Two old stories, two tales of crime: books read

I read Edgar Rice Burroughs’ At the Earth’s Core two years ago but good as it is, I only now got around to the sequel, PELLUCIDAR. At the end of the first book, Burroughs didn’t know whether David Innes, explorer of the hollow Earth, had lived or died, nor could he locate the telegraph wire from Pellucidar to the surface world. In the opening of this book (perhaps ERB’s best framing sequence) he gets a letter from a reader saying he’d read the first book and was amazed … that anyone would publish such tripe. Only while traveling in the desert, he stumbled across a telegraph receiver clacking away …

United with his correspondent, Burroughs learns how Innes returned to Pellucidar to discover conniving Hooja the Sly One has undercut Innes’ anti-Mahar alliance (the reptilian tyrants of the hollow Earth) to build his own power. David must find his fellow surface-dweller, scientist Abner Perry; find his lost love Dian the Beautiful; rebuild the alliance against the Mahars (though they’re given more complexity than just Evil); and survive the prehistoric perils of the timeless world.

This is a dynamic adventure though it suffers from Burroughs’ usual love of coincidence. When David’s thrown into a Mahar arena, for instance, guess what pretty woman is thrown in with him? Yep. However the ending is as abrupt as Sorceress of the Witch World: the Mahar are driven out of David’s realm in a few pages, then David and Abner go full on Connecticut Yankee and import modern tech to bring Pellucidar as much in line with the modern USA as possible. Even given he presumably wanted to wrap up the setting, nobody (as Black Gate says) wants to see Pellucidar turned that dull. No surprise a lot of this got walked back when the series continued. Regrettably I don’t think we ever saw more of the Mahars, nor explored Pellucidar’s inner moon.

The disappointing second season of Outer Limits included an adaptation of one of Eando Binder’s (pen name for Jack and Otto Binder) Adam Link stories which prompted me to dig out the ADAM LINK, ROBOT collection and read them all (it’s not huge). What’s striking is how much this 1930s series feels like the later X-Men: Adam has to prove to humanity that despite his vastly superior power he isn’t a threat, nor will creating more robots pose a Great Replacement. We watch as Adam struggles to prove himself in court cases, by exposing criminals and finally taking on an alien invasion.

This is fun stuff, though lightweight compared to some treatments of the same issue. However I’m really impressed by the Binders’ handling of Adam’s robot mate, Eve. I expected the worst given Adam’s statements that not even his super-brain can understand women, but it turns out Eve is capable, smart and doesn’t wind up dying tragically so Adam can suffer alone. That’s cool.

THE STEAL: A Cultural History of Shoplifting by Rachel Shteir traces shoplifting from Elizabethan London (Shteir doesn’t make it clear if that’s when it first became a problem for stores or simply the earliest records she could find) with stops along the way to look at kleptomania, Winona Ryder, anti-shoplifting methods and tech, and Abbie Hoffman and others who advocate stealing as a way to push back against capitalism. Interesting but the anti-capitalist rationale — “It’s okay to steal from Wal-Mart or Food Lion, not mom and pop stores” takes the principle too seriously — reminds me of the rationales people parrot for digital piracy and I’ve never found those convincing. Interesting though.

QUELCH’S GOLD: Piracy, Greed and Gold in Colonial New England by Clifford Beal looks at obscure early 1700s New England privateer John Quelch who like so many in that line of work opted to target profitable prey — Portuguese gold shipments from Brazil — rather than his assigned mission to harry and loot the French, enemy to England and its colonies. While Quelch’s haul topped that of Blackbeard and many other better known maritime outlaws, he picked the wrong career at the wrong time: where the American authorities of the previous century had been happy to turn a blind eye to piracy (it pumped money into their community), the times were changing and a colonial kangaroo court would send Quelch to the gallows. A good look at piracy, commerce, law and New England attitudes in a particular time and place.

#SFWApro. Top cover by Roy Krenkel, don’t know second artist; all rights to images remain with current holders.