Lord of Atlantis. John Russell Fearn

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СКАЧАТЬ enjoyed extraordinary popularity (especially with Canadian housewives), and ran for the next sixteen years following the appearance of the first novel in the March 3, 1945 issue, ending with Fearn’s sudden death in September 1960, aged only fifty-two. His final two Amazon novels appeared posthumously.

      During Fearn’s lifetime, only the first six novels were published in British hardcover editions from the World’s Work in England, after appearing in the Star Weekly. This was because the publishers discontinued their entire fiction line in 1954. However, the Amazon novels continued to appear in the Star Weekly, eventually notching up twenty-four titles.

      Fearn had resold paperback rights to the Canadian publisher Harlequin Books, but after publishing only the first three titles, they stopped publishing SF and other genre fiction to concentrate on their famous Romances line.

      Meanwhile, as early as 1949, Fearn had realized that the Amazon series had the potential to run indefinitely. This presented him with a problem, however. The ‘origin story’ of the Golden Amazon was conceived and actually set during the Second World War. Subsequent novels were written during the war and the immediate postwar period, and projected their stories only a few decades into the future.

      He very astutely realized that to keep ahead of reality, he needed to move the Amazon further into the future—first into the outer solar system, and thence to the stars. So with the seventh novel, he introduced a new main character, Abna of Atlantis—someone as equally intelligent, and even stronger than herself. These dynamics provided him with an interstellar canvas, thus ensuring that the series would remain ahead of reality.

      Fearn’s strategy was a great success, and the Amazon novels retained their popularity, ending only with his tragically early death in 1960. By then he had written a further twenty Amazon novels, and made preliminary notes for his next (which would later be written by Fearn’s biographer, Philip Harbottle).

      Long after Fearn’s death, his entire Amazon series would eventually see print from the pioneering US small press Gryphon Books in limited paperback editions, and later by the Canadian Battered Silicon Dispatch Box small press in their hardcover Omnibus series.

      This new Borgo paperback series will be the first trade edition of all twenty-one of these later novels by Fearn, beginning with the seventh novel in the original series. First published in 1949 as Conquest of the Amazon, I have edited it slightly as World Beneath Ice (The Golden Amazon Saga, Book One) so that it can be read and enjoyed by new readers who may be totally unfamiliar with what had gone before. Subsequent novels have also been slightly edited for modern readers.

      The publishers hope that this new series may create many more “fans of the Amazon.” Meanwhile, any reader interested in seeking out the earlier six Golden Amazon novels will find that they are readily available on the internet, and in numerous earlier paperback and hardcover editions.

      * * * *

      To date, readers can enjoy the following new Borgo editions:

      Book One: World Beneath Ice

      In destroying the threat of an alien invasion, the Golden Amazon had inadvertently caused a decline in the sun’s heat, encasing Earth in an ice sheet that threatens to eliminate humanity. The Amazon encounters Abna, a descendant of Atlantis, stronger and even more scientifically advanced than she, and the ruler of an Atlantean colony still surviving in a protected environment on Jupiter. She refuses his offer of marriage, but agrees to form an alliance in order to restore the sun and save the Earth. One thing that Abna has not told the Amazon is that all the females of his race have been wiped out by a bacilli infection....

      CHAPTER ONE

      UPHEAVAL

      Commander Ronald Clifton, chief navigator of the space-liner Atom Cloud, stood gazing out of the big observation window of the bridge. He was looking at something he could not quite understand, something that did not fit into his years of experience in the spaceways between Earth and Mars. Presently he turned, speaking in his clipped voice.

      “Have you a moment, Mr. Claxton?” The second navigator glanced up from studying his instruments and moved to his superior’s side. The commander motioned through the window. “What the blazes do you imagine that is?” he asked.

      Claxton gazed steadily. Here in the utter depths of space, some millions of miles from Earth—from which the liner was heading in the direction of Mars—a most unusual spacecraft was visible. In these sheer distances where no air intervened, where the sun blazed with relentless, blinding glory, it was hard to estimate mileage.

      The object at which both men were staring was probably 3,000 miles away—an enormous wheel, it seemed.

      “Not the least idea, sir,” Claxton said. “Looks a bit like one of those alien spacecraft we had trouble with some time ago.”

      “Can’t be that; they were all destroyed by the Golden Amazon. Anyway, that thing is much bigger. Get the reflector set up, Mr. Claxton.”

      “Right, sir.” The second navigator turned to the powerful telescopic apparatus and adjusted its light-trapping devices and screens so that it was prismatically reflecting the distant object onto a broad viewing screen. The Commander gazed at it and gave a long whistle of surprise.

      “Not a disc, sir, as we thought,” Claxton said. “It’s a globe of some sort with glass circles all around it.”

      “Yes—if that’s what they are,” the Commander said. “They might even be lenses of great size. Sixteen of them circling that ball like a necklace. There seems to be windows in the ball, too. I certainly never saw anything like it before. Apparently it’s heading in the direction of Earth.”

      “Might be dangerous,” Claxton suggested. “Do you think we ought to warn them back home? They’re in no shape for meeting any possible menace while rebuilding everything from the great glacier catastrophe.”

      “It’s not our job to issue warnings, Mr. Claxton. That’s a panic action. We’ll report what we have seen and leave it at that. Attend to it, will you?”

      “Immediately, sir.” The Commander returned his attention to the big window. It was his responsibility to get this huge liner safely to Mars, not conjecture on the meaning of a strange spacecraft. Nevertheless, he did wonder quite a lot about it as he watched its glittering circle slowly sink into the abyss in the direction of far-flung Earth.

      On Earth itself the information concerning the weird craft did not excite undue attention, chiefly because those in charge of world affairs had more than enough on their minds in restoring order after chaos. Only a few months had passed since the whole world had been encased in a cocoon of ice—the Great Glacier, as it had been called—created by the near death of the Sun. That the Sun now blazed again upon the world and surrounding planets, as hot and friendly as of yore, was entirely owing to the combined sciences of Violet Ray Brant—the Golden Amazon—and Abna, a descendant of the lost city of Atlantis, whose home now lay beneath the distant Red Spot of Jupiter. The Amazon herself, acclaimed at last throughout the world for her stupendous feat in rekindling the orb of day, had virtually become dictatress of Earthly policy. Since she had always taken a leading part in world affairs, especially when scientific problems arose, her rise to absolute power really signified but little. She was pleased—and nothing more—that the Earth’s inhabitants had at last decided to elect her of their own volition; otherwise nothing was changed.

      Day by day she sat in the headquarters of central London, from where came all the world’s orders, discussing plans with engineers and architects for rebuilding, arranging new social СКАЧАТЬ