A Busy Year, and More to Come

I have soooo neglected this blog! The truth of the matter is that the blog was created to support my writing career, serving potentially as an affidavit of my presence and reality as a writer for those in the publishing trade, and as my career has grown busier I’ve had less time to reflect those events on the blog. (Plus I’m never sure how many people are or aren’t reading here—am I keeping this record pretty much for myself? I would like to think a few readers do indeed drop by!)

2023 has been a busy year! While the regular review roundup is due on January 7^th, which will be the eighth anniversary of my launching my bid to be a professional writer, here is so much to reflect on.

This year saw my Sherlock Holmes novel A Traditional of Evil released, a genuine milestone. I’ve written a fair few novel-length projects in my time, but this is the first genuinely professional outing to see print, and there’ll be more to come, with a second novel to be written in 2024. Coming early in the year there’ll be a second chapbook from Black Hare Press, the psychological horror piece If Thine Eye Offend Thee, and I have so far lined up what should be three single-author anthologies for the coming year.

The last story is now on paper for a collection with Hiraeth Publishing in the US in the horror/action/supernatural field, and the material is being brought together for not one but two anthologies with Belanger Books—more on these when the time comes.

The launch of my author website some months ago was another big stride, and there are updates on the way, a major one in the next round providing a wealth of reading.

So despite how quiet I’ve been, things are indeed busy, and big things are coming!

Cheers, Mike Adamson

Royalty-free header image from Pixabay

Recently Read: The Alternate Martians by A. Bertram Chandler

Here is a novel I first read as a child of ten years or so, and indeed it was the same copy. We have a 1965 Ace first edition, in poor condition (this will probably be the last time it's ever subjected to a reading, and there are better copies out there to be had). I last read it probably some decades ago, and had only a few memories to draw on, but this was the sequel to Chandler's The Coils of Time, which I reviewed in February, 2017, so it was a logical choice.

Chandler (1912-1984) was one of our favourite science fiction writers in the far-off days of childhood. Not that he was writing for children at all, some of his material was probably a bit strong for kids in retrospect, but standards were far less, well, prissy, in those days, and we got to read the books on the shelf.

Chandler was fascinated by what today we call the Multiverse concept, and explored it several times. I first heard of the notion in Science Fiction Monthly in 1974, when it was described by the old term “parallel worlds,” or “moving sideways in time,” and it would seem the latter was the concept that struck Chandler. The precept established in the previous novel was that a machine designed for time travel might, due to its own imperfectly understood nature, send a traveller sideways as surely as backward, thus accessing another stream of reality. In that event it was to a Venus where planetary catastrophe had not unfolded as it did for our Venus, giving rise to a habitable world on which a neo-Burroughsian adventure could unfold. The degree to which Chandler was devoted to the vintage science fiction of Wells and Burroughs can be gauged by the sequel, which constitutes a full-blown homage, with some original twists for good measure.

The original characters make an expedition from Science City on Venus, to Mars, taking the “Time Twister” machinery with them, with the object of trying to discover if writers like Wells and Burroughs—Leigh Bracket is also mentioned by name—were not simply creating their fantastical visions of these places, but remembering them, a kind of distorted telepathic vision transmitted across the membranes separating parallel universes (“coils of time” as Chandler called them). The intention was to send a small party through the device into this other reality to explore. However, interference from the ship's inertial drive, operated simultaneously with the time machine, sent not just the explorers through, but the entire ship...

The world in which they appear is a hostile one. Lowell's canals exist, pumped water from the high latitudes feeds cities closer to the equator, but the inhabitants of this planet are drawn from two sources—War of the Worlds (Wells's Martians, with their tripods, handling machines, heat rays and gas weapons) and the other Martians of John Carter fame, the six-limbed green ones, like Tars Tarkas. Then there are the humans, kept as slaves (and food) by the “Masters,” the tentacle-bearing, owl-eyed things that drive the tripods. These humans are the resilient Cockneys of London, scooped up by the Martians in their rampage and transported back to Mars because they were useful.

This delightful mishmash avoids being a pastiche because it paces a new spin on every aspect. Bill Carter and Delia Doris are crude but true-hearted Cockney tearaways living in rags in the Martian deserts, and Well's bacterial apocalypse for the invaders is seen to be an embellishment upon the time-spanning memory, the wishful thinking of the author—the alternative would of course have been a pessimism that made the original tale not worth telling.

The theme is revolution, the arrival of visitors from a parallel universe the catalyst for change that will rage across the planet as the oppressed humans and green Martians rise up and sweep away the stagnant, indolent overlords. Regular heroic fare, then, filled with swords and violent, brutal action—stories as they were told long ago.

Chandler's professional background as a merchant sea captain comes through very strongly. His space vessel is run on merchant marine lines, with bridge, engine room, staffing requirements—and every malady of the sea trades made manifest in space: owners versus master, liability issues, crew versus automation, civil regulations, autocratic minor functionaries throwing their weight around, a Scottish engineer who thinks he knows better than the Captain... It's rather heartwarming to see the real maritime experience of the mid-20^th century perpetuated into the future—somewhat naive perhaps but it certainly spoke volumes about human optimism.

