The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Book Details

This volume of The Land That Time Forgot contains the complete Caspak Trilogy by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

A manuscript is found floating in a thermos in the waters off of Greenland, that details the adventures of Bowen Tyler Jr., an American passenger whose ship is sunk by a U-boat in 1916, at the outset of World War I. By a quirk of fate, Tyler is rescued by a British tugboat but the tug then is attacked by the same submarine. He ultimately finds himself on an island, long forgotten, roamed by dinosaurs and cavemen – a land of tooth and claw. Whether it’s dinosaurs looking for their next meal or cave men living in a “kill or be killed” world, or the Germans marooned with him attempting to sabotage him, Tyler is at odds against all. Burroughs’ working title for this novel was “The Lost U-Boat.“

The Land That Time Forgot (1918) is Book 1 of the Caspak Trilogy. The People That Time Forgot (1918) is Book 2 of the Trilogy and Out of Time’s Abyss (1918) is Book 3.

In The People That Time Forgot, a rescue attempt is made to find Bowen Tyler, and this book and Out of Time’s Abyss both tell of the struggle to survive in this primitive world by two men of the rescuing team. Survival becomes more than just dodging dinosaurs when they find that some humans on Caspak have metamorphosed into flying, bat winged creatures that base their status in their society on murders.

Book I
The Land That Time Forgot
Chapter 1
• An Unpleasant Surprise
• I and Nobs in the Ocean
• Missing
Chapter 2
• A Sea Fight with a U-boat
• The Survivors of the Fight
• A Strange Revelation
Chapter 3
• Treachery of the Defeated
• The Submarine on her Way to a Harbor
• An Interview With a Swedish Captain
• The U-boat in German Hands
• A Recapture of the Ship
Chapter 4
• The Hand of Death Upon the Heart
• The Traitor’s Story
• An Inhospitable Coast and a Strange Discovery
• Water is Needed, Can it be Found?
• A Subterranean Stream
• Daylight Ahead at Last, An Encounter with a Strange Reptile
• More Reptiles and a German Killed
Chapter 5
• A Great Inland Sea
• Trying to Clear the Atmosphere
• Another Saurian the Allosaurus
Chapter 6
• Establishing a Camp. Trouble with the Germans. The Neanderthal Man
• An Interview with Miss La Rue
• The Neanderthal Man has a Language
Chapter 7
• An Awful Disappearance. More Treachery
Chapter 8
• Lys is Found—An Attack and a Deadly Shot
• Cave Dwellers
• The Bathers
• Lost in Caspak. A Recent Grave
Chapter 9
• Tracing the Evolution of the Races of Man
• A Prisoner and an Escape
• Another Grave
Chapter 10
• Lys Found and in Danger

Book II
The People That Time Forgot
Chapter 1
• Planning a Rescue From the Island
• Finding Caprona. The Seaplane
• A Disappearance
Chapter 2
• On Foot in Caspak
• A Fair Native and the Panther
• The Alus
• Not a Lady’s Man. A Dirty Goddess
• A Bath in Caspak
• The Bear of Caspak
Chapter 3
• A Diplodocus
• The Country of the Band-lu of Caspak
• The Great Labyrinthian Cavern
• The Goddess in the Cave
• Wandering Under Ground
• Daylight in the Cavern and a Meeting
Chapter 4
• Evolution of Man in Caspak
• The Cave Lion
Chapter 5
• A Strange Tale of Trouble Continued
• The Caspakian Races Explained
• A Prisoner of a Higher Race
• The Enmity of the Different Races
• “She is Mine” A Competition
• A Duel with a Saber-tooth Tiger
• The Caspak Village
Chapter 6
• Nobs to the Rescue
• Ajor the Beautiful Caspakian, Safe
• Dressing and Arming in Caspakian Style
Chapter 7
• A Good Bow-shot
• The Lasso and the Horses
• Nobs Driving the Horses to Capture
• A Rescue in the Quagmire
• The Lost is Found Climbing the Cliffs

