up, the two set off on the journey in hopes of eluding the border guards and making their way into Chandara. Along the way they will brave bandits, predatory dinosaurs, hostile environments and a culture that is wary of outsiders.

In many ways, Gurney seems to be trying to recapture the spirit of the first Dinotopia book in Journey to Chandara. Both start with the artist stumbling upon one of Arthur’s forgotten journals, and both share similar images, such as a group of kids running along a beach with a sauropod or a visit to a snow-covered mountaintop temple. The difference here is that Gurney has refined his skills as both an artist and a storyteller. Journey to Chandara combines the first-person narration of first book with the focused storyline of The World Beneath. The characters are not just wandering Dinotopia to see the sights. They have a goal in mind and must undergo hardships to reach that goal. They meet interesting characters along the way and come across several different cultures that parallel real-world civilizations, but with their own twists – my favorite being a group of very anti-Pilgrim Pilgrims.

Of course, Dinotopia is most famous for its dinosaurs, and keeping with the Asian theme of the setting, several species of feathered dinosaurs discovered in the Gobi Desert make appearances throughout Journey to Chandara. Sporting feathers or scales, the terrible reptiles are depicted with an amazing amount of realism, and they are incorporated into human society in imaginative ways. After all, what kid wouldn’t want to ride in a school bus carried on the back of an Apatosaurus? The landscapes, architecture and people are all painted with the same painstaking detail.

The production values of the book also are top-notch, with a map of Chandara printed inside of the dust cover, the cover stamped to look like dinosaur hide and the book sporting a cloth bookmark. Sure, these are tiny things, but they make readers feel they got the most out of paying the $30 cover price.

The Dinotopia books are children’s books, but Journey to Chandara has plenty for dinosaur-loving adults as well. This is a book that parents will want to read even when their kids are not around, if just to ogle at the gorgeous illustrations.

Trivia

Marco Polo is not the only explorer Gurney is channeling in Journey to Chandara. Part of Denison’s travels also mirror the real-world adventures of British explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton, particularly his trip to Mecca.

It is interesting to see how our knowledge of dinosaurs has changed over the series. For example, in The World Beneath, Gurney painted an Oviraptor with scales, but in Journey to Chandara, the dinosaur sports feathers.

A few Ice Age mammals also make appearances in Journey to Chandara, including one that essentially plays the role of Santa Claus. (Santa Claws, anyone?)

The Web site ExpandedBooks.com recently posted a preview of the book and an interview with Gurney:

The official web site www.dinotopia.com has previews of Journey to Chandara as well as ordering information.

Reviews

LJay (Dinotopia message board)

Dinotopia: First Flight by James Gurney (1999)

2007-09-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

Hardback cover blurb

THE STORY OF DINOTOPIA UNFOLDS!

The much-anticipated third book in James Gurney’s Dinotopia series takes us back to Dinotopia’s ancient past, where the empire of Poseidos is about to use its robotic technology to capture the peaceful dinosaurs of Dinotopia. Only Gideon Altaire and his faithful mechanical friend, Fritz, can stop this evil plan. But first they must escape Poseidos and win the trust of the prehistoric creatures.

This dramatic addition to the award-winning Dinotopia series tells a tale of partnership and courage, where humans and animals fight side by side to over the greatest challenge yet to free Dinotopia. As a special bonus, the front cover opens up to reveal an easy-to-learn board game. By detaching the game cards fro the back of the book, players can join Gideon on his adventure, experiencing his crushing setbacks and his high-flying triumphs.

My thoughts

If Dinotopia was the equivalent of a novel, then First Flight is the equivalent of a novella. The third book in James Gurney's series is about 100 pages shorter than the others, and as a result, it doesn't quite have room for the epic story it wants to tell.

First Flight is set a few thousand years prior to the events in the first two books, when the human empire of Poseidos was at its height. Poseidos is an island kingdom where advanced technology has replaced biology and its citizens drive around in vehicles shaped like dinosaurs. True dinosaurs are not allowed on the island but are instead confined to Dinotopia, which the empire's leaders are planning to invade.

Gideon Altaire is a young-pilot-in-training who gets kicked out of flight school for being a little too high-minded for his own good. Shortly afterward, he finds a small pterosaur that has injured its wing. Instead of turning the creature over the authorities, Gideon befriends the small animal, who leads him to a group of humans secretly working to protect Dinotopia's saurian inhabitants. The meeting sets off a series of events that will eventually lead to Gideon becoming the first human to fly on the back of a Quetzalcoatlus -- the first skybax rider.

Dinotopia has always been a children's book series, but First Flight is probably the only title in it that was targeted almost exclusively for children. The text is the uncomplicated, third-person narration used in The World Beneath, and the front cover of the book folds out to unveil a children's board game. The final two pages of the book are punch-out cards to be used in the game, and while I understand the reasoning behind that, I've always been a little wary of books that encourage kids to rip up their pages.

The artwork is superb, as usual for Gurney. There are not many dinosaurs in First Flight when compared to the previous two books, but there are plenty of pterosaurs as well as a gang of furry little extinct mammals that play a key role in the plot. (There also is a rather odd-looking mammal-like reptile I had no idea existed until I encountered it in this book.) The main problem is that the art and the scant 60 pages of the book don't leave much room for a story. Readers instead get a CliffsNotes version of a story that moves far too quickly and glosses over many details. It would have been nice to spend more time the odd characters or watch Gideon wrestle with the decision to betray the empire that he has called home, but there simply isn't room.

First Flight is still worth owning if you are a Dintopia fan, given the quality of the art more than makes up the cover price. Kids also will like the book and the simple board game that comes along with it. Just remind them that it's not always cool to tear pages out of a book.

Reviews

None

Dinotopia Lost by Alan Dean Foster (1996)

2007-09-19T08:05:00.000-07:00

Hardback cover blurb

This thrilling tale of high adventure set in the world of James Gurney’s Dinotopia, the extraordinary uncharted island where humans and dinosaurs live in harmony, features all the colorful wonder and wining characters that have won this “land apart from time” millions of fans all over the world.

In all Dinotopia’s countless centuries, rarely has a vessel reached her peaceful shores except as a splintered wreck, until a mighty, storm-swollen breaker hurls the pirate ship Condor beyond the treacherous fangs of the coral reefs that surround the island. When marauding pirates capture a dinosaur family, young skybax pilot Will Denison leads a tiny band of rescuers on a pursuit that takes them into the perilous Rainy Basin, where tyrannosaurs still stalk the steamy forest long abandoned by civilized Dinotopians. Doggedly tracking the invaders, Will and his dinosaur companions must face both the cruelty on ancient instincts and the brutality of modern ignorance as they race toward a fateful confrontation at the breathtaking climax of a once-in-a-lifetime typhoon.

A harrowing tale of suspense, courage, and triumphant cooperation between creatures great and small, Dinotopia Lost will be relished by both newcomers to this exotic and magical realm and those who have already made the voyage.

My thoughts

Throw together Treasure Island with a lighthearted version of Jurassic Park, and you will end up with something very much like Dinotopia Lost.

Dinotopia Lost is the first in what became a series of novels set in artist James Gurney’s Dinotopia. Most of the books are for kids, but Dinotopia Lost was written for adults and kids alike.

The plot is pretty simple. A group of scurvy pirates safely land their ship on the coast of Dinotopia after a storm surge carries them over the coral reefs that protect the island continent. The pirates, of course, have never seen dinosaurs before, and mistaking the animals for dumb beasts, they capture a family of the ostrich-like Struthiomimus so they can sell the dinosaurs to the outside world. One of the dinosaurs escapes and alerts a nearby village of the danger. Skybax rider Will Denison leads a rescue mission to free the family, but complicating things is the fact that the pirates are walking right into the carnivore-infested Rainy Basin, and they’ve captured a young T. rex whose parents won’t be happy to learn the news…

Dinotopia Lost is a decent attempt to tell an old-fashioned adventure story while remaining faithful to the non-violent nature of Gurney’s books. In fact, anyone picking up the novel who has never read the original Dinotopia stories will have no clue about what’s going on. The writing itself is pretty good from a technical standpoint, with Foster knowing how to create colorful descriptions with just a few words. And the pirates are appropriately villainous if a little toothless because of the aforementioned non-violent nature of the setting.

One issue I had with Dinotopia Lost is that plot could've been better paced. The storyline meanders quite a bit, never finding a real focus until midway through the novel when Will launches his rescue mission. The pirates get quite a bit of ink, so much so that for a good part of the novel the heroes are little more than a supporting cast. Still, things pick up once the rescue is underway, and the resolution to the story keeps with the optimistic tone of Gurney’s works.

Dinotopia Lost won’t please anyone approaching it hoping to see realistic depictions of dinosaurs, because like in Gurney’s books, the animals are depicted as smart as humans. But fans the setting should enjoy this fantasy adventure.

Trivia

Alan Dean Foster is a prolific writer who has written a number of original works, but he may be best known to the general public for his many movie novelizations, ranging from the original Star Wars to, most recently, Transformers.

Foster also wrote a sequel, The Hand of Dinotopia, which I haven’t read yet.

Reviews

Dinotopia: The World Beneath by James Gurney (1995)

2007-09-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

(Note: This is the sequel to Dinotopia, reviewed below. Spoilers ahead if you haven't read the first book.)

Hardback cover blurb

The voyage that Arthur Denison and his son, Will, began in Dinotopia now continues in The World Beneath. On the lost island continent where dinosaurs and humans live together in peaceful interdependence, Arthur embarks on a quest into Dinotopia’s deepest mystery that soon becomes a desperate race to keep Dinotopia’s existence unknown to the outside world.

When The World Beneath begins, Professor Denison unveils his new invention, a steam-powered flying machine. Will, a fledgling Skybax pilot, flies his father’s creation over Waterfall City, but disaster strikes and Will narrowly escapes death.

Though stung by the failure of his machine, Arthur Denison turns his focus to an earlier exploration of ancient caves that yielded artifacts he believes point to a long-lost Dinotopian civilization. The mysterious society seemingly employed a technology beyond any that Arthur has ever encountered. The answer lies in The World Beneath.

Arthur Denison and Bix soon organize an expedition that will include the untrustworthy but resourceful Lee Crabb, and Oriana, a beautiful musician who holds the key to their quest.

While Will flies scouting missions for caravans in the Rainy Basin, Professor Denison and his team plunge deeper into the heart of the island, toward a monumental discovery that will teach him and important lesson about the power and peril of technology.

Full of dramatic illustrations like those that delighted the readers of Dinotopia, this sequel offers another wondrous excursion into this saurian realm. The balance of science and nature created by James Gurney’s imagination guides us from one wonder to the next… until we stand beside Arthur Denison in contemplation of an ancient marvel called Poseidos.

My thoughts

Dinotopia: The World Beneath was the first sequel to the original Dinotopia and Gurney's attempt to answer many of the questions that had been raised in the first book: What did Arthur Denison find when he traveled to The World Beneath? And how did his journal make to the outside world?

Gurney drops the first-person narration of the first book to tell a more traditional and straightforward adventure story in The World Beneath. The book opens with Will test-flying a dragonfly-shaped contraption invented by Arthur only to have it crash into the swirling waters around Waterfall City. Arthur is disappointed by the failure and comes to realize that if he is ever going to master the technology behind the flying machine, he must revisit The World Beneath. It turns out the vast caverns under Dinotopia hold the remains of an ancient and highly-advanced civilization that has long since disappeared. Arthur mounts a second expedition, this time joined by the protoceratops Bix, the shady Leo Crabb and by the musician Oriana, who is in possession of a key that can open the doors to the underground world.

Meanwhile, Will is assigned to escort a caravan across the Rainy Basin, a place where carnivorous dinosaurs prey on humans and other dinosaurs. While on patrol, Will makes a discovery deep in the rainforest that has implications for his father's expedition.

One thing readers will notice when comparing The World Beneath to Dinotopia is that Gurney has refined his skills as a paleo-artist. The dinosaurs in the original book were exquisitely detailed, but they are even more so in The World Beneath. There are subtle changes in their appearances that make the creatures even more lifelike, such as detailed skin textures. Also, people who like their dinosaurs big and ferocious will be happy to see that the carnivorous dinosaurs play a much larger role this time around.

The focused story may please readers who wished the first book had more of a plot, but I believe something was lost in Gurney's decision to replace the first-person journal entries of Dinotopia with the third-person narration of The World Beneath. The narrative format of the first book allowed readers to connect with the setting at a more personal level -- you felt as if you were traveling with Arthur as he made his way across Dinotopia. The world seemed more real because you could fool yourself into believing this really was a journal written by someone who lived in a lost world of dinosaurs. Also, Will's inclusion in the story seems almost an afterthought, which is a shame after spending so much time with him in the first book.

These are small complaints, however. The artwork more than makes up for any shortcomings in the text, and expedition to The World Beneath manages to capture much of the whimsy of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. You will once again be left waiting for a return visit to Dinotopia after you have finished with The World Beneath.

Trivia

The World Beneath plays a central role in the 2002 Dinotopia miniseries.

Two real paleontologists who helped with the research for Dinotopia are honored in The World Beneath. Ralph Chapman of the Smithsonian has an island named after him on page 45. Michael Brett-Surman is portrayed as the grinning bearded sea scavenger on page 40.

“Stinktooth” the Giganotosaurus is the first reconstruction of the new giant carnivore recently found in Patagonia. Gurney met the discoverer Rodolfo Coria just weeks after he uncovered the first fossil. Coria graciously allowed Gurney to include the dinosaur in the new Dinotopia book, provided the publication date followed that of Coria’s scientific paper. It did by just a couple weeks.

* Updated trivia provided by author James Gurney.

Reviews

Stephen Bespalko

Dinotopia by James Gurney (1992)

2007-09-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

Paperback cover blurb

In 1860, when extensive uncharted territories covered a respectable portion of the globe, biologist Arthur Denison and his young son, Will, set out on a Darwinian voyage of exploration.

Somewhere on the expedition, Professor Denison and Will disappeared. Neither they nor anyone from their ship were heard from again – until very recently. It now appears that, through the kindly intervention of dolphins, they were transported to the lost island of Dinotopia, a land where dinosaurs and humans live together in peaceful interdependence. The dinosaurs appreciate the skills and liveliness of Homo sapiens, and the humans benefit from the wisdom and gentleness of the very much older species.

The exciting, often spectacular, adventures of the Denisons in Dinotopia are chronicled here by the Professor. As a trained professional observer of the world’s flora and fauna, he recorded his experiences in meticulous detail; otherwise it would be difficult to believe the astonishing discoveries he documented. His artistic skills allow the rich tapestry of Dinotopia life to emerge with graphic impact. He presents clearly the marvels of architecture designed for 50-ton organisms – aquatic cities, water-parks, treetowns, and other wonders both natural and dinosaur/man-made.

Professor Denison details aspects of daily life, too: parades and celebrations, sports (some quite risky!), and foods. He tells of sleeping quarters suspended from trees; hatcheries (where dinosaurs tend dinosaur young) and playparks (where dinosaurs tend human young); and modes of transportation, including air travel on Quetzalcoatlus, known locally as Skybax. In short, he shows Dinotopia to be a marvelously fascinating place, offering adventure and excitement, as well as an extraordinary opportunity to gain insight into our own world and time from the Dinotopian point of view.

My thoughts

The word "Dinotopia" literally translates to "terrible place," but as envisioned by artist and writer James Gurney, it isn't such a bad place to visit.

The story begins with Gurney stumbling upon an obscure journal written by an equally obscure 19th century explorer, Arthur Denison. The book that readers hold is a copy of that journal, which records Arthur's travels in Dinotopia, a lost continent where dinosaurs and humans live together in peace, with a few exceptions.

Arthur is traveling by sea with his young son Will when their vessel is shipwrecked in a storm. The two are saved by friendly dolphins, who carry the father and son to a sandy beach. The discovery of a large footprint in the sand is their first clue that something strange is going on. Not long after, a bizarre-looking reptile come walking out of the underbrush, and Arthur, in a panic, throws a large stone at it and injures it. Arthur and Will are immediately surrounded by a group of dinosaurs, but instead of being trampled or eaten, they are surprised when a young girl appears and talks to the beasts. It turns out that dinosaurs are not only still alive, they're as intelligent as humans.

So begins a years-long journey across Dinotopia, which Arthur meticulously records with paintings and writings in his journal. At the same time Will makes his own journey into manhood, training to become one of Dinotopia's most celebrated residents -- a skybax rider.

I admit my first reaction to the book was mild disappointment because I was assuming Dinotopia was a place where humans lived beside wild dinosaurs and not the intelligent beasts that populate the Gurney's world. However, that disappointment soon disappeared and I quickly got caught up in the fantasy. What makes Dinotopia an outstanding work of fiction is the art. It is incredibly detailed, from the anatomy of the dinosaurs to the architecture to the often bizarre clothing worn by Dinotopia's residents. It's as if Gurney painted each of his scenes from real life rather than from his fertile imagination, and a reader can easily loose track of time scanning for details in many of the paintings.

The book itself really doesn't have much in the way of plot. The character of Arthur is largely just the vehicle readers use to explore Dinotopia, experiencing the world through his eyes and ears. Will's story is more fleshed out as he grows to manhood, falls in love and pursues his dream of becoming a skybax rider. Some readers may bemoan the lack of a focused story with a beginning, middle and end, but the journal format Gurney uses works quite well because it allows readers to explore the setting at a level that would have not been possible with a more traditional plot.

Dinotopia ends with many of the questions raised throughout the book left unanswered. It is clear that Gurney meant the book to be the first in a series. While the ending may feel like a bit of an anti-climax, you will have had so much fun making the journey, you won't mind returning again.

Trivia

Dinotopia was adapted into a three-part miniseries and a short-lived television show in 2002. The series is set several years after the books, but references to Gurney's works are found throughout the show.

There also have been at least three video games adapted from the series: A PC game titled Dinotopia: Living the Adventure; an Xbox game titled Dinotopia: The Sunstone Odyssey; and a Gameboy Advance game called Dinotopia: The Timestone Pirates.

The official web site is Dinotopia.com

The Code of Dinotopia, found on page 77 of Dinotopia begins with the saying: “Survival of all or none,” and is followed by 10 other lines. If you look at the first letters of each of those sentences and read down, they spell out another line: “SOW GOOD SEED.”

The dinosaur and the human in charge of the library are named “Enit” and “Nallab.” If you spell their names backwards, you get “Ballantine.” Ian Ballantine, who served as the model for Nallab, was the publisher who encouraged James Gurney to write the book.

The Dinotopian footprint alphabet was inspired by cuneiform writing from ancient Babylon. The idea developed from actual reports that early explorers mistook the impressions in clay tablets for the footprints of birds.

In the dinosaur parade scene on page 153, the building says “SAUROPOLIS” in Roman letters rather than in the footprint alphabet. This painting was finished before the alphabet was developed, and the change wasn’t possible.

On page 24 of Dinotopia, there is a man with white hair named “Orchardwine” seated at the head of the table. His face is modeled after Sir Richard Owen, the British scientist who came up with the name “Dinosauria.” If you rearrange the letters of “Orchardwine,” they will spell “Richard Owen.

Dinotopia has been published in 18 languages, including Chinese, where the word “Dinotopia” translates as “terrible lizard happy dream kingdom.”

* Updated trivia provided by author James Gurney.

Reviews

"Dinotopia Week" starts Monday

2007-09-15T15:30:00.000-07:00

Dinotopia is one of the most successful dinosaur franchises in history. The creation of artist James Gurney, it has spawned video games, tie-in novels, a TV miniseries and a short-lived television show, not to mention a mountain of related merchandise. I doubt there are many dinosaur-loving kids or adults who haven't at least leafed through one of the books at one time or another.

Now the first new Dinotopia book by Gurney in eight years, Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara, will soon be released, and to mark the occasion I plan a series of Dinotopia reviews starting Monday. I'll profile a different Dinotopia book each day, including a tie-in novel written by Alan Dean Foster, wrapping up with a review of Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara on Friday. (That is, assuming no emergencies or other situations come up -- so far it looks like it will be a pretty quiet week for me.)

Why the wait? I'm a sucker for suspense, plus I need to write the reviews. But in case any of you are debating whether to order the book, I believe it's his best work since the original Dinotopia.

You can check out the official site, Dinotopia.com, for previews of the book and for ordering information. Gurney also maintains a blog that serves as a sort of "behind the scenes" look at how a Dinotopia novel is created.

Time Spike coming next summer

2007-09-13T21:08:00.000-07:00

It looks like next summer we will have at least one new work of paleo-fiction -- I think.

