Book description
Somewhere in the unexplored heart of Africa a part of this Earth has
been taken over by an intelligence from outer space. Such was the
message that reached the explorer Hareton Ironcastle, member of the
famous Baltimore Gun Club. In that hidden and transformed valley would
now be found monsters and pre-humans not to be seen anywhere else. Such
a challenge could not be ignored, and the account of Ironcastle's
expedition of daring but inexperienced amateurs became one of the
classic novels of the French writer, J. H. Rosny, who was a contemporary
of Verne, Wells, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Now Philip José Farmer, Hugo
winner and chronicler of the adventures of Tarzan and Doc Savage, has
translated and retold Rosny's novel, making it a marvel adventure novel
to stand alongside the works of Burroughs, Haggard and Farmer himself.
Philip José Farmer (1918 - 2009)
Philip José Farmer was born in Indiana in 1918. Although he once said
he resolved to become a writer in the fourth grade, it wasn't until 1952
that his first SF was published - the novella 'The Lovers', which won
him the Hugo Award for Most Promising New Author. Although best known
for his Riverworld sequence, beginning with the Hugo Award-winning To
Your Scattered Bodies Go, Farmer also pioneered the use of sexual and
religious themes in SF and wrote several novels reworking the lore of
celebrated pulp heroes such as Tarzan and Doc Savage. He also wrote the
tongue-in-cheek Venus on the Half-Shell using the pseudonym 'Kilgore
Trout', a character who appeared in several Kurt Vonnegut novels. Philip
José Farmer won three Hugos, a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement
and the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. He died in 2009.
