James Nicoll Reviews

1984’s Circumpolar! is the first volume in Richard A. Lupoff’s Twin Planet’s duology.

It has long been known that the Earth is a flattened toroid. Vast ice walls bar the southern (outer) edge of the planet. Fierce winds make passage through the hole at the northern (inner) region nearly impassable. Therefore, while this side of the Earth — the side with Eurasia, the Americas, and all the other familiar continents — has been mapped, nothing is known of the other side.

Mrs. Victoria Woodhull Martin offers fifty thousand dollars to the first team to somehow reach and return from the other side of Earth.

Two aviator teams undertake this historic challenge.

Howard Hughes entices Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart to accompany him in the Don-Hall-designed The Spirit of San Diego (or Spirit for short). Although Lindbergh is surprised that the other aviator is a woman, he puts this aside in favor of good old all-American teamwork.

The other team is decidedly Unamerican, representing the interests of Russia’s Tsar Alexei and Germany’s Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm, who yearn to undermine parliamentary power and restore full monarchal might to where it was before 1912’s One Year War. This team is composed of German aviators Manfred von Richtofen and his brother Lothar, accompanied by Russia’s Princess Irina Lvova, a woman whose beauty, ruthlessness, and ambition are matched only by her utter uselessness. The Europeans will make the trip in Kondor… or so they claim.

The Americans head south towards Antarctica’s vast ice wall. Surviving an attempt by a European catspaw to poison them, the trio makes its way deep into Antarctica. There they find mysterious structures now covered in ice. They also find a path to the other side. Now all that remains is to find some source of fuel for the plane. Even Hall couldn’t provide the plane with tanks large enough to traverse both sides of the Earth.

The Europeans opt for the northern route, traversing Symmes Hole in Kondor. Once on the other side, out of communication with Europe, the brothers von Richtofen reveal the full extent of their underhanded plane. Kondor was never intended to make the full trip, as the contest rules require. Kondor carries within it a lighter-than-air craft that can traverse the other side. Once the Europeans make their way back to the familiar side of Earth, they will finish the trip in a duplicate Kondor.

While travel between the faces of Earth is nearly impossible today, it was easier in the past. Both expeditions encounter civilizations soon after reaching the far side. The Americans befriend the highly advanced, essentially decent Muiaians. The Europeans ally with all round dastardly and gleefully warlike Svartalheim.

Who will prevail? Good, as represented by America and the Muiaians? Or Evil, as represented by the Europeans and Svartalheim?

~oOo~

This would have been reviewed in my Tears reviews, except when I slid my copy of Lupoff’s novel off the shelf, I discovered the book I remembered as Circumpolar was in fact Lupoff’s 1974 Into the Aether, which is an entirely different book. Being published by Timescape in 1984 as it was, Circumpolar is not eligible for a Tears review for reasons I will happily explain at sufficient length to make any questioner regret their life choices.

I had questions about Lupoff’s Earth, which seems to spin around its centre hole but also has a 24-hour day/night cycle. The eventual answer: I would be a lot happier not thinking about that at all, as the book embraces pulp adventure science, which is to say things work however they have to work to advance the plot.

The Howard Hughes and Charles Lindbergh of this Earth are altogether nicer people than their counterparts on our world, Lindbergh in particular not being the very nearly a Nazi he was historically (although he does have unfortunate taste in race-related vernacular). Perhaps to balance this, Lupoff offers versions of Manfred and Lothar that border on libelous. Readers fearing the modern vice of all-too-nuanced characterization need not be concerned, as this novel eschews that sort of excess.

As for the two women, Earhart is brave, skilled, and useful, whereas Lvova is arrogant, greedy, and so utterly useless she is lucky not to have been heaved overboard with the rest of the airship’s ballast.

This should have been an amusing confection, a modern-day (at least in 1984) homage to pulp adventures. Alas, it was not.

Once the book reaches the other side of the Earth, the plot bogs down. There are interminable infodumps and near-death encounters. The cliffhangers should have been exciting but were slow as glaciers . Lupoff was emulating the pulp adventures in which savage beasts, lost civilizations, and peril are behind every iceberg and palm tree. This version is just repetitious.

I always set Lupoff books down, wishing they’d been more to my taste. Perhaps readers with more whimsy than I possess will enjoy this novel more than I did.

Circumpolar! is available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Barnes & Noble), and here (Kobo).

I did not find Circumpolar at Apple Books (because their search function is non-existent), at Chapters-Indigo (because their search engine sometimes misses ebooks) or at Words Worth Books (because Circumpolar seems to be available only as an ebook).