Authors Eric Flint and Marilyn Kosmatka have a new science-fiction novel coming out titled Time Spike. The cover shows a T. rex ready to chow down on Spanish Conquistador, with pterodactyls flying overhead. There is nothing about the book yet on the publisher's web site, but I found the cover image and the below blurb on the novel's Amazon.com page:

Captain Mark Stephens was overseeing the change of shifts at the state of Illinois’ maximum-security prison when the world outside was suddenly ripped. They thought it was an earthquake until they found that the Mississippi river had disappeared, along with all signs of civilization. Then the sun came up—in the wrong direction. And a dinosaur came by and scratched its hide against the wall of the prison . . .

Something had thrown the prison back in time millions of years. And they were not alone. Other humans from periods centuries, even millennia apart had also been dropped into the same time. Including a band of murderous conquistadores. But the prison had its own large population of murderers. They couldn’t be turned loose, but what else could be done with them? Death walked outside the walls, human savagery was planning to break loose inside, and Stephens and the other men and women of the prison’s staff were trapped in the middle.

Not sure from the description how much Time Spike will involve dinosaurs, but it's still worth noting. Amazon.com also gives a release date of May 6, 2008, for the book, so we're going to be waiting awhile for this one.

I've never read anything by Eric Flint, but I've noticed that his name appears on many books he has apparently co-authored with numerous other writers. I suspect this is because he writes the substance of the book while the other, usually unknown author provides the plot outline. Anyone know if that's the case?

Anyway, Flint has also co-authored Boundary with Ryk Spoor. The novel has something to do with dinosaurs, although I'm not certain what role they play in the plot. I haven't read it yet because I was waiting for the paperback to come out, but the publisher isn't going to release a paperback until early next year, so I guess I'll hunt down a copy. (No offense to the writers, I've just always preferred paperbacks, finding them more convenient to carry and read.)

Lost Prehistorica by Dark Quest Games (2004)

2007-09-12T19:45:00.000-07:00

Cover blurb

Has your adventuring party ever wondered what was to be found on those parts of the map marked “Here there be monsters’?

Have you, as a GM, ever been at a loss as to what to do if they decide to explore these hitherto uncharted regions?

Have you, or your players, ever wanted to play something a little more primitive?

Lost Prehistorica could be the answer to your questions! An informative well presented tool-book for the GM who wants to try something that little bit different! Packed full of new playable races, information upon long lost cultures, lost continents, nomadic tribes and settings specific monsters, this book could be just what you need to spark a whole new range of adventures in a land untouched by time where dinosaurs still roam!

108 pages of tools to create a setting like no other.

Features include:

16 new diseases
Over a dozen natural traps
New weapons, armor, and equipment
Nine new races
Ten new divine entities
Extensive beastiary
Guidelines for creating tribes

My thoughts

Anyone who is thinking about turning their Dungeons & Dragons game into a “Dungeons & Dinosaurs” game will want to give this game supplement a look. (And given the last three posts all concerned D&D, I figured this was a good way to wrap up this week's theme.)

Lost Prehistorica is simply a guidebook for inserting “lost world” settings into traditional fantasy worlds. It is campaign neutral, meaning you can use it to add on to an existing world or create new one. And while it is an amateur effort – a fact reinforced by the subpar illustrations – the subject matter is well thought-out and the text is quite useful to any gamers wanting to get their adventurers out of the standard Medieval European setting of most roleplaying games.

The book provides everything from tips about how big to make your lost world to suggestions for creating primitive societies. There are sections about the environmental hazards found in stereotypical prehistoric settings, diseases your character could contract, how certain character types would react to the lost world and even how fossils may fit into local economies. It also has a sizable bestiary of both extinct animals and mythological creatures.

Lost Prehistorica is pretty closely tied to the J.R.R. Tolkien-inspired gameplay of most RPGs, and that diminishes its value for other types of game settings, like those inspired by pulp fiction. Still, there is enough here to keep most gamers satisfied. The supplement is available as a cheap PDF download on RPGnow.

Trivia

The publisher also has produced Lost Creatures, a bestiary of fantasy creatures suited to lost world settings.

Reviews

Son of Thunder by Murray J.D. Leeder (2006)

2007-09-11T20:32:00.000-07:00

Paperback cover blurb

It was the best thing that ever happened to him.

It was his god’s blessing.

It was hell.

Vell was content to be a warrior in the Thunderbeast tribe who stayed behind on the hunt to guard the camp.

But then something alien awakened deep within him, the spirit of a behemoth that he could not control. With it came attacks from the sky, visitors from far lands, and a mysterious command from their ancestral totem: Find the living. And this time, no one was going to let him just stay behind.

My thoughts

I learned from reader reviews on Amazon.com that this Dungeons & Dragons novel somehow concerned dinosaurs. It turns out the prehistoric reptiles are central to the plot, although Son of Thunder is more standard fantasy fare than paleo-fiction. Ironically, the book reminded me of the 1985 movie Baby, Secret of the Lost Legend, which shares some similar plot elements.

Vell the Brown is a young barbarian who isn’t much of a barbarian – he would rather stay home and guard the children and the old folks rather than join the men when they’re out raping and pillaging or whatever. However, during a religious ceremony, the skeleton of the tribe’s totem animal – which is some kind of sauropod dinosaur – comes to life and gives Vell the ability to morph into a dinosaur whenever he is threatened or angry. The dead beast also cryptically tells the tribe to “find the living.” The tribe takes this to mean that they’re supposed to find the last living dinosaurs in their part of the world. (Dinosaurs still live in Chult, but that’s far away.) Meanwhile, a young sorceress in another part of the world gets the same message, and she sets out to join the barbarians in their quest.

Complicating things is an evil wizard and his pretty young assassin, who learn about the living dinosaurs and a powerful artifact that may be keeping them alive.

The main problem with Son of Thunder is it tries to cram too much story into a single novel. Readers follow not one but two quests to find the dinosaurs, and Leeder is much more interested in his villains than his heroes, with the former seemingly getting more screen time. In fact, the author spends very little time fleshing out the personalities of the good guys, having obviously put more effort into the bad guys. The epic quest to find the dinosaurs is a rushed effort, quickly skipping from scene to scene with no build up of mystery or suspense. And, as usual in these types of novels, the climax is a big battle between the forces of good and the armies of evil.

The book also is dripping with obscure Forgotten Realms history, so much so that anyone not already familiar with the campaign setting probably won’t have any idea what’s going on. Then again, I doubt anyone else would pick up this book.

The dinosaurs here are just another fantastic creature populating the setting of the novel, and despite the focus on them, Son of Thunder isn’t concerned about paleontology. I included the novel on this blog simply to be comprehensive.

Reviews

None

The Ring of Winter by James Lowder (1992)

2007-09-10T20:32:00.000-07:00

Paperback cover blurb

For centuries, adventurers have sought the fabled Ring of Winter, rumored to possess the magical might to make the wearer immortal and bring a second Ice Age down upon the Realms. Artus Cimber knows where it is.

After discovering the ring is hidden in the jungles of Chult, he sets off to fulfill the quest that has devoured a decade of his life. Knowing that the artifact is hidden somewhere in the danger-filled jungles and recovering it are two entirely different matters, however – especially when a lost city, rampaging dinosaurs, and the villainous Cult of Frost all stand between Artus and his goal.

My thoughts

The Ring of Winter is part Raiders of the Lost Ark, part The Lost World, and a lot of The Lord of the Rings all thrown together into one novel. While not a complete failure, it’s not very memorable either.

The novel is set in the Forgotten Realms, a campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons. Artus Cimber is basically the Indiana Jones of Middle-Earth – an explorer and archaeologist who plunders ancient tombs for magical artifacts. He has spent a decade searching for the legendary Ring of Winter, an artifact that, as the cover blurb says, could bring about another Ice Age (and probably solve global warming in the process). During a stop at the explorer’s club in which he is a member, Artus meets a half-crazed explorer recently returned from Chult, a vast jungle where dinosaurs still live. The explorer tells Artus that the man who founded their club – a man who should have died hundreds of years ago – is still alive and in possession of the ring. Artus immediately sets off for Chult, but he is followed by the Cult of Frost, which wants the ring for its own evil plans.

The first thing that struck me after reading The Ring of Winter is that for a book set in a lost world of dinosaurs, it’s surprisingly lacking in dinosaurs. The terrible reptiles make a few cameos but Lowder mostly populates his setting with mythological creatures more traditional to the Dungeons & Dragons world, which is a shame. The characters themselves are stereotypical and the writing is simply serviceable, but tie-in novels have never been known for their literary merits.

That said, Lowder never takes the whole thing seriously, and there is a playfulness in the writing that reminded me very much of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. When two characters are a talking wombat and a ghost stuck in the material world because of a bureaucratic blunder between gods, you get the idea. And I must admit I enjoyed the merging of the pulp fiction and high fantasy settings, if more in concept than in execution. The Ring of Winter didn’t feel like a chore to read, and while that may not sound like much of a compliment, it’s more than I can say than some novels reviewed here.

Trivia

The author would later flesh out the world of the novel in the game supplement The Jungles of Chult.

Reviews

None

The Jungles of Chult by James Lowder and Jean Rabe (1993)

2007-09-09T19:15:00.000-07:00

Cover blurb

Come, all ye seekers after treasure beyond your ken and adventure greater than any you can dream!

Come, all ye mighty warriors, seekers after prey worthy of your peerless skills, and stalk the Children of Ubtao. Walk the streets of the city of Mezro, of the Maze of Life. Meet the barae, the holy warriors of Ubtao, those men and women who will live forever sustained by their wisdom and their faith.

Wizards, be prepared for new magical spells and new methods of magic use based on gemstones.

Search the jungles of Chult for the fabled emerald mines, for the Heart of the Jungle, a single gem as large as a man's heart.

Also within these pages are new monsters and new character kits: Mage hunters, specialty priests of Ubtao, and spiritlords.

My thoughts

This is the game supplement for anyone who has ever thought, “The Lord of the Rings would’ve been so much cooler if it had dinosaurs.”

The Jungles of Chult is set in the official Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting Forgotten Realms. The world is inspired – some would say ripped-off – from a dozen different works of fantasy fiction, most notably the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Chances are if you ever played a Dungeons & Dragons computer game, it was set in the Forgotten Realms.

Chult itself is the most forgotten of the Forgotten Realms, usually just filling the role of a distant, little-known land that supplies magical items for the rest of the fantasy world. The Jungles of Chult was an attempt to flesh it out a little, but it’s a weak effort.

Chult, as portrayed in the book, is an African Congo setting with African natives, primitive dwarves, dinosaurs and “pteramen” – half-human, half-pterosaur creatures. The authors don’t bother going into any real detail about the setting, places to explore, or its wildlife, instead spending most of the book detailing a tribe of goblins who live in the jungle and a “lost city” that Chult’s human natives call home. Neither culture is particularly interesting, being made up of clichés. The only imaginative streak comes as a threat to the jungle in the form of a logging operation where all the employees are zombies – a fantasy parallel to the modern-day destruction of the rainforests.

The Jungles of Chult is simply a lazy effort considering the vast amount of real-world history and jungle-adventure fiction the authors could’ve drawn on when writing the book. In recent years, writers of the Dungeons & Dragons line of game supplements have been trying to redefine Chult as a base of operations for the villainous snake-people of the Forgotten Realms setting, the Yuan-ti. It would be nice to see them revisit Chult in a future supplement, but I doubt that will happen.

Trivia

A couple stages of the Dungeons & Dragons video game, Demon Stone, are set in Chult, but no dinosaurs or other prehistoric wildlife make appearances.

The game supplement Serpent Kingdoms provides a little more history about Chult and the snake-people of the setting.

The Jungles of Chult was published the same year that the first Jurassic Park film was released, which I'm betting wasn't a coincidence.

Reviews

None

The Shores of Kansas by Robert Chilson (1976)

2007-09-08T23:23:00.000-07:00

Paperback cover blurb

IN THE PRESENT

Grant Ryals was a world-famous figure, the man who had mastered time travel, and who now was surrounded by the ravenous forces of commercial greed and by the man-eating appetites of "celebrity groupies," women who wanted to add him to their list of conquests at any price.

IN THE PREHISTORIC PAST

Grant Ryals was the only human being on the face of planet Earth, walking through the great, trackless landscape of jungle, swamp and sea that was Kansas millions of years ago, and facing the hugest and most hideous carnivorous creatures that had ever ruled the globe.

In the present, Grant Ryals was fighting for his manhood. In the past, he was fighting for his life. And he did not know which was the more dangerous…

My thoughts

One of the perks of haunting used-book stores is that occasionally you come across a long-forgotten title that turns out to be a surprisingly good read. The Shores of Kansas is one of those titles. It’s a flawed book, but still an entertaining one.

Grant Ryals is one of a handful of people who can travel through time simply by willing themselves into the past. But even among this group Grant is special, because he is the only person who can travel to the age of dinosaurs. Equipped with a movie camera and a medieval war axe for protection, Grant made two prehistoric wildlife documentaries and then used the profits to set up an institute to research and publicize his findings.

Grant is one of the most famous people on the planet when the novel opens, but the reclusive time-traveler isn’t adapting well to his celebrity. He is constantly hounded by the media and by women want “to add him to their list of conquests.” The greedy people who run his institute are trying to maximize their profits while minimizing the center's scientific research. And a rookie female time traveler is apprenticing to journey back to the dinosaur era, but Grant isn’t sure he wants the company.

The Shores of Kansas isn’t as much about dinosaurs as it is about a man trying to come to grips with the decisions he has made in life. Most of the novel is set in the present – the “present” in this case being the 1970s – with the excursions to the Mesozoic Era being only rare events. Still, the time-travel sequences are well-executed with an impressive amount of research put into them. In a few pages, the author manages to paint a believable prehistoric world with dinosaurs that behave like real animals rather than movie monsters, and even modern readers will find the descriptions of the terrible reptiles are not far off from how we view them today.

The passages set in the prehistoric past are so well done that it’s a shame the author didn’t use them more often. He instead focuses on Grant’s inner turmoil as a celebrity who doesn’t want to be a celebrity. The Shores of Kansas has literary ambitions, and sometimes it succeeds, but sometimes it doesn’t. The most glaring problem is the author’s sexism. Women are constantly referred to as “girls” and are often depicted as emotionally and intellectually shallow, leading to howlers like this sentence, describing a group of kids playing with a toy plumbing set: “All the boys were absorbed, and the girls were equally interested, if only for the shiny beauty of the copper tubings and the brass fittings.”

Sexism aside, the novel remains a good short read, weighing in at about 200 pages. The Shores of Kansas tries to be many things, but it works best as a tribute to the long lost Mesozoic world, which is described so poetically at times that readers will understand why Grant feels more at peace among dinosaurs than among humans.

Trivia

I don’t know much about Robert Chilson other than he has published a handful of novels and short stories over the years, his most recent novel having come out in 1998.

Reviews

None

Some thank yous, and the future of Prehistoric Pulp!

2007-09-06T19:54:00.000-07:00

I just got around to realizing that a few days back, Brian over at Laelaps chose Prehistoric Pulp as one of his five favorite blogs. It's a big honor for me and I just wanted to give him a very belated thank you. Any readers who love natural history and paleontology must put Laelaps on their favorites list -- his posts are some of the best reading on the subjects you will find, either in print or on the web.

The nature of Prehistoric Pulp, being mostly reviews and news, doesn't always allow me to properly thank other bloggers who mention this site. There have been several, from Biology in Science Fiction to Robert J. Sawyer to Cryptomundo to The Esoteric Science Resource Center. Check out the blog roll to the right for a more complete list, because there are several other bloggers I want to thank.

This almost sounds like a goodbye post, but it's not. I just wanted to give you a little update about where this blog is heading. I'm roughly three-fourths of the way through my collection of paleo-literature. I have some catching up on reading to do, and I still have a lot of reviews to crank out, but at some point my posts will become less frequent simply because there is a finite amount of fiction relating to dinosaurs and prehistoric animals.

Ironically, if I wrote about books set in outer space, or even fiction concerning dragons rather than dinosaurs, I would probably have enough material to update at least on a weekly basis. Also, I admittedly limited myself by not reviewing caveman romances such as Clan of the Cave Bear. (Paleoanthropology has never appealed to me the same way as paleontology, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me.) Prehistoric Pulp will continue even after I've read every work of paleo-fiction in my library -- it will just be updated three or four times a month rather than three or four times a week. Usually only one or two novels about dinosaurs and other extinct animals are published in a single year, so news about the paleo-fiction is slow. More than anything, I want the blog to be a library of information about stories concerning paleontology so they are not forgotten even if I didn't care for them. (Remember readers, it is perfectly OK to disagree with my reviews in the comments section -- I even encourage it.)

As far as the more immediate future, I'm hoping to start a series of "theme weeks" soon. There will be a Dinotopia week, a King Kong week, and a mammoth week. How soon they will come will depend on how quickly I can catch up on my reading -- my personal life has been pretty busy lately, so I haven't had as much time to devote to my hobbies as I usually do.

Stay tuned!

Dinosaurs, edited by Martin H. Greenberg (1996)

2007-09-06T17:59:00.000-07:00

Hardback cover blurb

Though gone from the world for sixty-five million years, dinosaurs live on with mythic power in the human imagination. Here, editor and award-winning anthologist Martin H. Greenberg assembles fourteen classic stories featuring these at once fearsome and awe-inspiring creatures, whose enigmatic and sudden disappearance may account for part of our enduring fascination. Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov are among the many notables who breathe life back into the dinosaurs in this imaginative collection.

My thoughts

Sure, I realize this anthology was slapped together simply to make some money on the dinosaur craze that had gripped the public between the first two Jurassic Park films, but come on… A picture of someone’s eye for the cover image? I mean, couldn’t have publisher just used some stock art of a reptilian eye instead? Or better yet, how about actually paying an artist to design a cover image? Artists need to eat, after all. (So do writers and bloggers, for that matter.)

That said, this anthology proves true the old saying about not judging a book by its cover, because it is a very good collection of dinosaur-related fiction. The only downside is the book can be hard to find these days.

The two best stories are two classics of paleo-literature. “The Fog Horn” by Ray Bradbury is the story of a lighthouse fog horn that calls a very lonely reptile from the ocean depths. “A Gun for Dinosaur” by L. Sprague de Camp is the first Reginald Rivers story, with the author’s time-traveling safari guide explaining to a client why he will only take men of a certain size dinosaur hunting.

Other highlights of the anthology include “Time’s Arrow” by Arthur C. Clarke, a time-travel story with a twisted ending; “Shadow of a Change” by Michelle M. Sagara, which concerns a shy woman who undergoes a strange transformation; “Wildcat” by Poul Anderson, about an oil-drilling operation in the Jurassic Period; and “The Last Thunder Horse West of the Mississippi” by S.N. Dyer, a story where the famous rivalry between Edward Drinker Cope and O. C. Marsh reaches critical mass when the two discover a living sauropod.

The remaining stories are all strong and nicely fill out the volume. Some of the tales are decades old, so the science isn’t exactly up-to-date, but that doesn’t diminish their entertainment value.

Stories

“The Fog Horn” by Ray Bradbury
“Day of the Hunters” by Issac Asimov
“Dino Trend” by Patricia Cadigan
“Time’s Arrow” by Arthur C. Clark
“Chameleon” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
“Shadow of a Change” by Michelle M. Sagara
“Strata” by Edward Bryant
“Green Brother” by Howard Waldrop
“Wildcat” by Poul Anderson
“Just Like Old Times” by Robert J. Sawyer
“The Last Thunder Horse West of the Mississippi” by S.N. Dyer
“Hatching Season” by Harry Turtledove
“A Gun for Dinosaur” by L. Sprague de Camp
“Our Lady of the Sauropods” by Robert Silverberg

Reviews

None

Ice Hunt by James Rollins (2003)

2007-09-05T00:01:00.000-07:00

Paperback cover blurb

Carved into a moving island of ice twice the size of the United States, Ice Station Grendel has been abandoned for more than seventy years. The twisted brainchild of the finest minds of the former Soviet Union, it was designed to be inaccessible and virtually invisible. But an American undersea research vessel has inadvertently pulled too close—and something has been sighted moving inside the allegedly deserted facility, something whose survival defies every natural law. And now, as scientists, soldiers, intelligence operatives, and unsuspecting civilians are drawn into Grendel's lethal vortex, the most extreme measures possible will be undertaken to protect its dark mysteries—because the terrible truths locked behind submerged walls of ice and steel could end human life on Earth.

* The cover image and blurb are from the publisher's web site.

My thoughts

Land shark! Wait! I mean, land whale!

You wouldn't peg Ice Hunt as paleo-fiction by its cover or its blurb, but it passes the test. In this case, the plot hinges around the survival of the famous "walking whale" Ambulocetus.

Ice Hunt starts when an experimental U.S. Navy submarine finds an abandoned military base carved into the side of an iceberg in the Arctic Ocean. The scientists aboard the sub learn that the berg is crisscrossed with tunnels, with strange creatures frozen in the ice. Meanwhile in Alaska, game warden Matthew Pike investigates a plane crash in the wilderness and comes across the sole survivor -- a reporter on his way to the hidden base. The two are immediately set upon by assassins and must race to the arctic to uncover why they have been targeted. And to make a bad situation even worse, a Russian admiral also is seeking the secret hidden in the iceberg, and he has his finger on the trigger of a doomsday weapon.

