Pocket Nostradamus: The A.I. Wars, or Turning Over Governance to Machines

Here is an unnerving prediction: 

The relentless global expansion of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) will spread from companies to governments. 

Humans will turn over local, state and national government to machines. 

While A.I. runs things, people will devote most of their time and resources to the entertainment industry.

Under A.I. leadership, countries will wage war upon each other, using human beings as combat fodder, in a bid to reduce population, greenhouse gases and energy consumption.

Sounds fun, right?

Giant African Snails & Fake Facts: A Cautionary Tale

Giant African Snail (Achatina fulica)

A recent Australian news feature on giant African snails led this blogger to undertake some casual research on this remarkable species, known to scientists as Achatina fulica.

The quest led to discovery of a chunk of false information, hiding in plain sight on Wikipedia. It served as a reminder that “fake news” isn’t the only problem we encounter on the Web and in social media generally; “fake facts” are also sitting out there on a myriad of websites, just waiting to be discovered.

The news feature that aroused my interest was “Giant African snails: A biosecurity threat too big to ignore for Australian agriculture,” appearing on Australia’s ABC News Rural on May 29. The feature itself was fine; I didn’t have any problems with it. Among its fascinating tidbits:

·       The fast-breeding world's largest land snail, the giant African snail, is considered one of the world's top invasive species

·       It can reach up to 20 centimetres in length and consume entire plants — posing a threat to native species

·       Previous detections of the species in Australia have been eradicated but Ausveg biosecurity officers are warning Australian farmers that it is a threat they need to be aware of

Nowadays, when folks find something of interest on the Web and want more info, they often use a well-worn route to further discovery: first search on Google, then read an article on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, many people often end their inquiries at this point. But there’s no guarantee that what you are reading on Wikipedia is accurate. Often you need to check the sources cited there to make sure what you are reading is true.

Sadly, the article on “Achatina fulica” contains some “fake facts.” As often happens, the bogus info appears in a paragraph without any footnotes:

In some regions, an effort has been made to promote use of the giant African snail as a food resource in order to reduce its populations. However, promoting a pest in this way is a controversial measure, because it may encourage the further deliberate spread of the snails.

One particularly catastrophic attempt to biologically control this species occurred on South Pacific Islands. Colonies of A. fulica were introduced as a food reserve for the American military during World War II and they escaped. A carnivorous species (Florida rosy wolfsnail, Euglandina rosea) was later introduced by the United States government, in an attempt to control A. fulica but the rosy wolf snail instead heavily preyed upon the native Partula, causing the extinction of most Partula species within a decade.

Some additional research using the article’s general references led to the discovery that the above passage was rife with errors or possibly deliberate distortions. The second paragraph is the problematic one. It conflates a number of real facts and mixes in some bogus ones.

Further research revealed that the American military was NOT responsible for introducing the giant African snail in the South Pacific. (Those of you familiar with the U.S. and its military will realize that (a) the United States does not regard giant African snails as a food source and (b) the American military would never even think of developing a food reserve of this kind. Potatoes, maybe, but not land snails.)

The giant African snail appeared in different parts of the South Pacific at various times, mostly prior to World War II. It turns out that some Japanese enjoyed eating them. And while, the Japanese government realized the danger of this invasive species and barred its citizens from importing the giant snails, some people brought them into Japan covertly. Other Japanese, apparently including Japanese soldiers during World War II, either deliberately or accidentally may carried giant African snails to various Pacific islands.

One American study, “Studies on Control of the Giant African Snail on Guam” by Gordon D. Peterson, Jr. (Hilgardia: A Journal of Agricultural Science, July 1957), cites a report about the snail’s introduction on Guam:

Guerrero's report presents evidence that Achatina fulicamay have been introduced during the Japanese occupation. He gives an account of his interview with one Jose I. Shimizu, a Japanese half-caste and an old resident of Guam. Shimizu stated that his father, a Japanese national, had learned of the accidental importation of snails with sweet potatoes from the island of Rota in 1943 and had informed the Japanese Governor-Commandant of his discovery. Shimizu also stated that while he was imprisoned at the Island Command Stockade following American reoccupation of Guam, he overheard Japanese prisoners of war telling of their having eaten snails while they were hiding in the jungle.

The same study says that if American forces introduced the giant snail into Guam after taking control of the island from the Japanese, it would have been done accidentally. The snails are very talented at hitching rides in loads of vegetables, hollow pipes, etc.