Book III
Out of Time’s Abyss
Chapter 1
• The Hatchet-Men
• Flying Beings and the Meat-Eaters
• The Constant Nervous Strain
• A Dreadful Encounter and Death
• The Titan Slain
• The Effect of Caspak Horrors
• Fort Dinosaur Again
Chapter 2
• The Captive of a Great Human Bird
• A Curious Interview with the Wieroo
• The City and the Skulls
• A Talk with a Wieroo
• Strange Adventures of the Captive
• Fighting with the Wieroo
• A Beautiful Captive
• Cos-ata-lo
Chapter 3
• In Prison with a Galu
• Caspak Mysteries Explained
• Exploring His Prison
• A Long Blind Trail
• Another Encounter with a Wieroo
• A Duel with the Curved Sword Blades
• The Blue Room
Chapter 4
• He Who Speaks for Luata
• The Rescue of the Girl
• The Death of a Prisoner
• The Ladder
• The Murderers Are Abroad
• In the Open Country at Last
Chapter 5
• The Submissive Wieroos
• The German U-Boat
• The Fight with the Germans
• The End of a Tyrant
• The Beautiful Co-Tan
• The Last Encounter
• Good-bye to Caspak

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) was one of the giants of American adventure and science-fiction writing. He will forever be known for his creations; Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, and the Pellucidar stories which took place inside a hollow earth. The Land That Time Forgot was first made into a movie in 1975 and again in 2009. The People That Time Forgot was made into a movie in 1977.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, Caspak, and World War I is a post about how submarine warfare in World War I influenced Burroughs in writing The Land That Time Forgot.

The Land That Time Forgot contains 20 illustrations.

Files:

1. TheLandThatTimeForgot.epub

The Land That Time Forgot is also available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Excerpt: The Land That Time Forgot

Chapter 1

IT must have been a little after three o’clock in the afternoon that it happened—the afternoon of June 3rd, 1916. It seems incredible that all that I have passed through—all those weird and terrifying experiences—should have been encompassed within so short a span as three brief months. Rather might I have experienced a cosmic cycle, with all its changes and evolutions for that which I have seen with my own eyes in this brief interval of time—things that no other mortal eye had seen before, glimpses of a world past, a world dead, a world so long dead that even in the lowest Cambrian stratum no trace of it remains. Fused with the melting inner crust, it has passed forever beyond the ken of man other than in that lost pocket of the earth whither fate has borne me and where my doom is sealed. I am here and here must remain.

After reading this far, my interest, which already had been stimulated by the finding of the manuscript, was approaching the boiling-point. I had come to Greenland for the summer, on the advice of my physician, and was slowly being bored to extinction, as I had thoughtlessly neglected to bring sufficient reading-matter. Being an indifferent fisherman, my enthusiasm for this form of sport soon waned; yet in the absence of other forms of recreation I was now risking my life in an entirely inadequate boat off Cape Farewell at the southernmost extremity of Greenland.

Greenland! As a descriptive appellation, it is a sorry joke—but my story has nothing to do with Greenland, nothing to do with me; so I shall get through with the one and the other as rapidly as possible.

The inadequate boat finally arrived at a precarious landing, the natives, waist-deep in the surf, assisting. I was carried ashore, and while the evening meal was being prepared, I wandered to and fro along the rocky, shattered shore. Bits of surf-harried beach clove the worn granite, or whatever the rocks of Cape Farewell may be composed of, and as I followed the ebbing tide down one of these soft stretches, I saw the thing. Were one to bump into a Bengal tiger in the ravine behind the Bimini Baths, one could be no more surprised than was I to see a perfectly good quart thermos bottle turning and twisting in the surf of Cape Farewell at the southern extremity of Greenland. I rescued it, but I was soaked above the knees doing it; and then I sat down in the sand and opened it, and in the long twilight read the manuscript, neatly written and tightly folded, which was its contents.

You have read the opening paragraph, and if you are an imaginative idiot like myself, you will want to read the rest of it; so I shall give it to you here, omitting quotation marks—which are difficult of remembrance. In two minutes you will forget me.

Excerpt From: Edgar Rice Burroughs. “The Land That Time Forgot.”