I was pretty forgiving with Rollins' first novel, Subterranean, which I enjoyed despite its numerous flaws. I couldn't do the same with Ice Hunt, which was his fifth novel and showed all the same weaknesses as his first. The novel is all about action, action, action! The characters are constantly running from something, be it Russian assassins or hungry walking whales, but many of the action scenes strain credibility. Until I read the book, I never knew that 1) bear spray has the same effect as battery acid on human faces, 2) you could fly a small Cessna full of people through a mountain range like Luke Skywalker through the Death Star and still make it across Alaska on a single tank of gas, or 3) you could have a nuclear bomb detonate right beside you and come out without a scratch.

Suspension of disbelief only goes so far -- it shouldn't be used as an excuse for lazy writing.

Another problem with the novel is it's too convoluted. Ice Hunt would have worked well simply as a thriller about a group of scientists who make an extraordinary discovery that turns terrifying when the hibernating walking whales emerge from their slumber. Rollins actually has a good explanation for the survival of the prehistoric critters and what their discovery may mean for science. Unfortunately, that wasn't good enough for the author, who had to throw in a government conspiracy, some post-Cold War politics, and a doomsday device that would make Dr. Strangelove squeal with joy. The monsters eventually take a backseat to all the other, less-interesting plot elements as a result.

Yet again, we have another work of paleo-fiction where a little subtlety would've gone a long way toward making it a better read.

Trivia

James Rollins is the pen name for veterinarian and amateur spelunker Jim Czajkowski. He has written several thrillers where evolutionary biology and archeology are the main focus.

The author's web site is www.jamesrollins.com

Reviews

Meg by Steve Alten (1997)

2007-09-04T00:01:00.000-07:00

Hardback cover blurb

On a top-secret dive into the Pacific Ocean's deepest canyon, Jonas Taylor found himself face-to-face with the largest and most ferocious predator in the history of the animal kingdom. The sole survivor of the mission, Taylor is haunted by what he's sure he saw but still can't prove exists -- Carcharodon megalodon, the massive mother of the great white shark. The average prehistoric Meg weighs in at twenty tons and could tear apart a Tyrannosaurus rex in seconds.

Written off as a crackpot suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Taylor refuses to forget the depths that nearly cost him his life. With a Ph.D. in paleontology under his belt, Taylor spends years theorizing, lecturing, and writing about the possibility that Meg still feeds at the deepest levels of the sea. But it takes an old friend in need to get him to return to the water, and a hotshot female submarine pilot to dare him back into a high-tech miniature sub.

Diving deeper than he ever has before, Taylor will face terror like he's never imagined, and what he finds could turn the tides bloody red until the end of time.

My thoughts

You're gonna need a bigger boat... like an aircraft carrier.

I'm sure there are more than a few movie-goers who wished that instead of picking a great white shark as the villain in Jaws, author Peter Benchley should have chosen the prehistoric super-shark, Carcharodon megalodon. The novel Meg by Steve Alten wants to fulfill that wish, but it fails horribly. It isn't Jaws as much as it is Jaws 3-D.

The novel opens 70 million years ago with an ocean-bound T. rex becoming dinner for a megalodon -- never mind the shark didn't evolve until millions of years later. (The scene exists solely for the purpose of trying to upstage Jurassic Park.) Fast forward to the modern day. Paleontologist Jonas Taylor (get it?) is dealing with a scientific community who thinks he is a quack for claiming to have seen a living megalodon, plus he has an unfaithful wife. (Think she is going to become shark chow?) Jonas is given a chance to prove he is not a quack by taking an experimental submarine to the bottom of the Marinas Trench, where he finds a living megalodon, but things go wrong and the shark escapes to the surface. The shark is soon eating whales and people, and it's up to Jonas to stop the creature.

Meg is a novel that exists solely for the purpose of being turned into a movie, and not a very good movie at that. It is often unintentionally funny, with bad writing, numerous scientific errors and no sense of subtly or even logic. It may be lazy to point to another person's review in your own review, but the well-known biologist and author Richard Ellis perfectly summed up my feelings about this book when he wrote:

Not only is (Meg) not the slightest bit terrifying, it is unintentionally, hilariously funny, largely because almost every page contains a genuine howler. Whenever the author discusses biology, paleontology, oceanography, or any other recognized scientific subject, he gets it wrong. It is obvious that Alten equipped himself with a book about sharks, a study of submersibles, some weirdly off-base material about whales, and everything that Peter Benchley, Michael Crichton, and Clive Cussler ever wrote, and then mixed them together to produce an almost totally incoherent story, in which the human characters make no sense, the sharks and whales behave like unknown animals from the planet Zarkon, and the technology sounds like a cross between Rube Goldberg and Buck Rogers.

He goes on:

When Doubleday published Jaws in 1975, they paid Peter Benchley an advance in the mid-four figures. Now the same publisher has joined the ranks of those who can twist their own definition of literature (there must be another name for this stuff) to justify paying a million dollars for this outrageously awful book, crammed with egregious errors of fact, and stuffed to the gills with writing so awful that it would insult the intelligence of a sea cucumber...

I am more than a little embarrassed to see than in his author's note, Alten acknowledges me and John McCosker for our book "Great White Shark" as "an excellent source of information on both Megalodons and great whites." If "Meg" is what we spawned, then we ought to be ashamed of ourselves too.

That's OK, Richard -- I forgive you.

Trivia

Meg is the first of a series of novels by Alten concerning the survival of the megalodon. The others include The Trench and Meg: Primal Waters. He has another novel coming out next year titled Meg: Hell's Aquarium. Sorry, but I haven't been able to talk myself into reading the sequels, so I doubt I will have reviews anytime soon, if ever.

A movie based on the novel has been in "development hell" for ages. The creator of the movie news web site, Chud.com, is seeking to produce the film and has been touting it for quite some time. And according to this movie blog, Alten has had a pretty rough turn of events as a result of the movie not getting made. Still, when it does get produced, one must wonder: Will it be the cinematic masterpiece that was Shark Attack 3: Megalodon?

The author's web site is www.stevealten.com

Reviews

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Paleo by Yvonne Navarro (2000)

2007-09-03T14:07:00.000-07:00

Paperback cover blurb

PREHISTORIC HYSTERIA

Buffy Summers and her gang know that Sunnydale is a haven for outsiders, whether of the supernatural or strictly adolescent variety. Shy transfer student Kevin Sanderson is no exception. But Kevin instantly finds a mentor in Daniel, a paleontologist and fellow dino-phile at the Sunnydale Museum of Natural History. When Buffy starts hearing rumors of alligators in the sewers, she has to wonder about Kevin and Daniel's hobbies.

Meanwhile, the Slayerettes are having extracurricular excitement of their own. Alysa, a hotshot talent agent, wants to represent the Dingoes, and she's offering the Scooby Gang fame and fortune. If she's legit, it could be Oz's big break. But Buffy's too busy to run a background check -- Daniel and Kevin have reanimated an ancient creature with a new agenda...an agenda that begins and ends with the destruction of the Slayer....

* Cover image and blurb from the author's web site.

My thoughts

There are many strange ideas in the world of paleo-fiction, from hollow worlds to prehistoric space arks. But even by those standards, a book about vampires and demon-possessed dinosaurs is a little far-fetched.

Paleo is set during the third season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when the Mayor and Faith the evil vampire slayer were the main enemies. Neither makes an appearance in this novel. The book opens with paleontologist-in-training Daniel Addison coming across a 60-year-old journal of a long-dead scientist who discovered a spell that can reanimate fossils. Daniel and a dinosaur-loving high school student, Kevin Sanderson, try out the spell on a fossilized dinosaur egg. It works, but there is something odd about the dinosaur and its glowing eyes.

Meanwhile, Buffy finds the vampire-slaying business surprisingly slow, with all the vampires having gone into hiding because they sense that something really bad is coming to town. Things quickly pick up when Buffy and her gang come across a trio of juvenile T. rexes set loose on Sunnydale. At the same time, Willow's boyfriend Oz meets a talent agent who may give his band the lucky break it needs to make it big, but he is having doubts about the agent's true intentions.

Paleo reads like a filler episode of the TV series: The stakes are not too high, and nothing really relates to the larger story arc of the third season. The plot is straightforward with no twists and the book suffers from predictability as a result, but all-in-all it's a decent effort. Navarro has put more research into the novel than some writers of mainstream fiction about dinosaurs, and from a technical standpoint, it's better written than those works.

The author never delves too deeply into the psychology of Buffy and the main characters -- a shortcoming of all tie-in fiction where the universe is defined by writers of the TV series -- and some of the dialogue reads very much like a baby boomer author's attempt to emulate the hip speech of teenagers. The dinosaurs themselves also are curiously underused, with only a few popping up. Still, there is more than enough action to keep fans of the TV series happy. I can't recommend Paleo to anyone who was never into the show, but for those who were, there are worse ways to spend your time.

The novel is currently available as a digital download on the publisher's web site, which is the version reviewed here.

Trivia

In a rant on her web site against the user reviews on Amazon.com, the author gives a glimpse of how tie-in fiction is cranked out. Basically an author submits a proposal, waits for the thumbs up from the publisher, and then has eight weeks to turn out a novel.

The author has written several novels set in the "Buffyverse", most dealing with Buffy's sidekick Willow.

Reviews

MyShelf.com

Take a "Journey to Chandara" this October

2007-09-01T20:23:00.000-07:00

I'm late with this, but I noticed that illustrator James Gurney has another Dinotopia book coming out in October. It is titled Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara and is based on the travels of the real-life Marco Polo, with the hero of Gurney's novels, Arthur Dennison, traveling to a mysterious Eastern realm in Dinotopia.

The Dinotopia novels are children's books but the artwork is so astounding that many adults also consider themselves fans. Gurney has produced three books so far, making Journey to Chandara his fourth. There also was a TV miniseries and a short-lived show based on the Dinotopia books, but the less said about those efforts, the better.

If you have stumbled across those shows, let me assure you that the books are much better. Dinotopia is a lost world where humans and dinosaurs live side-by-side in harmony. The dinosaurs are as smart as humans, so don't expect realistic behavior on their part. The anatomical detail, however, is amazing, and Gurney has an impressive imagination that he is able to capture on canvas.

I'm thinking about having a Dinotopia week in the near future, perhaps close to when the new book will be released. You may have noticed I recently had a streak of reviews about games and novels set in hollow worlds populated by dinosaurs and prehistoric animals. One will find many common themes throughout paleo-fiction.

Anyway, the official web site for Dinotopia is www.dinotopia.com

* The cover image is from the publisher's web site.

Tooth & Claw by Jared A. Sorensen (2003)

2007-09-01T20:10:00.000-07:00

Usually roleplaying games let you play as humans fighting dinosaurs. Tooth & Claw is the only one I know that lets people play as dinosaurs.

Tooth & Claw is nothing fancy. It's simply a set of rules for creating dinosaur characters and roleplaying them. There are no illustrations and it lacks flashy page design, having been cranked out on a word processor. The author writes that originally the game was to be published by a game company in 2001, but that never happened. The version he ultimately released was written in a single night so he could enter it into a gaming competition, where it won third place.

It's not a bad effort if you're looking for a rules-lite RPG. Tooth & Claw leaves it up to players to decide how realistic they want to make the game. If they want their dinosaurs to talk, no problem. If they want their dinosaurs to communicate only through grunts and body language, no problem. The rules themselves just give some basics for building dinosaurs with tail spikes, or horns, or enlarged toe claws, or pointy teeth. You could use the rules to build a Triceratops, or make up something completely new and not in the fossil record.

The game uses a dice-pool system in which players role a certain number of six-sided dice and try to get as many in sequence as possible, starting with 1. So, for example, say you role four dice and get 1, 2, 4, 5. You have two successes because 1 and 2 are in sequence. The 4 and 5 don't count because you must start with 1. The more successes you have, the more likely you are to accomplish a task or win a challenge. Positive traits let you role larger numbers of dice or let you start sequences with higher numbers than 1.

Most players will probably welcome the simplicity. Hard-core gamers who thrive on statistic complexity and ultra-realism will hate it. Tooth & Claw is a nice, easy game if you have a few dinosaur nuts at your house and you're looking for something other to do than play Monopoly. Plus it's only a $3 download at RPGnow, so it's hardly going to bankrupt you if you don't like it.

Trivia

The author, on his web site, says he would like to one day revisit Tooth & Claw and get it published as a roleplaying game for kids.

Reviews

None

Two self-published dinosaur novels now available

2007-08-30T21:46:00.000-07:00

Novels about dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures are hard to find in many bookstores these days, at least outside the children's sections, so anyone looking for some paleo-fiction may need to look in other places. Some authors have turned to self-publishing to get their dinosaur fiction out.

First up is Eleven Days in the Valley and Other Stories by William M. Svensen. It is a self-published anthology set on Gondolend, a planet where dinosaurs and humans co-exist. The author has put together a pretty neat Web site and has obviously put a lot of effort into creating the world of his stories.

Next up is The Worlds of Naughtenny Moore by David Brown. The author writes the book belongs to the dinosaur hunting subgenre of paleo-fiction, although creatures other than dinosaurs make appearances and that a fair amount of metaphysical speculation is thrown into the mix. Visit the Web site of Open Page Publishing for ordering information.

As far as myself, I'm still debating whether to review self-published fiction. That may seem unfair given I have already reviewed self-published comics and will be reviewing a couple self-published RPG games in the near future, but I admittedly hold authors who have sold their works to publishers to a higher standard. They've had the benefit of an editor to review their manuscripts and a publishing team to market them, something self-published writers rarely have.

Regardless, if you want to get the word out about a novel or other work of fiction concerning prehistoric creatures -- no matter how it's published -- feel free to drop me an e-mail at prepulp(at)hotmail(dot)com. I'm always happy to at least let readers know the work is out there.

A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne (1864)

2007-08-30T21:20:00.001-07:00

Note: This is a review of the e-text version of A Journey to the Center of the Earth, so I don’t have a cover blurb. The book cover is from the Wikipedia entry about the novel.

This is where paleo-fiction started.

A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne was first published in 1864. The famous story is the first major work of fiction to feature prehistoric creatures surviving to the modern day.* Ironically, there are no true dinosaurs in the novel, since the beasts hadn’t captured the public’s imagination at the time the book was written.

The novel is narrated by Axel, a young man who is apprenticing under his geologist uncle, Professor Otto Lidenbrock. The two come across a cryptic manuscript alleging that a passageway to the center of the Earth exists inside an extinct volcano in Iceland. It’s a crazy claim, but Lidenbrock is open-minded -- or gullible -- enough to mount an expedition to the volcano in hopes of making the greatest scientific discovery of his time. The two are joined by a guide, and together the trio descend into the bowels of the Earth, finding a lost world hidden for millions of years. Getting out will be a different matter, however.

That’s admittedly a short description of a novel that has had a profound influence on science fiction, but the story is so well-known that most people know it by heart. A Journey to the Center of the Earth has been adapted into comics, cartoons, video games and movies numerous times, although few have been faithful to the source material. The best-known adaptation is probably a 1959 movie starring James Mason and country gospel star Pat Boone. (Boone recently called evolution a “false religion” in an opinion column, apparently forgetting that he once starred in a dinosaur movie.)

The book itself is one of Verne’s more famous titles, but I’ve never really considered it one of his better works. It’s a bit sluggish in parts, and it lacks any particularly memorable characters such as Captain Nemo from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The humor seems forced by modern standards, and the whiny narrator can come across as annoying rather than funny.

Nonetheless, it would be unfair of me to leave you with the impression that this is a bad book. While it may not be Verne’s best, it’s still fun. There is a terrific sense of wonder in it missing from most of today’s science fiction. Verne just throws wonder after wonder at the reader, so much so that it isn’t until you’re near the end of the novel that you realize it doesn’t have much of an actual plot. No adaptations have really captured the full extent of Verne’s imagination, so even if you have seen two or three versions of the story, you’re still likely to be surprised by what the explorers find in the underground world they discover.

Also, how many science fiction novels are there where the authors write so lovingly about geology? It’s a topic that most writers find drab compared to quantum physics or space travel, but is just as fascinating in its own right. Paleontology really isn’t the central focus of A Journey to the Center of the Earth, and it’s pretty clear from reading the novel that Verne considered it a branch of geology rather than a separate science. The prehistoric creatures here are just window dressing, although when Verne does use them, he does so for maximum effect.

The novel is available for free on many places on the Internet, including this Web site.

* Some of the above information about the novel came from Dinosaurs in Fantastic Fiction by Allen A. Debus.

Reviews

voiseb

Technosaurs #2 kicking off

2007-08-27T14:40:00.000-07:00

I noticed over the weekend that Kevin Wasden of Splintered-Mind.com is kicking off the second issue of his web comic, Technosaurs. The series is written by Wasden and Darwin Garrison, with art by Wasden. The comic is about anthropomorphized dinosaurs and a brother and sister suddenly thrown into their world. Give it a look because I think you will be pleasantly surprised by both the quality of the art and the storyline.

Wasden also reports that the first issue of Technosaurs will be released in print in late September. He currently has a sketchbook available for sale.

Also relating to online comics, I forgot to mention Commodore Dinosaur by Brad Olrich when I linked to it a while back. I haven't had time to read through the series yet, but it is about a superhero whose power is turning into a dinosaur. The comic appears very tongue-in-cheek, from what I saw.

Subterranean by James Rollins (1999)

2007-08-27T14:18:00.000-07:00

Paperback cover blurb

TRAVEL TO THE BOTTOM OF THE EARTH…

to a place you never dreamed existed.

BENEATH THE ICE…

a hand-picked team of specialists makes its way toward the center of the world. They are not the first to venture into this magnificent subterranean labyrinth. Those they follow did not return.

OVER THE ROCKS… ACROSS THE YAWNING CAVERNS…BEYOND THE BLACK RIVER…

You are not alone.

INTO THE DARKNESS…

where breathtaking wonders await you—and terrors beyond imagining…Revelations that could change the world—things that should never be disturbed…

AT THE BOTTOM OF THE EARTH IS THE BEGINNING.
KEEP MOVING…

toward a miracle that cannot be…toward a mystery older than time.

My thoughts

It takes a lot of nerve to write a lost world story set in the modern day, particularly one that borrows heavily from Journey to the Center of the Earth. But that’s exactly what we have in this techno-thriller.

Subterranean opens when the two main characters, paleoanthropologist Ashley Carter and expert caver Ben Brust, are recruited by the U.S. military to investigate an enormous cavern in Antarctica. There are archaeological ruins inside the cave dating back before humankind had evolved. Who -- or more precisely, what -- built the ruins? The answer lies deeper in the cave system. Carter and Brust will lead an expedition into the depths of the Earth to find out, a journey that a previous team attempted, but never returned.

The monsters populating Subterranean are not prehistoric survivors in the strictest since, but the plot and the setting rely heavily on paleontology, so I'm not bending the rules too much. The novel is about finding out what creatures inhabited Antarctica in the 30-million-year gap between the extinction of the dinosaurs and the coming of the ice. Many authors would've used aliens to explain away the pre-human ruins, and I will give Rollins credit for coming up with a more imaginative and more interesting idea.

That said, Subterranean isn't a good book by any stretch of the imagination, with boring characters and frequent action sequences that defy logic. The main villain will offend some readers because of the ethnic stereotyping, and the monsters will feel very familiar to anyone who has seen Jurassic Park. Still, for some reason, I liked it. Why? I'm not quite certain. Perhaps because it is an old-fashioned lost world story with an appropriate sense of mystery and wonder. Or maybe because I read it at a time in my life when I was looking for some popcorn-movie escapism, and it fit the bill.

Subterranean is a good "bad book" -- not one I could recommend if you prefer your literature to be, well, literary, but a fun one as long as you don't take it seriously. Be warned that it does weigh in at a whopping 430 pages, which is about 130 pages more than the author honestly needed to tell the story.

Trivia

James Rollins is the pen name for veterinarian and amateur spelunker Jim Czajkowski. He has written several thrillers where evolutionary biology and archeology are the main focus.

The author's web site is www.jamesrollins.com

Reviews

The only ones I can find spoil the book's central mystery, so I'm not linking to them.

At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1914)

2007-08-24T22:55:00.000-07:00

Note: This is a review of the e-text version of At the Earth’s Core, so I don’t have a cover blurb. The book cover is from the Wikipedia entry about the novel.

What’s long and hard and full of Victorians? Why a giant drilling machine, of course.

