Subj : Re: This echo
To   : Scott Adams
From : Kay Shapero
Date : Mon Aug 19 2002 08:08 pm

on Aug Aug 02 23:31, Scott Adams wrote to Kay Shapero:

 KS>> The latter -  "Green Mansions", "The Lost World" and so forth.   

 SA>         Not familiar with green mansion...hmmm...

It's a novel _Green Mansions_ by W.H. Hudson, written in 1904.  The protagonist 
goes to Venezuela (iirc), meets and falls in love with Rima the last survivor 
of a bird-like human race living in the jungle.  


 SA>         The lost World tv series has been on a couple years now
 SA>         I see.  Never saw more than a few minutes of it.

I've never seen it myself.  I meant the novel _The Lost World_ by Sir Arthur 
Conan Doyle, in which Professor Challenger leads an expedition to the top of a 
huge mesa in South America and discovers it to be inhabited by dinosaurs and 
things.  Greg Bear recently wrote a sequel in which, years later, dinosaur 
circuses have gone through boom to bust and the owner of the last decides to 
return such of his collection who can be expected to survive the trip to the 
wild, through political and natural hazards.  Did a decent job of it.

 SA>         So how if your doing dinos and such did you come
 SA>         up with stats?

I don't know if dinosaurs will get involved or not - what I'm after is the 
atmosphere of the early 1900s pulp novels, where you might find just about 
*anything* over the next ridge or up the next mesa.  (Or floating high in the 
air or hidden under the sea or....)  I also plan on pulling out a lot of 
supernatural critters including a domovoi (Russian house spirit), maybe some 
selkies amongst the sea lions.  A bit of comic book style as well, given that 
Doc Strange is the inspiration for one of the characters.

Nothing new about that - my last major pulp campaign allowed folks to invent 
their own characters or use existing pulp (or other period) fiction ones, so at 
one point we had a hard boiled detective (Cameron, Nicolai's "Bogey  clone"), 
Doc Savage (and the Brain Trust), The Spirit, a handful of Borribles, a 
psychic, and (briefly) Lord Peter Wimsey involved in the same trilogy of 
adventures.   

(What I called the "What I did on my vacation" sequence.  

First there was the trip out, complete with giant demon rat in the bilges, and
Denny Colt (The Spirit) getting his exercise dodging a wouldbe girlfriend.

Then there was the Law Enforcement convention in London notable for such things 
as Doc Savage's retrieval of a kitten from a tree, an encounter with a 
werewolf, and the rescue of a kidnapped child (who later turned out to be 
Anastasia.  Yes, THAT one.)

Finally there was the fishing trip up north to a small Scotts town with 
peculiar goings on lifted mostly out of a Dorothy Sayers short story, and the 
incidental opening of a faery mound closed by cold iron which enabled the last 
elf outside to get back in.  

The trip back was uneventful - I figured the characters were tired enough. )

I just wish the lantern hadn't gone out when Cameron ran into the demon rat.  
It was huge, and invisible save for glowing red eyes, but since the lights were 
out anyway, he couldn't even TELL.  Sigh... so much for special effects.

--- Msged 6.0.1
 * Origin: StormGate Aerie (1:102/524)

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