How Chandler treats women is another matter, and here he is a product of his time. There are only two main female characters, both stunningly beautiful (of course) and treated on a umber of occasions in an inherently dismissive way by narrative or dialogue. This novel was published in 1965, when women were still bound by pedantic male social custom, and to act out of the ordinary in any significant way was somewhere between risque (think Bond women, maybe?)  and unacceptable/unbelievable, so for these women to be pilots, explorers, fighters, and self-assertive, was actually quite forward-moving. For this reason, I'm prepared to forgive the broader cultural narrative of the age showing through.

The Alternate Martians was published in an Ace Doubled (M-129) back to back with Chandler's Empress of Outer Space, another great read from a great age of space opera. Can it still be found? I'm aware of at least one reissue in a new edition, and there are copies of the original to be had fairly cheaply on eBay. As with The Coils of Time, it is a work to be read in light of the age when it was written, and enjoyed as enthusiastic storytelling, with some clever twists.

Mike Adamson

A New Website, and Other Developments

This blog has been rather neglected for one reason and another, with nowhere near as many posts as it had the its early days. It's more than time for an update, and the big news must be either of two headlines. Let's start with my brand new dedicated author website!

Check out The Worlds of Mike Adamson for the most comprehensive overview of my writing you'll find anywhere. Here are pages dedicated to my work by genre, with listings of completed works and their publication histories, plus new essays. Also links to my my nonfiction work, journalistic pieces, book reviews (the ones here on the blog), interviews and such—there are more of them out there than I thought, and quite impressive when brought together. Purchase links are provided for all published works throughout, along with the covers of publications containing those stories—there are lots!

The site was built by my sister Jen Downes, who writes html like plain English. She is also an artist—the site is richly illustrated with science fiction, fantasy and horror artwork, generated in Photoshop and 3D/CGI software. Jen is also a dab-hand at prompting an AI to generate something usable too. This latter technique was used to generate substitute images within the site format to stand in for those online publications for which there are essentially no cover illustrations to present as links to the material.

There are dozens of free reads out there—places where my stories appear in online archives and may be read without a paywall. These are gathered together in a coordinated link-list, with new artwork and teasers, for ease of access.

The site has already been updated once, with extra material on the miscellany page—interviews, commercial author pages and such.

I could not be happier with the site, nor more grateful to Jen for bringing it together. There'll be rolling updates, so check back from time to time for what's new!

In other news—my second single-author volume with Belanger Books is officially go! The title has not yet been finalised, and the publishers have asked me to play things close to the chest for the moment, but there'll definitely be an exciting new Sherlock Holmes volume from me in 2024!

Next post coming shortly—a new review of an old book!

Cheers,

Mike Adamson

Recently Read: The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

Continuing with my interest in soaking up the classics, over the last few days I've had the pleasure of finally reading H. G. Wells's original 1895-97 epic, The War of the Worlds. I read a 1978 paperback copy by Golden Books of the US, still in surprisingly good condition, though the cover has been laminated with clear vinyl for durability.

Everyone knows the story, at least the high points, and it has been adapted for all conceivable media countless times—but the original remains a wonderful read and a highly worthwhile work in its own right.

It's not a long work, and the style is easily followed, if one has developed an ear for the over-formal, often over-loquacious, 19^th century expression. Just as with the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, one must allow, ever so slightly, for changing modes of expression over time, as indeed for the idiosyncrasies of individual style. Besides the formalities, there are figures of speech we just don't use any more, nor have we in living memory, but I find myself mentally editing, translating these expressions into the common word usage of today, so there is no jar or difficulty. On the same point, it's worth noting that Robert Louis Stevenson's style could be a lot more jarring to the modern ear than either Doyle's or Wells's, at least in Jekyll and Hyde, though not, oddly, in Treasure Island.

The War of the Worlds is the story of an English summer late in Victorian times, when a profound change came over the world. London and its immediate counties was the venue for the arrival of alien invaders, a desperately overused theme in science fiction in general, but Wells's novel was the first time in literary history that it appeared, and one can imagine the effect it must have had upon its first readers. For contemporary society to be faced with an implacable foe whose technology was a mystery and who regarded human beings as we have been guilty of regarding all other lifeforms on our own planet, can easily be seen as a commentary on the ills of the world, the way that science fiction has often been the “safe” vehicle for social critique and discussion. There is considerable comment on this aspect out there in the literature, and indeed Wells was inspired to write his novel by aspects of British colonialism.

The narrative is a first person account through the eyes of an unnamed protagonist (which seems a little odd to us today), as well as a second-hand account from the character's brother of other events elsewhere. It would seem the Martians landed only in England (a tradition Dr Who has upheld staunchly, as surely as aliens only ever arrive in America in American works). The story is told nigh blow-by-blow and from the personal viewpoint, as a man alone struggles through catastrophe, fire and battle, and the horrors of the refugee columns fleeing the invaders. Wells was indeed quite graphic in his descriptions, more so than I had expected, though tasteful enough to sensibilities attuned to modern Hollywood's seemingly ubiquitous brutality and splatter.

