Allan Quatermain Zulu Trilogy

[Plynkes]

(That's what he thinks.)

[Hammers]

Yes, that is what I think. Sometimes it is beneficial to be a dullard. 

[The_Beast]

***snippage***

I've never seen the 1937 version of King Solomon's Mines, but I'd like to, as it is supposed to stay much truer to the book than the others. It also has Paul Robeson singing in it, apparently!

Have it on DVD, couldn't get into it. I enjoy Robeson voice, but found the song interjections too jarring.. I ended up following Plynkes advice of "If you don't enjoy it I wouldn't try to force it. If I am struggling with a book I'll stop reading it rather than have it become a millstone around my neck."

Of course, we're talking a movie instead of a book, but you can get the same effect. I shall try it again, soon, to see if it was just a mood thing.

Doug

[Plynkes]

Yes, on reflection Paul Robeson singing in an Allan Quatermain picture does sound like a really stupid idea. But it's just I'm a massive admirer of Robeson, and also the Bollywood-style lunacy of characters bursting into song for no reason in the middle of an action movie appeals to me for some reason. 

[Lowtardog]

When a youngster I received form an old biddy a copy of the withces head (god knows what happened to it) that was set in the zulu war but had a supernatural edge to it if I recall. Wish I still had it as there were some lovely illustrations in it

[Plynkes]

How about some short descriptions of a few more?


"The Almighty gave us our lives, and I suppose He meant us to defend them, at least I have always acted on that, and I hope it will not be brought up against me when my clock strikes."

King Solomon's Mines
The classic. The novel that kicked off the whole 'Lost World' genre in the first place, and despite the complete lack of dinosaurs, still one of the best (the best if you ask me).  If you have never read it you have no business posting on Colonial Adventures so go away and don't come back until you have (Just kidding, that's not LAF policy or anything!).

Allan Quatermain accompanies Sir Henry Curtis, Captain Good RN and a mysterious African stranger to a lost world of mysterious ruins, inhabited by an offshoot of the Zulus. They get tangled up in local politics and Good starts hitting on the local totty. Bloody Civil War ensues. Alan shoots animals. Bad Guys get comeuppance, Good Guys get treasure, but not the girl.







"Nay, nay, it will be a man's death: gainsay me not, old friend. It has been a good day, let it now be good night."

Alan Quatermain
Follow-up to KSM, and the final episode of the saga. Yet it was only the second one to be written. After that Haggard treated us to Phantom Menace-style prequels, and got himself into almost as much of a mess as George Lucas (but more of that later). Now, this might seem like I'm copy-and-pasting, but:

Allan Quatermain accompanies Sir Henry Curtis, Captain Good RN and a mysterious African to a lost world (this time a Filmation Tarzan cartoon-style lost white civilisation of the week). They get tangled up in local politics, and this time both Curtis and Good immediately start hitting on the local totty. Allan, being Allan, begins shooting the local high priest's herd of sacred Hippopotami. Hilarity ensues.

No, wait a minute. Not hilarity:  Bloody Civil War ensues. Uh, look guys, do you think that just once you could discover a lost civilisation without starting a war when you get there?

In this one Allan gleefully slaughters Masai, weird mutant crab things (yes, really), Hungry Hungry Hippos, and loads of Zu-Vendi (the name of the people from the lost civilisation). We have one of Haggard's favourite things: a doomed romance, plus a not-so-doomed one. Allan's pal Umslopogaas gets his Crowning Moment of Samuel L. Jackson Fuck-Off Badass Awesomeness when he shows the Zu-Vendi just what kind of stuff Zulus are made of (Umslopogaas' popularity meant he got his own spin-off novel later on). And as it's the last chapter in the saga, everyone gets a happy ending. Except the ones who are dead. And the ones who are alive but aren't that happy. Um, let's start again: two of the characters get a happy ending.







"She has come back, Macumazahn, with all the baboons in the world, and she has come back to do evil."

Alan's Wife
The first of the prequel stories. As the title might lead you to suspect, Allan gets married. This one is kind of like a trailer for the whole saga. Most of the themes and ideas that typify Quatermain are all shoved into one not very long story. Mysterious ancient ruins? Check. Zulu Impis and Trek-Boers? Check. Scary African magic and creepy witchdoctors? Check. Doomed romance? Check. Downer ending and overall atmosphere of melancholy? Check. Allan slaughtering animals? Just wait and see. The only thing missing is the sassy/feisty/sexy/wilful young Zulu lass.

Animal slaughter? Oh yes, in his ongoing quest to completely exterminate the animal population of Africa, Quatermain really, really outdoes himself this time. Not only does he somehow manage to kill an entire bloody herd of elephants in one go, he commits an act of attempted genocide on a tribe of baboons (though they did have it coming, the bastards). Speaking of baboons, a full twenty-five years before Tarzan we have a feral white character living in Africa who was raised by apes (yeah, Burroughs, you fucking copy-cat!): The 'Babyan-frau' or Baboon Woman.


This first of the prequel stories causes a few problems, because if you have read the Zulu Trilogy, nothing quite adds up. You get the feeling that Haggard thought he hadn't really done the whole "Allan gets married" and "Allan has adventures with Zulus and witchdoctors" thing justice in this short novel, so he went back and wrote a whole trilogy on that theme. Trouble is, he retconned in a whole bunch of stuff which is (obviously) never mentioned in this, earlier-written but later-set book. So Allan, for example, claims that Stella Carson, his wife in this book, was his first and only wife. Yet according to Marie, Marie Marais was Allan's first wife, and Stella his second. He tries to wave this away by saying the death of Marie was so traumatic to him that he never mentioned it to anyone, nor did he put it in his journals, but it is all a bit of a half-assed way around things and isn't very convincing. You get the distinct impression you are reading about the adventures of an Allan from an alternate universe, or one who has been hit on the head and lost his memory. Continuity screw-ups and retcons, eh? Marvel and DC would be proud!  

