Customer Reviews

Doctor Omega - Collector's Edition

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It begins in a small village in Normandy, France in 1905. The narrator, Denis Borel, suddenly wealthy by the standards of the time has purchased a small cottage and retired from the hectic life of Paris. Alone except for the company of a manservant and a gardener, he spends his days playing his beloved Stradivarius violin and enjoys his solitude and music. Then one night, as he sits in his gazebo thinking about music, a strange light fills the night sky and a thunderous roar shakes the valley.

He learns from a neighbor that a hanger belonging to Dr. Omega has exploded. Borel knew nothing of Dr. Omega but learns quickly that others know of him and consider him something more than eccentric. According to his gardener....

"'He's an old gentleman with white hair dressed in black. There's something odd about him. The farmers think he's some kind of warlock, that he's got powers...Some are afraid of him, they think he has the evil eye....They avoid him like the plague....'" (Page 17)

After another night of strange dreams he sees Dr. Omega walking nearby and he becomes an obsession for Borel. He can't get the man out of his mind and constantly wonders what Dr. Omega is doing. He eventually goes to see the damage for himself and meets Dr. Omega. After a few more days and more visits with Dr. Omega he is stunned to learn that Dr. Omega is building a ship out of some strange metal and it planning to go to Mars. Dr. Omega wants Borel to make the trip with him.

"'I am looking for a man of courage to be my companion on a fantastic voyage-the word is not too strong-an extraordinary journey that I have long labored to make possible.'" (Page 33)

Dr. Omega wants Borel to make the trip not just to Mars, but a visit to a Mars of the distant past, as the spaceship will cross space as well as time. Borel agrees and what follows is his narrative of the shipbuilding process, launch, and resulting numerous perilous adventures on Mars. Reminiscent of Jules Verne, it truly is a fantastic voyage across space and time that catapults the reader into a world that might have been. Fans of Doctor Who will surely note the amazing description of Dr. Omega and his ship, Cosmos, and the many similarities.

And maybe that is why this reader enjoyed the book so much. Or maybe it is because as part of classic pulp fiction, it harkens back to a wonderful time, when anything was possible in the intermingled worlds of science fiction and fantasy. Unlike many movies and novels of today that set a scene of cataclysmic destruction with a planet destroyed by chemical, biological, nuclear, or something else, this novel presents wondrous possibilities while occasionally mixing in for the more critical reader a little social commentary.

In short, this was simply a wonderful novel written in a style that just isn't done anymore. The added black and while illustrations from the original French publication in 1906 in the collector's edition are a very nice touch. They, along with the surrounding incredible story, make the collector's edition well worth owning as well as passing down to children. With all the violence and negativity reflected in today's fiction, regardless of the genre, it is very refreshing to read a work full of the potential of the human race and full of wonder.

I was amazed by the uncanny smilarities between Doctor Omega and the Other Doctor. For a novel written in 1906, this is remarkably prescient. A wonderful sf classic.

Written in 1906, "Docteur Omega" came near the end of the Age of Noble Flight. War was coming and the initial hope that flight would bring peace to the world and that science would finally develop sufficiently to merge with (christian) religion was fading. Nevertheless, Galopin remained hopeful. More than that, he promoted it actively. Where most Noble Flight tales were either "conquer the brutal savages" or passive enlightenment by "higher beings", Galopin's "higher being", Doctor Omega, remains human (more or less) and very active in promoting cooperation over conflict and thought and empathy over unthinking violence. Of course, being only human in a universe filled with potential violence, he makes mistakes and occasionally finds violence to be the only available response - but only occasionally.

Galopin's Mars of the past is interesting in the detail that he tries to add to it. Parts of it read like a flora and fauna (and other) guide to Mars. There's enough here that, being a person who likes well thought-out universes, I would like to see more adventures on Mars to fill in the billion or so years between now and then.

My one complaint about the book is that the translators (the l'Officier brothers) adapted parts of it fairly heavily, partly to bring it into a more modern understanding of the cosmos and partly to harmonize it more closely with "Doctor Who". I would have appreciated an appendix giving some ideas of what has been harmonized so that, if I wanted to write a Doctor Omega story, I wouldn't step on any of their copyrighted ideas (yes, the original "Docteur Omega" is in public domain).

That said, those "Doctor Who" fans who have written their own fiction involving the first Doctor, might want to consider reading this book and adapting their stories to Doctor Omega. It might make a fairly interesting anthology.

Being a long time Doctor Who fan, I could not put this book down! The parallels between this novel and the television series point to more than mere coincidence. The story is simple, yet familiar: a old man called Doctor Omega is in the process of creating a space/time machine. He enrolls his man servant and a neighbor from his village into traveling with him in his machine. They are whisked millions of years in the past to Mars where they meet up with a host of alien lifeforms. AFter traveling around Mars they eventually meet up with a group of aliens that seem harmless. Alas, the leader of these aliens hold the Doctor and his companions hostage in order to use the Doctors scientific knowledge. The Doctor is finally able to contact his granddaughter, Suzanne, back in present day France and, with her help, contact another of his race that help the Doctor and his companions to escape back to the future.

It should be obvious to anyone who has read this book that Sydney Newman, Donald Wilson and C. E. 'Bunny' Webber, the creators of Doctor Who, had to have had more than passing knowledge about this novel. Yes, the writers and producers of the television series developed the characters to a better extent, but the basic outline of the Doctor, his companions, and their travels was layed out in this novel 100 years ago.

There is a floating rumor that this novel is a plant that was written by a modern Frenchman in an effort to discredit the BBC and the British as a whole. I love a good conspiracy story as good as anyone, but this novel has the look and feel of an actual late 19th to early 20th century French science fiction novel. It is almost like reading Jules Verne (actually it is a little easier to read than Verne). If it is in fact a modern forgery then homage should be paid to the forgers for doing a fantastic job in capturing the style of our sci-fi founding fathers.

This novel is a fun read for anyone interested in early science fiction stories. If the reader is a fan of Doctor Who then I can promise that this is a novel not to be missed.