The action takes place mostly between Surrey, to the west of London, and in the city itself, and I found myself most engaged when the protagonist walks through parts of London I know well—on streets I have actually visited myself. He walked up Baker Street to Regent's Park at a time we know Sherlock Holmes to have lived there, so two aspects of the fictional reality of the times intersect in a strange and very neat way.

The 19^th century notions of high technology are of course quaint to us, but it is fascinating to see what Wells was forecasting with his Martians. Walking machines—we've done them, if not tripodially; the “heat ray” preguesses the laser beam by sixty years; the “black smoke” is a terrible foreshadowing of chemical weapons as used only twenty years later; and the “handling machine” with which the Martians construct new systems after landing can be easily visualised by us as it would seem to be a large robot, equipped with handling arms, styled more or less on a scorpion.

Wells has a wonderful turn of phrase. His descriptions of the English countryside, his character sketches, and his oratory describing scenes of disaster and conflict resonate off the page over 126 years later, and make his era come very much alive. Likewise, he was clearly an astute student of human nature, for in this work he finds the best and worst among his fellow beings.

The novel was perhaps controversial in its time for its depiction of religion as both the cornerstone and crutch of society, yet also a thing of words in the mouths of those of insufficient moral strength to face the situation. The character known only as “the curate” is the epitome of this—a man of God who is a profound coward, who loses his mind so thoroughly that he must finally be “silenced” by our protagonist as they hide from the Martians. This part was transposed (sanitised) in the 1953 Americanised movie into the noble if misguided priest who walked out before the war machines with a cross and a Bible to exorcise them—and was vaporised.

Perhaps the device of Earthly bacteria being the downfall of the Martian organisms is too simplistic for us—surely germ theory would long predate the ability to travel between worlds—but Wells explains it in terms of the course of an alien evolution, that bacteria and viral bodies did not exist on Mars, thus were not foreseen before the invaders exposed themselves to our environment. It seems a stretch to us, but flew well enough in its day.

The entire novel can be plotted on maps. It takes place in the world of the time, and those places still exist. One could perform a tour throughout the locations, from the village of Woking where the first Martian projectile landed, through to Primrose Hill in London, where the last war machines came to a halt as their pilots died. It would be quite an adventure to recreate the events of that long-ago summer.

If you're a fan of Sherlock Holmes or other Victorian to Edwardian classics, I highly recommend Wells's The War of the Worlds. It's not much like the dark derivative filmed by the BBC a few years ago, and no US production has anything in common beyond a name and a concept. (The US has always updated and set the story locally, from Orson Welles's famous (infamous?) Mercury Theatre radio production of 1938, to Spielberg's highly derivative movie of 2005, and others.) To read the original is to put yourself into a world long gone, yet tackle notions which were at that time wholly fresh and profoundly disturbing.

I could not locate a file of the cover of the edition I read, so instead present above the famous cover of the very first issue of Amazing Stories, from 1926, in which the novel was reprinted.

Mike Adamson

New Releases

A couple of new titles have appeared—you can find my work in an anthology from the US and magazines from the UK and US.

First, the good folks at Third Flatiron took a short prose-poem style piece from me for their anthology Rhapsody of the Spheres. Catch “Sunrise on Eris” for a look back upon the solar system from its outermost reaches.

Buy links:

Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFCZHBRS

Ebook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CCK9WYTT

And just out today from Cathaven Press, Occult Detective Magazine #10 features my archaeo-ghost-mystery “Secret of the Lark.” This is a fairly unique story for me so far, combining my qualifications in archaeology and a lifetime interest in art with a supernatural theme and an exercise in detection.

Buy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CGL3S5TH

Also out recently from Hiraeth Books in the US, the July 2023 Shelter of Daylight features a reprint of my fantasy short “Fall of the Dark God,” which first appeared in Lovecraftiana back in 2017. This was the first fantasy story I ever wrote, in the 1990s, and polished up for publication. It's the first of my “Avestium” arc, of which there are now eight tales.

Buy here: https://www.hiraethsffh.com/product-page/shelter-of-daylight-july-2023

You can also find the title through all your favourite online booksellers.

And lastly, Bellangers have released an ebook edition of A Tradition of Evil, which joins the hardback and paperback editions at Amazon. There's also a whisper of a forthcoming audio book—stay tuned for details!

Cheers from Aus,

Mike Adamson

A Tradition of Evil

I can hardly believe I didn't post in July, and that August is nearly out!

The big news is of course that my Sherlock Holmes novel A Tradition of Evil went on sale early this month (official release date was August 1^st) though even as we enter the last week of the month Amazon is still listing it as “temporarily out of stock.” Many folks have received their Kickstarter copies, and some have been able to order direct—Amazon UK, for instance, I believe has stock and ships promptly.

Here's the buy link for Amazon US:

https://www.amazon.com/Sherlock-Holmes-Tradition-Mike-Adamson/dp/B0CD91X511

The book also has a Goodreads page, which you can find here:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/195503549-sherlock-holmes

Some weeks on there are no ratings or reviews, which is a bit disappointing as it seemed there was considerable interest at first, but it's not yet translated into feedback. Amazon looks for fifty reviews (good or bad makes no difference) before they begin to promote the product themselves, and that of course is the gateway to desirable extra sales.