OK, I’m really sorry for the corny joke, but At the Earth’s Core is a pretty corny novel. It was first published in 1914 and kicked off what was to be a lengthy seven-part series set on the inner shell of a hollow earth inhabited by prehistoric creatures and primitive tribes of humans and ape men. The author, Edgar Rice Burroughs, is best known as the creator of Tarzan, a character who would visit the hollow world in the crossover novel Tarzan at the Earth’s Core.

Pellucidar, the name Rice gave to his world, hasn’t enjoyed as much fame as Tarzan, but it has had a surprising amount of influence on pop culture over the years, more because of the unique setting than any merits of the novel.

At the Earth’s Core starts when the unnamed author stumbles across one David Innes in the middle of Sahara Desert. Innes is delighted to finally see another “white man” and relates to the author his strange story: He is the son of a wealthy mine owner who had funded the creation of a giant drilling machine invented by Dr. Abner Perry. Innes and Perry take the machine for a test drive, but soon learn that it’s kind of hard to make a U-turn through solid rock. The machine keeps drilling deeper and deeper, and the two men expect to die, but instead of hitting a molten core, the machine instead breaks through to open air. It turns out the Earth isn’t solid but rather a hollow sphere, with a prehistoric ecosystem thriving on the inner surface of the sphere in defiance of gravity. A tiny sun in the sky provides constant daylight and the horizon curves up instead of down.

Well, things happen, and Innes and Perry soon become prisoners of a race of intelligent pterodactyls called the Mahars. It will be up to Innes to lead the humans of Pellucidar in a revolt against their reptilian masters, and save the girl at the same time.

Had I read At the Earth’s Core when I was 10 rather than the older, cynical man I am now, I might have enjoyed it more. And yes, there are things to like about it. The setting is fun, and the novel is the first work of fiction to feature intelligent creatures evolved from prehistoric reptiles, paving the way for the Silurians, the Yilane, and the Quintaglio. I don’t fault Burroughs’ imagination, but his writing leaves much to be desired. His books are just badly written, with virtually no characterization, horrendous prose and giant leaps of logic in the plot. His heroes are so flawlessly good they can never make mistakes, and there is no situation they can’t fight their way out of, no matter how overwhelming the odds against them. His books get very boring very quickly.

There also is the blatant racism, although Burroughs is hardly the only early 20^th century pulp writer guilty of that sin. Still, with few other redeeming values in the work, it sticks out like a sore thumb here.

I know many people have fond feelings for Burroughs, but that has more to do with nostalgia than anything else. My love of paleo-fiction only goes so far, so I won’t be reviewing any other the books in this series. I could barely make it through one – I can’t imagine trying to get through all seven.

All the books in the Pellucidar series are in the public domain. Update: Scratch that. It appears that only the first two novels are freely available. Below are all seven titles, with the Project Gutenberg links to the first two.

At the Earth's Core
Pellucidar
Tanar of Pellucidar
Tarzan at the Earth's Core
Back to the Stone Age
Land of Terror
Savage Pellucidar

Trivia

As I’ve already stated, the Pellucidar series has had a substantial influence on pop culture. The hollow world setting has been used in games, comics, other novels and even a handful of cartoons.

The novel was turned into a 1976 movie of the same name staring Doug McClure. The actor would also star in another Burroughs adaptation, The Land That Time Forgot.

There are a couple fun web sites about Pellucidar and Edgar Rice Burroughs. The first is ERBlist.com, which probably is the most comprehensive site about the pulp author. The other is von Horst's Pellucidar, which has more information about the setting.

Reviews

Dungeons & Dragons: Hollow World by Aaron Allston (1990)

2007-08-23T00:22:00.000-07:00

Cover blurb

THE KNOWN WORLD: IT ISN'T FLAT, BUT IT IS HOLLOW!

Within the sphere of the Known World is another world, a hollow world. There your characters will meet ancient Nithians, long disappeared from the surface world and thought extinct; Blacklore Elves, living in a magical valley and served by automatons -- devices that take care of everything, from serving their food to trimming their grass; Arcans, terrifying, war-mongering natives whose taste for battle extends even into their favorite game -- the losers always die -- and many more. Monsters abound as well, from dinosaurs to aurochs.

In the Hollow World, the sun never sets. Magic works differently than it does "outside"-- some spells don't work at all. And quite often, getting in is much, much easier than getting out.

My thoughts

There was a time when the people producing Dungeons & Dragons games were more creative than they are now, and when the company that put out the famous roleplaying brand -- originally TSR but now Wizards of the Coast -- experimented with several campaign settings. I actually learned about this RPG supplement through a video game that used the setting: Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun for the SEGA Genesis, a favorite of mine even though I never did manage to beat it.

D&D: Hollow World is set in the campaign world of Mystara, or rather, below it. The planet of Mystara isn't a rocky solid ball floating in space, but rather a hollow sphere with an interior lit by a small sun. Dinosaurs and civilizations that have long disappeared from the surface thrive in the hollow world, and magic doesn't always work as expected.

Basically the campaign combines the J.R.R. Tolkien-inspired world of D&D with the hollow earth setting Edgar Rice Burroughs Pellucidar series. This allows gamers to encounter civilizations other than the Western European kingdoms found in most D&D games. There are Romans, Aztecs, Egyptians and other cultures, most of which never interact because of the high mountain ranges that separate them. The Hollow World also has its own pantheon of gods, including Ka the Preserver, who is an intelligent Tyrannosaurus rex.

Sure, it's all pretty silly, but no more than your average D&D setting. There is an interesting backstory about how the Hollow World came to be and what function it serves, but that information is for game masters only so I won't spoil it here. What's nice about the campaign world is the author gives players plenty of different cultures and creatures to choose from -- the Hollow World is a big place and gamers could spend a lot of time exploring it and never run into the same thing twice. One valley may contain a lost Roman civilization, while the next one over may be filled with primitive cavemen and dinosaurs. Any setting that allows player to tailor the game to their own tastes is a winner in my book.

D&D: Hollow World uses the original rules, not the advanced rules, although the game is generic enough that it could be easily converted. The boxed set is now available as a $4.95 download on RGPnow, which is a bargain considering you get 264 pages of material for less money than you would spend buying lunch at McDonald's.

Trivia

The author, Aaron Allston, has written several gaming supplements and science fiction novels, the latter mostly tie-ins to film franchises such as Star Wars. One of his current projects is a rewrite of the 1985 RPG supplement Lands of Mystery, which is about creating lost world settings for games. It is scheduled for release later this year.

Allston also wrote the story for the roleplaying computer game Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire, which is set in a valley filled with dinosaurs and primitive tribes. I recommend The Savage Empire and Warriors of the Eternal Sun to any gamers looking for fun RPGs that are a little different from your standard sword-and-sorcery fare.

The author's web site is AaronAllston.com

Reviews

None

Hollow Earth Expedition by Exile Game Studio (2006)

2007-08-22T00:01:00.000-07:00

Cover blurb

First we discovered that the Earth is round.

Then we discovered that it's hollow.

Now we must keep its secrets from falling into the wrong hands.

Explore one of the world's greatest and most dangerous secrets: the Hollow Earth, a savage land filled with dinosaurs, lost civilizations, and ferocious savages! Players take on the role of two-fisted adventures, eager academics and intrepid journalists investigating the mysteries of the Hollow Earth. Meanwhile, on the surface, world powers and secret societies vie for control of what may be the most important discovery in all of human history.

Set in the tense and tumultuous 1930s, the action-filled Hollow Earth Expedition is inspired by the literary works of genre giants Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jules Verne, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The subterranean action is powered by Ubiquity, an innovative roleplaying system that emphasizes storytelling and cinematic action.

Hollow Earth Expedition: There's a whole new world of adventure inside!

* Cover image from publisher's web site.

My thoughts

I should start out by saying that this won't be a true review because I've never had the opportunity to test this game out by actually playing it. But ever since I purchased the PDF version of Hollow Earth Expedition, I've had a lot of fun leafing -- or in this case, clicking -- through its gorgeously illustrated pages.

Hollow Earth Expedition is a pulp roleplaying game set in the 1930s. Think Indiana Jones with dinosaurs. The premise is based on the occult belief that the interior of the Earth is hollow and inhabited by prehistoric creatures and lost civilizations. The authors don't provide a lot of background about the world of the hollow earth; they just give the game master the tools to build his or her own setting around the idea. Players can expect to encounter everything from dinosaurs to Caribbean pirates -- it's pretty much up to the game master to decide how crazy to make the world.

What stands out about the book is its production values. It is illustrated with colorful maps and top-quality black-and-white drawings. It also is well-written, with a lot of information crammed in its 260-or-so pages. One downside is that most of the book is dedicated to game mechanics and doesn't delve much into exploring the historical and literary precursors of the lost world genre. (I would recommend GURPS Atlantis for an example of how well it can be done in an RPG supplement, although that's an unfair comparison because GURPS comes with a separate core system rulebook.)

Another shortcoming is the sparse bestiary. There are not many animal stats provided to populate your hollow earth, and given that the game engine is unique to the book, it may be hard for gamers to create animals on their own until they have a good grasp of the system. The publisher has two supplements in the works that promise to fill in some of the gaps in Hollow Earth Expedition.

Regardless of these complaints, the book is still worth the cover price -- $20 for the digital version and $40 for the hardcover version. There is more than enough information about how to build characters and how to play in a hollow earth setting to make any gamer happy, and the fine illustrations are the icing on the cake.

Trivia

The most obvious inspiration for Hollow Earth Expedition is the Pellucidar series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, which are set in an interior world heated by a miniature sun. Burroughs also is the creator of Tarzan, a character who visited the Pellucidar in the crossover novel Tarzan at Earth's Core.

I prefer RPGs with relatively simple dice systems, and the Ubiquity system of Hollow Earth Expedition seems to fit the bill -- although, as I've stated, I haven't had the chance to try it. It is a dice-pool system in which players try to role as many positive numbers as possible to score successes. It can involve rolling a lot of dice, but the publisher also sells special 8-sided dice that help cut down on the number of dice you must roll.

Reviews

Game Geeks (YouTube video review)
Ridiculous Thoughts
RPGnet

Wildside by Steven Gould (1996)

2007-08-21T10:15:00.000-07:00

Hardback cover blurb

It's another world, a pristine Earth where mammoths and saber-tooth tigers still roam. Where there are no cities, no highways, no pollution, no laws... no people at all.

It lies just beyond the heavy wooden door, hidden in the back of the old barn, through a tunnel that enters a hillside in South Texas but doesn't come out the other side.

It belongs to Charlie. A whole world accessible only through the doorway on the ranch that his uncle left to him free and clear. But to explore a planet, you need help. And equipment. And money to buy the equipment. Money to live on while you explore; money for taxes on the ranch, and to pay for the training you need to survive in a completely wild world.

So Charlie decides to capture some extinct birds -- passenger pigeons -- and sell them on the tame side to finance his venture. He sells more than a dozen of the birds, and Wildside Investments is born. That is the beginning of the end.

For how can you keep a secret like that, once anyone gets wind of it? Now Charlie and his trusted friends are going to have to fight for the preservation of the Wildside -- and their own lives as well.

My thoughts

Charlie sure has a swell uncle. Most people would be lucky to get a few items of furniture when their close relatives pass away, but in Charlie's case, his Uncle Max has left him an entire planet.

Wildside is told from the first-person point of view of Charlie, a teenage boy who is about to graduate from high school with his four friends when the novel opens. Charlie is a bit of an outsider, agreeing to drive his friends to the prom because he doesn't have a date. But in exchange for the favor, Charlie asks them to accompany him to his late uncle's ranch, which he has inherited. He has a business proposition.

The ranch is more valuable than it first appears because on the property is a tunnel leading to a parallel Earth where humans never evolved. As a result, Ice Age megafauna such as mammoths and saber-tooth cats have survived to the modern day. (The author assumes that the overkill hypothesis for the Ice Age extinctions is the correct theory.) A world without humans also is a world still abundant in natural resources, particularly gold. The group secretly sells off a few passenger pigeons to zoos in order to raise the money for the equipment they need to start prospecting for gold, but that turns out to be a mistake. The federal government soon learns about the parallel world and all those resources ripe for the taking...

Wildside is an entertaining little novel despite the fact Gould never realizes the full potential of his Big Idea. The prehistoric animals here are only for color, and the author could've left them out entirely and the novel would still read the same. Gould seems more interested in aeronautics, which he describes in such detail that after you read Wildside, you may feel like you qualify for a pilot's license. It would have been much more fun to watch Charlie and his gang face off again saber-tooth cats, hulking mastodons and giant short-faced bears rather than government bureaucrats, but unfortunately that's what we're left with. The deus ex machina ending also leaves a lot to be desired.

That said, I still enjoyed Wildside for the things it gets right. Charlie and his friends are interesting characters, even if they seem to know a little too much about science -- particularly physics and paleontology -- for your typical teens. They evolve over the course of the novel from seeing the wildside as something to exploit to something to protect, so the book has a good, if heavy-handed, message about the environment. And the novel is short and fast-paced, so the plot rarely drags.

Wildside was originally marketed as adult science fiction, but it has since been reshelved in the young adult sections of most bookstores. It also sports a new cover with mammoths, saber-tooth cats and an Apache helicopter, although none are central to the story.

Trivia

Steven Gould shouldn't be confused with paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould.

The author's web site is www.digitalnoir.com/s

Reviews

Free paleo-stories on the web

2007-08-16T20:50:00.000-07:00

Hope you have a fun weekend planned, but if you find yourself stuck inside for whatever reason, here is some good reading to pass the time.

The following paleo-tales are all available on the Web for free, either because the author posted them or because they are now in the public domain. I'm planning a future post about novels in the public domain, so none of those titles are listed here. The titles below are all short stories.

First up is science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer, who has posted several of his short stories on his web site.

Just Like Old Times -- The mind of a serial killer is transferred to a Tyrannosaurus rex, where he gets to stalk the greatest prey of all.

Gator -- A scientist investigates the urban legend about alligators in the sewers and finds the truth is more bizarre than the tabloids would have you believe.

Forever -- Intelligent dinosaurs prepare for the asteroid that will bring their era to a close.

Peking Man -- A secret history is revealed through the bones of a missing fossil.

The next two stories are featured on the science fiction story web site, Sci Fiction, which is no longer publishing. Its older stories are still up, however.

The Dragons of Summer Gulch by Robert Reed -- A tale set in an alternate world where the age of dinosaurs was replaced by an age of dragons. Fossil hunters in what may be the American West fight over some extraordinarily well-preserved dragon eggs.

The Ugly Chickens by Howard Waldrop -- A ornithologist searches for the last dodos on Earth after encountering an elderly lady on a bus who claims to have seen them.

The next couple stories will take some explaining. Both are by Clark Ashton Smith, an early 20th-century artist and fantasy writer who was good friends with horror legend H.P. Lovecraft. Smith wrote a handful of fantasy stories set in Hyperborea, a mythical lost land that the author placed in Greenland before the onset of the last Ice Age. It was populated by dinosaurs and other extinct animals, although in most of his stories these creatures were little more than decoration, if they were used at all. The following two tales are the ones where they play the largest role:

The Seven Geases -- A personal favorite of mine, although it is admittedly a strange piece of work. The story is about a snobbish aristocrat who is cursed to follow an archaeopteryx into the bowels of a mountain, where he encounters horrors both mythological and prehistoric.

Ubbo-Sathla -- A man purchases a strange stone from a curio-dealer and uses it to travel to the dawn of life on Earth, where a great horror awaits. (Try to ignore the ugly reference about the "dwarfish Hebrew" -- early pulp fiction writers were notoriously bigoted.)

The last group of stories come from the cryptozoology web site StrangeArk.com. All are late 19th and early 20th century stories with a cryptozoology theme, and as a result, many also are interesting examples of early paleo-fiction.

Visit the web site's fiction section for a larger list of stories. Below are links to the titles with a paleontology theme. Just be warned that some contain racist attitudes that were unfortunately common for the time they were written.

The Last Haunt of the Dinosaur by Henry Francis
Aepyornis Island by H.G. Wells
The Terror of Blue John Gap by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
A Relic of the Pliocene by Jack London
The Killing of the Mammoth by H. Tukeman
The Monster of Lake LaMetrie by Wardon Allan Curtis (gets my vote for the strangest paleo-story ever published)
The Pterodactyl by Thomas Charles Sloane
The Ancient Horror by Hal Grant
The Paradise of the Ice Wilderness by Jul. Regis

Raising the Dead: Bringing back extinct animals in fiction

2007-08-15T00:45:00.001-07:00

Note: This article was inspired by an essay about dinosaurs in science fiction appearing in Dougal Dixon’s The New Dinosaurs: An Alternate Evolution. I penned it several years ago and have posted it on the occasional Internet forum, with its most recent incarnation being my Amazon.com guide to prehistoric creatures in science fiction and fantasy. I will update this post with links to the various titles as I get the reviews up on this site.

Introduction

Dr. Frankenstein had it easy. He had all the body parts he needed when resurrecting his creature: a heart, some lungs, a brain. Writers of paleontological fiction are not so fortunate. The animals they write about have been dead for thousands of years, usually millions. The soft tissues have rotted away, the bones have turned to stone. In most cases, we don’t even know what the critter looked like.

Readers must expect to suspend their disbelief when delving into any science fiction story about extinct creatures, but the fact remains that the more plausible the scenario for bringing back the animals, the more acceptance a work will receive from the public. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle penned The Lost World at a time when large regions of globe were still unexplored and the prospect of finding living fossils in the distant lands seemed possible, if highly unlikely. Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton played on fears of genetic engineering and was based on a premise that a few scientists said could become a reality. Even time travel, which almost certainly is not possible, has been used so much in science fiction that most people will accept it without asking too many questions about how it works.

Fantasy, of course, operates under different rules than science fiction, although fantasy authors usually are more interested in dragons than dinosaurs. Still, readers of the genre have expectations for scientific accuracy. One reason the Dinotopia books by James Gurney are so popular is because of the anatomical detail of the animals he paints, even if they are portrayed as smart as humans.

Throughout the years, writers have relied on eight plot devices to resurrect dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals in fiction, some more plausible than others. Many stories use one device. Others use two or more -- a lost world story, for example, can be set on an alternate world. Then there are a few odd titles that don't fit into any of the eight categories, but given they involve such things as dinosaurs walking around disguised as humans, scientific accuracy usually is not what the authors have in mind.

1. Through Their Eyes

Readers see through the eyes of a human or an animal to experience prehistory as it happened in this scenario. The stories here are set in the prehistoric past rather than the modern day, and they can be the most realistic take on paleo-fiction if the writer does his or her homework. That's not to say using this plot device always means the science will be right, because it includes caveman-and-dinosaur melodramas such as One Million Years B.C.

One example of a serious take on the scenario is Raptor Red by Robert Bakker, which features a Utahraptor as its main character. Another is Evolution by Stephen Baxter, which traces human evolution through a series of stories, each told from the viewpoint of one of our ancestors. Baxter's Longtusk, the second book of his mammoth trilogy, explores the Ice Age world through the eyes of a mammoth.

Comic books have depicted dinosaur life as red in tooth and claw. Age of Reptiles: Tribal Warfare and Age of Reptiles: The Hunt, both by Richardo Delgado, are set in the Cretaceous and Jurassic periods. Jim Lawson’s Paleo: Tales of the Late Cretaceous is a little less gory by comparison, but its characters’ lives are still brutal.

2. The Lone Survivor

An individual creature or small group of the same species survives into modern times in this scenario. This is the realm of cryptozoology, the pseudoscience concerning the search for unknown animals and living fossils, such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and the Yeti.

Prehistoric survivors are usually hidden somewhere inaccessible to man, like the brontosaurs deep in the Congo jungle in the movie Baby, Secret of the Lost Legend. The most memorable tale to use this plot device is Ray Bradbury's short story "The Fog Horn", in which the horn of a lighthouse summons an ancient and very lonely reptile from the depths of the ocean.

Stephen Baxter's Silverhair is about a small herd of mammoths that still lives on an isolated arctic island. A wealthy Arabic family has been gathering prehistoric survivors from all over the globe for centuries in Bestiary by Robert Masello, a thriller set in modern-day Los Angeles.

The expansive and largely unexplored oceans provide plenty of territory for prehistoric animals to hide in. Both Meg and its sequels by Steven Alten and Extinct by Charles Wilson are about the survival of the super-shark Megalodon.

3. The Lost World

The most famous example of this device is the book that gives it its name, The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In it, British explorers discover a South American plateau populated by dinosaurs and ape men. A lost world is different from the previous scenario in that an entire ecosystem survives hidden and unchanged, although animals from different time periods are usually thrown into the same setting.

This scenario was first used by Jules Verne in 1864 with the publication of A Journey to the Center of the Earth, in which the heroes discover a giant cavern populated with extinct creatures. It became a staple of early 20th century pulp writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs in his The Land That Time Forgot trilogy, set on a lost continent, and his Pellucidar series, set inside a hollow earth.

