Myths for the Modern Age: Wold Newton Universe

Wold Newton #Reference

by Win Scott Eckert

Features contributions that intend to expand the Wold Newton family, a collection of heroes and villains whose family-tree includes Sherlock Holmes, Fu Manchu, Philip Marlowe, and James Bond.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Essays, Pulp

400 pages, Paperback

First published November 25, 2005

About the author

WIN SCOTT ECKERT is a novelist, editor, essayist, and author of short fiction. He is steeped in the works of famed science fiction writer Philip José Farmer, particularly Farmer’s shared universe literary-crossover Wold Newton cycle and the Lord Grandrith/Doc Caliban series. He has a deep interest in studying fictional biographies, creating detailed chronologies of fictional characters and universes, and exploring the metafictional connections between seemingly unrelated works, which resulted in MYTHS FOR THE MODERN AGE: PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER’S WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE (MonkeyBrain Books), a 2007 Locus Awards finalist, and the critically acclaimed, encyclopedic CROSSOVERS: A SECRET CHRONOLOGY OF THE WORLD 1 & 2 (Black Coat Press, 2010).

Eckert is also an expert on many of the authors and characters who inspired Farmer—such as Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan, Pellucidar, John Carter of Mars, and more), the pulp heroes (Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Avenger, etc.), Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty, Ian Fleming’s James Bond, and Sax Rohmer’s Denis Nayland Smith, Fu Manchu, and Sumuru—as well as other heroic characters whose adventures Eckert has chronicled, including Zorro, Sexton Blake, the Phantom, Honey West, the Scarlet Pimpernel, the Domino Lady, and the Green Hornet, all of which can be found in the pages of anthologies from Moonstone Books, Meteor House (THE WORLDS OF PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER), Black Coat Press (TALES OF THE SHADOWMEN), and Titan Books (TALES OF THE WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE).

An accomplished essayist, Eckert contributed a new foreword the 2006 edition of Farmer’s well-known fictional biography, TARZAN ALIVE: A DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY OF LORD GREYSTOKE (University of Nebraska/Bison Books), as well as several forewords and afterwords to Titan Books’ reissues of Farmer’s novels. As Executive Editor for Meteor House, he played a key role in reissuing definitive editions of Farmer’s fictional biography DOC SAVAGE: HIS APOCALYPTIC LIFE (2013), and Farmer’s authorized Burroughs novel, TARZAN AND THE DARK HEART OF TIME (2018).

Eckert is the authorized legacy author of Farmer's Patricia Wildman series (THE EVIL IN PEMBERLEY HOUSE, THE SCARLET JAGUAR). His latest releases are an authorized Avenger book from Moonstone, HUNT THE AVENGER (2019); an authorized novel in the new Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe, TARZAN: BATTLE FOR PELLUCIDAR (2020); and, as coauthor with Farmer, the fourth novel in Farmer's Secrets of the Nine series, THE MONSTER ON HOLD (2021), furthering the titanic saga of Doc Caliban's battle against the dark manipulators who hold the secret to eternal life, the Nine. His Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe novel KORAK AT THE EARTH'S CORE is forthcoming in April 2024.

Find him online at winscotteckert dot com

Reviews

[Leonard Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whether or not you like this thing will be 100% defined by your interest in pulp fiction and your tolerance for nerdy universe-building and continuity geekery. I like that stuff, so I found this to be a decent read. I can't imagine many other people would, though.

[Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

Observant and regular readers will have probably noticed by this point that one of the things I look for in my fiction is coherent (or at least interesting) world-building. The acknowledged grandmaster of this, of course, is J.R.R. Tolkien; he even coined some of the terminology associated with this, such as "Secondary World" and "sub-creation".

Some authors and other scholars take this one step farther - treating their favorite stories as the lightly-fictionalized records of real events, analyzing broad swathes of literature to uncover the "true" events behind them, and connecting them. This game has been played with popular literature for quite some time, and has interested me ever since I first heard of it. Indeed, I've even dabbled in The Game myself, and was actually intending to make this post about Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World #1.

Then, I finally manged to get ahold of a copy of Myths for the Modern Age, a collection of essays exploring this kind of "Tertiary World"-building, edited by the same Win Scott Eckert as is behind Crossovers. As a compilation, naturally there are some pieces that are more interesting than others - for example, one of the early pieces, "Wold-Newtonry: Theory and Methodology for the Literary Archeology of the Wold Newton Universe"is a particular favorite of mine; not least because of the delightful phrase, "literary archeology".