It feels amazing to have a book out there, and to see copies in both hardback and paperback is quite the validation of one's efforts over so long. I'm looking forward very much to coming to grips with my second Sherlock Holmes adventure, once a couple of other projects are done and dusted.

In other news, NewMyths have picked op my “Middle Stars” story “Gaming Aquarius,” a sequel to “Wharf Rat” which they publish a couple of years ago. This is my fortieth placed story in the cycle, and I'm closing in on sixty on paper. Unfortunately, it will be 2025 before they can get the story out to readers, so keep an eye on their website about the end of next year.

Things have otherwise been quite. I'm bringing together an anthology of my vampire stories (they're receiving a pro edit at this time) and hopefully Hiraeth will be releasing this one in the not too distant future. Also, I'm working on my novel Venatrix again, with an eye to completing it before launching back into a full scale Holmesian outing.

Cheers, Mike Adamson

Progress on a Few Fronts

 

Just two placements this month (okay, there might be one tomorrow!), A Sherlock Holmes piece, “The Babbington Inheritance,” for A Year of Mystery 1886 (Belanger Books), plus a science fiction short/long flash, “Sunrise on Eris,” for Rhapsody of the Spheres from Third Flatiron. This latter is my twenty-first professional-rates placement.

However, during this month I have also completed a lengthy interview with Steve Southard, “Poseidon's Scribe,” which will be going live soon. This was a real opportunity as it gave me the chance to showcase all my main areas of endeavour, Sherlock Holmes writing, Tales of the Middle Stars and so much more. I'll post a link when it's open.

EDIT—It's open! Read it here!

Latest news on A Tradition of Evil is that the publishers are aiming for a July release, so before long my first novel will be on the shelves! Once again, I'll post the moment it's live at Amazon.

I've not done much composition lately, with writing effort at the moment going into the textual material for a brand new dedicated author website, coming in the not too distant future. This will feature essays, listings, purchase links, free reads, lashings of artwork and so forth.

More news as it breaks!

Mike Adamson

A Very Successful Kickstarter

 

The Kickstarter campaign for “A Tradition of Evil” has wrapped up with a very satisfying 220% of the finding goal, so the novel is proceeding apace now thriugh production and marketing!

The fantastic promotional trailer can still be viewed in future—follow this link:

I'm looking forward keenly to the release of this volume!

Mike

The Big 3000!

It's taken 88 months since I launched this writing endeavour in earnest, but I just made my three thousandth submission!

I had four acceptances at earlier dates, all non-paying, which suggested to me that I should be getting serious about the possibilities, and I test-fired the submission mechanism on a few occasions in late 2015, but I'm not counting those outings, for simplicity's sake.

I've been scrounging for this sub for a few days. It's amazing to what degree the market is saturated, not expressly with my own material but material in general. To find a story of the right genre, of the right length, not previously published, and match it with a market both reading at this time and paying an acceptable rate, was no easy matter. I studied two industry newsletters, worked through lots of possibilities, and got quite frustrated before settling on one to go out.

But the milestone has gone by, and the future awaits—onto the next thousand submissions! But from 2023 onward, my emphasis will be trending toward novels and anthology collections—single-author publications—with short stories continuing to circulate in the background.

That said, I hope to have plenty more news from the magazine and anthology markets in future as well!

All the best from Aus,

Mike

Sherlock Holmes is Go!

 

As followers of my publication record will know, since 2019 I've been dabbling in the wold of Sherlock Holmes. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "Prince of Detectives" has been in the public domain for quite some time, and new writings in the Holmesian canon are very popular.

I have placed quite a few stories in the last four years, two with Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine (though they have not yet been scheduled), one with Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, two with Strand Magazine (for which I am 'dead chuffed' as the saying goes, as The Strand has always been the spiritual home of Sherlock Holmes, certainly since 1892!) I also placed one with Weird Tales, though that piece is in limbo with the on-again, off-again nature of the magazine, plus the unfortunate passing of the editor who actually picked up the story. Then there are the anthologies from Belanger Books—I'm in seven released to date, with three more on the way. Add four active submissions at this time (including an invited sub to the prestigious charity MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories ongoing anthology series) and that's quite an accomplishment already.

However, last year I mooted the thought to Belanger Books that I would very much like to write a Sherlock Holmes novel, and their reaction was most positive. “A Tradition of Evil” was the result, taking a little under three months to write, and about the same to edit and polish (for which copious thanks to my sister Jen Downes, an English expert whose meticulous editing resulted in a manuscript so clean there were essentially zero edits coming back from the publisher!}

The novel is presently scheduled for release around November, 2023, and will be available through both Amazon online (print and eBook editions) and a number of physical bookshops in the US. A limited edition hardback, some with a dustjacket, is also planned.

The Kickstarter campaign launched a couple of days ago (the project is already fully funded) and is gathering backers by the day. Of spectacular note, don't miss the promotional video: the Belanger brothers created a trailer as dramatic as if the project were a forthcoming movie!

