1920 adventurous SF novel. Bored after the War, "The Master"
determines to gather some like-minded people and find Adventure!
And it's interesting because it isn't quite in the usual vein
of these things. Yes, the Master is a war hero, genius inventor, great
leader, strict disciplinarian, with no time for women… but he isn't
the always-right automaton that, say, Doc Savage would be when he
appeared thirteen years later. Indeed, one of the band of
thrill-seekers turns out (no spoiler, it's quite obvious from first
appearance) to be a woman, who plays just as much a part in events as
the rest of them in spite of The Master's disdain for all of her sex.
And it's a technothriller of its day, but that day is still in the
very early years of aviation, made most clear as we meet "the most
stupendous hydroplane ever conceived by the brain of man or executed
by the cunning of his hand". [For "hydroplane", read "seaplane", I
think.]
By comparison with the Handley-Page, the Caproni, the D.H.-4, the
Gotha 90-120, the Sikorsky, it spread itself as an eagle spreads
beside a pigeon.
Yes, I believe the timing is just right! "The Caproni" must be the
Caproni
Ca.60,
caught in that brief window after it had been announced but before
anyone tried to fly it, during which one might have believed it could
work. As for the others, "the Handley-Page" is probably the
V/1500, the de
Havilland DH.4 is not
particularly huge, the Gotha bombers I know of were designated G.I to
G.V, and I'm guessing "the Sikorsky" would be the Ilya
Muromets, as he
only went to America in 1919.
It lay in a kind of metallic cradle, almost like a ship ready for
launching on its ways. Ahead of it, metal plates stretched away like
rails, running toward the lip of the Palisades. Its quadruple
floats, each the size of a tugboat and each capable of being
exhausted of air, constituted a potential lifting-force of enclosed
vacuums that very largely offset the weight of the mechanism. It was
still a heavier-than-air machine, but the balance could be made
nearly perfect. And the six helicopters, whose cylindrical,
turbine-like drums gleamed with metallic glitters—three on each side
along the fuselage—could at will produce an absolutely static
condition of lift or even make the plane hover and soar quite
vertically.
A vacuum balloon only saves about 0.9N of weight per cubic metre
compared with a hydrogen balloon at STP, in return for which it has to
be rather heavily braced, which is why they have never been built. It
later turns out that these floats can pump out an air cushion to
reduce drag on takeoff. I've never met "helicopter" in this usage,
though I could believe someone had proposed the mechanism.
There the monster lay, outstretching its enormous sextuple wings,
each wing with an area of 376 by 82.5 feet. The non-inflammable
celluloid surfaces shone white as fresh-cut ivory, clean, smooth,
unbreakable. The plane reminded one of some Brobdingnagian
dragon-fly, resting for flight, shimmering with power as it poised
for one swift leap aloft into the night.
But most of all, while the foreigners are as one would expect
inferior, they are for the most part not portrayed as sub-human.
Some of them are evil, some are treacherous, they get gunned down by
the dozen, certainly, but compared with for example the Tuaregs or the
cannibal tribe portrayed in The Sky Riders (from the previous year)
there is no doubt that they are people rather than inconvenient
obstacles or unusually clever animals on the way to the prize.
Oh boy the orientalism, though. All the stereotypes are here, and
given that some of the shenanigans involve stealing the actual Black
Stone from Mecca there's
really no getting away from it. (The Master follows some Islamic
practices, and has an Arab servant whose life he saved at Gallipoli,
but of course is not actually religious himself.)
Oh yeah, he uses Khat, we're
told strictly one leaf per day because he's so amazingly disciplined,
but soon enough it's several leaves several times a day. Not that that
ever causes any problems.
It's all an odd blend of the usual post-war adventure, using a real
religion more for its value as an exotic weirdness than from any real
interest in it but actually doing the research rather than just making
stuff up, a manly hero with no time for women who ends up in love
nonetheless, a wild scheme that isn't so much for enrichment but for
danger, having enrichment merely as a by-product… I cannot say
anyone should read this book, but if you think the way I do you may
find it strangely fascinating.
BigJackBrass mentioned
this to me (as before, "recommended" would be too strong). Freely
available from Project
Gutenberg.