But that's not the article that convinced me to use the book for this post - that honor falls to Eckert's own "Who's Going to Take Over the World When I'm Gone?", a genealogical* study of the Moriarty family. Imagine my delight and surprise when, seemingly out of the blue, the article mentions how one of the Professor's grandchildren is none other than Howling Mad Murdock of The A-Team (the television version, obviously). Since Murdock is pretty much my favorite A-Team member, and The A-Team itself one of my favorite television shows, I was quite pleased at this.

Amongst other amusing tidbits from that section was the idea that Murdock's first name is "Hamish" - in the show, Murdock is never given a first name, only an initial. And why is this so amusing? Because the name "Hamish" is a variant form of "James", which according to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was the first name of both Professor Moriarty and at least one of his brothers (the cavalier attitude some famous authors take towards continuity is part of what makes this kind of fandom so entertaining).

As if Murdock wasn't enough, both Eckert's article and a later one by Brad Mengel ("Watching the Detectives, Or, The Sherlock Holmes Family Tree") both theorize that Hannibal Smith was the son of Fu Manchu's great nemesis, Sir Denis Nayland Smith. Furthermore, it seems that Hannibal's grandfather was Fu Manchu himself (through his mother Fah lo Suee) - this Asian ancestry no doubt explains how Hannibal kept getting away with his "Mr. Lee the Chinese Laundry Man" persona.

While the inclusion of half the A-Team is what qualified Myths for the Modern Age as a Book That Makes Me Happy, there's plenty of other good material to be found within. Admittedly, much of it is available on Eckert's Wold Newton Universe website, though I understand the published versions are more up-to-date. Indeed, a quick poke around the site shows that it includes only Hannibal's inclusion, not Murdock's. This is no criticism, merely an acknowledgement that the two sources are different - and it will surely inspire me to acquire my own copy of Myths, from a source other than the library.

*Genealogical studies linking various fictional characters being one of the major features of Wold Newton Universe scholarship.

(The above review originally appeared at Words of Wonderment: 30 Day Book Challenge - Day 5. I did, indeed, end up getting my own copy.)

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read, but need to read other works to really appreciate it

[Jean Wetmore · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading the speculations on how fictional characters might be related. But in this also lies the weakness of the story. By making all fictional villains part of a super villian family and in the same way so many heroes related in the same way fails to be satisfying. To me that detracts from the characters greatness. For instance it's nothing special to being a great detective if your only one of many great detectives in your family tree. In fact, to be something less would make one a colossal disappointment. To me it also takes away a bit of free will away from the characters. It's almost taken for granted that the child or grandchild for several generation will follow in the family line to be what their ancestors were. Reality doesn't work that way. The child rarely follows into the same profession as their parents and though Wold Newton is not the same universe it comes from our world and in my opinion needs to be recognized as from this world and by creating Family trees that connect so many characters it doesn't feel like it even resembles ours. I'm not really sure if that's a criticism of this book or the Wold Newton universe in general. But that's my opinion.

[John Desmarais · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am such the fanboy of the whole "Wold Newton family" concept. It's based on an admittedly goof conceit, but as a basis for a crossover universe it's better than most. For those unfamiliar with Wold Newton Universe, the concept derived from Philip Jose Farmer's Tarzan and Doc Savage "biography" novels. As the universe grew (and Win Eckert has been one of the driving forces behind the growth) it has created interrelationships between such characters as Solomon Kane, Captain Blood, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Harry Flashman, Sherlock Holmes, Allan Quatermain, Tarzan, Fu Manchu, Doc Savage, james Bond, and a host of other - mostly pulp fiction era - characters.

Myths for the Modern Era collects essays from Farmer and others (scholars, writers, historians, etc) that bring more characters into the Wold Newton family. It's a lot of fun.

[Geof Sage · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.75 rounded down. It might have been a 3.25 rounded down but whoever did the actual copyediting should be ashamed. There is a footnote 30A which is in full size script, thereby leaving all of the footnotes (over 300 of them!) one off for the remainder of the book.

Also, the Zorro timeline is too damn long.

[DAVID ADAMS · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even though I could not find any connections between the idea of the Wold Newton Universe and Jungian archetypes, it does seem obvious there is one. The hero’s and villains that live in our unconscious from our adolescent reading are firmly established.
As Hillman says in The Lament of the Dead, “The connection between and among the figures and images” in reference to “types of narrative formation.” They still talk to us and can still help determine our decisions.