View the Kickstarter page and trailer here.

Here is the production credits screen for the trailer!

From here, I would hope to continue to place short stories with the major markets, and am of course thinking about a second novel. I have no shortage of ideas for both long- and short-form work, and if the gods should smile with regards to sales success, it would be my great pleasure to write Sherlock Holmes for a long time to come!

Cheers,

Mike Adamson

Plenty Happening!

 

In the weeks since I last posted, a few interesting things have happened. First of all, I didn't win the Derringer Award—I had no real expectation of doing so, but the nomination was a most pleasant surprise, and I am now being referred to as “Derringer Award-nominated author Mike Adamson...” in the mystery field, which is nice!

As the cover above suggests, I have appeared once more in the Australian SF mag Alien Dimensions, this time with a double-header. The mag specialises in extraterrestrials, as its title suggests, and for this extra-large (360-page) edition the editor took not one but two stories—both part of my “Takes of the Middle Stars” opus. In this issue you'll find “Downtime at Ranger Station.” one of the “Colonial War” arc, as well as “Keeper of the Ways,” an early episode of the arc leading up to what should be my first “Middle Stars” novel, though no indications yet on when that might be. Catch Alien Dimensions #24 at Amazon:

AlienDimensions #24 Digital

AlienDimensions #24 Print

On April 21^st, my “Middle Stars” short “Rain Girl” went live at Wyldblood—catch it here.

Placements have been generally slow of late, and what's come my way has been largely non-paying reprints or other token-payment situations. Other writers have commented on the drought they're experiencing, so the industry as a whole seems to be feeling the pinch of the difficult times we're living through. This much is to be expected, but that makes it no less frustrating.

However, for the really good news, see the next post!

M

A Pleasant Surprise!

Being nominated for an award is always the most pleasant of surprises, and I was more than thrilled to discover such a recognition had come my way recently.

My mystery piece “The White Calf and the Wind,” one of my “Inspector Trevelyan Mysteries,” has been nominated in the category of ”Best Long Story” for the 2023 Derringer Awards. The graphic of the finalist pool appears below. This came right out of left field—it was published in Black Cat Mystery Mgazine #11, in February, 2022. It had previously been accepted for the magazine Hybrid Fiction, due for release in September, 2020, but this was one of those occasions when an accepting market folds before release.

The Derringers are organised by the Short Mystery Fiction Society, which has been around since 1996.

The awards are announce around May 1^st each year, and I shall be on the edge if my swat until then!

Cheers,

Mike Adamson

Recently Read: The Lost World

 

NB: This essay is about the original, not Michael Crichton's 1994 Jurassic Park sequel, for which he somehow was able to use the same title in some monumental generic cash-in. Presumably a lot of money changed hands.

Reviewing a book that's 111 years old seems like redundancy at best, but there are always new things to be said, and from my perspective it's more than interesting to read other works by the same hand that created Sherlock Holmes.

I read a copy that has been in the house for a very long time, the Pan paper back of 1977. It's in surprisingly good shape, only the spine is faded somewhat. The cover design is reproduced above. The first thing that struck me was that Conan Doyle's style is as distinctive as a fingerprint, not simply in the usage of terms and forms which are no longer found in the language, but his very way of putting words together. It's a dynamic style, to be sure, forward-moving, and the writer strikes an excellent balance between suspense and the implied knowledge of what's to come.

The Lost World was published in 1912, the same year as A Princess of Mars, and for the reader of embryonic science fiction it must have been an exciting age, with names like Doyle, Wells and Burroughs actively producing, and Verne as the Old Master of the genre. This is of course the first outing for Doyle's other larger-than-life character (created some 25 years after Sherlock Holmes), the irascible Professor George Edward Challenger, that polymath of the Herculean physique and the pompous, arrogant, overbearing and didactic nature.

Certainly this aspect of Challenger's character I felt may have been ever so slightly overstated in the first third of the book, such that one felt him rather a caricature, yet from most of the description one also cannot help seeing the mighty Brian Blessed in the role: the booming voice, the stature, the beard of Assyrian proportions—he was born for the role, yet was never cast in any production. (As close as he came was Professor “Atlantis” Atticus in Lost Secrets of Atlantis, first of the two MacGyver TV movies from the early 90s. The character was, in most ways, Challenger without the aggravation.)

Conan Doyle was clearly well-read on the scientific views of his time, including the vitriol and competition between dignified specialists, and public reaction to same. The 19^th century was the age of public debate of scientific discourse, epitomised by the epic battles waged by Huxley on behalf of Darwin (see, for instance, Stephen Jay Gould's essay Knight Takes Bishop? from Natural History magazine, which can be found in his 1991 collection Bully for Brontosaurus), and Doyle gives us two such confrontations. They make for a wonderful arena in which big egos can clash, with much elegant oration in the process.

The concept, that isolated populations can exist without pressures which would change or destroy them, is entirely valid. Here, Doyle placed his survivors of the distant past into a closed ecosystem atop a towering plateau, quite inaccessible before the age of flight. It is based on the real-world Mount Roraima, in Venezuela, though magnified many times in size and placed in Brazil. The real mountain does indeed feature unique forms of life on its summit, though no dinosaurs, sadly.

