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Books So Bad They're Good: Allan Quartermain's Excellent Adventures, Part I [1]
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Date: 2025-04-05
We have the wrong idea about Heroes.
I don’t mean the main character in the average book or epic poem. Those are protagonists, and they can (and do) come in all heights, races, religions, genders, and ages. They do many things, from gardening to having affairs to running businesses to having fantasies about having affairs to running gardening stores to leaving their spouses (spice?) upon finding out that the spice is having an affair to raising children to paying child support when their affair partner has a child. They live lives of wealth, poverty, luxury, misery, in suburbs and prairie towns and quaint rural hamlets, working as vicars and secretaries and artists and executives. They are you and me and old Mrs. Ashante-Ferguson at the bodega, and they are often quite fascinating as they live their lives and cope with whatever befalls them.
Protagonists do things and go places and accomplish much, but as interesting as they may be, they are not Heroes.
Oh no. Heroes are another breed entirely.
These are the bold, strong, fearless men (and sometimes women) who fight EEEEVVVILLLL. Spies outthinking Nazis, warriors challenging the gods, gentlemen detectives fighting crime or discovering lost worlds, generals leading troops in last-ditch charges, princesses rallying their countries against invaders, callow youths sent on quest, jaded veterans called back into service for one last mission...these are Heroes, or so fiction claims. Jack Ryan, D’artagnan, Amadis de Gaula, Sir Gawain, James T. Kirk, Red Sonja, Mary Ambree, Wonder Woman, Captain America — whether they live or die, succeed or fail, Heroes are stuff of which dreams are made, or at least bestselling novels.
There’s even a long, influential, and badly dated study of the mythology of Heroes, and I would be absolutely stunned if most of those reading this diary had not at least heard of Joseph Campbell and The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Heroes can be a lot of fun — one of my all-time favorite movies is Goldeneye, the James Bond entry where he drives a tank through St. Petersburg and drops a radio telescope on Sean Bean — but they are not exactly realistic. The average Hero, especially in a long-running series, should by all rights be a shivering, quivering, psychological wreck after all the swashbuckling, bullet-dodging, Nazi-punching, alien-smashing exploits they engage in on the regular.
It’s little wonder that a surprising number, at least in modern fiction, end up running a vineyard or keeping bees or just plain retiring to a quiet little village where they can chop wood and call themselves Dypje Schittz while staring moodily at a convenient flock of chickens or the local equivalent...and of course they pull a Cincinnatus when their country or dimension or planet calls, leave the fowl of choice, and plunge right back into the fray.
It would be all quite exhausting for a normal person, but hey, that’s what Heroes do.
The late 19th and early 20th centuries were one of the great heydays of Heroes as opposed to protagonists in popular fiction. Hundreds of writers churned out thousands of books, magazine stories, film treatments, and plays about Heroes. Professor Challenger, Rudolf Rassendyll, Sir Percy Blakeney and his beloved Marguerite, Prince Florizel, John Carter and his beloved Dejah Thoris, Jonathan and Mina Harker, Edmond Dantes, Lady Molly and her BFF Mary Granard, the denizens of Graustark and all of its peculiarly named neighbors...the list goes on, and on, and on, ad infinitum et ad nauseam . One couldn’t pick up a copy of The Strand, Argosy, or any of several dozen similar publications without encountering one or more Heroes.
And that’s just the Victorian/Edwardians. The public demand for Heroes, whether swashbucklers or detectives, gentleman adventurers, or ladies out to vindicate their husbands, was so great that even more appeared in the years between the world wars. Bulldog Drummond and the Black Gang...the Saint...Clark Savage, Jr…Conan of Cimmeria...the Legion of Space...Blackie Duquesne...Nick Carter...Biggles...I could do this all day, and I’m sure there are people reading this who can and would, given the chase (*waves at MT Spaces*). Readers, especially those of a romantic disposition, still loved the idea of a Hero, and be damned to the idea that, y’know, someone who gets beaten up all the time or comes down with unknown tropical diseases every few weeks is going to be in very sad shape well before the author runs out of ideas.
Most of these once-popular characters are long-forgotten, or at least out of print. The Old Adventurers Stately Retreat in Badbookistan is one of the largest and most luxurious Homes for Obsolete Characters in that rarified land, thanks largely to the Victorian and Edwardian Heroes’ propensity for making vast fortunes during their farflung travels. It’s a comfortable, clubby, tobacco-friendly place, with deeply upholstered leather chairs, tiffin on demand, and exotic Patrol Beasts purring on every footstool.
One of the most prominent denizens of the Old Adventurers Stately Retreat is a character who has managed to remain in print despite the vagaries of taste, the passage of time, and the failure of a Movie So Bad It’s Career Killing. A Heroic gentleman to the core, he spends most of his time beating the bounds, a large firearm at the ready, one or two faithful native guides guarding his flanks. Sometimes he brings in a rare jewel or a map of an unknown land, but he’s spent so much of his life adventuring that he prefers roughing it. Even the concept of tiffin on demand hasn’t changed the stubborn old coot’s mind about civilization, as horrifying as that might be.
I mean, who doesn’t like tiffin? Especially on demand?
The adventurer in question is the creation of a quintessential British Gentleman, and is perhaps the beau ideal of a British colonial adventurer despite his small stature and tragic life story. He’s largely known today for a single book, but this Old Adventurer not only appeared in nearly twenty tales published over forty years, he also figures in another, nearly as popular series by the same author. Over a dozen films and television series have chronicled his adventures to one extent or another, starring well known actors such as Stewart Granger, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Richard Chamberlain, and Patrick Swayze.
If that weren’t enough, this particular Old Adventurer has enjoyed something of a revival in the last quarter century thanks to several pastiches pairing him with Sherlock Holmes in a completely heterosexual way, if you want the slash write your own! and a popular graphic novel series that was itself adapted into a Movie So Bad It Was Career Killing.
The Old Adventurer in question is Allan Quartermain. He was and is the most famous creation of Victorian legend H. Rider Haggard, the star of King Solomon’s Mines and a surprising number of other stories, and his influence on subsequent popular adventure, thriller, and science fiction has been enormous, albeit largely unacknowledged. And though I thought I would be able to cover Quartermain and all his permutations, ancillary works, and adaptations in a single diary, the sheer volume of works devoted to literature’s greatest big game hunter/adventurer/pukka sahib/colonialist/explorer is more than I can analyze in one bite.
All I can do is beg indulgence from you, my faithful readers, and ask that you tune next Saturday, April 12, for “Allan Quartermain’s Excellent Adventures, Part II” for the thrilling conclusion. See you then!
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Have you ever heard of Allan Quartermain? H. Rider Haggard? Is there a 1960’s reprint stuffed in the insulation of your knotty pine rumpus room? Did you ever see one of the many, many movies starring this character? Would you admit it if you had? It’s a rainy night in New England, so come in from the cold and share….
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