The plot device has waned in recent years as the blank spots on maps have been explored, but modern examples include Dinotopia and its sequels by James Gurney; Subterranean by James Rollins; and Greg Bear’s Dinosaur Summer, a pseudo-sequel to The Lost World set in an alternate timeline. Then there is The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island, a movie tie-in and illustrated guide to the wildlife of an island where dinosaurs continued to evolve and thrive.

Paul T. Riddell has written an excellent essay about the scientific implausibility of a lost world as portrayed in fiction.

4. Freeze and Thaw

In the animated movie Ice Age, one of the characters stumbles upon a Tyrannosaurus rex frozen mid-stride in a wall of ice. That’s not far off from what some authors have used to resurrect prehistoric animals.

In the novel Carnivore, Leigh Clark freezes a T. rex egg in Antarctic ice so it can hatch in the present day. Author Jeff Rovin literally freeze-dries a pride of saber-tooth cats in Fatalis so they can stalk prey in Los Angeles. And in James Rollins' Ice Hunt, a pod of walking whales chases after humans after awakening from hibernation inside an iceberg.

5. Attack of the Clones

You’ve seen Jurassic Park, right?

Then you know that in this case scientists find ancient DNA and resurrect dinosaurs using genetic engineering. It should be pointed out that Michael Crichton wasn't the first use this device. Harry Adam Knight -- a pen name for B-movie historian John Brosnan -- unleashed genetically engineered dinosaurs on an unsuspecting British public in his 1984 novel Carnosaur, which hit bookstores six years before Jurassic Park. Piers Anthony resurrects a Baluchitherium, the largest land-dwelling mammal ever to have lived, in Balook.

6. Time Travel

Time travel is the plot device usually used to resurrect extinct species, for obvious reasons.

A tiny subgenre has sprung out of time travel stories: the dinosaur hunt. Ray Bradbury’s famous short story “A Sound of Thunder” deals with the consequences of time travel after a botched Mesozoic hunt. David Drake glorifies the trophy hunt in Time Safari, later republished as Tyrannosaur with a new opening story. L. Sprague de Camp’s time-traveling safari guide Reginald Rivers serves up a series of funny stories in Rivers of Time. "Trouble with Tribbles" writer David Gerrold speculates that laser guns may not be the weapons of choice when hunting dinosaurs in Deathbeast.

Humans have traveled into the past for more benign purposes. Explorers seek out the cause of the dinosaurs’ demise in Dinosaur Nexus by Lee Grimes. Mysterious benefactors give paleontologists the chance to study their subjects up close and personal in Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick. The time-traveling Doctor and his companion Martha Jones visit a museum where every species that has ever gone extinct has been saved and placed in suspended animation in Doctor Who: The Last Dodo by Jacqueline Rayner. Scientists find a wristwatch-wearing caveman beside the corpse of a Mammoth, by John Varley. Two researchers learn what really killed the dinosaurs in Robert Sawyer’s End of An Era. You get three guesses about what the expedition in The Virgin and the Dinosaur by R. Garcia y Robertson finds in the prehistoric past. And a couple who finds a time-traveling alien in their backyard turns the creature's talent into a very profitable enterprise in Mastodonia by Clifford D. Simak.

The prehistoric past can become a prison for those who are not careful. A family takes a vacation to the end of the Cretaceous in Cretaceous Sea by Will Hubbell only to be stranded as the K-T asteroid comes crashing down. One of the survivors heads back in the sequel Sea of Time. A scientist is trapped in the distant past and must come to terms with the fact he can never go home in The Dechronization of Sam Magruder by paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson. An Oregon town is transported to the Mesozoic Era in the comic Cavewoman by Budd Root, but luckily it has a scantily clad female superhero to defend it from the dinosaurs.

Sometimes the past comes intruding into the present with disastrous results, such as the case in Footprints of Thunder by James F. David, where time ripples replace chunks of modern-day Earth with their Mesozoic equivalents. The causes of the disaster are further explored in Thunder of Time. Our future is replaced by an alternate earth where dinosaurs never died out in First Frontier, a Star Trek novel by Diane Carey and James I. Kirkland, the change a result of alien tinkering in prehistory.

7. Aliens from Earth

Is it possible that on a distant planet with similar conditions to earth, evolution has produced dinosaurs and the alien equivalents of other extinct creatures? Probably not, but that hasn't stopped authors from using this device.

Beyond the Gates by Martha Wells hinges on convergent evolution on a galactic scale. Dinosaurs also are found on an alien world in The Mystery of Ireta, which combines the novels Dinosaur Planet and Dinosaur Planet Survivors by Anne McCaffrey, who usually writes about dragons.

Luckily, some aliens are environmentalists rather than invaders, and they have used their technology to ship dinosaurs to another world before they went extinct here. The Quintaglio trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer depicts a distant world where dinosaurs continued to evolve after they were transported there by a friendly alien force. The series starts with Far-Seer. Aliens have terraformed Venus and have populated it with prehistoric animals in The Sky People by alternate history writer S.M. Stirling. Pluto's moon turns out to be a gigantic game preserve in Charon's Ark by Rick Gauger. And in Icebones by Stephen Baxter, mammoths find themselves on a terraformed Mars.

Intelligent dinosaurs managed to escape extinction by fleeing into outer space in The Homecoming by Barry Longyear and in Dinosaur Wars and its sequel Dinosaur Wars: Counterattack by Thomas P. Hopp.

8. The Best of All Worlds

What if the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs missed? What would the earth be like today? The alternate world genre usually deals with changes in human history, but a few authors have reached further back in time to speculate on divergences in natural history.

Dougal Dixon depicts a wild world populated by the evolved descendents of dinosaurs in The New Dinosaurs: An Alternate Evolution. Harry Harrison speculates that mammals would have evolved in those parts of the world too cold for cold-blooded reptiles in the West of Eden trilogy, leading to war between humans and a race of intelligent reptiles called the Yilane. The series starts with West of Eden. The comic Neozoic also has humans and dinosaurs living side-by-side after alien interference nudges the K-T asteroid off-course.

The survival of the dinosaur seems a favorite theme here, but there are a couple examples of more recent changes. A Different Flesh by Harry Turtledove depicts a world where Homo erectus rather than modern humans populated the Americas, allowing Ice Age mammals such as saber-tooth cats to survive into historic times. A group of teens finds a cave leading to a world where humans never evolved and Ice Age animals still roam in Steven Gould’s Wildside.

Fantasy worlds also belong in this category, given they are a type of alternate earth. The illustrated The Katurran Odyssey by Terryl Whitlatch and David Michael Wieger takes place in a world where both living and extinct mammals live side-by-side and can talk.

9. The Oddballs

There are some works that really don't fit into any of the above categories.

The novel Bone Wars and its sequel Two Tiny Claws, both by Brett Davis, involve early paleontologists encountering fossil-stealing aliens and holographic dinosaurs, so its prehistoric creatures are not real in the strictest sense.

Anonymous Rex by Eric Garcia is a detective story in which dinosaurs are not extinct, but living and hiding among us in fake human skins.

The comic Xenozoic Tales by Mark Schultz is set in a future where every species that has ever lived has been resurrected. Schultz has yet to explain the reason for his weird world, but he hints at genetic engineering on a massive scale.

Devolution -- that is, evolution in reverse -- is the explanation for the future return of a world-spanning Triassic swamp in The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard. The cause is a sudden flare-up of the sun, which floods Earth with heat and radiation.

There are certainly many other stories out there that bend the rules. If you know of any, feel free to e-mail me at prepulp(at)hotmail(dot)com

Bestiary by Robert Masello (2006)

2007-08-14T08:01:00.000-07:00

Paperback cover blurb

Release the beasts of Eden…

A manuscript illuminated with fantastical creatures said to have roamed the Garden of Eden, the bestiary has been handed down throughout the centuries by one of the Arab world’s most prominent families. Commissioned to restore it is the beautiful young art curator, Beth Cox.

But it is Beth’s husband, Carter – a young paleontologist making his own dire discoveries in Los Angeles’s famed La Brea Tar Pits – who will be led by the bestiary into a living, breathing menagerie of wonders… and horrors.

… and you open the Gates of Hell.

Now, myth and reality are about to collide. Carter wills step back into a world before time… and unleash the creatures that haunt our dreams and nightmares.

My thoughts

Imagine if the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park didn’t show up until the last 15 minutes of the movie, and for the two hours before that we got to watch the film’s unexciting characters go out on dates, take hikes in the woods, look after their kids and do other everyday things. The result would be Bestiary.

Bestiary is an interesting wreck of a novel because Masello has a great idea, but he squanders it like a sailor’s paycheck while at port. Beth Cox is assigned by her employer to preserve a previously unknown medieval bestiary titled The Beasts of Eden, which belongs to a wealthy family who has recently fled Iraq. Its pages are filled with life-like images of creatures from folklore, but, of course, if the animals were mythological, the novel wouldn’t be featured here. Her husband Carter, a paleontologist at the La Brea Tar Pits, is slowly drawn into the mystery after the owner of the manuscript realizes that Carter’s unique profession may be what he needs to keep his private collection of strange animals alive.

Bestiary fails on so many levels. It is a boring, over-bloated thriller, filled with plot threads that go nowhere and no sense of pacing or suspense. There are hints of a mystery involving Native American remains at the tar pits, a subplot involving an oddly aggressive pack of coyotes and the introduction of a supernatural being from Masello’s first novel, Vigil, but none of these have any relevance to the main plot, are themselves never resolved and only serve to stretch Bestiary out to a grotesque 450 pages. Even the bestiary of the title is ultimately unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

The characters themselves are bland. Most of the first 400 pages is simply spent following their mundane lives around, and the main plot about the exotic zoo largely takes a back seat until the final 50 pages when the creatures break free. I sincerely doubt most readers will make it that far.

Trivia

The novel shouldn't be confused with the 2007 novel The Bestiary by Nicholas Christopher, which also is about the quest for a long lost manuscript about fantastic animals.

The author's web site is www.robertmasello.com

Reviews

Doctor Who: The Last Dodo by Jacqueline Rayner (2007)

2007-08-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

Hardback cover blurb

The Doctor and Martha go in search of a real live dodo, and are transported by the TADRIS to the mysterious Museum of the Last Ones. There, in the Earth section, they discover every extinct creature up to the present day, all still alive and in suspended animation.

Preservation is the museum’s only job – collecting the last of every endangered species from all over the universe. But exhibits are going missing…

Can the Doctor solve the mystery before the museum’s curator adds the last of the Time Lords to her collection?

My thoughts

I’ve dropped enough hints throughout this blog for any readers to have guessed I’m a Doctor Who fan. For any Americans who have no idea what I’m talking about, Doctor Who is a long-running BBC science fiction series about a mysterious “Time Lord” called the Doctor who travels in a time machine that can take him to any point in time and space. He always takes along one or two human companions wherever he goes. Despite having a time machine, the Doctor has never bothered visiting the prehistoric past during the course of the series. There were a couple memorable episodes based on the idea that intelligent reptiles had evolved early in the planet’s history, those being “The Silurians” and “The Sea Devils”, but the show’s tiny budget pretty much kept dinosaurs off-screen. The one episode that did feature the reptiles, “Invasion of the Dinosaurs”, was a special effects disaster.

The Doctor finally stumbles across dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures in the novel The Last Dodo, but by accident. His most recent companion, Martha Jones, tells him she would like to see a dodo after noticing that the Doctor is using a dodo feather for a bookmark. He plops the feather into the console of his TARDIS – the time machine – intending to use its DNA to hone in on the species in the past and visit it. The TARDIS instead lands in a natural history museum the size of a planet, where the last dodo is kept in suspended animation along with every other animal species that has ever lived, from Earth and countless other worlds. (Extinct plants seemed to have been snubbed.) The two soon learn that several preserved earth species have gone missing, and they set out to solve the mystery. However, the Doctor faces a bigger threat when the curator, Eve, learns that he is the last of his species.

The first thing that should be said is the plot of The Last Dodo has an uncanny resemblance to a 1996 episode of Superman: The Animated Series, with an alien “preserver” trying to collect Superman because he is the last of his kind. I’m not into conspiracy theories, so I’m betting it is just a coincidence. And, anyway, a planet-sized natural history museum with living specimens is an interesting setting. Unfortunately, Rayner never realizes its full potential, and the plot is rather unwieldy and unfocused, as if the author couldn’t figure what the story should be about. Rayner makes too many leaps of logic to get the characters out of sticky situations, although this always has been a weakness of the TV series. Also, the main villain’s motivation and final defeat are ripped straight from “Ghost Light”, a TV episode where evolution was the central theme.

The characterization of the Doctor is spot-on, although readers not acquainted with the most recent incarnation of the TV show may be taken aback by his goofiness. Martha is a different matter. The novel alternates between Martha’s first-person point of view and a third-person point of view. Mostly the first-person point of view is used when Rayner wants to cover large spans of time in a few pages. But these passages, which read like the diary of a pop-savvy teen, don't fit the intelligent, doctoral student of the show. They remind me more of the Doctor’s former companion, Rose, and my suspicions were confirmed when I saw on Wikipedia that The Last Dodo was originally supposed to feature Rose. The author and publisher just threw in a few references to Martha and plugged in her name wherever Rose appeared.

The Last Dodo is now available as a small hardback, the only reason being so the BBC can get a few more dollars out of readers than if it issued a paperback. Still, I admit I wish more hardbacks came in its handy, easy-to-hold size rather than the backbreaking tomes lining shelves today.

Reviews

Deathbeast by David Gerrold (1978)

2007-08-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

Paperback cover blurb

TIMEBEAM TO DANGER

There were eight of them – six hunters and two official guides.

Their destination was Earth as it was a hundred million years ago, long before human dominion, when the great hot-blooded dinosaurs ruled supreme.

Each of the time travelers had a different motive. Some were on this strange safari for pay. Others were taking a psychological and sexual holiday from civilization. There were women who wanted to show themselves the equal to men – and men out to test and prove their manhood.

But whatever their drives and desires, their strengths and weaknesses, the ultimate horror was waiting for them all…

DEATHBEAST

My thoughts

The best thing Deathbeast has going for it is its simple and straightforward plot. A group of hunters from the future travel back to the Cretaceous Period to take down a Tyrannosaurus rex, but the animal proves more than they can handle. Unfortunately, Gerrold stumbles in about every other regard.

Deathbeast is a horror novel despite its science fiction trappings. It is Jaws with a T. rex instead of a shark. The 40-foot-long dinosaur has an unnatural ability to sneak up on unsuspecting people and gobble them up, and regardless of the amount of damage that the hunters inflict on the creature, it… just… won’t… die!

That said, Gerrold’s hunters are not particularly well-equipped to take out the beast. They carry laser guns, which because of some scientific mumbo-jumbo about water content in bodies, do little except really tick the creature off. We learn in the course of events that previous hunting expeditions also had failed to bring down a T. rex, so you wonder why they haven’t got the hint by now that laser guns don’t work. And, more bizarrely, at one point a character takes down a brontosaurus with a single laser rifle. There isn’t much logic about how the novel’s high-tech weaponry is supposed to work.

The book is notable for being one of the first examples of fiction to fully embrace the idea of warm-blooded dinosaurs, but Gerrold didn’t do much research beyond that. He places animals from different time periods in the same setting, so there are allosaurs and tyrannosaurs walking side by side. At one point he writes that dinosaurs had gone extinct only 10 million years before the emergence of humankind, although he later corrects himself.

The author also makes the mistake of filling Deathbeast with a group of thoroughly unlikable characters. The hero is a safari guide who cracks jokes while the people he is supposed to be protecting get slaughtered by the T. rex, and the rest of the cast are just as despicable. When one character, for example, is in an understandable state of shock after seeing her significant other get eaten, the rest of the group treats her with hostility. It’s hard to care about what is going to happen to any of these people. Gerrold’s error is one common to horror fiction: It’s not scary if the characters are only getting what they deserve.

The writing itself can be laughably melodramatic, particularly anytime the “deathbeast” of the title shows up. Gerrold sure likes his dashes– his triple periods… and his exclamation marks! A little subtlety in the writing and a cast of humane characters would’ve gone a long way toward improving Deathbeast.

Trivia

Gerrold is a science fiction writer who may be best known for writing the famous Star Trek episode, “The Trouble with Tribbles.”

Of interest to readers of this site, Gerrold also was the story editor for the first season of the original Land of the Lost, a Saturday morning children’s show about a family trapped in a prehistoric valley. The show, during its first two seasons, was quite good, showing much more maturity in its stories and characterizations than most children’s programming.

The author’s web site is www.gerrold.com

Reviews

None

Neozoic #1 by Paul Ens et al. (2007)

2007-08-10T21:05:00.000-07:00

Neozoic opens with the ultimate example of collateral damage.

Sixty-five million years ago, an alien ship is cruising in the general vicinity of Jupiter when the crew’s unseen opponents blast the vessel to smithereens. One of the pieces strikes a passing asteroid, nudging it off course by a hair. This is the rock that, in our timeline, killed the dinosaurs. In Neozoic, the asteroid was deflected just enough so that it strikes the moon instead, taking out a sizable chunk of the satellite in the process.

The dinosaurs never go extinct as a result, leading to a modern-day world of besieged humans, giant T. rexes and – if the cover is any indication – women with two right hands.

Neozoic is an upcoming title from the new comic company, Red 5 Comics. It’s written by Paul Ens, with pencils by J. Korim and colors by Jessie Lam. And to skip to the end, yes, I thoroughly enjoyed it, although as a first issue, it’s really only a tease of what’s hopefully to come.

Ens works with an interesting premise: Instead of having dinosaurs continue to dominate the mammals after their aborted extinction, the two groups have been engaged in 65 million years of evolutionary competition. Humans have evolved and are the same as we know them, so are horses. Wolves, however, have grown to gigantic sizes to prey on the dinosaurs. The terrible reptiles themselves are pretty much the same ones we know from the fossil record. A T. rex plays a central role in the first issue but is depicted as much larger than the real thing, more for dramatic effect than scientific speculation about what the species would have evolved into. Neozoic isn’t a hard-science take on the alternate world theme, but rather a fantasy with dinosaurs substituting for dragons.

The main problem with the first issue of Neozoic is that, as a first issue, it needs to provide a lot of backstory about its universe in a short two-dozen-or-so pages. Add on top of that the fact the comic has a rather large cast of characters. Ens and his team make the smart decision of keeping the opening story fairly simple so the reader can absorb all the new information: A young architect is working on a project outside the walled city on Monanti, much to the disdain of a squad captain from the famous Predator Defense League, whose mission is to defend the city’s population from the predators beyond its walls. Needless to say, the league will have to put its skills to use, and before the end there are hints of a romantic subplot, political intrigue and a mystery involving the dinosaurs.

The art by Korim is highly stylized, eschewing the ultra-realism of, say, Mark Schultz for a more cartoon-like look. For the most part it is excellent, and his jungle environments in particular stand out. There are a couple anatomical irregularities with the humans, though. I couldn’t get over the oddly-formed round gut on one character, and readers both here and elsewhere have pointed out that the female on the cover has two right hands. I strained my eyes looking through the comic to see whether that was some strange feature of the character or just a mistake, but if she is supposed to have two right hands, I didn’t see any evidence of it.

Also a shout out to Lam, whose colors are appropriately muted for the setting and manage to capture the hazy atmosphere of the outdoors.

It’s hard to give a final word on Neozoic because this is only the first issue of what could be a long-lived series, but I like what I see. The writing shows promise, and the art is more than satisfactory. This is not a comic for people who insist that the science in their fiction be as accurate as humanly possible, but if you get a kick out of watching a hot chick take down a T. rex with nothing more than a sword and a gauntlet that shoots acid -- à la Buffy the Vampire Slayer with dinosaurs -- this title is for you. I’m definitely interested in seeing where this one is going.

The comic should be in stores in October but is now available for pre-order. You can order using a PDF order form or through this web site.

Reviews

Xtnct: A dinosaur comic from Doctor Who writer Paul Cornell

2007-08-10T20:34:00.000-07:00

Lately you would be forgiven thinking this site was all about dinosaurs in comics. Don't get me wrong, I love comics, it's just that there seems to be more news in the comic world lately than in the world of novels.

Anyway, I was looking up information about Doctor Who writer Paul Cornell and his involvement in the next season of Primeval when I stumbled across his blog. And lo and behold, right there on the front page was an advertisement for his new dinosaur graphic novel, Xtnct.

Here is the description from the publisher's web site.

EARTH, THE FAR FUTURE. ONLY A FEW HUNDRED HUMANS SURVIVE AND THEY WAGE A WAR AGAINST THEMSELVES, using genetically engineered plants and animals. Homo sapiens are on their way out and it looks like they’re taking the planet with them.

In the chaos a crack troop of GM dinosaurs are abandoned by their creator. Rex, Forest, Aviatrix, Trike and Raptor swear their revenge on ‘Father’ and all humanity. Their journey takes them across a dying planet, seeking out the remaining human enclaves and making them… XTNCT!

