dinosaurs

"I have wrought my simple plan / If I give one hour of joy / To the boy who’s half a man / Or the man who’s half a boy." (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, introducing The Lost World)

One of the most unnerving things about the Internet, I find, is the way it reveals the commonality of our human experience. No matter how unique I imagine myself, the online world usually demonstrates that someone else has been there, seen it, and done it all—if not before me, at least at roughly the same time. Back in July I wrote about an obscure young-adult novel, Danger: Dinosaurs! which had made a big impression on me during my formative years. I thought I was the only person alive who knew such a book even existed. To my surprise, two readers wrote back immediately, recalling a similar fascination with the very same book! Carl Eddy even went on to list as his childhood favorites many of the touchstones of my own youth: the movies King Kong and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, the paintings of Charles R. Knight, and Turok, Son of Stone. My God, when was the last time I heard anyone mention Turok? What wouldn’t I give to have on hand again that beloved series of comic books from the mid-fifties about two Native Americans, Turok and Andar, who became trapped in a lost valley of prehistoric animals (which they called “honkers”) and spent episode after episode trying to find their way out? I could also go on about Gorgo, The Giant Behemoth, The Valley of Gwangi and the other dinosaur-related fantasies which colored my younger days. . .at least until I discovered that perfect television show, The Avengers, with John Steed and Emma Peel--especially Emma Peel, who gave this teenage boy something even more compelling to focus on than dinosaurs.  read more »

I was one of those kids who visited his neighborhood library in Brooklyn several times a week and always came away with an armload of books. It was a profound rite of passage when I graduated from a children’s card to an adult card and was allowed into the sanctum which contained Lady Chatterley’s Lover and other such mysterious things; until then, however, there was more than enough to beguile me in the children’s room. Since there was always plenty of time for everything back then, any book I really liked I borrowed and read repeatedly. One book in particular which seized me and set up subterranean forces in my personality that I haven’t shaken to this day was a young adult science-fiction novel called Danger: Dinosaurs! by Richard Marsten, about a group of time travelers stranded in the Jurassic era. Some children might have been traumatized by Bambi’s mother in the forest fire, but I had my first adult lesson in the fragility of life when one of the main characters of Danger: Dinosaurs! was trampled to death by a stampeding herd of brontosaurs. Interestingly enough, for someone who has trouble remembering what movie he saw last weekend, I can still visualize the exact corner of the children’s reading room and even the middle shelf where this book could be located.

Do you have similar books which helped (for better or worse) to define you?  read more »