Even without worrying about such issues, this one does get a bit silly in its own right too, what with the Baboon-Woman and her army of killer apes, but it's all good harmless pulpy fun. Besides, baboons are bloody scary.







"'Yes,' she continued, 'it is the dead hand of my dead child, and I bear it with me that I may never forget, never for one short hour, that I live that I may see Wambe die, and be avenged."

Maiwa's Revenge or The War of the Little Hand
Allan becomes a marked man after shooting elephants on the hunting grounds of a tribal chieftain without permission, and must fight for his very life.

The first half of this short novel is all hunting. I don't share the author's enthusiasm for this kind of scene, or the obvious joy he gets from filling his books with this stuff. The hunting scenes in this one are rather exciting, but I like elephants, and so found myself a little disgusted with Quatermain and his cheery delight in wiping them out.  Just when I was thinking I couldn't stomach any more of this the plot arrived, in the form of one of those fiesty young Zulu girls that Haggard is so fond of. From that point on the already exciting (but rather sickening, in terms of fauna abuse) tale hits another gear and doesn't really let up. It's pretty much all action from there on without all the exposition, sitting around chatting, committee meetings, audiences with kings and formal speech-making that sometimes tends to pad out Quatermain stories. This time they just fucking get on with it. And the 'it' they get on with is very enjoyable too: A sustained chase sequence, and after a short rest and a quick planning session a cunning ruse followed by a massive battle.

Job done. Excellent fun.

Haggard is rather fond of these strong, attractive young female Zulu characters, and as mentioned another one crops up here. Unlike in the Zulu trilogy where they are often morally ambiguous at best, if not outright villains, this one is more like the example from King Solomon's Mines: Though she is driven, fierce and violent, there is no doubting she is one of the good guys.* In fact although other characters outrank her, she is really their de facto leader (with Quatermain as advisor, subordinate military commander and ideas man). While in the other books such character are femmes fatales or witchdoctoresses, this one is an action girl. An amazon, in fact. She gets her knobkerries out and gets stuck in with the lads like a good 'un when there's fighting to be done.

Despite the sustained cruelty to animals this is one of my favourites. I like the ones with lots of fighting and sexy Zulu twenty-somethings. You may have noticed that.  

*Yes, she's vengeful, very violent and driven to extreme behavior and cruelty, but it is made abundantly clear that her furious rampage of Doom and Death is entirely justified. And she does stop when Allan asks her to.

[JollyBob]

Thanks again Plynkes, more excellent reviews. 

Its been a long time since I read it, but the scene in Allan Quatermain where Curtis and Umslopogaas stand shoulder to shoulder atop the stairway, axes swinging is one of my favourite bits in any book ever.

A "Crowning Moment of Samuel L. Jackson Fuck-Off Badass Awesomeness" if ever there was one.

[Gluteus Maximus]

Agreed!

I like the attack on the Maasai camp by our heroes in Alan Quatermain. A great basis for a scenario. We need more armoured African adventurers.

Yes, Sam L J would make a great Umslopogaas and I really should find an appropriate figure to try and do a conversion at some point 

[Plynkes]

I have a suitably imposing Zulu figure, and have finally procured him an African-looking axe. Just a matter of getting off my lazy arse and doing the work now.

I had quite forgotten that they wear the chainmail they got in 'King Solomon's Mines.' My Umslopogaas shall be the standard, unarmoured version, but a chainmail-clad one would be cool, too, as would chainmail-wearing explorers. I suppose the place to start would be fantasy or medieval ranges if looking for conversion fodder.

[Gluteus Maximus]

I have a suitably imposing Zulu figure, and have finally procured him an African-looking axe. Just a matter of getting off my lazy arse and doing the work now.

I had quite forgotten that they wear the chainmail they got in 'King Solomon's Mines.' My Umslopogaas shall be the standard, unarmoured version, but a chainmail-clad one would be cool, too, as would chainmail-wearing explorers. I suppose the place to start would be fantasy or medieval ranges if looking for conversion fodder.

Mail is quite easy to do with some greenstuff etc and one of those handy dental tools that many figure suppliers stock. There are quite a few suitable Pictish/Scottish axe-armed figures, wearing short mail byrnies and with bare legs that could work for Umslopogaas with a Zulu head stuck on and a little filing.

An elephant-gun toting Quatermain in mail would be a fine thing to see!

[Christian]

There's a passage from King Solomon's Mines that I've been meaning to share with everyone. I think it's one of the most poignant things I've ever had the pleasure to read. It is Quatermain's musings on the eve of battle...

"... Yet man dies not whilst the world, at once his mother, and his monument, remains. His name is lost, indeed, but the breath he breathed still stirs the pine-tops on the mountains, the sound of the words he spake yet echoes on through space, the thoughts his brain gave birth to we have inherited to-day; his passions are our cause of life; the joys and sorrows that he knew are our familiar friends - the end from which he fled aghast will surely overtake us also!

Truly the universe is full of ghosts, not sheeted churchyard spectres, but the inextinguishable elements of individual life, which having once been, can never die, though they blend and change, and change again for ever."

Beautiful stuff. You don't see that in the latest Twilight or whatever... 

[Traveler Man]

Old Rider Haggard lived in my home county of Norfolk, England. One time in the 1890's he stood for Parliament. A hustings speech he gave in the village of Coltishall was so inflamatory it triggered an outright riot!