Another report on “Invasive Species of the Pacific” by the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme (Samoa, 2000) notes that elsewhere in the Pacific, specifically in Hawaii, the U.S. government did introduce a number of species of carnivorous snails in an unsuccessful bid to eliminate the giant African snail. The unfortunate result was serious damage to native snail species – and A. fulica was apparently unaffected by its carnivorous cousins.

Bottom line: Be careful about accepting information uncritically from Wikipedia and similar websites. Always check the sources, and the sources of the sources. You’ll be glad you did.

The Two-Headed Sea Serpent

Right-hand head of Aztec double-headed
serpent, British Museum

In February 1899, a cargo ship brought to Sydney, Australia, the skeletal remains of a huge “two-headed sea serpent” – said originally to weigh seventy tons and extend sixty feet in length – that was found on a beach on Rakahanga island in the Solomons. The find was significant enough to reach the newspapers in the United States. On April 5 of that year, the Los Angeles Herald described the discovery as follows:

The steamship Warrimoo, from Australia, brings an authenticated story from Sydney of a tidal wave which washed ashore an immense two-headed sea serpent on Rakahanga island of the Solomon group. The creature’s weight is given as seventy tons and its length is sixty feet. The skeleton was brought to Sydney by the steamer Emu and presented to the New South Wales museum.

It’s not clear which museum received the sea serpent bones. Today there are many museums in Sydney and New South Wales. A search of the website of Sydney’s Australian Museum – a likely home for natural science finds – turned up no “sea serpent” bones from Rakahanga (or from anywhere).

We managed to dig up more details on the find from Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald(Feb. 23, 1899). The Morning Herald account is more detailed and varies slightly from the Los Angeles Herald report. The story is recounted in part by A.G. Bell, identified as the supercargo on the steamer Emu. Bell said that while the tidal wave devastated Rakahanga Island, the sea serpent was actually found washed up on a beach on Suwarrow Island, 422 km southwest of Rakahanga:

“It was at Manihiki that we were informed of a tidal wave. We had had a very high sea, though no wind to cause it, and the supposition is that on or about the 17th of last month a tremendous submarine eruption occurred. In the Solomons, you have heard, they experienced it, and the natives of Manihiki were in great dread of it, seeing its approach for miles, like a great black wall, as if it would demolish the whole island. Manihiki came out of it with little damage, but one of the most beautiful isles of Oceania was all but swept off the face of the waters. This was Rakahanga. Villages were washed away, the natives taking to the bush, having been forewarned by the roar of the approaching wave. It is counted as one of the high islands in that part of the Pacific, but from all that we heard the mountain of waters swept it like a sea-level shore, and it was miraculous how the people escaped, if indeed they did so…. "Now we come to the most remarkable incident in our voyage," went on the supercargo, and the brightening of his eyes easily foretold that something most unusual was about to be narrated. "After we left Manihiki we returned to Suwarraw [sic] on our way back to Sydney, and while there the natives carelessly remarked that 'one big devil devil' from the sea had washed ashore a little way off two months ago. They did not know its name, only that it had two heads. We went along the beach to where the gigantic animal lay, and long before we reached the scene of the stranding the stench was so horrible we were on the point of abandoning the 'catch.' On getting within sight of it, however, its extraordinary appearance determined us upon acquiring possession of it, and after perils by sea, and worse dangers from the poisoned air, we secured the first sea serpent ever brought to Australia – perhaps to any other place."

Asked by the newspaper’s reporter where the sea serpent was now, Bell replied: "Down in the hold of the steamer, and it will not be unloaded for a day or two – when the vessel comes in to discharge at Parbury's Wharf."

At that point, someone from the shipping company that owned the Emuentered the picture:

At this juncture the representative of the Pacific Islands Company came in to see the supercargo, and remarked that he intended to present the skeleton to the Sydney Museum. It was a pity he said that only the two heads, the two backbones, and part of the ribs had been secured, but as the supercargo observed, "To stay longer collecting the remains would have nauseated the collectors, perhaps beyond recovery," From Captain Oliver's (the master of the steamer) account there was but one body, which had a double spine, and two distinct heads. It is the two heads and the other portions just mentioned that they were so careful to secure. In their descriptions both the supercargo and the captain agree. They say that its hide or skin was a brownish colour, and covered with hair; that the heads somewhat resemble horses' heads. The approximate weight of the great sea serpent, whence the remains aboard the Emu were taken, is given at not less than 70 tons, its length fully 60 ft.

