WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS

Well, I’ve finished the classic S. Fowler Wright book The Amphibians / The World Below in its Galaxy Novel form.

I first wondered if Tolkien had read it, as there are a couple of similarities with The Lord of the Rings…

1) The vivid opening action recalls what happens the instant Galdalf steps onto the threshold of Moria. It has some resemblance to The Amphibians, when a slight step off the path triggers a ferocious tentacle attack…

her left foot pressed for a second on the purple soil beyond. As it did so, with the speed of light itself, the nearest of the bright-green globes shot open in a score of writhing tentacles, of which one caught the slipping foot

The similar scene from The Lord of the Rings…

He strode forward and set his foot on the lowest step. But at that moment several things happened. Frodo felt something seize him by the ankle, and he fell with a cry. … the waters of the lake seething, as if a host of snakes were swimming up from the southern end. Out from the water a long sinuous tentacle had crawled; it was pale-green and luminous and wet. Its fingered end had hold of Frodo’s foot and was dragging him into the water. Sam on his knees was now slashing at it with a knife. The arm let go of Frodo, and Sam pulled him away, crying out for help. Twenty others arms came rippling out. The dark water boiled, and there was a hideous stench.

2) There are some passages that remind me of the entrance and walk into Lorien in The Lord of the Rings. A peaceful wood of yellow but-vitally living leaves, the troop of elf-warriors heading out to deal with the orcs, the freeing of the Fellowship from worry or grief…

I could not say if the others slept, for I knew nothing more till I woke bewildered in a dim golden light, with my comrade of the night touching my hand to rouse me. The rest of the troop had begun to move forward already.

I was sunk deeply in the soft moss, which was of a very close texture, and of so dark a green as to look black in the shadow. The branches overhead spread low and wide, as do those of a beech. The leaves also were beech-like, but of a golden yellow. Not the yellow of Autumn, but one of an abundant vitality. I noticed the fragrance which had soothed my exhaustion when we entered. It gave me now a sense of contentment and physical well-being such as I had never experienced.

Indeed, there seemed to me a general kinship between Wright’s Amphibians and Tolkien’s elves, in terms of i) their tall superhuman movement, sight and agility; ii) their method of ‘waking sleeping’; iii) various aspects of their ‘strangeness’; and iv) the ability of some of their kind to perceive the minds of others. The Amphibians are also sea-dwellers and thus, in their venture onto land, have a “sea-longing” akin to Tolkien’s elves. If in circa 1930 Tolkien had been looking for a way to get his elves out of diminutive Edwardian fairyland, he would have found here several possibilities.

I also spotted a rather firmer and more likely inspiration, but this time for H.P. Lovecraft, re: his “The Shadow Out of Time” (written Nov 1934 – Feb 1935). In the first book Wright offers…

In the interior where they live, the Dwellers have captive specimens of the inhabitants of many bygone ages. These they keep under such conditions as approximate to those from which they come, so that they may study their habits and acquire their knowledge, if they should have any which may be worth recording.

The similarity with the modus operandi of The Great Race in “The Shadow Out of Time” is quite obvious.

The dating also fits. A letter shows that Lovecraft had The World Below as a Christmastime gift in December 1932 or January 1933 (I allow for the vagaries of the mail at such a busy time), and presumably he then found time to read it sometime in 1933 or even into 1934. Which would mean he read the book before he wrote “The Shadow Out of Time”.

Update: Derleth letters. Lovecraft writing to Derleth in January 1933, gave brief critical comments suggesting he had read the book over the 1932/33 winter.

Wright’s initial idea about ‘captive minds from many bygone ages’ is only very loosely developed in the second book, The World Below. Firstly there is some cursory introduction of ‘display windows’ showing cinema-like fragments of time (a dinosaur-era pool, a calm ice-age scene, a giant-bird hunting scene possibly from an intermediate future). These are seen as the hero passes through The World Below, being displayed on tunnel walls by some undetermined method of the Dwellers. But they reveal little and are concluded to be akin to decorative wall-hangings for solemn contemplation by the morose Dwellers. The first book’s idea of there being many captive minds from many ages is only alluded to at the end of the second book, when the hero learns of a method of sanctuary from the Dwellers, in one of the library-temples…

if you can then make your way to the Place of the Seekers of Wisdom, you will be in a sanctuary from which none will seek to remove you. They will question you of the life you left, and so long as you can tell them of new things they will be very sure to keep you in safety.

The hero goes there, but the ending of the second and final book is very cursory and must have been frustrating for Lovecraft…

I was with the Seekers of Wisdom many months, till the year was completed. During that time I was examined incessantly on every detail of the civilisation from which I came. … But to write of these in detail would be to begin a book when it is time for the ending.

We learn nothing of the Seekers, their temple-like Place, and there is no mention of the other minds from other times that (if the retentive reader remembers a brief aside given in the first book) must also be held there.

There are a few other similarities, beyond the obvious time travel (here going forward, rather than back). Such as the weirdly verdant setting, the vast library, and the wider scenario re: a millennia-past global conflict and its apparently fragile and fearful resolution — which is breached while the time-travelling hero is there, when the feared monsters attack again…

they [the Dwellers, the dominant race] passed through a period of warfare with the inhuman population of other portions of the earth’s surface, in the course of which many of them were destroyed, and which remained as a continuing menace when the actual conflict ceased.

Their enemy takes the form of huge…

… monstrous insects flying low over the water. As it neared the conflict, its head drew back into a neck-like collar, which shone with a metallic lustre, similar to that of the wing-sheathes. The front pair of sheathes lifted and adjusted their positions, till they formed a vertical shield to the advancing monster.

These are battled with what are in effect giant blue laser-beams, which once fired, form into living “wil o’ the wisps” that act like a wolf-pack. Again, one thinks of “The Shadow Out of Time”, in which the Great Race greatly fears the resumption of a war by…

a final successful irruption of the Elder Beings. Mental projections down the ages had clearly foretold such a horror, and the Great Race had resolved that none who could escape should face it. … the Great Race maintained its cautious vigilance, with potent weapons ceaselessly ready despite the horrified banishing of the subject from common speech and visible records.” Their weapons being… “camera-like weapons which produced tremendous electrical effects”

And then there are Lovecraft’s own beetles…

After man there would be the mighty beetle civilisation, the bodies of whose members the cream of the Great Race would seize when the monstrous doom overtook the elder world.