The Wild Huntsman

    Thus, Tarzan has as ancestor Woden. It would be difficult to find a more highly placed forefather than the All-Father.
     Perhaps the great god of the North is not dead but is in hiding. It pleased the Wild Huntsman to direct the falling star of Wold Newton near the two coaches. Thus, in a manner of speaking, he fathered the children of the occupants. The mutated and recessive genes would be reinforced, kept from being lost, by the frequent marriages among the descendants of the irradiated parents.
—Philip José Farmer, Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke

In November 1795, after undergoing a harrowing adventure in France, Sir Percy Blakeney—The Scarlet Pimpernel—decided to call a Conclave of some of the most remarkable people of his time to plan how to influence the political and revolutionary climate sweeping across Europe. These extraordinary people, many of them heroes in their own right, were the ancestors of a group of mutant supermen who have played a large role in our affairs—Sherlock Holmes, Doc Wildman, Captain Nemo, and the lord of the jungle, among many others.

It is December 13, 1795. The ionized radiation accompanying a meteor strike in the tiny village of Wold Newton, Yorkshire, endows Blakeney and his fellow Conclave attendees with a boost—a nova of genetic splendor—that will result in those supermen and women.

Or does it?

A mysterious time traveler has come to Wold Newton to witness the momentous event, and is quickly drawn into investigating a series of impossible murders heralded by an ominous tolling, murders never recorded in the history books. As the Conclave guests divide into camps, and hopes for a solution to the European problem dwindle, so too dwindles hope for the future. For if the enigmatic time voyager cannot overcome the machinations of an immortal trickster and ensure that the right people are at the right place, at the right time, then not only will his own future and past be erased, but the whole of history itself will be rewritten…

Drawing on the cornerstone Wold Newton novels, biographies, and stories by science-fiction Grandmaster Philip José Farmer, including Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke, Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, Time’s Last Gift, The Other Log of Phileas Fogg, and A Feast Unknown, “The Wild Huntsman” is a 12,000-word novelette by Wold Newton expert Win Scott Eckert. A sequel to Eckert’s tale “Is He in Hell?” (The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 1: Protean Dimensions), “The Wild Huntsman” will see publication in Meteor House’s The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 3: Portraits of a Trickster (2012).

Note: Time is running out for readers to win to a chance be Tuckerized in a major story in The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 3: Portraits of a Trickster. Readers can enter this contest up to three times (see www.pjfarmer.com for details) but the deadline is June 30.