The February 1937 issue of Open Road For Boys featured an adventure story called “Primeval” by Charles W. Diffin. Open Road was a boys’ outdoor life magazine from November 1919 until the 1950s, a competitor of Boys’ Life, the Boy Scout magazine. Written for male youth, all its fiction starred young boys of good American values. Even the caveman version. “Primeval” is a tale of the age of primitive man. It stars a young blond-haired primitive named Urg.
The plot begins with Toolah, a human of rough outline with darker skin, discovering the local swamp-dwellers, Neanderthals with shaggy coats, chasing a young boy. Toolah kills one of the swamp-dwellers with a throwing club. Having saved the boy, he decides to take him to the caves of his people, the hill dwellers. He is fatalist about the boy’s future. If the hillmen accept him, he will live. Urg would have been dead anyway if Toolah hadn’t intervened.
The caveman is immediately impressed by the boy, His stone hammer has sinew to hold on the head, an innovation the hill-dwellers do not know. Also, Urg can climb like a monkey in the vine and branch highway that takes them to the caves. Once there, Gorok, the biggest and meanest of the lot, decides to kill the boy. Only Urg dives off into the river to save a foolish child who has fallen into the water.
Urg saves the boy. He is pulled from the water by the shaman, Lohte. He, too, came from beyond the swamp and knows Urg’s language. Lohte is the man who paints the animals of the hunt so they can be killed. He has magical powers even Gorok doesn’t want to challenge. Lohte tells the tribe that if Gorok raises his club against Urg he will turn into a fish. The tribe accepts Urg in. The boy wants to live with Toolah but the man says he has paid his debt. Urg chooses to live with him anyway.
Not a bad opener if the series had continued. No doubt, Gorok would be back as an antagonist as Urg gets into prehistoric trouble each story. One thing I didn’t like (but wasn’t surprised by) was the not-so-subtle racism in the story. Urg is blond-haired and Toolah is dark-skinned. Urg, even as a child, is superior to the hillmen in strength, speed and knowledge. His kinsman, Lohte, has knowledge and power over the others, again because of his origins. In 1937, this is pretty standard, and by comparison with the British Boys’ magazines of the time, this is almost liberal. Still, I don’t care for it, making this a poor choice for reprinting for children.
The end of the story promises a sequel: “Watch for “The Cry”, another story of Urg’s adventures with the hillmen.” This story, as far as I can tell, never materialized. Why didn’t Diffin continue the series? There are many questions here that I can’t really answer.
Charles W. Diffin was one of the big writers for the Clayton Astounding Stories of Super-Science, and later made the transition to the Tremaine Astounding Stories. He wrote of space creatures, molemen and the like. His last SF Pulp story is “Blue Magic” (Astounding Stories, November 1935). After this he sold a few Westerns and Mystery stories, which were better paying and easier to sell. I thought he walked completely away from all things SF but this tale, while not really Science Fiction, appeals to the same audience that loves Edgar Rice Burroughs.
For Top-Notch he wrote two stories set in prehistory of the creative awakening of a young caveboy, “Man of the Dawn” (October 1934 Top-Notch) and “The Feast of Rah” (May 1935 Top-Notch), which formed the basis for his later Kiplingesque adventure novel The Secret of the Sun-God’s Cave (1942).
Trussel gives the dustjacket copy:
This is the thrilling story of Rak, a boy who lived in a cave at the edge of the jungle long ago when the world was young.
At Rak’s birth, the wise woman of the tribe made a strange prophecy. She said that he would travel to far-off places, even to the end of the world where the Sun-god slept, and that he would be chief of two tribes. But whether he would ever come back to his own caves, she did not tell.
As Rak grew up and learned to hunt with the long spear, he found adventure waiting for him at every turn of the forest trails. Sometimes it was a tree-cat waiting to spring. Once it was a horde of wild ape-like invaders that fell upon the tribe; and once, Mum-boob, the great savage bear.
By the time his journey to the end of the world began, Rak had already rescued his people from destruction. And he found out what no cave dweller knew before — that a raft made of logs could carry a whole tribe down the river to safety.
That was only the beginning of his discoveries. Together with his friend Poto and his dog Ghee, Rak set out on unexplored trails. The prophecy was right. For Rak’s way took him to the Sun-god’s cave, and he came back to share with his people the wonderful things he found there.
Beautifully written, with characters strongly portrayed, THE SECRET OF THE SUN-GOD’S CAVE makes this far-off period extraordinarily alive to boys and girls of today.
I haven’t read this book or the Top-Notch version so I don’t know if Urg is simply another version of Rak or a second try to capitalize on the sub-genre of prehistoric adventure that Irving J. Crump sold to boys in Boys’ Life. That series became four books. (His hero is Og not Urg.) Perhaps Diffin was trying to re-tool the Top-Notch ideas for a Crump-like series for the children’s magazines. Charles W. Diffin lived to 1966. He wrote some non-fiction based on his background in engineering around the same time, but The Secret of the Sun-God’s Cave may have been his final book.
The primitive man adventure sub-genre had many small number story entries from writers like H. G. Wells, Robert E. Howard, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Ray A. Palmer, Howard Browne, Jim Kjelgaard and Manly Wade Wellman, but most did not make a career of it. Charles W. Diffin proved no different. “Primeval” by Charles W. Diffin was a last gift at end of a decade-long career.
Thanks to Mike Davis for the great scan of this old magazine.