  

The Morning Herald mentioned several other accounts of sea serpents in the South Pacific, and then concluded its article with a quote from the manager of the Pacific Islands Company:

"Sensational sea serpent stories have been repeated scores of times, but there is no getting away from the actual heads and parts of the frame of this animal secured at Suwarrow by our steamer, and now on board. Whatever naturalists may think of the existence or non-existence of this denizen of the sea depths, here are the proofs, the most interesting proofs from a zoological point of view probably on record."

What ultimately happened to the mysterious two-headed skeleton, we’re unable to say at this point. But we’ll keep searching….

The Human Magnet Stone

The bahit, or human magnet stone, was widely accepted as real by geographers and historians of the Middle Ages. This stone – sometimes also called baht – reputedly had the power to attract human beings to it, who would then be held fast to it until they died. The bahit was associated with the legendary City of Brass, described in the Thousand and One Nights. The lost city's exterior walls were said to have been built of solid brass blocks, but the interior walls were believed by some to have been constructed of bahit stone. In fact, the City of Brass is sometimes called El Baht.

The stone is described by various writers, among them Ibn Fadl Allah al-‘Umari (1301-1349) of Damascus, who authored an unconventional encyclopedia – a combination universal history and world geography – called Masalik al-absar fi mamalik al-amsar, “Pathways of Vision in the Realms of the Metropolises.” This work has never been published in its entirety. But a section that has been published (Section One, ed. Ahmed Zaki, Vol. 1, Cairo 1342/1924) talks about the bahit stone…

All mountains are branches of the range which encircles most of the inhabited world. It is called Jabal al-Qaf and is the mother of mountains, for they all stem from it….
 This side-chain of the Jabal al-Qaf is called at its beginning [i.e. the eastern end] al-Mujarrid. Then it extends until it reaches, in the western section, a longitude of 65 degrees from the beginning of the Maghreb….
 A chain called the Mountains of the Moon branches off here. The Nile rises in it. It is said that glittering stones are to be found there which gleam like white silver. They are called sanjat al-bahit. Anyone who sees one laughs and cleaves to it till he dies. It is also called the “human magnet” (maghnatis al-nas). The author of [the] Jughrafiya [“Geography” – presumably Ptolemy is meant here] says that Aristotle mentions it in his Book of Stones (Kitab al-ahjar)….
 There are numerous accounts of the origins of the course of the Nile. Al-Mas‘udi and others give worthless information. The most commonly expressed view is that somebody or other has actually seen its source, and each writer puts forward a reason for the failure to find out the truth about it.
 Some say: “Some persons reached the mountains [where the Nile rises], climbed them, and saw beyond them a heaving sea with water black as night split by a river white as day which entered the mountains on the south and came out on the north, where it divided into branches at the dome of Hermes, which is built there. They assert that the builder of this dome was Hirmis al-Haramisa (Hermes of the Hermeses), who is called the Threefold in Wisdom [Trismegistus], while others claim that he is Idris (peace be upon him!), who reached that place and there built a dome; and they say that he is called the Threefold because he combines three things: prophethood, wisdom, and kingship.”
 Others say: “Some persons climbed the mountain, but each time one of them stepped forward he would laugh, clap his hands, and fling himself down the far side. The rest feared to suffer the same fate, and so came back.”
 Others make this assertion: “What these persons mentioned about actually saw was the bahit stone. Everyone from among them who saw it laughed, stepped forward, and cleaved to it until he died.”

The celebrated geographer al-Idrisi mentions the human magnet stone in the well-known work he penned for the Norman King of Sicily, Roger II – Nuzhat al-mushtaq fî ikhtiraq al-afaq (“The Pleasure of Him Who Longs to Cross the Horizons”), completed in 1154….

[The First Section of the Second Clime]
 On the coast of the sea that stretches away from these [the Fortunate Isles] and other islands, ambergris of excellent quality is found. From its coasts, too, comes the baht stone, which is famous among the people of al-Maghrib al-Aqsa. Single specimens of that stone are sold at great price, especially in the country of the Lamtûna, who relate that if a person sets out to fulfill some need, and takes hold of such a stone, he will succeed in full. They assert, too, that it is good for tongue-tie….