Written by acclaimed Doctor Who and Robin Hood script writer Paul Cornell and featuring the striking art of D’Israeli (Scarlet Traces) this unique collection comes complete with an introduction by the author and a selection of sketches from the artist.

Sadly, it appears the graphic novel is only available in Britain. Hopefully it will be exported across the pond in the near future.

Neozoic preview

2007-08-08T21:50:00.000-07:00

The good folks at Red 5 Comics have sent me a preview of their upcoming dinosaur comic, Neozoic, which they've asked me to share. You can click on each of the following images for a larger picture.

Neozoic is set on an alternate earth where the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs missed, allowing humans and dinosaurs to evolve side-by-side. It's an uneasy existence, with a group of skilled hunters known as the Predator Defense League charged with protecting the citizens of the walled city Monanti against very hungry saurian predators.

The comic is the creation of Paul Ens, with pencils by J. Korim and colors by Jessie Lam.

Neozoic will be on shelves in October. Red 5 Comics also has two other titles coming out, Atomic Robo and Abyss.

I'll have a review of the first issue of Neozoic up within a couple days. (It's been a long day today -- I'm basically sleep-typing this.) Red 5 Comics is trying to get the word out to comic shops, so they've created a PDF order form readers can use to grab a copy of the title. You can also order the comics here.

Tommysaurus Rex by Doug TenNapel (2004)

2007-08-08T20:17:00.000-07:00

Paperback cover blurb

From the creator of Creature Tech comes a story about a boy and his T-rex. Ely is an everyboy trying to cope with the loss of his dog Tommy. When he finds a live, 40-foot Tyrannosaurus Rex trapped in a cave behind his grandfather’s house, Ely embarks on an adventure to tame this seemingly friendly giant, convince the town his new pet isn’t a threat and keep his dinosaur safe from the jealous town bully. Ely discovers what it takes to be a man… and what it costs.

My thoughts

Who knew a story about a boy and his T. rex could be touching?

Yes, touching.

Tommysaurus Rex is a graphic novel about a young boy, Ely, who goes to spend the summer with his grandfather after his dog gets hit by a car. While fleeing a bully, Ely finds a cave with a living T. rex inside it. The dinosaur doesn’t gobble him up, or else this would be a different story. Instead, it behaves like his dead pet dog, Tommy, playing fetch and chasing cats. Soon the whole town knows about the dinosaur and it becomes a media celebrity. But as often the case, good times rarely last forever.

TenNapel weaves a sad-but-ultimately-uplifting tale in Tommysaurus Rex, which shows a surprising amount of sophistication for what is essentially a retelling of countless Disney tearjerkers, substituting a dinosaur for a dog. Granted, TenNapel’s vision of childhood is a little too Lassie and he overdoes it on the poop jokes, but the story has a good sense of humor and it is beautifully illustrated with cartoonish, black-and-white panels. What really raises it above most stories of its kind is the sympathetic portrayal of the bully – in fact, I would argue that Tommysaurus Rex is his story, although he is not the main character. The other characters are a bit stereotypical, but they’re likable.

The graphic novel weighs in at only a little more than 100 pages, so you’ll be able to finish it in under an hour. Also, it’s a good gift for kids, particularly if you want to introduce them to comics. Just make sure to keep a box of tissues handy.

Trivia

TenNapel is an artist and animator whose best-known creation is the video-game hero Earthworm Jim. You can check out his web site here.

Ain’t It Cool News reported back in 2004 that Universal Pictures has acquired the rights to turn Tommysaurus Rex into a feature film. I haven’t heard any news since concerning the status of the film.

Reviews

Xenozoic Tales (a.k.a. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs) by Mark Schultz (1986 onward)

2007-08-06T13:00:00.000-07:00

I have bad news: The world ended 11 years ago. It’s just that no one has told you yet.

That, at least, is the history of the world according to the comic book series Xenozoic Tales. First published in 1986, it postulated that by the then-future year of 1996, a cataclysmic series of geologic upheavals would begin to change the surface of the earth. Things get so bad that by 2020 the planet is no longer habitable and most of the human race is extinguished, along with the rest of life. A few groups of humans, scattered here and there, retreat to underground bunkers in a desperate attempt to survive. When they emerge 500 years later, instead of finding a wasteland, they find a lush ecosystem where every species that has ever walked the planet has been resurrected, from trilobites to mammoths. Also, there’s a second moon. A new geologic era has begun – the Xenozoic Age.

Xenozoic Tales is better known by its nickname, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, and there are plenty of both throughout its pages. Mark Schultz published 14 issues of the comic before he stopped, mid-story, in 1996. Don’t let that turn you off though. Even half-finished, Xenozoic Tales remains the best dinosaur comic ever published, and in my view, one of the best adventure comics ever to appear.

The series owes a lot to the adventure comics of the 1940s and 1950s, and in early issues Schultz is clearly trying to imitate their art style. (EC Comics is often cited as his source of inspiration.) Set on the transmogrified east coast of North America, the story centers around Jack “Cadillac” Tenric, who is an odd cross between an auto mechanic and a forest ranger.

Tenric uses his skills to rebuild 20^th century machinery – particularly Cadillacs – and to protect the surrounding wildlife from the predations of human poachers. Not much is known about the cataclysm that changed the world other than it was brought about by humanity’s mistreatment of the environment, and Tenric’s job is to make sure his “tribe” doesn’t repeat those past mistakes.

Trouble comes in the form of the beautiful Hannah Dundee, an ambassador from the neighboring city-state of Wassoon. The dangerous environment of the Xenozoic Age makes communication between the surviving remnants of humanity difficult, and while she is welcomed, the leaders of Tenrec’s tribe are suspicious about Dundee’s motives.

Tenric and Dundee have a rocky relationship, with Tenric a little too hotheaded for his own good and Dundee too secretive about her real mission among his people, but there is sexual tension between the two from the start. Together they explore the Xenozoic’s mysteries: What exactly caused the cataclysm? How did the strange ecosystem come to be? And who are the Grith?

Xenozoic Tales is a black-and-white comic that shows in the world of comics, color can be overrated. Schultz’s art style evolves over the series’ 14 issues, starting from simple-but-promising drawings in the first few issues to a fully organic and exquisitely detailed style by the last issues. His dinosaurs also evolve over the course of the comic. Science-literate readers will likely be disappointed with the tail-dragging saurians appearing in the first issues, but they will notice that in later issues his dinosaurs catch up to modern thinking, yet retain a Charles R. Knight-vibe at the same time. Steve Stiles supplies the art for the short stories appearing at the end of each issue that flesh out the invented world, but his own style is rather clunky compared to Schultz’s work.

The stories themselves are well-told, with better-than-average characterization and plenty of action. My main complaint with the series is that it ends mid-story, with no resolution to the mysteries it raises. Schultz hasn’t indicated when – or even if – he plans to finish what he started.

Don’t let that stop you. If you see this comic, get it. Sadly, it can be hard to find. Dark Horse Comics published the entire series in two volumes a few years ago, but they quickly sold out and now the individual volumes rarely sell for less than $70 each. Cross your fingers and hope that someday Dark Horse decides reprint the comic.

Trivia

Xenozoic Tales, under the Cadillacs and Dinosaurs name, has enjoyed a good amount of marketing success. It was turned into a short-lived – and, unfortunately, a dumbed-down – Saturday morning cartoon; a fun beat-‘em-up arcade game; and a Sega CD full-motion video game. (You can watch a video of the open titles for the cartoon here; and the promotional video for the CD game here.)

Topps released a short-lived series of Cadillacs and Dinosaurs comics in 1994 that were a tie-in with the TV show. These are not the original comics.

A short biography of Mark Schultz is available here.

Reviews

Return to Eden by Harry Harrison (1988)

2007-08-06T05:42:00.000-07:00

Note: This is the final book of the West of Eden trilogy, starting with West of Eden. Spoilers ahead if you haven’t read the first book, reviewed below.

Paperback cover blurb

In West of Eden and Winter in Eden, master novelist Harry Harrison broke new ground with his most ambitious project to date. He brought to vivid life the world as it might have been, where dinosaurs survived, where their intelligent descendants, the Yilane, challenged humans for mastery of the Earth, and where the human Kerrick, a young hunter of the Tanu tribe, grew among the dinosaurs and rose to become their most feared enemy. Working in collaboration with an international team of scientific experts, Harrison created a believable, richly detailed world rivaling Frank Herbert’s Dune and Jean Auels’s The Clan of the Cave Bear in the majesty of its scope and conception.

Now, in Return to Eden, Harrison brings the epic trilogy to a stunning conclusion. After Kerrick rescues his people from the warlike Yilane, they find a safe haven on an island and there begin to rebuild their shattered lives. But with fierce predators stalking the forests, how long can these unarmed human outcasts hope to survive? The small band of humans have no choice but to confront their fate head on. And, of course, Kerrick cannot forget Viante, his implacable Yilane enemy. She’s been cast out from her kind, under sentence of death, but how long will her banishment last? For her strange attraction to Kerrick has turned into a hatred even more powerful than her instincts – an obsession that compels her to hunt down Kerrick and kill him.

My thoughts

Return to Eden is the “threequel” that can be easily skipped without any worries that you have left the story arc started in West of Eden incomplete. Most of the plot threads are resolved in the second book of the series, Winter in Eden. The result is the characters in Return to Eden have nothing to do, and the book lacks any real plot, instead reading like a grossly bloated epilogue of the first two novels. Kerrick, having made the world safe for humanity, now focuses on raising his family and finding a home for his tribe. The Daughters of Life slowly build their peaceful society in the Amazon. And Viante, now an outcast, plots her revenge. These separate storylines are drawn out over a tedious 400 pages, coming together in the end in a whopping anticlimax.

By now the alternate world of the Yilane has lost its charm, and the lack of any real story makes this book a difficult one to read through to the end. The science, which was dated when West of Eden was first published six years previously, was even more dated when Return to Eden hit bookstores. And Harrison seems to have lost interest in the setting he created. The novel feels like it was written mainly to fulfill a contractual obligation to the publisher to turn out a trilogy. Unless you have a burning desire to learn about the ultimate fates of many of the characters to the first two books, there is no reason to pick up Return to Eden.

Trivia

The entire trilogy was recently republished, although I’ve never had any trouble finding the original books in used bookstores.

The author’s web site is www.harryharrison.com

Return in Eden has a short Wikipedia entry.

Reviews

The Dedly Blog (more an overview of the trilogy than Return to Eden)

Winter in Eden by Harry Harrison (1986)

2007-08-05T07:45:00.000-07:00

Note: This is the second book of the West of Eden trilogy, starting with West of Eden. Spoilers ahead if you haven’t read the first book, reviewed below.

Paperback cover blurb

TWO BOLD CULTURES STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL…

WINTER IN EDEN

Harry Harrison, an acknowledged master of imaginative fiction, broke new ground in West of Eden. He brought to vivid life the world as it might have been, where dinosaurs survived, where their intelligent descendants challenged humans for mastery of Earth, where a young hunter named Kerrick grew among the dinosaurs and rose to become their most feared enemy.

Now, the awesome saga continues in Winter in Eden… A new ice age threatens Earth. Facing extinction, the dinosaurs must employ their mastery of biology to swiftly reconquer human territory. Desperately, Kerrick launches an arduous quest to rally a final defense for humankind. With his beloved wife and young son, he heads north to the land of whale hunters, east into the enemy’s stronghold, and south to a fateful reckoning with destiny.

Not since Dune has there been a work of such majestic scope and conception – a monumental epic of passion, courage and triumph.

My thoughts

Winter in Eden starts almost immediately after the events of the first book, with the humans celebrating their victory in driving the Yilane from their shores. Kerrick, however, is troubled with the knowledge that it will be a short-lived celebration. The Yilane will return in full force, and despite their initial success, the Stone Age humans still are no match for the technologically superior reptiles. So Kerrick takes off on a journey to the Yialne homeland, hoping to find some way of single-handedly turning back their invasion.

Meanwhile, the Yilane Vinate is plotting her revenge against Kerrick, and hopes to lead the invasion force that will reclaim the lost territories. And while all this is happening, a group of peace-loving Yilane flee to the Amazon basin, where they seek to found a society radically different from that of the rest of their xenophobic species. Once there, they make a surprising discovery.

Winter in Eden is an entertaining sequel that nonetheless suffers from some of the “been there, done that” syndrome that plagues most sequels. This time, however, the story lets the reader to explore a larger portion of the world Harrison created, allowing the exotic setting to remain fresh. The story itself isn’t as well-paced as the one in the first book, so even though Winter in Eden is 100 pages shorter, it feels like a longer read. And the author had to once again rely on a dues ex machina ending to resolve the desperate situation he put his humans in. Many of the problems with the science in the first book remain in the sequel, although Harrison does introduce some interesting twists in evolution this time around.

Nitpicking aside, Winter in Eden remains a worthy follow-up to West of Eden. Most of the plot threads started in the first book are resolved in the sequel, so even if you never read the third book in the trilogy, you won’t be left feeling the story is incomplete.

Trivia

The entire trilogy was recently republished, although I’ve never had any trouble finding the original books in used bookstores.

The author’s web site is www.harryharrison.com

Winter in Eden has a short Wikipedia entry.

Reviews

None

Second series of British "Primeval" now filming

2007-08-04T21:51:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if the British realize how good they have it TV-wise. They have Doctor Who, while we Americans are stuck with the dull-yet-bizarrely-popular Lost. They have the excellent BBC documentaries while we have the Discovery Channel, which is rapidly dumbing down. And they have a show about a team of scientists battling prehistoric creatures.

In truth, the first series of ITV's Primeval left me with mixed feelings when it aired earlier this year. The special effects were excellent, but the writing was rather amateurish and the paleontological aspects were often downplayed. Still, it showed a lot of promise, and after its short six-episode run, I was left wanting more. Now it appears that filming for Series Two is already underway, with seven episodes to air in 2008.

The series hasn't aired in the U.S. yet, so for any Americans who don't know what I'm talking about, here's the plot description from Wikipedia:

The series follows a team of scientists who investigate anomalies in time and deal with the ancient creatures that come through, although they are not always prehistoric. The team of five is led by Professor Nick Cutter, a palaeontologist determined to find his wife who disappeared while investigating an anomaly in the Forest of Dean, England, eight years previously.

One decision the producers made in Series One was not to feature any dinosaurs or really any recognizable creatures other than a pterodactyl and a few dodos. I thought it was an interesting decision, given there are plenty of other prehistoric animals that are rarely featured in television or movies, but probably not the wisest one since the majority of the viewing public wants to see dinosaurs. Anyway, we now know that an episode in the upcoming series will feature velociraptors.

You can check out Primeval on the official web site. There also is a web site for the lead actor that is updated pretty regularly with news about the show.

West of Eden by Harry Harrison (1984)

2007-08-04T21:17:00.000-07:00

Paperback cover blurb

IMAGINE THE WORLD AS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN…

THE WORLD WEST OF EDEN

From a master of imaginative storytelling comes an epic tale of the world as it might have been, a world were the age of dinosaurs never ended, and their descendants clashed with a clan of humans in a tragic war for survival.

It is the tale of Kerrick, a young hunter who grows to manhood among the dinosaurs, escaping at last to rejoin his own kind. His knowledge of their strange customs makes him the humans’ leader, the dinosaurs’ most feared enemy.

My thoughts

West of Eden is the start of a trilogy of novels set on an alternate earth where the dinosaurs never went extinct and have survived to the modern day. The asteroid (or comet) that killed off the great reptiles missed entirely, so mammals never got the chance to take over. One group of reptiles, the mosasaurs, have evolved into the intelligent but cold-blooded Yilane. However, humans also have evolved in North America, where the chilly climate has allowed mammals to out-compete the cold-blooded dinosaurs of Harrison’s world. A coming ice age is forcing the Yilane to spread out to find new territory, resulting in a violent clash between the two species.

West of Eden is essentially a more literary take on One Million Years B.C., although Harrison would probably loathe hearing it described it as such. Nonetheless, through the genre of alternate history, he managed to figure out a way to place dinosaurs and cavemen side-by-side and still keep some measure of plausibility in the story (more on that in a bit). The plot isn’t as original as the setting, but it serves its purpose. Kerrick, the main character, is captured by the Yilane as a small boy after the intelligent reptiles wipe out his tribe. He grows up among them, learning their language, their customs and some of their technology, before he is rescued by the leader of another human tribe. The Yilane want to exterminate the humans, seeing them as little more than vermin. Only Kerrick’s special knowledge of the reptiles will be able to save the human race.

What works best about the novel is the Yilane. Harrison spent a great deal of time crafting the species and actually sought out the help of two scientists in designing their biology and their language. Females are dominant, with the males giving birth. Their entire society is defined by their cold-blooded physiologies: They have no concept of metallurgy, because their bodies can’t stand the heat of an open flame, so their civilization is instead based on millions of years of selective breeding and genetic manipulation of other organisms. They make fascinating villains. Still, from a purely scientific point of view, it should be pointed out that the Yilane are impossible given it takes a warm-blooded metabolism to support human-like intelligence. And the species seems a little too alien for anything that could have evolved on earth. Why Harrison chose to have them descend from mosasaurs rather than a land-dwelling dinosaur is a mystery to me.

Given the effort he put into his villains, it’s too bad Harrison didn’t spend any time fleshing out the rest of his alternate world. Instead of having dinosaurs evolve in new and weird forms after 65 million years of evolution, he just plops in creatures known from the fossil record, even if they were already extinct by the time the asteroid came crashing down. The same is true for the mammals, which have evolved into their ice age forms rather than into forms fitting the alien environments they live in. The dinosaurs of Harrison’s world also are depicted as sluggish and cold-blooded despite the fact that other science fiction writers had already embraced more modern theories about active dinosaurs by the time the author was penning West of Eden. Harrison shows a remarkable disinterest in paleontology given the subject matter of the novel, and I wouldn’t be surprised if most of his research of the science came from reading a couple children’s books about dinosaurs.

That said, West of Eden still works as an old-fashioned adventure story with a good sense of wonder. The Yilane are appropriately evil (although they do have good individuals), and it’s easy to sympathize with the Stone Age humans who are trying to avoid genocide at the hands of a technologically superior race. The only let down story-wise is the deus ex machina ending. It’s a book worth reading, even if more science-literate readers will be left wishing Harrison had used a little more imagination in crafting his world.

Trivia

West of Eden was republished in 2004, although I’ve never had any trouble finding copies of the book in used-book stores.

The author’s web site is www.harryharrison.com

West of Eden has a Wikipedia entry.

Reviews

The only ones I can find spoil the ending, so I'm not linking to them.

The Ultimate Dinosaur, edited by Byron Preiss and Robert Silverberg (1992)

2007-08-02T21:40:00.001-07:00

Hardback cover blurb

It is twilight in the forest. Densely packed cycads and fir trees block out the waning sun, casting deep shadows on the forest floor.

A tiny mammal is busily overturning ground litter, looking for an insect meal. Its large eyes are alert for any movement. Suddenly, there is a rustle of leaves. A blurred shadow follows. The creature panics, and makes a run for its subterranean liar. But before it can enter, powerful claws pin it to the ground. The chase is over.

The winner is a hundred-foot dinosaur: a swift, agile night-hunter, resembling a large flightless bird. The time is 80 million years ago, and the age of dinosaurs is in full flower.

The Ultimate Dinosaur is a unique collaboration that vividly recreates this prehistoric world in both scientific essays and short fiction, combing the talents of leading paleontologists, visionary writers, and dinosaur illustrators.

The essays examine discoveries that are transforming the field of paleontology right now: Dinosaur fossils on the continent of Antarctica; pack hunting and cooperation among ferocious predators; evidence of seasonal migrations of herds of dinosaurs traveling thousands of miles to ancestral nesting grounds. These are just a few of the exciting new theories described in these pages.

In the short stories that follow each essay, highly imaginative fiction breathes life into scientific theory. In one story we ride along on a wild and woolly time-travel safari to go trophy-hunting for dinosaurs. In another, we visit a future wildlife park filed with living dinosaurs created from genetic material discovered on expedition. Contributors include award-winning writers Ray Bradbury, Harry Harrison, Gregory Benford and co-editor Robert Silverberg.

Among the experts contributing to this project are scientists from around the world: Dr. Phillip Currie, head of dinosaur research for the Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Alberta, Canada; Dr. Sankar Chatterjee, professor of geosciences at Texas Tech University; and Dr. Ralph Molnar, paleontologist at the Queensland Musuem, Australia. The science editor for The Ultimate Dinosaur is Dr. Peter Dodson of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine.

The illustrations for the science essays help visualize the incredible new theories of dinosaur life and behavior. They are executed by much-lauded artists such as Doug Henderson, whose work has appeared in nation touring exhibits of prehistoric life, and William G. Stout, whose paintings have been exhibited in the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.

