Charles Romyn Dake (1849–1899)

This is another unofficial sequel to the 'Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allen Poe'. The tale of what happened to Pym is done in a fairly short way.
Its being told by a doctor who extracted the information from Dirk Peters. As such it lacks detail at times.
All of the characters are quite good and it has a number of interesting and funny digressions.
There are various discussions on money, doomsday devices, medicine, politics etc. Can be a little dry at times especially when geology is concerned but it was worth a look.
A actually liked this a little more than 'Pym' or 'An Antarctic Mystery' which was Jules Verne's sequel to 'Pym'.… (plus d'informations)

Review of: A Strange Discovery, by Charles Romyn Dake

This is another sequel to Edgar Allen Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, published in 1899, two years after Jules Verne's sequel. This one is not as good as Verne's and is basically a story of an isolated and advanced civilisation living near the South Pole, narrated on his deathbed by the elderly Dirk Peters. Unlike Verne's sequel, Dake's does not go with the grain of Poe's original, and, though I may be doing the author an injustice, feels to me like a completely separate story tenuously linked to Verne's sequel in order to raise his profile - Dake had apparently only written two short stories previously. The story is also particularly a vehicle for Dake's own philosophical observations. Tragically, he apparently committed suicide the same year the book was published after discovering he had lung cancer. The story is a curiosity only.… (plus d'informations)