Customer Reviews

Giants from Eternity

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Unlike a lot of that late 30s, early 40s pulp sci-fi and fantasy fiction, Wellman's work holds up surprisingly well. Giants concerns a meteor crash that slowly starts to spread a red cancerous blight across the midwest, devouring everything and anyone that gets in its way. When two scientists discover that matter sampled from the core of the meteor has life-restoring properties, they set about using it to revive history's greatest scientists to enlist their help in saving the Earth. These includ Darwin, Edison, Newton, Marie Curie and Louie Pasteur. There are plenty of pulp-story twists and turns and melodrama, but all in all its a good story with a lot of interesting and clever (considering when it was published) scientific innovations.

Paired with Giants From Eternity is the shorter piece The Timeless Tomorrow, a chronicle of Nostradamus and how he deals with the politics of his time and how his life is affected by his gift for foresight, including his most dire predition: Atoma Divisia.

Though Manly Wade Wellman is known mostly for his later works (the stories of John aka Silver John) his considerable catalog of science fiction stands up just as well in my opinion.

I picked up GFE from the local library because I was looking to get lost in "yesteryear" when ray guns were the ultimate aspiration of technology. Anyway, it turns out that Louis Pasteur, Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Thomas Edison, and Marie Curie are the GIANTS from ETERNITY who are called forth (I won't spoil it and tell you HOW) to help deal with a blob-like "blight" that crash-landed in rural Kansas (those blasted, contaminated meteor rocks). The "blight" is consuming everything in its path, and it is up to these brainiacs from the past to figure out a way to stop it!

Naturally, each of these scientific elders brings their unique field of expertise into play as they try to figure out how to stop the blight. It is a neat concept to "imagine" how these historical figures might approach solving a "modern-day" problem...even if that problem is as far-fetched as a gelationous sea of goo. Each GIANT is indespensible in this battle, and I think any curious mind will have a fun time reading about HOW they deal with this apocalyptic ooze.

It has a b-movie quality to it, but that's what makes it so entertaining...

When a malignant red growth from outer space begins to spread across the face of Kansas, scientists Oliver Norfleet and Spencer DuPogue travel out to see what they can do. Among the discoveries they make, Norfleet discovers that the gas given off by the blob can bring the dead back to life - no matter how long dead or how thoroughly decomposed. And so, with the help of the Board of Science, they gain access to the remains of some long-dead giants of science, and recruit them in the fight against the growth that is threatening to destroy all life on earth. But, can even the assistance of Louis Pasteur, Charles Darwin, Sir Isaac Newton, Thomas Edison, and Madam Curie, be enough to destroy a menace that eats all life, and even the ground beneath it?

OK, where do I start with this one? Manly Wade Wellman (1903-86) was a prolific author of fantasy stories, horror stories, and stories of just about every other genre. This science-fiction story is pretty OK. It had its moments, but it also has some pretty bad weaknesses.

The worst weakness of the story is the seemingly magical action of the goo-gas - it can bring back a mouse that was completely incinerated, and it brings back people with the complete memories of their lives, and when the seemingly normal resurrected people die they evaporate into nothingness. Another weakness of the story is the bonhomie that the resurrected scientists evince. If a teenager wrote a story where he found a magic wand that allowed him to bring all of his favorite baseball heroes to life, you would expect them to be back-slapping friends that enjoyed each other's company and heaped praise upon their benefactor. And, I suppose that that is my problem with this book - it has the feel of a story written by a precocious seventh-grader, rather than one written by a serious author.

But, in spite of all of that scorn that I just poured out on the book, I actually did enjoy it. The blob from outer space is surprisingly interesting, and there is a lot of good action throughout the story.

So, if you are looking for a work of serious science-fiction, something Asimov-esque, then keep looking, this book is not for you. But, if you want an interesting, young-adult-type science-fiction story, then give Giants from Eternity a read - you will enjoy it.

Got this book in the school library over 30 years ago. Loved it then, couldn't wait to read it again. Good clean easy reading. Lots of fun, a little scary.