The next thing that strikes the modern reader is the unfortunate schism between the frames of reference of then and now. The text is both racist and sexist by modern standards, with its frequent references to blacks and Amazonian Indians in derogatory or patronising terminology, and sometimes explicit reference to the Europoid male as the pinnacle of evolution, which is both racist and sexist on one package. There is only one female character, who appears as a motivating device in the first chapter and as an irony in the last, her behaviour a general dismissal of females in general, one might feel. Thus this dimension to the tale is something which must be placed firmly in its historical context, and left there.

This is likely also the fundamental reason that the book has never been filmed as it was written. Productions have always hit the high points, the gist of the story, but no production has ever been without female characters, whether a female member of the explorers' company, or the fur-clad cave-girl encountered on the plateau (which, as I recall, was a device of both the Irwin Allen 1960 movie, and the Canadian TV series from about twenty years ago). No such character exists in the book, indeed there are no “cave men” as such, but a tribe of Amazonian Indians who migrated onto the plateau by a secret path and made a home there, eternally at war with the “ape-men” who form the principle enemies of the book, other than nature itself.

And once more, we find an element that could not be introduced to an adaptation—the war between the humans and their savage, cruel, pre-human cousins, in which the Europeans join to exterminate the ape-men as a force and consign the survivors to slavery—as if that were the natural and correct order of things. Modern sensibilities choke first of all at the thought of largely killing-off a unique species, and then at the creation of a subjugated menial class. But in 1912 such things were viewed differently, and one can only remember this as an academic reality. New Sherlock Holmes fiction tends to be sanitised in such respects, so we can more comfortably view Victorian times trough modern eyes.

The Lost World is a classic example of what is today referred to as epistolary fiction. The lead character, Edward Malone, is a journalist, sent along on the expedition to report every foot of the way, and the text, told in Doyle's usual first person style, constitutes his account. Most of the chapters are framed as the letters Malone sends back to his editor in London, describing their adventures. This is a clever way to tell a novel and works well.

Doyle's descriptive skills don't often get a workout in his Sherlock Holmes stories on account of the need for brevity in the short format, indeed I can bring to mind only one stand-out example, from the only proper novel in the cycle, The Hound of the Baskervilles, being the pages describing the journey to Baskerville Hall. In The Lost World he has the chance to wax lyrical in his descriptions of the Amazonian jungles and waterways, and finally of the plateau itself, which constitutes delicious world-building. A writer inevitably hears some faceless first-reader's carping complaint that “all this exposition is unnecessary, this book could be a whole chapter shorter,” as if conciseness were some goal in itself. I would rather think that beauty of language and immersion in topic were equally worthy objectives, especially when one has room to move in long-form composition.

The Lost World has been filmed on at least six occasions. The 1925 silent production was the showcase for the first real outing of stop-motion special effects by the great Willis O'Brien, mastermind behind the FX of King Kong several years later. It wowed audiences so profoundly that the film was lengthened by a few reels of soap for some reason, yet audiences had no problem sitting through that lot to get the FX sequences. The test reel of the dinosaur material was presented by Conan Doyle at a meeting of professional magicians, at which he invited them to figure out that particular magic!

The next time it was filmed, Irwin Allen did the honours, early in his career, before his TV science fiction opus of the 60s, or his disaster movies of the 70s. He gave us a highly derivative version of the story, moved up to contemporary times, lizards with rubber appendages, filmed in slow motion to appear huge, cavegirls, and, if memory serves, even a volcanic sequence at the end. Claude Rains played Challenger at the head of an all-star cast. The great Michael Rennie, of The Day the Earth Stood Still, played Lord John Roxton, the big game hunter and all-round adventurer of the piece.

1992, just before the coming of Jurassic Park and its revolutionary digital dinosaurs, saw a film production, with John Rhys-Davies as Challenger. Another film version with Patrick Bergin as Challenger appeared in 1998. I can say I know nothing at all of these productions!

The BBC made a TV production in 2001 with closer adherence to the book in many ways, including the pteradactyl brought back to London and presented to the Zoological Society at the end. They used their brilliant CGI shop to generate the dinosaurs, springing off their ground-breaking series Walking With Dinosaurs, which launched so many other productions.

The most recent production (to my knowledge) is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, a three-season (1999-2002) TV version from Canada, which lodged the explorers permanently on the plateau, and introduced tribes with which they could interact, and of course female characters. Their digital dinosaurs were notably poor, though about ten episodes in they could afford a better T. rex model than the rubbery one they began with.

The story remains eternally fascinating, and one can only imagine the impact it had on the post-Edwardian world. To present living dinosaurs was a thoroughly new and catchy idea, and to do so through the lens of contemporary science, rather than some fantasy scenario, was most compelling, as witnessed by its notable and ongoing success in print. A century later the book can be enjoyed at many levels—as grand adventure in the steps of Ryder Haggard and Talbot Mundy, certainly, definitely as a window onto its times, and lastly as its own self: the pioneering vision of a brilliant writer who combined the real with the not-real in a way that made it seem possible. And that could be said to be the real goal of all speculative fiction.

