Secrets Of The Nine - The Monster On Hold!

The first three installments of the Secrets of the Nine saga were all written by Philip Jose Farmer in 1968 or thereabouts and were published as A Feast Unknown, Lord of the Trees and The Mad Goblin. These stories detailed how Doc Caliban and his half-brother Lord Grandrith battled the Nine, a secret cabal of impossibly old people who tried to run the world from the shadows. There was a fourth installment titled "The Monster on Hold" or "Down to Earth's Centre" proposed by Farmer at a 1984 convention where he shared some of the notes and early writings. It was alas never finished in his lifetime. But now it has been completed under the title The Monster on Hold by Win Scott Eckert who is an accomplished Wold-Newton theorist and has finished other Farmer fragments such as the The Evil in Pemberly House. 

The novel serves as a sequel of sorts to a canonical Doc Savage story, the last one in fact by Lester Dent entitled Up from Earth's Center. This Doc Savage finale from 1949 has the Man of Bronze confront underworld denizens who might or might not be actual devils. That the story ends without supplying the typical rational explanation for mysterious doings is unusual in the Savage canon and has led to much speculation as why this turned out the be the final outing for the good Doctor. (We know it was because Conde Nast saw that pulps were dying in the face of the new breed of paperback and the technological advance of television but don't mention that to a Wold-Newtonian scholar.)

Weirdly the story also draws upon a non-canonical Doc Savage story titled "Who Goes There?" written by John W. Campbell Jr. The "Thing" from this creepy story is suggested to have come from space and maybe that's true but maybe not, and did they kill them all really. 

Finally, the story owes a tremendous debt to H.P. Lovecraft and his C'Thulhu Mythos, the weird stories about other-dimensional supernatural overlords who are trying their damnedest to creep back into the world of men. There are also hints of Edgar Allan Poe blended in. 

The story begins in 1977 when Doc Caliban and his associates invade the North American stronghold of a member of the Nine. They are confronted with all kinds of threats, both to the body and mind but they prevail. Skipping forward to 1984 Doc Caliban again gathers his allies to descend into a vast cave network in New England (possibly around Miskatonic University) led by a man who is impossibly young and who was first encountered when these caves were penetrated in 1949. Doc and his team again face both threats to body and mind and find a weirdly bizarre world of peculiar creatures. It is a world which evokes Dante's Inferno but it's not that either. Eventually Doc sends his aides back to the surface as he goes even deeper. He's not alone though as the other-dimensional nature of this dim world allows him to connect to an "Other", a version of himself called "Lacewing". It is in fact Doc Wildman from the  Wold-Newton Universe. These two Docs acting as one encounter "Shrassk", a creature who exists between dimensions but seeks entry into our own to dire effect. There are more mysteries still to be solved but I don't want to ruin it all for you. 

 

The Monster on Hold was a rousing read and more than lived up to my expectations. It brought some closure to storylines developed in earlier "Secrets of the Nine" books but certainly left much room for more. This "Creative Mythograhpy" as Farmer called it makes for delightful reading as it mixes the new and old together with just the right blend of spicey storytelling. In addition to the story itself this volume also contains Eckert's seminal essay "The Wild Huntsman" which serves to clarify some of the relationships between characters. There are extensive original materials from Farmer himself as well as an excellent chronology to help a reader make sense of it all. The Monster on Hold can be picked up from Meteor House Press.

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