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[This review originally published on my blog in September 2017.]
Cover of KING OF THE WORLD'S EDGE (web link)
On a whim, I bought this book from a local second-hand bookshop because it looked to be pure pulp, and it was well worth the mere pennies I paid. The cover, drawn by Jack Gaughan, shows something like a Viking longship (I'm no expert) being pulled through the sea by a trio of alligator men. Who could resist that?
This is a rattling good yarn - part historical novel, part fantasy, all pulp - very much in the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs, but with just the hint of Lovecraft to it. Although Munn didn't reach the heights of Burroughs in this tale, it shows that he had talent – and this was his first novel, too.
The story is set at the fall of King Arthur, and depicts Arthur and his forces as the last defenders of Roman civilisation in Britain - which is more historically accurate than the usual mythic treatment he gets. The remainder of his armies, led by Ventidius Varro and the magician Myrdhinn (Merlin), leave the British Isles, head for the mythical (to them) New World, have strange adventures on the way, and even wilder adventures when they get there. Varro and Myrdhinn's great dream is to rebuild Roman civilisation somewhere else, away from the fading and falling real Roman Empire*. This they achieve, but with a few stings in the tail that I'll get to.
The plot doesn't let up, and the book rattles through the whole Arthurian mythos in the first 17 pages, with no stinting on the story, no loss of important detail or lack of pathos, which is quite some feat. When Varro and his men arrive in the Americas, things continue at an equally fast pace: to quote the blurb, they encountered the dread fish-monsters of Piasa, and were captured by the savage legions of Miapan's barbaric empire. (That's the Mayans to you and me.) They are held as human sacrifices, escape, have huge battles, unite the enemies of the Mayans, all leading to Varro setting himself up as the King of the World's Edge - but not before a final tragedy in his moment of triumph. All in all, great pulp fare.
The story has some interesting features that you tend not to see so much in today's market. For a start, the novel is structured as a 'message in a bottle'. After a hurricane in Munn's present day, a veteran finds a bronze cylinder, and passes it onto the unnamed narrator who opens it to find a parchment, which he then reads. This parchment is Varro's report to the Roman emperor on his adventures and what awaits the Roman Empire should they send representatives to the New World.
This sort of story within a frame is popular in Lost World and Sword and Planet adventures. John Carter often tells his latest story to Edgar Rice Burroughs, who then tells it to us. Transit to Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers (Ken Bulmer), which I am currently reading, has an even more convoluted message-in-a-bottle structure with a 'real' narrator and two intermediary narrators before we get to the actual story told by the protagonist. These message in a bottle stories all date back at least to Poe's MS. Found in a Bottle, and maybe further. However, Poe's story didn't have an overt narrator; we were left to read the story as if we'd found the manuscript ourselves.
Although this kind of structure is mostly out of fashion now, King of the World's Edge doesn't drag for using it. In fact, it sets the scene and helps anchor the story rather well. After all, when you read a story told in the first person, don't you often wonder "Who is the narrator telling this story to?" Well, Varro is telling his story to the Roman emperor, and who better to tell such an amazing tale to than the most powerful man of his era? Even better, this discovery takes only one page – no messing about here.
The second interesting feature is more about the attitudes of the characters than the structure: most obviously, the natives of the New World are not Noble Savages, but are barbaric in the extreme, happy to maim and kill anyone they see fit. And yes, they do hold human sacrifices. The main characters, though more civilised, are still barely civilised by today's standards. They are perfectly accepting of slavery, for instance. There are no ahistorical Politically Correct attitudes in this book.
King of the World's Edge occasionally discusses the conflict between spirituality and practicality, as when the Brits are trapped and awaiting sacrifice by the Mayans. Myrdhinn has a constant fear of losing his soul through the use of black magic, which clashes with Varro's more pragmatic need for a solution to the imminent problem of having his heart cut out. This philosophical conflict only comes out now and then and fortunately isn't boring or thrust in your face.
Munn was obviously heavily influenced by Burroughs, as you'd expect. Going by their behaviour, the native societies are a mix of red and green Martian societies from Barsoom, and when Varro forms an alliance against the oppressive Mayans, this is done similarly to how David Innnes built up his Empire to combat the Mahars of Pellucidar. In other words, Munn summarises lots of battles and events, which ERB also did. A pulp writer never gets bogged down with unnecessary detail, but is happy to chop down vast events or to shove them off-screen. Another of Burroughs' touches comes when Varro is taken prisoner by the Mayans, and he makes a friend of one of his captors, much like John Carter made friends with Tars Tarkas.
Unlike in Burroughs' books, there is a mystic character who retains his mystery and who would have stuck out on Barsoom: Myrdhinn, who is very much the archetypal cryptic magician throughout. Although a lot of his magic is science (especially meteorology), he does have supernatural powers, but only uses these sparingly because of the danger to his soul. He's more of a fantasy or weird fiction character than the Burroughsian scientists Abner Perry and Ras Thavas, who manipulate the world through scientific rather than spiritual means. You can see from Myrdhinn's presence and the occasional bleak event in the novel, like the death of Varro's nephew, that Munn was a contemporary, correspondent and friend of Lovecraft.
Indeed, Myrdhinn is so strong and interesting a character that he often overshadows Varro, who is often a minor character in his own story. Munn did not have Burroughs' talent of creating a pro-active hero, at least in this, his first novel. Although both Myrdhinn and Varro are threatened with death throughout, only Myrdhinn has any emotional or spiritual jeopardy to give the story a bit more oomph - the threat to his soul from using black magic. Varro has none of that extra motivation, especially not when it comes to the heart: he has no Dejah Thoris, Dian or Jane to pursue and motivate him into action. Varro mainly wants to rebuild Roman civilisation in the New World and, worthy as this might be, in pulp fiction it's not quite up there with 'I must rescue this beautiful woman from danger'.
One theme of King of the World's Edge, and of many other pulp stories, is the clash of civilisations and worldviews – look at the plots in many of Burroughs' Barsoom and Pellucidar books. Varro and Myrdhinn, like David Innes and Abner Perry, massively change the societies they encounter, each pair destroying one civilisation (the Mahars and the Mayans) and revitalising another (the humans in Pellucidar and the non-Mayans of the New World).
It's a sting in the tail, if you are aware of it, that although Varro and Myrdhinn triumph by toppling the evil empire of the Mayans and setting up a slightly more civilised one of their own, we know from history that this 'victory' eventually led to disaster. At the end of King of the World's Edge, the natives view Myrdhinn as the god Quetzalcoatl, and centuries later the Spanish arrived and were seen as the returning hero-god Myrdhinn (Quetzalcoatl) and his forces. We all know what happened next, that's if we go by the generally accepted story of how Cortes conquered the Aztecs in the 1500s. Whether Cortes really was seen as the god Quetzalcoatl or not by the Aztecs, Munn would have been aware of this story at the time he was writing. He knew what long range and rather ironic ending he was setting up for the novel, something that plays out in the knowledgeable reader's mind rather than on the page, which makes him more sophisticated a writer than we might think if we just looked at an outline of the plot.
Munn started writing in 1925 and continued till his death in 1981. King of the World's Edge was first serialised in Weird Tales in 1929, making it one of his earliest works, and though it shows some flaws, there is still plenty to enjoy. I'm looking forward to reading more of his work, such as its two sequels The Ship from Atlantis and Merlin's Ring, especially the latter, which was written when he was a much more mature writer and has many good write ups.
(* Shades of the present day, perhaps?)
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PAUL LUCAS, WRITER AND COGITATOR
paul.lucas0001@gmail.com