Accompanying the fiction are paintings from such acclaimed artists as Wayne D. Barlowe, illustrator of Expedition, and William Parsons of the Buffalo Museum of Science.

Through science, fiction, and art, The Ultimate Dinosaur presents the age of dinosaurs in an exciting new way.

My thoughts

The Ultimate Dinosaur attempts to be the dinosaur book to end all dinosaur books, and it almost succeeds. Some of the heavyweights of dinosaur paleontology and illustration contributed to the book, and it shows in the lush production values. Unfortunately, the editors didn’t do as good a job in picking the fiction, which is a mixed bag of stories.

Among the highlights are Michael Bishop’s “Herding with the Hadrosaurs”, about two boys growing up with a herd of Corythosaurs in the wilds of Cretaceous North America; L. Sprague de Camp’s “Crocamander Quest”, a sexist-but-still-funny Reginald Rivers story; Robert Silverberg’s “Hunters in the Forest”, about a guy who tries to prove his manhood by hunting dinosaurs; Poul Anderson’s “Unnatural Enemy”, the tale of a plesiosaur in the prehistoric seas; and Harry Harrison’s “Dawn of the Endless Night”, a story involving the Yilane, the intelligent reptiles from the author’s West of Eden series.

The rest of the stories are only so-so, with a couple real turkeys. Dave Wolverton’s “Siren Song at Midnight” really doesn’t involve dinosaurs at all, while Barry Malzberg’s “Major League Triceratops” comes across as surprisingly contemptuous against the book’s target audience. The editors also chose a lesser-known Ray Bradbury story instead of “The Fog Horn” or “A Sound of Thunder”, the two dinosaur stories he is best known for. Perhaps they felt the two had been overused, but the story they picked -- “Besides a Dinosaur, Whatta Ya Wanna Be When You Grow Up?” -- is subpar for Bradbury.

Luckily, the very informative non-fiction essays more than make up for uneven fiction. There also is plenty of eye-candy in the form of gorgeous illustrations peppered throughout the book. The Ultimate Dinosaur is worth a look.

Stories/Essays

“Kingdom of the Titans” by Robert Silverberg
“Dinosaurs for Adults” by Peter Dodson
“The Dawn of the Age of Dinosaurs” by Sankar Chatterjee
“Crocamander Quest” by L. Sprague de Camp
“The First Dinosaurs” by Catherine Forster
“The Feynman Solution” by Charles Sheffield
“The Dinosaur Radiations” by Teresa Maryanska
“Siren Song at Midnight” by Dave Wolverton
“The Jurassic Period: A Time of Great Change” by David Gillette
“Rhea’s Time” by Paul Preuss
“The Age of Giants” by Anthony Fiorillo
“Shakers of the Earth” by Gregory Benford
“Dinosaur Predators” by Halszka Osmolska
“Hunters in the Forest” by Robert Silverberg
“The Cretaceous Dinosaurs” by Don Lessem
“In the Late Cretaceous” by Connie Willis
“Major League Triceratops” by Barry Malzberg
“Migrating Dinosaurs” by Phillip J. Currie
“Herding with the Hadrosaurs” by Michael Bishop
“The Behavior of Predatory Dinosaurs” by Ralph Molnar
“Besides a Dinosaur, Whatta Ya Wanna Be When You Grow Up?" By Ray Bradbury
“Monsters of the Sea and Air” by Kenneth Carpenter
“Unnatural Enemy” by Poul Anderson
“Becoming a Modern World” by William Gallagher
“Dawn of the Endless Night” by Harry Harrison
“Myths, Theories, and Facts of Dinosaur Extinction” by David J. Archibald
“The Bone Wars: Cope vs. Marsh” by Ronald Rainger
“The Green Buffalo” by Harry Turtledove

Reviews

None

Raptor Red by Robert T. Bakker (1995)

2007-08-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

Hardback cover blurb

A pair of fierce but beautiful eyes looks out from the dull green undergrowth. The eyes follow every movement in the great herd of plant-eating dinosaurs that mills around the open meadows, moving back and forth with the rapid scanning of a hunter who is thinking about everything she sees. She is an intelligent killer…

So begins one of the most extraordinary novels you will ever read. The time is 120 million years ago, the place is the plains of prehistoric Utah, and the eyes belong to one of the most unforgettable heroines you will ever meet. Her name is Raptor Red, and she is a female Utahraptor dinosaur.

Raptor Red’s tale begins with tragedy. She and her mate are stalking prey, a giant astrodon feeding in a nearby meadow. They approach silently and attack with deadly force. But at the moment of triumph, something goes terribly wrong and Raptor Red’s mate is killed. It is the beginning of a yearlong odyssey of survival, a thrilling story told by leading paleontologist Robert T. Bakker. Now, in Raptor Red, he dramatizes his revolutionary theories in a one-of-a-kind tale.

Raptor Red strikes out on her own, and before long she has rejoined her sister’s clan. Together they will hunt and devour iguanodons, brave a monstrous storm and the ensuing flash flood, migrate toward the western ocean to escape powerful predators, and eventually move north to a snowy mountain region in a desperate attempt to escape the threat of the deadly acrocanthosaurs.

At the same time, Raptor Red must obey nature’s command to find a new mate. But when a bold and graceful young male presents himself, she is stymied by her conflicting loyalties to her sister’s brood and her own powerful impulses to mate and produce chicks of her own. On a snowy mountaintop in the frozen north, Raptor Red’s search for a new home and a new mate will culminate in a thrilling climax.

Painting a rich and colorful picture of her lush, exotic prehistoric world, the novel is convincingly told from within Raptor Red’s mind, revealing the powerful instincts and Darwinian forces that shape her remarkable consciousness. Her story is filled with a unique cast of characters that includes a white pterodactyl, a giant prehistoric crocodile, a small furry aegialodon, hulking astrodons, and an incredible range of other exotic creatures.

Raptor Red is a completely unique and utterly compelling story of a year in the life of a dinosaur – and is sure to be one of the most talked-about books of the year.

My thoughts

The above cover blurb pretty much gives away the entire plot of the book, so there really isn’t any need to summarize it again. Raptor Red is told from the point of view of a female Utahraptor as she struggles to survive in her early Cretaceous world. Bakker, a famous paleontologist, is aiming for realism so this isn’t Watership Down with talking dinosaurs instead of rabbits. His animals behave more or less like the real thing, although Raptor Red herself comes across as a bit too smart and emotional at times.

One result of Bakker’s approach is that Raptor Red’s story is pretty simple as far as novels go. There are no plot twists or any attempts at grand themes. It’s simply a tale about an animal living in her environment. The exotic nature of the setting keeps the novel from becoming trite after the first few chapters, and Bakker’s quirky sense of humor comes across in several passages.

More than anything, Raptor Red serves as a vehicle for Bakker to give science lessons in a user-friendly format. The paleontologist is well-known for championing the idea of active, warm-blooded dinosaurs. It probably should come as no surprise then that the very first illustration in the novel features Raptor Red on a snowy mountainside, a place you wouldn’t find cold-blooded reptiles. Many of Bakker’s more radical theories are far from universally accepted, but other than in a few places, he doesn’t really delve into them.

Chances are you will still find Raptor Red in the science fiction section of your local bookstore, the paperback sporting a holographic cover. The book has had a remarkable shelf life for a work of paleofiction. It’s worth picking up a copy if you’re a fan of dinosaurs.

Trivia

There seemed to be a time, not long ago, when every TV dinosaur documentary had to feature at least one interview with Bakker. He is instantly recognizable with his beat-up cowboy hat and his long hair and beard. He also served as the inspiration for the character of Dr. Robert Burke in the movie The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Burke meets a rather nasty end in the jaws of a T. rex in the film.

The Utahraptor was co-discovered by paleontologist James Kirkland, who has also authored a work of dinosaur fiction. He co-wrote the Star Trek novel First Frontier with Diane Carey.

Reviews

Christian Wiesgerber
Matt Adam Ingber
New York Times (also reviews Crichton's The Lost World)

Dinosaurs in Fantastic Fiction by Allen A. Debus (2006)

2007-07-30T21:50:00.000-07:00

Hardback cover blurb

From the first illustrated edition of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth in 1867, dinosaurs and prehistory have fascinated readers. Writers would time and again come back to dinosaurs as an element of fantastic fiction, often using these creatures – through the venue of the written word – to reflect the world of the writers’ own time.

This literary survey examines how paleoliterature originated, developed and matured to the present day. It follows historical trends on the crafting of classic dinosaurs, investigating the enlivened figurative and metaphoric meaning of fictional dinosaurs and related prehistoria. Also discussed are the ways in which dinosaur fiction mirrors contemporary ideas about subjects such as geology, the Cold War, environmentalism, time travel, evolution and bioengineering.

Featured authors include Ray Bradbury, H.G. Wells, and Poul Anderson, among others. In select cases, the novelizations of movie scripts are also utilized. An appendix provides brief summaries of deserving dinosaur texts.

My thoughts

Dinosaurs in Fantastic Fiction is a more thorough overview of paleofiction than I thought it would be when I first picked it up. Despite my love for the subject, it took me some time to get around to reading the book – the $55 cover price is a big disincentive for those of us on a budget. There’s not enough material in its scant 220 pages to justify the high price, but lovers of the genre won’t be disappointed either.

Debus starts at the very beginning, scrounging up a few obscure 19^th century poems that marked the first appearance of ancient creatures in fiction. Still, the first true work of paleofiction was Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, in which the protagonists find a huge cavern populated with prehistoric beasts – although, ironically, no dinosaurs, since they hadn’t captured the public’s imagination yet. Debus makes a convincing argument about how Verne’s work was really a trip backward through time, at least from the perspective of how Victorian-era scientists viewed prehistory.

He then moves on to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, which, in my mind, is the true granddaddy of the subgenre simply because it created many of the clichés later writers would use in their stories. He travels at warp speed through the 20^th century, moving from dinosaurs in the pulp era to the tie-ins with B-cinema to Jurassic Park, before ending with Dinotopia and other examples of how writers have started portraying dinosaurs more like humans than animals. There also is a handy, but spoiler-heavy, appendix at the end of novels and short stories concerning prehistoric creatures.

As I've already stated, Dinosaurs in Fantastic Fiction does a pretty good job encompassing the subgenre given its varied and often hard-to-find titles. More than a few works only get the briefest of mentions, but Debus covers enough of them that the book rarely feels incomplete, and his observations about the trends in paleofiction are pretty much spot on. The author does cheat a little in the middle and starts delving into dinosaurs in cinema, which, unlike prehistoric fiction, has been covered extensively by other writers. Also, some of his writing comes dangerously close to imitating postmodern literary criticism, meaning that it is stylistically dense but intellectually hollow. These are only small complaints, however.

Reviews

Neozoic: A new dinosaur comic coming in October

2007-07-24T16:16:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since we've had a dinosaur comic hit stores, but now it looks like the drought is almost over. A new title, Neozoic, is coming in October from Red 5 Comics. Here is a summary of the plot from the publisher:

In NEOZOIC, a debut title from publisher Red 5 Comics, there’s nothing special about an 80-foot-long brachiosaurus lumbering past a group of human travelers. It’s been going on for millions of years.

However, if those same humans hear the blood-thirty roars of a T-Rex, then it’s time to call the professional super-hunters of the Predator Defense League. Armed only with swords, arrows, warrior cunning, ruthless precision and a lifetime of training, these exceptionally skilled athletes keep the citizens of the walled city of Monanti from becoming a dinosaur’s breakfast...

Unlike most dinosaur-themed fiction, where ill-prepared and unsuspecting modern-day humans are thrust together with pre-historic beasts through some contortion in time, NEOZOIC imagines an Earth where the dinosaurs escaped extinction altogether. As a result, the entire history of the human race unfolded side-by-side with the giant beasts, leading to a society greatly different than the one we know today.

While the kinetic pencils of J. Korim and the rich colors of Jessie Lam deliver on the promise of epic evenly-matched human / dino battles like never seen before, the complex heart of NEOZOIC is in its ensemble cast of characters.

Sounds like an interesting twist on the man-vs.-dinosaurs theme, although that lady on the cover must be a pretty tough character to take on a T. rex is nothing more than a sword.

The title also reminds me of Xenozoic Tales by Mark Schultz (review coming soon). Xenozoic Tales concerns a make-believe geologic age where humans and dinosaurs lived side-by-side, although the Xenozoic was set in the future where the Neozoic sounds like it is set in an alternate reality.

Anyway, there isn't much news about Neozoic yet, but you can read what news there is on the publisher's web site.

* Thanks to Bob Mozark at Antediluvian Tours Inc. for pointing out the comic.

Paleo: Tales of the Late Cretaceous by Jim Lawson (2003)

2007-07-24T16:03:00.000-07:00

Paleo is a comic for anyone who enjoyed BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs; that is, a comic that does its best to get the science right and only wanders from that goal when the needs to the story dictate otherwise. There are no humans, and the dinosaurs are, as far as I can tell, appropriate for the Late Cretaceous setting.

The comic was a labor of love for artist Jim Lawson, who has illustrated the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comic books. It was published over eight issues beginning in 2003, with the first six issues later collected in a single volume. There are no colors, this is a black-and-white comic.

Each issue tells the story of a different dinosaur or creature that inhabited the world of the Late Cretaceous. There is some anthropomorphizing of the animals but not to the extent of Age of Reptiles, another dinosaur-only comic. One story concerns an injured Albertosaurus fleeing the predations of its larger cousin, Tyrannosaurus rex. Another story is about a baby Stegocerus on its own after its mother is eaten by a pack of “raptors.” Yet another follows the flight of a dragonfly through a Cretaceous swamp. You get the idea.

Paleo is straightforward in execution and pretty much accomplishes what it sets out to do. There are few happy endings, since this is a fairly accurate portrayal of nature “red in tooth and claw,” but not every story is a downer either. The dinosaurs are anatomically accurate although Lawson tends to exaggerate certain features – giving them oversized feet and calves, for example – and his animals and environments usually lack natural curvature and look a bit blocky as a result. I’m not keen on the stylized art style, thinking Lawson could have used a little softer touch and cut back on the heavy use of ink in some panels, but others may like it.

Whether readers will enjoy Paleo will depend on their personal tastes. This is a comic best suited for dinosaur fanatics – people who enjoy dinosaurs for what they were rather than just seeing them as monsters to be thrown into a story to oppose human heroes. I quite liked it, even though, as already stated, I didn’t particularly care for the art style. If you’re the kind of person whose shelves are lined with non-fiction books about dinosaurs, then this is for you.

Trivia

One reason to get the Paleo graphic novel, which has issues one through six, is that it also features an excellent essay by comic book artist Steve Bissette about the history of dinosaurs in comics. You can also read the essay online at Palaeoblog, with links to each entry posted here.

Reviews

The History of Dinosaur Comics

2007-07-24T15:48:00.000-07:00

A genuine dinosaur comic is a rare thing. A true dinosaur comic is something unique, unblemished by human characters.

So writes comic book artist Steve Bissette in his history of dinosaurs in comic books. The essay appeared in the graphic novel bringing together the first six issues of Paleo: Tales of the Late Cretaceous, but it also was published in nine pieces over at Palaeoblog along with pictures from the comics mentioned in the essay.

It is worth reading if you are a fan of comic books or dinosaurs in general.

GURPS Lands Out of Time by Lizard (2006)

2007-07-23T16:08:00.000-07:00

Cover blurb

Humans and dinosaurs go together like gamers and pizza. That tens of millions of years separated the last of the dinosaurs from the first of the humans is a mere inconvenience, easily ignored. GURPS Lands Out of Time is a sourcebook for human/dino adventuring, providing all you need to know to place man and giant reptile side-by-side, whether it's a "Lost World" adventure, caveman slapstick, or something in between. GURPS Lands Out of Time is an e23 original game setting for GURPS.

*Cover and blurb from publisher's web site.

My thoughts

GURPS Lands Out of Time is a web-only gaming supplement available on e23, the official online store of Steve Jackson Games. It's mostly about building characters for "lost world" adventures, almost to the exclusion of everything else. One mistake the author made in writing the supplement was his decision to portray dinosaurs like their 1950s B-movie counterparts rather than using modern scientific theories. "(T)he fun of the genre is adventuring with dinosaurs as they should have been, not as a they were," he writes. Sorry, but it's not fun for those of us who find modern views of dinosaurs far more interesting than the dim-witted behemoths of yesteryear.

The portrayal of dinosaurs is a small complaint because other than a short bestiary, dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals are surprisingly absent given the subject matter. Most of the book is about creating characters, from cavemen to dinosaur hunters armed with space age weaponry, with a list of advantages, skills and disadvantages suitable to the setting. There also is a disappointingly brief summary of the genre, a few generalized setting ideas and a short campaign setting taking place on a parallel world.

There is really nothing in GURPS Lands Out of Time that any gamer couldn't come up with on his or her own when designing characters; it basically just spells out the glaringly obvious. A far more useful supplement is GURPS Dinosaurs -- also available for download on e23 -- which has stats for more than 100 prehistoric creatures and is better researched. Both supplements sell for $7.95 each, but instead of spending the full $15 for both, just buy GURPS Dinosaurs and use the rest of the money to buy snacks for your fellow gamers. They'll appreciate it.

Reviews

None

Saber-tooth cats, mammoths star in 10,000 B.C.

2007-07-21T20:45:00.000-07:00

I walked down to the local theater earlier today to catch the latest Harry Potter movie, not expecting to see anything related to prehistoric animals. So imagine my surprise when, during the trailers, I saw this:

It was a trailer for an upcoming movie called 10,000 B.C., directed by Roland Emmerich of Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow fame. I vaguely remember hearing about this movie a year or so ago, thinking it interesting but quickly forgetting it. I definitely had no idea it was already in production.

Any movie that features a saber-tooth cat already has won my ticket. But judging from the trailer, it also features a terror bird and mammoths. Lots of mammoths.

It's not shooting for realism, if the trailer is any indication. By 10,000 B.C., saber-tooth cats could only be found in the Americas -- if they were still around -- and terror birds had gone the way of the dodo. There also are several scenes in the trailer featuring the construction of the pyramids, using mammoths no less. You think they'd overheat in the desert with those thick shaggy coats. Anyway, the Egyptian pyramids do not date back to the Ice Age, despite fringe theories to the contrary.

Personally, I have no problems with the inaccuracies, as long as the producers market the movie as a fantasy rather than a historical drama. (In that sense, the world of 10,000 B.C. would be much like the Hyborian Age of the Conan stories.) The sad truth, however, is the director has been known to pass off psuedoscience as the real thing in his previous efforts, so prepare for a lot of BS to accompany B.C.

What's the plot? This is the description from the trailer on YouTube: "It was a time when man and beast were untamed and the mighty mammoth roamed the earth. A time when ideas and beliefs were born that forever shaped mankind. 10,000 B.C. follows a young hunter (Steven Strait) on his quest to lead an army across a vast desert, battling saber tooth tigers [sic] and prehistoric predators as he unearths a lost civilization and attempts to rescue the woman he loves (Camilla Belle) from an evil warlord determined to possess her."

A high-definition Quicktime version of the trailer also is available.

I'm excited about the movie even though I know little about it and I've been unimpressed with Emmerich's other films. But when a big-budget movie about dinosaurs and other monsters is in theaters, book publishers usually try to cash in by publishing novels and anthologies about the creature in question. So check your local bookstore around March 7, 2008, when the film is scheduled for release.

Also, just a little trivia, this may be the first big-screen film since Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger in 1977 to feature a saber-tooth cat. Yes, there were the Ice Age movies, but those were cartoons. The cats also featured in two truly awful direct-to-video films, as did a killer mammoth that was possessed by an alien lifeforce. All three aired on the SciFi Channel, known for its *cough* quality programming. *cough*

Update: Ain't It Cool News already has a review of the movie. Warning: Spoilers if you follow the link.

Foreigner by Robert J. Sawyer (1994)

2007-07-21T20:10:00.000-07:00

Note: This is the last novel of the Quintaglio Ascension trilogy, starting with Far-Seer. Spoilers below.

Paperback cover blurb

A NEW ERA

...the dawn of scientific discovery, a new way of thinking. is about to revolutionize the world of dinosaurs. Novato, mate of Afsan the Far-Seer, is mastering the technology of an ancient artifact -- one that could take her species to the stars. And Afsan is struggling to overcome his blindness with the help of a new kind of doctor. Mokleb is an advanced practitioner indeed she treats not the body, but the saurian mind...

My thoughts

The last of the Quintaglio Ascension trilogy is more of an afterthought than a conclusion. It concerns the Quintaglio's attempt to escape their doomed planet, using alien technology to give them a boost from a medieval age to the space age. A big problem for the species is they're unable to stand within a few feet of each other without launching into a homicidal rage. As a result, they wouldn't survive in the cramped conditions of spaceflight, killing each other before they could reach their destination. But there may be a new kind of doctor who has the solution for that...

