The Lost Worlds of Doc Savage

Lost Worlds are a sub-genre of adventure story made popular by H. Rider Haggard in 1885 with King Solomon’s Mines. (Granted he borrowed from Jules Verne, who borrowed it from Poe, but hey, that’s a different article.) Haggard wrote others like Allan Quatermain and the She novels. Others got in on the fun like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with The Lost World (1912) and Edgar Rice Burroughs, who made a cottage industry of it with his lost lands of Pal-u-Don, Opar and other cities sprinkled through Africa, Caspak and best of all, Pellucidar.

It shouldn’t be surprising that when Lester Dent (disguised as the robust Kenneth Robeson) sat down to knock out an adventure a month that Doc and his five amazing friends should discover a lost land or two. Here is a list of the best of them:

“The Man of Bronze” by Lester Dent (March 1933), the very first novel, has Doc and Co. discover “The Valley of the Vanished” with its Mayan people and lost deposits of gold. There is also the terrible death by phantom snakes.

Doc returns to the valley in “The Golden Peril” by Harold A. Davis and Lester Dent (December 1937) when the gold that funds Doc’s philanthropic work is attacked by a new leader in Hildago.

“The Land of Terror” by Lester Dent (April 1933) the second book, has an island inhabited by dinosaurs! How Edgar Rice Burroughs!

“The Phantom City” by Lester Dent (December 1933) has a lost city in the Arabian desert known as Rub’al Khali. Again in the spirit of ERB’s Opar, the inhabitants have to be beautiful and hideous with Mohallet and his white-furred beast-men. This one reminds me a little of Robert E. Howard and Conan, written around the same time.

“The Thousand-Headed Man” by Lester Dent (July 1934) is perhaps the most fascinating title out of 181 fascinating titles. A lost city in Indonesia and another ancient terror bringing death. This novel was adapted as a comic by Gold Key in 1966. They used a close-up from this Bama cover.

“The Land of Always Night” (March 1935) is one of my favorites in this category of lost worlds. Written by W. Ryerson Johnson, then rewritten by Dent, it has everything you want: a strange locale, weird inhabitants and a creepy vibe that the best Docs have.

“The Quest of Qui” by Lester Dent(July 1935) is a Northern lost world, with the race of Qui working with long-lost Vikings. I wrote about it at length here.

“The Fantastic Island” by W. Ryerson Johnson and Lester Dent (December 1935) was my first Doc, so I’m probably over-fond of it. I mean, how can you beat giant lizards? The man-eating crabs harkens back to Allan Quatermain (1887), which also had giant crabs guarding the way to Zu-Vendis.

“Mystery Under the Sea” by Lester Dent (February 1936) slips more into a Science Fiction vein, but I’ve always loved the underwater kingdom trope. This one got a sequel “The Red Terrors” by Harold A. Davis (September 1938) with a great Boris cover. I think I read these out of order. (sigh.)

“Ost” or “The Magic Island” by Lester Dent (August 1937) is probably the most lost of lost worlds. Of course, the bad hats have to find something wondrous and turn it to profit. Like The Quest of Qui, gangsters try to plunder a fantastic city.

“The Submarine Mystery” by Lester Dent (June 1938) has an English colony lost to time for three centuries. Of course, everybody has to talk with plenty of “Forsooths” and such.

“The Other World” by Lester Dent (January 1940) has all the best elements, a northern location and prehistoric animals. This is my second favorite Bama cover after The Land of Always Night. Sometimes referred to as the Whack-a-Weasel cover. Jack Mackenzie talks about this being his “first Doc” in our podcast.

“The Men Vanished” by Lester Dent (December 1940) borrows a plateau in South America from A. Conan Doyle. No surprise, ERB style, he ends up in an arena to fight to the death. Emery Clarke shows that conflict on the cover.

The Time Terror (January 1943) has Doc chase the Japanese to a lost world inside a crater at the North Pole. Cavemen and dinosaurs abound!

“Weird Valley” by Lester Dent (September 1944) is an odd number during the War, when Doc spent his time fighting the Nazis. He is off to Mexico to discover the Fountain of youth! This Modest Stein cover looks like it belongs on John W. Campbell’s Astounding.

“Up from Earth’s Center” by Lester Dent (Summer 1949) was the last hurrah. As the series went on the lost worlds got further apart. In the last years when Doc struggled to figure out what he was all about, having helped defeat Hitler in WWII, they almost disappear. Oddly, the last novel was a good old-fashioned lost world in the Earth’s center entered through a fissure in Maine.

I know you are going to say, “What about –?” Most Doc Savage novels have some element of a remote place or mysterious location but I thought these were the most striking. If you disagree, feel free to tell me otherwise. Which lost world caught your fancy?