Post No. 5—One Epigraph

The Writing of One Novel

The Great Detective at the Crucible of Life;

 Or, The Adventure of the Rose of Fire

Copyright © 2012 by Thos. Kent Miller

All rights reserved

  [Note: These posts are sequential, each building on the previous.]
  

From "The Greek Interpreter"

—Sidney Paget 

From Marie

—Hookway Cowles (??) 

Some Thoughts on One Epigraph

Following the disclaimer page of The Great Detective at the Crucible of Life; Or, The Adveture of the Rose of Fire, there are four epigraphs. One of them is the passage from Arthur Machan's The Great Return already discussed in Post No. 3. There is one by A. Merritt that I added impulsively at the last minute and since regret. Another is a prayer, "The Memorare," that will be discussed in a future Post. That leaves:

"Travelers afoot in hot deserts should set their course toward shade!"

—Junior Woodchucks' Guidebook

This is a quote from the Dell comic book Uncle Scrooge # 7 (1954). That comic book has in many ways informed the direction of my imagination for the whole of my life.  [I said the same thing, I know, about Arthur C. Clarke and Richard Powers in the previous post. Nonetheless, both statements are true and are not contradictory.]

It is a magnificently written and drawn tale of Uncle Scrooge (by Carl Barks) and his nephews discovering the Seven Cities of Cibola in the American Southwest. (Curiously, I am not alone in being inspired by that particular issue. Clearly the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark owes much to it, and I'm gratified that that connection has been documented in detail at various web sites, particularly http://www.dialbforblog.com/archives/429 .)

In every possible way, The Great Detective at the Crucible of Life; Or, The Adventure of the Rose of Fireis an homage to Uncle Scrooge # 7. Both stories follow a group of people (or ducks) across a Hellish desert in the midst of which they discover a lost city. In both cases, the key to the gorge-like passage that leads to the city is a cleft in a cliff marked by shade in an otherwise featureless wasteland.

Putting These Last Comments into Perspective

I am not an eclectic guy. There are things that I like and things that have influenced me, and there are things I take exception to. The fact is that my life seldom deviates from these tracks. Of course, some people may be fooled to think that because I adore Uncle Scrooge on one hand and Heavy Metal on the other I must have far-ranging interests, but that is far from the truth. Age 8 was a formative year for me, as was 12, 21, 25, 28 and 32. Various things touched me at those times that seemed to have "programmed" or "hard wired" me. (Of course, every person on earth has had his or her equivalent "formative" moments.) I mention mine here because this blog is about the writing of CRUCIBLE, and CRUCIBLE is, whatever else it is, an ode or "love letter" to these formative incidents.  I imagine that as I continue writing about how and why I wrote successive pages of this novel, there will be more emphatic statements about life experiences that ""hard-wired" my feelings, tastes, and views. Just imagine that they are all true and running simutaneously like programs in the background of my consciousness [just as equivalent programs run in the background of your mind, dear reader.]

For example, at eight I discovered science fiction movies. Within a few weeks I saw both The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and The War of the Worlds, and the tenor of my life was set. From that point on, all things mundane and prosaic were anathema to me.

To say that another way: I may be able to explain how fundamental this synaptic track switching was to me at the age of eight by this little story.  In the 1970s, Roots, the first American TV mini-series, attracted a titanic audience. The show fanned a cultural interest in genealogy and people everywhere delved into their backgrounds and learned that they were related to thus and so, or sprung from this, that, or another stock, and so forth. Due to all this being "in the air" around me, I began to ponder what my roots were, but there didn't seem to by anything about my heritage or ancestors that was worth noting. Then one day it hit me that my fundamental roots were science-fiction movies. Clear and simple. It was science-fiction movies that cultivated in me a craving for anything but the here and now.

At age eight is when my life crossed paths with Carl Bark's Uncle Scrooge comic books and the whole notion of "lost-race" adventures became intrinsic to my being. At twelve I discovered books (that's right, books, whereupon I began haunting all our local licraries and bookshops), science fiction, and, particularly, Arthur C. Clarke, all during the summer of 1957. By 21, I began to notice everyday phenomena that didn't add up, coincidences that seemed highly improbable, that even seemed to have purpose. At 25, I learned of Carl Jung, the collective unconscious, and synchronicity, all of which put names to the phenomena I had begun to notice at 21.

Also around that same time, science fiction literature was going through one of its periodic inferiority complexes, which this time spawned the "new wave". . . and the genre that I loved turned to ashes in my mouth.

For three or four years I existed in a sort of literary limbo; nothing I read was satisfying. But then in 1973, at 28, I discovered H. Rider Haggard via his The People of the Mist published through the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series (Betty Ballantine and Lin Carter, eds). I found in Haggard a sort of soul mate with regard to attitudes about life and its meaning and the eyebrow-lifting ironies that seem to frame much of it all.  I never looked back and my fiction tastes have remained ever since happily entrenched in the period of roughly 1850 to 1930.

Cover by Dean Ellis

Therefore, I've written two pastiches, one set in 1891 and the other in 1872, and I've nearly completed a third titled Allan Quatermain at the Dawn of Time; Or, The Adventure of the Star of Wonder, set in 1873, another Sherlock Holmes and Allan Quatermian adventure.

Post No. 6 will explain the purpose behind my 600-word "Dedication: To Sir Henry Rider Haggard".

The Great Detective at the Crucible of Life; Or, The Adventure of the Rose of Fire is available at
http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Detective-Crucible-Life/dp/0809500507 

Comments are appreciated! Thsmk you.