In the last segment on riding beasts we focused largely on Barsoom and Amtor, or Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars and Venus, and similar types of settings. This time we are looking to ERB’s inner world of Pellucidar and the dino variety of weird things to ride.
Deep inside the earth, ERB placed the prehistoric world of Pellucidar. Cavemen and women travel by many methods though in the first book this was mostly walking or canoe. As the series progressed, he added mounts of many types. The first of these we meet at the end of the second book, Pellucidar (1915). The Thurians ride lidi or the gigantic brontosaurs:
Lidi
“Before the village were assembled a great concourse of warriors. Inside I could see the heads of women and children peering over the top of the wall; and also, farther back, the long necks of lidi, topped by their tiny heads. Lidi, by the way, is both the singular and plural form of the noun that describes the huge beasts of burden of the Thurians. They are enormous quadrupeds, eighty or a hundred feet long, with very small heads perched at the top of very long, slender necks. Their heads are quite forty feet from the ground. Their gait is slow and deliberate, but so enormous are their strides that, as a matter of fact, they cover the ground quite rapidly.” (Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs)
When Tarzan visited the inner world, getting there in a zeppelin, he gets separated from the crew and has some adventures on his own, including being captured by the hideous Horibs, lizard-men who live in underground burrows. These scaly men ride on komodo dragon-like lizards called Gorobors:
Gorobors
“Fully fifty of the Horibs on their horrid mounts had emerged from the ravine. Tarzan could see that the riders were armed with long lances–pitiful and inadequate weapons, he thought, with which to face an enraged triceratop. But it soon became apparent that the Horibs did not intend to meet that charge head-on. Wheeling to their right they formed in single file behind their leader and then for the first time Tarzan had an exhibition of the phenomenal speed of the huge lizards upon which they were mounted, which is comparable only to the lightning-like rapidity of a tiny desert lizard known as a swift.” (Tarzan at the Earth’s Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs)
Another person to get lost from that expedition to Pellucidar is Von Horst. He encounters the mammoth-men and their hairy mounts. William L. Chester would use the same idea for his Arctic version of Pellucidar.
Mammoths
“At first glance he thought it only a herd of mammoths moving down a gently sloping plain from the foot-hills, coming toward the river; but instantly he recognized the truth—astride the neck of each of the great beasts rode a man.” (Back to the Stone Age by Edgar Rice Burroughs)
First Tarzan, then later David Innes encounters the prehistoric riding birds, called dyals. Their riders use them ostrich-style. These giant ax-beaks are vicious mounts:
Dyal
“…The warriors were women, bushy-bearded and coarse like those of the Village of Oog; and their mounts were Dyals, huge birds closely resembling the Phororhacos, the Patagonian giant of the Miocene, remains of which have been found on the outer crust. They stand seven to eight feet in height, with heads larger than that of a horse and necks about the same thickness as those of horses. Three-toed feet terminate their long and powerful legs, which propel their heavy talons with sufficient force to fell an ox, while their large, powerful beaks render them a match for some of the most terrible of the carnivorous mammals and dinosaurs of the inner world. Having only rudimentary wings, they cannot fly; but their long legs permit them to cover the ground at amazing speed.” (The Land of Terror by Edgar Rice Burroughs)
Edmond Hamilton wrote all kinds of invasion stories early on in his career: giant robots, killer robots, aliens and interdimensional beings, but once he also opened a great pit in the earth to let the Pellucidarians come out into our world in “The Abysmal Invaders” from Weird Tales, June 1929:
“For through the streets were pouring masses of the lizard-men, bearing tools or weapons, hurrying along on taloned feet or riding huge brontosaurs, who tramped majestically along the street’s center while the walking crowd clung to its side.” (“The Abysmal Invaders” by Edmond Hamilton)
Pellucidarian type settings haven’t had the following that Mars and Venus had in book form. Despite this, good old Lin Carter did write one series about the inner world of Zanthadon. Here the Dragonmen of Zar have their own lidi-like dino-mounts called Thodars:
Thodars
“We ran into a herd of dinosaurs. They were very big dinosaurs, with
long, curving necks and pebbled bronze and-copper hides. There were a few things very strange about them. The first thing was that they wore bridles, bits and reins. Another thing that was odd was that they were
hunting us. The third thing was that men were riding on their backs.” (Hurok of the Stone Age by Lin Carter)
Of course, the dinosaur rider has been found in plenty of other places. In Fantasy games and novels, there is often a lich-like bad guy riding around on one, or in comics like Devil Dinosaur by Jack Kirby, the main character, a prehuman hominid rides about on a large red T. Rex. And who can forget Fred Flintstone? The desire to sit astride such a powerful beast is irresistible.