Mike Adamson

200—At Last!

 

It's been a long time coming, but two days ago I hit another milestone—two hundred placements. Australian e-mag Etherea will be featuring a reprint of my “Middle Stars” outing “The One that is All,” and I look forward to their always-spectacular layouts.

When I began this adventure, just over seven years ago, ten placements seemed a long way off, and I remember my elation to hit a hundred. Two hundred leaves me feeling more professional, or at least more accomplished, yet if I consider my income-potential in proportion to the volume and effort, I would be kidding myself to think that.

Instead, I'll see it as a punctuation pointing a long journey. At my current rate of placement, I would expect to see the three hundred mark in about three years, but it's clear that simple volume of acceptance does not open doors at the top end of the market. I have fewer pro placements now than I did five years ago. Instead of trying to find that magical portal, I would sooner go sideways into novels, and of course that's what's happening with a release due later in the year—more about that when we go to contract!

For now I'm going to enjoy this personal milestone, take a moment to reflect, and recharge the batteries for the next challenge—more stories, ongoing marketing, and watching carefully for the main chance to go long-form whenever it comes along.

Cheers,

Mike Adamson

Latest Additions

 

Just a quick preen—here are four recent publications to add to the shelf.

Abandoned, from Legion of Dorks, an anthology of lonely, vacant spaces, picked up my “Tales of the Middle Stars” story “A Silent Sphinx,” a tale of a lone scoundrel who happens upon an alien ambiguity—that which is utterly unknown yet foreboding in the extreme. This is part of an arc leading to my first “Middle Stars” novel, still in planning.

Buy here. 

Extraordinary Visions, from the North American Jules Verne Society, is a compendium of stories based on the worlds of that great French early master of science fiction and the strange. They picked up a piece from me based on 20, 000 Leagues Under the Sea, my second such tale published. Enormous scope exists for further adventures of Nemo and the Nautilus, both before and after the classic novel's events.

Buy here. 

Cosmic Crime Stories, issue for September 2022, from Hiraeth Books, features my short story “The Value of Meaningless Malaise,” a short piece critical of medicine and looking at how even miracle therapies could be abused by the unscrupulous. This is a reworked, extended version, giving the piece more oomph, as the original, written many years ago, seemed a bit flat.

Buy here. 

The above title is also available through Booktopia.

And lastly, ParABnormal, issue for December 2022, also from Hiraeth Books, features “The Witch of Wendover,” a medieval horror piece and something of a departure for me. It offers a fresh twist on the grim proceedings of a witch trial—maybe there was, just occasionally, a whole level of hidden meaning, and mercy from the least expected corner.

Buy here.

The above title is also available through Barnes & Noble.

It's always nice to receive contributor's copies, and they have quite overflowed the first shelf. If I was to finish collecting all the physical publications I have appeared in which did not actually give copies, I'm sure I would have a full second shelf by this point. I have visions of one day having an entire book case—in a swanky writing study—filled with the volumes I've been featured in. Okay, maybe at this point it's just a nice fantasy, but we have to look ahead in life, don't we?

'Till next time,

Mike Adamson

The Million Word Milestone

When I made my first tentative submissions in late 2015, I did so with a belief in my own ability to write a good story, while being under no illusions when it came to the competitive nature of the market. Selling stories is not easy, it took me four months to make a sale, and four months more for it to appear in print before the door seemed to creak open just a bit, and the placements began to flow. At that point I could not have seriously looked ahead to being able to report that I have now placed over one million words of short fiction.

This morning Hiraeth Books in the US picked up a reprint of my fantasy short “The Fall of the Dark God,” which first appeared in Lovecraftiana back in early 2017. This is the first of my “Avestium” fantasy series, and was actually my first fantasy story in total, written longhand (if memory serves) back in the 1990s, and polished a great many times over the years. This placement takes me to 1, 004, 417 words that have been accepted for publication, including all reprints and indeed a couple of pieces accepted for print but which failed to appear due to markets folding before the edition could be released. The point is, the stories got past the gatekeepers, and that's what's important here. Stories actually in print will be a whole other running calculation, and it'll be interesting to see what figure I've reached actually on paper (or digits) too.

I am closing in on my two hundredth placement, which will be the next major milestone, but a million words placed feels like the ultimate round figure. A million. Imagine substituting “dollars” for “words.” That gives you some idea of the volume, when you think of the buying power. A dollar for every word that has got past the gatekeepers in the last seven years would buy a very nice home indeed.

Unfortunately, the pay scale, averaged out, is about one percent of that. Pro markets pay very nicely, but accept very rarely, and while all writers are eternally hopefully of making it past those particular gates, the odds are correspondingly low. I know folks who have been in the game a lot longer than me and can't get into the top end of the market. Heck, yesterday I had a rejection from Analog which came personally from the editor in chief, and that's an accolade for me as it seems to say I made it past all the first-readers!

I wonder if the next million words will take seven years? We shall see—and maybe there'll be a few more lucrative sales along the way!