A Syrian writer, al-Dimashqi (1256-1327), briefly mentions the bahit stone in Nukhbat al-dahr fî ‘aja’ib al-barr wa-’l-bahr, “The Choice of the Age, on the Marvels of Land and Sea”…

[The sources of the Nile are ten streams which flow into two lakes situated beyond the Equator.]
 According to Qudama one of the ten streams, the most westerly, is called Aliha. Its water issues from beneath the bahitstone, the human magnet (maghnatis al-nas).

The earliest reference to the bahit or baht stone that I’ve been able to find appears in a work by historian-geographer Ibn al-Fakih al-Hamadhani, who wrote in the late 9^th and early 10^th centuries. Ibn al-Fakih mentions the human magnet stone in his Kitab al-Buldan (“Book of the Countries”),  a work which remains largely untranslated but is summarized in the Compendium libri Kitab al-Boldan (Leiden: 1885). Ibn al-Fakih applies the name baht to a lost city in the North African desert that he later identifies with the City of Brass…

Alexander constructed the city of Baht in the Maghreb: it was called The Splendid or The Brilliant. It was constructed of a stone called el baht. Anyone who looks at it loses his mind and laughs in a manner so prolonged and reckless that he perishes.

Later on, he mentions the city again:

Among the marvelous things of the region of Sous (Moroccan), it is necessary to mention the Wadi r remel (valley or river of sand), and the city of el Baht, which is located in one of the deserts of this country.

Finally, in the same book, Ibn Fakih merges the baht stone with the story of the City of Brass in a longish account that begins as follows. (At the time this book was written, “al-Andalus” was sometimes used as the name not only for Arab Spain but for Northwest Africa as well.) …

Among the wonders of al-Andalus is al-Baht, which is a city lying in one of its deserts. When the report of this city, and especially of treasures contained in it, had reached Abdu’l-Malik ibn Marwan, he wrote to Musa ibn Nusair, who was his governor in the Maghrib, ordering him to make a journey thither….

Ibn al-Fakih’s story – and the later “City of Brass” tale in the Arabian Nights– both relate that soldiers who scaled the walls of the city looked inside, laughed loudly, in some cases clapped their hands, and then jumped inside the walls.... These actions suggest the presence of the human magnet stone…

Folklorist Mai I. Gerhardt notes this phenomenon and discusses its further development in The Art of Story-Telling (Leiden: 1963), her impressive literary study of the Arabian Nights…

Both Yakut (d. 1229) and the wonder-loving Kazwini (d. 1283), when copying Ibn el-Fakih’s account, introduce it by the following paragraph:

 Ibn el-Fakih reports that according to the most ancient authors, the City of Brass was constructed by Dhou el-Qarnein [Alexander the Great], who deposited there his treasures and the products of his science, and prevented entry by some enchantments, which halted visitors. He constructed its interior of the bahtstone, which is for men what a magnet is for iron; whoever views it is forced to laugh at the brilliance and hurl themselves towards it: they then cannot detach themselves from it. One finds it in the deserts of Andalusia [ = el-Andalus].
                                (quoted by Gaudefroy-Demombynes, 101 Nuits, p. 333.)

 And Kazwini complacently adds some more stone-lore: the baht-stone has the colour of white marcassite; a certain little bird, when alighting on it, robs it of its power. – Yakut and Kazwini expressly identify the City of Brass with the city Ibn el-Fakih calls el-Baht; Kazwini specifies that its centre was occupied by a pillar of baht-stone. They keep, on the authority of Ibn el-Fakih, the attribution to Alexander, but at the same time reproduce the inscription speaking of Solomon; and, of course, the episode of the lake. It would seem as if, with these 13^th-century authors, the legend enters its period of decadence; no attempt is made to sort out conflicting information (as Abu Hamid still tried to do) and the mysterious is replaced and “explained” by the marvellous.
 The progress of this decadence is strikingly attested by the compilers of the next century. The Persian-writing Mustawfi (1340) [also a native of Kazwin, and sometimes designated Kazwini II] who follows Kazwini and an otherwise unknown History of the Maghreb [probably 12^th century], expressly locates the city in Spain. According to him the expedition of explorers was sent out by one of the Ommayad caliphs of Cordoba, while Musa ibn Nusair, earlier, dispatched fishermen to bring up the Solomonic jars from the lake. He then continues:

