Lord of the Trees Read Free

Or perhaps the two universes have always been parallel and coexistent.
    The parallel universe theory is supported by Farmer’s fragment of a fourth Nine novel, The Monster on Hold . The fragment was introduced by Farmer at the 1983 World Fantasy Convention, and was published in the convention program. 2 During a series of adventures in which Doc Caliban continues to battle the forces of the Nine, he “begins to suffer from a recurring nightmare and has dreams alternating with these in which he sees himself or somebody like himself. However, this man, whom he calls The Other, also at times in Caliban’s dreams seems to be dreaming of Caliban.”
    Later, when Caliban has descended below the surface into a labyrinthine series of miles-deep caverns, in search of the extra-dimensional entity known as Shrassk, a being which had been invoked and then imprisoned by the Nine in the eighteenth century, Caliban has another vision of The Other: “The Other was standing at the entrance to a cave. He was smiling and holding up one huge bronze-skinned hand, two fingers forming a V.”
    “One huge bronze-skinned hand.”
    The Other is Doc Wildman, communicating to Caliban across the dimensional void.
    Dennis Power takes a different view: “In this fragment, Farmer seemed to indicate that Doc Caliban and the Nine lived in an alternate universe from [Doc Wildman]. While Shrassk, the... monster, was most likely extra-dimensional, Doc Caliban of course was not, although he may have become trapped in other-dimensional space by the machinations of the Nine. I think that Farmer may have made the assertion that Doc Caliban, Grandrith, etc., resided in a different universe for a few reasons. First of all was the safety of his family. Having learned that the Nine were not entirely wiped out, he wanted to demonstrate that he was not a threat to them. By placing them in another universe, it is as if he was saying that not only were they fictional, but also that no true life counterparts ever existed in the real world. Also, he may have been trying to forever end the controversial theory that Grandrith and Caliban were [Greystoke] and [Doc Wildman]. This theory still raises the hackles today among casual readers of Farmer’s works who have only read A Feast Unknown , Lord of the Trees , or The Mad Goblin , and not his biographies or authorized novels about the real [Greystoke] and Doc.”
    Nonetheless, if one disagrees with Power, the parallel universe explanation begs the question how Farmer came into possession of Grandrith’s memoirs.
    Could Farmer have received Grandrith’s and Caliban’s manuscripts from an alternate universe? Assuming that Farmer’s recounting of meeting Grandrith in Kansas City is accurate—at least from Farmer’s perspective—how might this have occurred? And how did Grandrith subsequently deliver Volume X of his memoirs (which became Lord of the Trees ) to Farmer? How did Farmer receive Doc Caliban’s manuscript for The Mad Goblin ?
    Perhaps Grandrith learned how to cross the dimensional gate and delivered his manuscripts and that of Caliban to a noted writer of science-fiction in an alternate universe who would understand it? Probably not, as Doc Caliban does not seem to have any knowledge of the parallel universe in 1977 and 1984 (the dates of the two known fragments of Caliban’s further adventures, “Down to Earth’s Centre” and The Monster on Hold ); presumably, if Grandrith had learned to traverse the dimensions in the late 1960s, he would have informed his half-brother Caliban.
    Could someone else have passed through the dimensional gate and given the manuscript to Farmer? It would not have been hard to pose as Lord Grandrith (or rather, “James Claymore”) during their one meeting, since Farmer had never met him, and indeed had never heard of him. But Farmer, with his fascination with Edgar Rice Burroughs’ tales of a jungle lord raised by “apes,” would have been instantly hooked by the story of