[J. Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's sort of like fantasy football for literature buffs: Trying to fit all your favorite fictional characters into one gigantic family tree, a Unified Field Theory of heroic fiction. Sci-fi author Philip Jose Farmer laid the groundwork, postulating that the real-life crash of a meteor in the English town of Wold Newton in 1795 gave off radiation that altered the DNA of those nearby, creating a strain of nearly-superhuman geniuses and physical marvels who then became the great heroes and villains of fiction. Everyone from Tarzan to James Bond to Travis McGee to Phileas Fogg were part of the extended family. Since then, many other "Wold Newton scholars" have jumped into the game, expanding and refining Farmer's original family tree to incorporate even more characters from literature, movies, radio, tv, comic books and cartoons.

Myths for the Modern Age lays out the origins of the Wold Newton concept, and the generally-accepted "rules of the game". The bulk of the book consists of essays establishing, clarifying, and debating how various characters fit into the Wold Newton Family. Was Captain Nemo really Professor Moriarty in disguise? Was Charlie Chan the son of Fu Manchu? Is Zorro in all those books, movies, and tv shows really all the same person? How many children did Tarzan have, anyway? The answers are all here, exhaustively researched and footnoted, with a generous dollop of imagination and a touch of tongue-in-cheek humor.

It's a niche interest, to be sure...inside jokes don't get much more "inside" than this. But if this kind of "creative mythologizing" and pop-culture obsessing appeals to you, this is big barrel of fun.

[Charles Prepolec · Rating 4 out of 5]

While many Sherlockians engage in the mental gymnastics of “Playing the Game”, their efforts pale in comparison to the contortionists who have embraced the connect-the-dots style of game playing inspired by Philip Jose Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe concept. Taking his cue from the Sherlockian approach to dealing with Holmes as a real life personage, Farmer wrote his fictional biographies TARZAN ALIVE and DOC SAVAGE: HIS APOCALYPTIC LIFE creating a unified family tree connecting most pop fiction heroes and villains since 1795 onwards in the process! In MYTHS FOR THE MODERN AGE: PHILIP JOSE FARMER’S WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE editor Win Scot Eckert pulls together 28 essays, by a variety of Wold Newton fans, and reprints a few Farmer pieces as well, expanding on the concept. While only one of the included essays deals specifically with Sherlock Holmes, the heavy interconnectedness of the concept means you’ll find references to Holmes, Moriarty, and various other ACD characters scattered throughout almost every essay in the book. Unfortunately the quality of writing varies dramatically from piece to piece, Rick Lai’s The Secret History of Captain Nemo and Fu Manchu vs. Cthulhu essays stand head and shoulders above the rest, the book is a wildly uneven read at best. Recommended only to those with a familiarity, or appreciation of, the Wold Newton concept, or anyone that really gets a kick out of stretching the patently implausible to the breaking point.

[Riju Ganguly · Rating 4 out of 5]

In literature, some pursuits acquire strange titles. The idea that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson had been real persons, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had been acting as the "literary" manager of Dr. Watson, is called "the game". This idea, no matter how trivial it might appear to some, has resulted in truly impressive scholarship, and has made Sherlock Holmes more real than imaginary, and hence it has now ceased to be just a "game". Similarly, a basic idea of Philip J Farmer [which might have originated even before, and appeared to be perfected in Alan Moor's vision of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" (before that series got stuck in its present intellectual quicksand)], that links all the known heroes & villains to a 'cosmic' incident at Wold Newton, became bigger & vaster than anything imaginable. But it's easy to make abstract ideas, you need people to do the dirty work (research!) to actually effect the linking. And in that aspect, this book plays a crucial role, as it tries to tie all the loose ends, so that the Wold Newton Universe gets its stars, black holes, and other dark matter. For those inclined in Wold Newtoniana, this book is highly recommended. But don't read all of them together. Sip them gently, interspersed with the works of Jess Nevins, to get a clearer (and perhaps, more enjoyable) perspective.

[Jose Vidal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recopilación de algunos de los mejores artículos presentes en la página de wold Newton universe hace unos años.
Algo que se hecha de menos desde el abandono de la página web de wold newton universe son estos artículos, mezcla de investigación, deducción e imaginación que van de lo genial a lo absurdo. Lamentablemente ahora parece que, con la profesionalización de algunos de estos escritores, la escritura de artículos amateurs y la dedicación general a Wold Newton ha decaído.