Cheers,

Mike Adamson

Header image by LuminaObscura from Pixabay

A Magical Number?

 

“It was seven years ago, this very day, that Mr Marley left us...” Or...

“Marley was dead—as dead as a two-year-old un-responded submission.”

Okay, I couldn't help the Dickensian reference, but it really has been seven years—today—since I made my first story submission in earnest. Late in 2015 I made a few experimental submissions to test fire the method, and I'd had a few unpaid placements in the previous two years which encouraged me to get serious about the game, but January 7^th, 2016, is the date inscribed in my memory as the day I really launched my bid to be a writer.

Maybe seven is the charm—they used to call it a magical number in the ancient world, and with the seventh year complete I have in some ways positioned myself for success to come. This is my annual review of progress/state of play post, and 2022 has been an interesting excursion in many ways.

Here's the raw data:

In the last seven years, I have made 2849 submissions (401 in the last 365 days). I have 196 placements (14.53:1submission/acceptance ratio, up from, 15.11:1 last year, which was am improvement on 16.008:1 the year before, indicating a steady positive decrease over time, regardless of all other factors). I currently have about 70 stories out, and my record is around 105-110, though to be fair there must have been a fair few multiple submissions and dead/in limbo subs among that lot. These figures also indicate 2583 rejections, giving a rejection/acceptance ratio of 13.178, also an improvement for the third year running (down from 13.52:1 in 2021, and 14.27:1 the previous year).

During the calendar year 2022, I made 368 submissions, scoring 32 placements (even with 2017 and 2020). This is an acceptance rate of 11.5%, down from 2021's 12.375%, but still well above 2020's 7.67%. Covid isolation has gone by (indeed, the world is behaving like the pandemic is over—funny, a hundred people are dying a month from this disease in my state alone, but, horrifyingly, society has normalised that), which might account for fewer people reading. But outlets continue to fold as well, reducing market breadth, though new magazines come along as brave publishers give it a go.

Average time between acceptances in Year Seven was up from last year's 9.125 days to 11.4 days, a sign of harder times all round. I've gone through dead patches so long I would be forgiven for wondering if I would ever see an acceptance again! But in real terms it's about the same as 2020's 11.7, which was an improvement over the previous year.

Professional placements, what are they? I don't believe I've had one in the last year...

On the face of it, productivity has been somewhat low, just 33 stories this year, totalling, however, 175, 871 words, a major jump on last year's 104, 309 words (and not far behind 2020's 186, 585). There are at this time two stories unfinished, straddling the New Year period, and it must be remembered in these totals that this year I have extended into novels, with over 50, 000 words of a near future SF project committed to digits, plus an entire mystery novel of 78, 500 words completed, edited and submitted in the same period—more about this in due course. Totalled up, this is around 400, 000 words of output in the past twelve months, which I'm pretty sure is the record for me.

I have 287 stories registered at Submission Grinder, and some 420 in my personal list (this includes work on pseudonyms).

As with last year, the standout in 2022 is again my success as a writer of Sherlock Holmes. I'm continuing to write (two new stories in prep at this time), and have appeared in seven Belanger anthologies to date, with acceptances for two more, and a second placement with Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. Strand Magazine actually solicited a second story from me (still waiting to hear back about it), and I was recently invited to submit to the MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories anthology series, a charity collection coming out around quarterly in support of the Undershaw School, for children with learning disabilities, run out of a house that once belonged to Conan Doyle. This is a great honour, the tables of contents of these anthologies are a who's who of major talents, and I could not be happier.

My Sherlock Holmes output for 2022 was 62, 392 words, not counting the two still in prep, and I may as well reveal that the 78, 500 word novel I completed during the year is also a Holmesian excursion. I expect to have good news about that one in due course.

My total accepted word count stands at about 987, 000 words—I really wanted to pass the million mark, and the 200th acceptance before the end of 2022, but the market seems sluggish at this time. Perhaps this is to be expected, in view of the cataract of crises pouring over the world these days, from floods to wars, and disease to monolithic corruption.

In terms of period mystery, The Inspector Trevelyan Mysteries is continuing to develop, about half a dozen stories so far, plus two Sherlock Holmes crossovers (they are contemporaries). I have high hopes of an anthology at some point, and very possibly a Trevelyan novel too.

Also during 2022, I was invited to write a jacket blurb for a horror collection, Howls from the Dark Ages, published by the Horror Obsessed Writing and Literature Society, a group in Centennial, Colorado. I did a most enjoyable online Q&A with their members in August, 2021, and was invited to submit to their disaster horror anthology, Howls from the Wreckage, due out soon.

On the table with Hiraeth Books are two anthologies, a full collection of my Lucinda Crane, Vampire/Hunter stories, and a volume of three novellas of historical fantasy—more about those when things mature.

That's where I stand at the end of Year Seven, on the brink of the two hundredth acceptance and the millionth word past the post, with a novel and single-author collections in progress. I hope one year from now I'm reporting some real developments on all fronts!

Cheers, Mike Adamson

Header pic: Image by Nile from Pixabay.