Foreigner is the weakest book of the trilogy, with not much happening in its nearly 250 pages. Sawyer made the mistake of revealing too many of the dinosaur world's secrets in the first two novels, so he didn't have much to work with in the final volume. The novelty of the setting has pretty much worn off by now, and the book itself is slow moving and instantly forgettable. Yes, everything comes to a neat and tidy end, but it's not a very satisfying conclusion.

Trivia

Each book in the Quintaglio Ascension tells the story of the dinosaurian counterpart of a famous scientist on Earth. Galileo Galilei is the model for the protagonist in Far-Seer. Charles Darwin is covered in Fossil Hunter. Sigmund Freud is the main subject of Foreigner.

Book covers, essays and background about Foreigner are available on the author's web site.

Reviews

BookLoons

Fossil Hunter by Robert J. Sawyer (1993)

2007-07-19T21:46:00.000-07:00

Note: This is the second novel of the Quintaglio Ascension trilogy, starting with Far-Seer below.

Paperback cover blurb

THE SACRED SCROLLS

…teach that the first intelligent saurians emerged from the eighth and final egg of God. Toroca, son of Afsan the Far-Seer, is a geologist searching for the rare metals needed to take his species to the stars. But what he’s discovered instead is an artifact, immeasurably ancient, that may reveal at last the true origin of a world of dinosaurs!

My thoughts

Fossil Hunter is my favorite of the three novels making up the Quintaglio Ascension, perhaps because my obvious bias for the subject matter. It is about the rise of a dinosaurian Darwin, which seems a far more interesting premise than a dinosaur Galileo (Far-Seer) or a dinosaur Freud (Foreigner). Toroca, the son of the protagonist of the first book, is leading a geologic expedition to a distant part of the world, including the planet’s diminutive southern ice cap. The strange wildlife there, as well as the discovery of what appears to be an alien artifact by his team, forces him to reconsider his people’s explanation for the origin of life on his world.

Meanwhile, Afsan, now blind after the events of the first book, learns that one of his children has been murdered. He launches an investigation to track down the culprit. And if that weren’t bad enough, his friend, the Emperor Dybo, faces a challenge for the throne. It turns out the solution to the political crisis involves a really big arena and a really hungry Tyrannosaurus rex.

The main problem with Fossil Hunter is that it has too many plots. The murder mystery could have been easily dropped and the novel would have lost nothing except an extraneous 70-or-so pages. That said, the remainder of the book is a decent read, exploring in more detail how Sawyer’s dinosaur world came to be. Toroca faces a challenge in proving evolution in that the fossil record of his planet, unlike that of Earth, appears to point to a divine creation rather than the slow emergence of life. Also, the final confrontation between Dybo and his political opponent comes straight out of one of the quirkier episodes of original Star Trek, showing Sawyer wasn’t afraid of having a little fun with his invented world.

Trivia

Each book in the Quintaglio Ascension tells the story of the dinosaurian counterpart of a famous scientist on Earth. Galileo Galilei is the model for the protagonist in Far-Seer. Charles Darwin is covered in Fossil Hunter. Sigmund Freud is the main subject of Foreigner.

Book covers, essays and background about Fossil Hunter are available on the author's web site.

Reviews

None

Far-Seer by Robert J. Sawyer (1992)

2007-07-16T18:42:00.000-07:00

Paperback cover blurb

THE FACE OF GOD

...is what every young saurian learns to call the immense, glowing object which fills the night sky on the far side of the world. Young Afsan is privileged, called to the distant Capital City to apprentice with Saleed the court astrologer. But when the time comes for Afsan to make his coming-of-age pilgrimage, to gaze upon the Face of God, his world is changed forever -- for what he sees will test his faith... and may save his world from disaster.

My thoughts

Far-Seer is essentially the story of a dinosaurian Galileo Galilei, being the first book in Robert J. Sawyer's Quintaglio Ascension, a trilogy of novels. It is set on a planet where dinosaurs continued to evolve and thrive, although how they got there isn't revealed until the second book of the series. Afsan, a young astrologer-in-training, makes a religious trip to the other side of the world, where a giant celestial object hangs in a fixed position in the sky. Afsan's people believe it is their god, keeping constant watch over them. The young dinosaur, however, comes to suspect that is not the case, but his theories will not be greeted warmly by the church.

Far-Seer left me with mixed emotions. There are ideas in it I like, such as the cosmology of Afsan's world. It is very different from our own and watching Afsan figure it out makes for some of the best reading in the book. The Quintaglio also have some strange quirks, such as their inability to stand within a few feet of each other without launching into a murderous rage. That said, the species feels rather generic as far as aliens go. There is nothing to peg them as dinosaurs other than that they have tails and lay eggs -- you could plug in any other aliens and nothing would need to be rewritten to accommodate them. The biology of the Quintaglio's world isn't fleshed out any great detail, so besides a few cameos, we don't get to see what the rest of the Mesozoic world evolved into. And the story about science vs. religion seemed rather "been there, done that." Then again, given the current debates about stem-cell research and other issues, maybe it is important for authors like Sawyer to keep championing science.

The book probably won't satisfy anyone diving into it to read about dinosaurs. (The second novel of the trilogy, Fossil Hunter, does a better job in that regard.) It also probably won't please any "hard sci-fi" fans looking for gee-whiz gadgetry, since the Quintaglio world is at about the same technological level as Renaissance Europe. Fans of old-fashioned science fiction may like it, although the writing doesn't compare to anything Issac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke were putting out in their heyday. Far-Seer isn't awful, it's just not particularly memorable.

Trivia

Each book in the Quintaglio Ascension tells the story of the dinosaurian counterpart of a famous scientist on Earth. Galileo Galilei is the model for the protagonist in Far-Seer. Charles Darwin is covered in Fossil Hunter. Sigmund Freud is the main subject of Foreigner.

The Quintaglio are the evolved descendents of a type of tyrannosaur named Nanotyrannus. Most dinosaur paleontologists don't consider Nanotyrannus a valid species, instead believing its fossil remains to be that of a juvenile T. rex. Here is a link about the debate, although it is admittedly a little dated.

Book covers, essays and background about Far-Seer are available on the author's web site.

Reviews

Crescent Blues Book Views

Dinosaurs II, edited by Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois (1995)

2007-07-14T21:30:00.000-07:00

Paperback cover blurb

Mysterious and mighty, they were as untamed as the primeval forest, feared by lesser creatures for their brutal power. Small and lithe or large and lumbering, they ruled a wild world – and millions of years later, they continue to rule our imaginations…

DINOSAURS II

My thoughts

Dinosaurs II is one of the best short-story collections about dinosaurs that you can find – if you can find it. It features 11 stories that were originally published in science fiction magazines. As a result, the story quality is much better than later anthologies where most works were commissioned for the books and the editors lazily crammed in any submissions they got, regardless if they were readable or not.

The book kicks off with a Reginald Rivers tale by L. Sprague de Camp titled “The Big Splash,” which has the safari guide leading an expedition back in time to witness the asteroid (or comet) impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. Other stories concern a serial killer whose mind is transferred to a T. rex; a security guard who must guard a certain purple dinosaur that turns out to be the real thing; a trio of “raptors” that are resurrected in the present day; and a redheaded virgin who studies dinosaurs in the nude, much to the delight of the guy assigned to protect her.

There also are a couple tales by Isaac Asimov and Clifford D. Simak about the real reason dinosaurs went extinct.

The stories are pretty strong, and in each case you could tell the author was having fun with the subject. Only the final story, “Trembling Earth” by Alan Steele, came off as a little forced, partly because of the odd story structure Steele used to tell it. Another story, “Dinosaur Plies” by R.V. Branham, isn’t a story at all but rather… well, I’m not sure, but it’s only five pages long. Anyway, Dinosaurs II is definitely a book worth picking up. I’m sure there are a few copies collecting dust in a used bookstore somewhere.

Stories

Preface
“The Big Splash” by L. Sprague de Camp
“Just Like Old Times” by Robert J. Sawyer
“The Virgin and the Dinosaur” by R. Garcia y Robertson
“The Odd Old Bird” by Avram Davidson
“Bernie” by Ian McDowell
“Small Deer” by Clifford D. Simak
“Dinosaur Plies” by R.V. Branham
“Day of the Hunters” by Isaac Asimov
“Herding with the Hadrosaurs” by Michael Bishop
“Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny” by R. Garcia y Robertson
“Trembling Earth” by Alan Steele

Trivia

Before you ask, yes, this is a sequel to Dinosaurs!, an anthology published in 1990. I don’t have it.

End of an Era by Robert J. Sawyer (1994)

2007-07-12T16:44:00.000-07:00

Cover blurb

WHERE DID ALL THE DINOSAURS GO?

Paleontologist Brandon Thackeray wants to find out. With a newly developed, still-experimental timeship, he will be able to do what no human being has ever done: stand face-to-face with a living, breathing dinosaur. And what he and his partner are about to discover is more fantastic than any scientist’s theory: the truth about what happened at the twilight of the Cretaceous Era – and what really felled the dragons of Earth’s distance past…

My thoughts

A slightly silly but fun romp from the writer of the Quintaglio Ascension. Thanks to an experimental government time machine, paleontologist Brandon Thackeray gets the chance to travel back in time to the end of the Cretaceous Period to find out why the dinosaurs died out. Unfortunately, he’s stuck with a partner who happens to be sleeping with his ex-wife. (Great planning on the part of the mission control people.) The past turns out to be truly bizarre: The earth’s gravity is only about half that of what it is now, and there’s a second moon. The explorers also soon realize they’re not alone.

And, to complicate things further, a second Brandon from another timeline stumbles across notes from the expedition – an expedition he never took.

It’s hard not to like this book even if it does take itself a little too seriously given the craziness of the plot. It’s only 200 pages long, the appropriate length for this sort of thing. It’s also one of the few time travel novels to leave me with a sense of just how alien the Mesozoic would be to humans, although it has to use some strange plot devices to achieve this, like a second moon. Sawyer gets credit for the weirdest dinosaur extinction explanation I’ve ever encountered.

Trivia

The first chapter of the novel, as well as alternate covers, is available at the author's web site.

End of an Era was at one time pitched as a TV series. Sawyer wrote a 13-episode outline for the proposed series, which he has put up on his web site. (Warning: Contains spoilers.)

The novel was reissued with a new cover in 2001.

Sawyer, a Canadian, seems to be in a race with British sci-fi author Stephen Baxter for the title of most prolific writer of prehistoric fiction. So far Sawyer wins, with eight books with paleontology as the central theme, compared to Baxter's four books.

Reviews

Tyrannosaur Canyon by Douglas Preston (2005)

2007-07-11T18:34:00.000-07:00

Hardback cover blurb

A moon rock missing for thirty years…

Five buckets of blood-soaked sand found in a New Mexico canyon…

A scientist with ambition enough to kill…

A monk who will redeem the world…

A dark agency with a deadly mission…

The greatest discovery of all time…

What fire bolt from the galactic dark shattered the Earth eons ago, and now hides in that remote cleft in the southwest United States known as…

Tyrannosaur Canyon?

My thoughts

Tyrannosaur Canyon has the workings of a decent scientific detective story, but it suffers from the flaw of giving away too much information at the beginning. It opens with the history of a strange moon rock that has gone missing from NASA’s collection. Then we meet the protagonist, Tom Broadbent, who is horseback riding through the New Mexico desert when he hears gunshots echoing from a nearby canyon. When he investigates, he finds a dying man, who with his last breath, hands Broadbent a notebook and asks him to take it to his daughter.

Instead of letting the reader slowly piece together the mystery of the man’s murder with Broadbent, the author instead introduces the killer, an ex-con named Jimson “Weed” Maddox, and gives away the motivation for the murder: Maddox is working for a corrupt paleontologist who wants the location of a remarkably preserved T. rex skeleton found by the dead man. The next two-thirds of the novel are spent on Broadbent seeking out the solution to a mystery the reader already knows the answer to, and are pretty boring as a result.

It’s not until the novel’s third act that Preston throws a curveball, bringing back the riddle of the moon rock and introducing a new villain. It turns out the T. rex holds a vital clue about the reason why the dinosaurs went extinct, which after 65 million years, still poses a threat to humanity.

The third act almost manages to save Tyrannosaur Canyon, but it comes too late. I was a bit puzzled after reading the novel why Preston didn’t center the plot around his Big Idea rather than turning out such a pedestrian thriller. To say more would spoil the ending, but let’s just say regular readers of science fiction will probably figure out what’s going on before reaching the final page.

Another flaw is the writing itself, with the book seemingly written for people with attention-deficit disorder. Chapters are usually only two to three pages long, and the prose is mostly long stretches of dialogue with sparse descriptions. There are no living dinosaurs in the book except for brief interludes describing the life of the T. rex before it was fossilized.

Trivia

Preston may be best known as a fiction writer for his team-ups with Lincoln Child. The two men have co-authored several best-selling novels, including Relic, which was made into a 1997 film. Their official web site is www.prestonchild.com

Preston also once worked at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. He is the author of Dinosaurs in the Attic, an excellent history of the museum.

Tyrannosaur Canyon apparently is a sequel to Preston’s 2003 novel The Codex, although I didn’t know that until after reading Tyrannosaur Canyon. Having not read The Codex, I couldn’t tell you whether Tyrannosaur Canyon spoils the book or not.

Talk about good timing: A few months before the release of Tyrannosaur Canyon in 2005, which deals with preserved tyrannosaur tissue, scientists announced they had found soft tissue in a T. rex skeleton. No word yet whether it harbors the seeds of mankind’s destruction…

Reviews

Technosaurs, a free online dinosaur comic

2007-07-10T21:20:00.000-07:00

You don't need to head to the comics store to read a great comic. There is a new one on the web, and it's free.

Technosaurs is hard to describe, partly because the story isn't finished yet. But it seems to be inspired by the Saturday-morning cartoons of the 1980s. The plot centers around two siblings who are transported to a world of anthropomorphic, and robotic, dinosaurs.

The art by Kevin Wasden is top-notch and better than what you will find in most published comics. (I particularly like the comic's sepia tone.) The story is by Wasden and Darwin A. Garrison also is turning out to be quite good, with fully realized and likable characters.

A new page of the comic is put up every week, with the most recent comic posted on the web site's front page. Click here if you want to start at the beginning of the series.

Also, a link to Technosaurs has been added in the "related links" menu to the right.

* Thanks to Bob Mozark at Antediluvian Tours Inc. for pointing out the comic.

Thunder of Time by James F. David (2006)

2007-07-10T19:45:00.000-07:00

Note: This is a sequel to Footprints of Thunder, reviewed below.

Hardback cover blurb

Ten years ago, the prehistoric past collided with the present as huge swaths of the Cretaceous Period were transported into the world of the twentieth century. Entire neighborhoods and cities were replaced by dense primeval jungles. Humanity suddenly found itself sharing the earth with fierce dinosaurs – with catastrophic results. In the end, desperate measures were taken to halt the disruptions, and the crisis appeared to be over.

Until now.

Slowly at first, but with increasing frequency, time begins to unravel once more, and dinosaurs again roam the earth. What’s worse, Nick Paulson, director of the newly formed Office of Security Science, uncovers evidence that the time displacements are being manipulated by unknown parties, utilizing a technology as yet unexplainable by modern science. The very integrity of the space-time continuum appears to be at risk.

To preserve both the future and the past, Nick and his allies must seek out the answers to a mind-bending mystery whose secrets lie hidden within in a lost temple at the center of a dinosaur-infested jungle… and in an enigmatic structure on the surface of the moon. But they are not alone in their quest. A cult of ruthless fanatics is also intent on controlling the time waves, and they will stop at nothing to reshape history to their own design…

My thoughts

Thunder of Time is a sequel to David’s first novel, Footprints of Thunder. When the sequel came out in 2006, I was pretty hard on it at Amazon.com, and I make no apologies for that. Usually an author improves after his first novel as he refines his skills and his storytelling techniques. Thunder of Time, however, is a major step backward for David.

The novel is just badly written. Bad prose, bad pacing, bad characterization – you name it. The author throws in a literal army of throwaway characters to serve as dinosaur chow, so unlike the first novel, where you were not sure who would make it to the end, it’s pretty easy to figure out who’s going to be living happily ever after when this book is over. That saps a lot of the fun out of it.

Also taking away from the fun is the political stereotyping. David is obviously a political conservative of the Rush Limbaugh persuasion, so anyone shown as having the slightest environmentalist leanings is portrayed as either a buffoon or evil, while at one point, we have a good guy tell us about his decision to become a Christian. When an author, liberal or conservative, needs to resort to such simplistic caricatures to make a point, that’s simply lazy writing.

The worst sin of all is the treatment of the dinosaurs. Despite all the weird and wonderful dinos he could have picked to include his novel, David pretty much sticks to T. rexes and velociraptors – and the Hollywood version of velociraptors at that, given they are portrayed much larger than the real thing. Call me a snob, but I prefer my authors to put a little more research into a work rather than just renting a DVD of Jurassic Park.

I really can’t recommend Thunder of Time to anyone. If you haven’t already, pick up a copy of Footprints of Thunder instead. It is far more enjoyable.

Trivia

James F. David is a pen name for Jim Foster, a psychology professor at Oregon’s George Fox University.

Reviews

Buried.com
Analog (halfway down page)

Footprints of Thunder by James F. David (1995)

2007-07-10T18:52:00.000-07:00

Hardback cover blurb

It began with a rain of corn falling from an empty sky, and with the unheeded warnings of a handful of eccentric scientists and college students. Only they saw the disaster coming, but nobody listened to them until…

Suddenly, overnight, the boundaries between yesterday and today dissolve, transforming the entire world into a crazy-quilt mixture of present and distant past. Portland, Oregon, turns into a primeval forest, where a vicious motorcycle gang takes advantage of the chaos to hunt both tyrannosaurs and human beings. Plesiosaurs are spotted off the coast of Hawaii, while a stranded family struggles to survive between an enraged brontosaurus and a bloodthirsty park of killer whales. Winged reptiles, extinct for millennia, swoop from the sky to carry off small children. Looters battle dinosaurs in the Bronx, where one old woman, alone and forgotten, discovers a new reason to live.

And in the White House an increasingly unstable President searches for a solution – any solution – to the catastrophe that has gripped the planet. But the cure he is presented may be worse than the disease.

All over the world, ordinary people, from a confused state trooper to a band of lost teenagers, must fight against the unleashed terrors of prehistory. Anxious researches, led by the President’s chief science adviser, try to unravel the mystery of what has happened to the world, but no one is safe when reality itself quakes beneath the terrible fury of…Footprints of Thunder.

My thoughts

There was a gruesome Topps trading card series called Dinosaurs Attack! that came out when I was a kid back in the ‘80s. The plot – if you can call it that – was that a botched time travel experiment caused dinosaurs to materialize in the modern day, where they pretty much ate everyone in sight. It didn’t go for scientific accuracy: The dinosaurs were mostly Godzilla-sized monsters, and docile plant-eaters were turned into ravenous carnivores with a taste for children.

Footprints of Thunder reminded me of Dinosaurs Attack! The premise is that a disaster in time has replaced large swaths of modern-day earth with their Mesozoic equivalents, bringing people face-to-snout with living dinosaurs. The survivors spend the rest of the novel trying to make sense of this new world, and trying to avoid the predations of the carnivorous dinosaurs. Their various stories, and there are several of them, are told over alternating chapters.

Footprints of Thunder is David’s first novel, and he could have chosen two routes in writing it: science fiction or horror novel. He chose the latter, glossing over the science. It shows in the descriptions of the dinosaurs, which are pretty much depicted as solitary, lumbering behemoths straight out of 1950's B-movie (although, to be fair, that's not always the case). There’s even a description of a dinosaur dragging its tail, which is pretty horrible for a novel that came out after the movie Jurassic Park!

That said, I found the novel a fun read. Some of the survivors' stories are quite good, such as the trio of teenage boys lost in a primeval forest, or the plight of a group of researchers studying another stretch prehistoric ecology in Oregon. It's too bad that David apparently had no interest in his main stars, the dinosaurs. While fans of Stephen King will enjoy the novel for what it is, anyone with an interest in paleontology will be left wishing David had done a little more homework.

Trivia

1995 was a boom year for dinosaur fiction. Footprints of Thunder was one of four dinosaur novels that came out that year, the others being Robert Bakker's Raptor Red; Michael Crichton's The Lost World; and the Star Trek novel First Frontier. It may not sound like much, but fans of this genre count themselves lucky to get one new novel a year.
(Thanks to a reviewer at Amazon.com for pointing this out.)

James F. David is a pen name for Jim Foster, a psychology professor at Oregon’s George Fox University.

Reviews

SF Site
Monika Hubner
SF Revu (scroll down to bottom of page)