When the World Shook

When the World Shook by H. Rider Haggard is an unusual if flawed piece of early science fiction, laced with philosophy, religion, colonial anthropology, romance and humor.

The journal Science Fiction Studies of DePauw University sums up the book as follows:

When The World Shook: Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley, and Arbuthnot. 1919. The most science-fictional of Haggard's novels, for along with such psychic phenomena as metempsychosis we have suspended animation with survivors from a technologically advanced civilization 250,000 years in the past, a chart comparing the star patterns of that time with those of today, and a monstrous machine — one capable of changing the tilt of the earth.

It is a post-Victorian novel, written during World War I, and the conflict impinges upon the narrative in various ways. When the World Shook was first published in serial form in the British Christian evangelical magazine The Quiver in 1918, at the end of the war, and was released as a novel the following year.

A thoughtful blogger was right on target when he recently observed:

When the World Shook is a beautiful and silly book. It has very clear flaws and is definitely not one of the best books ever written, but it may turn out to be one of my favorites. This thing is deeply flawed, but I fully intend to read it again and again throughout my life. The book is, at its core, the adventures of a troubled agnostic and his buddies the atheist and the believer, as they explore a mysterious island and meet the powerful man-god-king asleep in its bowels. They also argue philosophy and theology a lot. Oh and there’s World War I? Plus a touch of racism, but not as much as I expected! Basically, it’s your normal “boy widower who suffers anxiety about where we go when we die and what our place in the universe might be meets girl who is an ancient scientifimagical princess who has slept in the Earth for eons and might be a reincarnation of someone who lived during her sleep” story.

The author, Sir Henry Rider Haggard, wrote adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa – such as King Solomon’s Mines (1885), Allan Quatermain (1887) and She (1887) – and was a pioneer of the “lost world” literary genre, of which When the World Shook is a late example.

Haggard was a close friend of Rudyard Kipling, and Sir Henry’s biographer Morton Cohen says Kipling provided the idea for When the World Shook. The website HiLoBrow says Kipling “helped with the plot.”

HiLoBrow has posted a modern serialization of the novel, with some minor abridgements.

Here is HiLoBrow’s plot summary plus some interesting blurbs, old and new:

When the World Shook concerns adventurers Bastin, Bickley, and Arbuthnot, who discover two Atlanteans in a state of suspended animation on a remote island. One of the awakened sleepers, Lord Oro, is a superman — the last king of the Sons of Wisdom, who’d relied on hyper-advanced technology to subjugate the planet’s lesser peoples. The other is Oro’s sexy daughter, Yva… who falls in love with Arbuthnot. Using astral projection, Lord Oro visits London and the battlefields of the Western Front. Why? To determine whether or not he should once again employ an infernal chthonic machine to drown the worthless human race, as he’d done 250,000 years earlier!... 

“A really splendid romance, rich in color, fresh and gorgeous in its imaginative qualities and power, and needless to add, absorbingly interesting, is this wherein Rider Haggard tells us of what happened ‘When the World Shook.’” — The New York Times (1919) 

“Speaking quite soberly and without exaggeration, this story of ‘When the World Shook’ is an amazing novel. Amazing in its imaginative quality, its romance, the splendor of its descriptions, doubly amazing when one remembers that it is the successor to a long series of colorful tales of adventure in savage or extraordinary lands… We frankly admit that, in our opinion at least, Rider Haggard has never conceived and placed before our eyes any pictures more thrilling or more impressive that are contained in this latest book.” — New York Evening Post (1919) 

“Rider Haggard has again unbridled his splendid imagination. A thrilling, gigantic wonder tale.” — Pittsburgh Sun (1919) 

“If this is pulp fiction it’s high pulp: a Wagnerian opera of an adventure tale, a B-movie humanist apocalypse and chivalric romance. When the World Shook has it all — English gentlemen of leisure, a devastating shipwreck, a volcanic tropical island inhabited by cannibals, an ancient princess risen from the grave, and if that weren’t enough a friendly, ongoing debate between a godless materialist and a devout Christian. H. Rider Haggard’s rich universe is both profoundly camp and deeply idealistic.” — Lydia Millet (2012 blurb for HiLoBooks)

Another online version of the novel is available on an Australian website, freeread.com.au.