Near the City of Brass, there had been set up two stone tablets on which were inscribed certain details concerning the (future) prophets – peace be upon them all – and mention here was also made of our Prophet – upon whom be peace – and many profitable admonitions and precepts were added thereto. The above account is taken from the History of the Maghreb, and Qazvini [Kazwini] states that the reason why every one at the sight of the City of Brass fell to laughter, was that therein lay a mountain of Bahat(or Laughing) stone. Now the peculiarity of this stone is, that when any man casts his eyes thereon, he falls into convulsions of laughter, and he laughs so violently that he forthwith dies; therefore the demons have great content in the presence there of this stone.
 (Mustawfi, The geographical part of the Nuzhat el-Qulub, transl. cit.,p. 260.)

 The inscribed tablets near the city are a new detail, recalling the seven marble tablets of the Spanish narrator in the ‘1001 Nights’-story. For the rest, Mustawfi’s data are garbled; but he gratefully reproduces Kazwini’s explanatory information on the marvellous stone.
 A few generations later, el-Bakuwi (d. 1403) still relies on Kazwini, as the wording in his paragraph shows:

Medinat al nehas. It is also called Medinat al Saphar(the City of Brass); it is famous: it is said that it was built by Dhoulcarnain, who deposited his treasures there with talismans to keep them untouched. In the interior there is a baht stone, which is the magnet for men; it is called such because if a man approaches too close, he is drawn to it and attached to it like iron to a magnet; he cannot free himself and he dies; this magnet is found in the deserts of Andalusia.
 The circuit of this city is some forty parasangs, the height of its walls five hundred cubits; it has no gates, its foundations are impregnable; what is more certain is that it was built by Solomon, son of David. Musa ibn Nasr, lieutenant of Abdol-malik, made his army approach it, and set up a ladder with which he reached the top of its walls, and he sent a man inside who never came back; he [Musa] entered also, and never returned; (but we leave there all the fables that are produced on this city). [The bracketed sentence at the end is due to the translator, who makes a point of suppressing the “fables” of his original. It is a pity to be thus deprived of whatever information the – very mediocre – el-Bakuwi still had to offer.]
                                     (El-Bakoui, Exposition…; transl. cit., p. 524.)

 As far as can be ascertained from the abridged and condensed eighteenth-century translation, this account seems to represent a shrivelled state of the legend. The familiar details, and notably also the baht-stone, are still there, but the whole is by way of losing whatever consistency it used to possess. Alexander and Solomon are mentioned, as builders of the city, almost in the same breath; the statement that Musa himself entered the city and never returned [I wonder if the translation is correct here] is preposterous, seeing that his whole career has come down in history.

[Source: Gerhardt, Mia I. The Art of Story-Telling: A Literary Study of the Thousand and One Nights.Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1963.]

Heat Death Warriors: The Battle Against Entropy

The universe tends to wind down.

            As they taught us in high school science class, everything slowly – or sometimes quickly – deteriorates. Energy is lost, either suddenly or gradually.  Heat seeps away. Stars burn out. Complex systems collapse. This is the physical process we call entropy. Thermal equilibrium is the goal of the universe.

            There seem to be only two things that work against entropy. One is the Big Bang, which happened almost 14 billion years ago. Whatever caused the start of our universe, it created processes that led to complexity and molecules and galactic systems and everything else that makes up the universe. The Big Bang, mysterious as it was, challenged thermal equilibrium.

            The second opponent of entropy is life – just as mysterious as the Big Bang – which began some four billion years ago and which is ongoing. Living organisms store energy and fight the tendency toward collapse, breakdown, rot, disorder. These organisms do die, but they create successors, offspring, which carry on the struggle against entropy. Life creates systems that challenge the tendency of the universe.

            What does all this mean? Simply, that we human beings, as living organisms, are engineered, designed, created, to fight entropy. There may be other reasons why we exist, but fighting entropy is self-evident and clearly our most important priority – for if we fail to stave off heat death (the end of thermodynamic free energy) we are finished.

            It is not certain that humans or any other living species can win the battle against entropy. In fact, it is very likely that the struggle is unwinnable in the long run. But it is in our nature as a species to fight against our own deaths and against the heat death of the universe.

            It may be that in time – perhaps billions of years from now – we will figure out a way to outwit the laws of thermodynamics, keep energy pulsing, and become literal masters of the universe. We’re a long way from that outcome, but we will doubtless continue to pursue it.

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.