In the previous novel Tarzan and Jane''s son, Jack Clayton, a.k.a. Korak, had come into his own. In this novel Tarzan returns to Opar, the source of the gold where a lost colony of fabled Atlantis is located, in order to make good on some financial reverses he has recently suffered. While Atlantis itself sank beneath the waves thousands of years ago, the workers of Opar continued to mine all of the gold, which means there is a rather huge stockpile but which is now lost to the memory of the Oparians and only Tarzan knows its secret location. A greedy, outlawed Belgian army officer, Albert Werper, in the employ of a criminal Arab, secretly follows Tarzan to Opar. There, John Clayton loses his memory after being struck on the head by a falling rock in the treasure room during an earthquake. On encountering La, the high priestess who is the servant of the Flaming God of Opar, and who is also very beautiful, Tarzan once again rejects her love which enrages her and she tries to have Tarzan killed; she had fallen in love with the apeman during their first encounter and La and her high priests are not going to allow Tarzan to escape their sacrificial knives this time. In the meanwhile, Jane has been kidnapped by the Arab and wonders what is keeping her husband from once again coming to her rescue. A now amnesiac Tarzan and the Werper escape from Opar, bearing away the sacrificial knife of Opar which La and some retainers set out to recover. There is intrigue and counter intrigue the rest of the way.

Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar

The story concerns the move from boy to man of its hero, Carnelian, son of the Lord Suth. Formerly powerful and influential, Lord Suth is in exile far from Osrakum, capital of the Three Lands. His son has been brought up with only his father and immediate household, which though extensive is only a pale shadow of the extravagance and excesses of the court life normally experienced by a ruling Lord. A delegation of lords comes to their island, asking that Suth will return to the capital and oversee the election of a new emperor, since the current one is dying. The emperor has two sons, and a choice must be made between them. Suth agrees, and Carnelian is thrown into a world of cruelty and indifference to the suffering of others. His home is torn apart to make repairs to the ship which brought the delegation. Most of the household are left behind, without the stores they would have needed to survive the winter. It is death for a common man to look upon the face of such a lord, and Carnelian has several sharp lessons in the laws of caste which govern this society. The journey to Osrakum is experienced by the reader through the impressions of Carnelian, as a stranger to the three lands. Once at court, Carnelian again experiences the contrasts between the rich and powerful, and their inconsequential slaves. He becomes involved in the affairs of the two brothers contending for the throne. His position as an outsider and his fathers position, initially as regent and then as arbiter of the election, makes him well placed to see the inner workings of the palace and to become a natural rulebreaker and explorer of secret places. He becomes allied to prince Osidian, who in a tight and vicious contest gains the greatest number of votes to become Emperor. Molochite, the other prince, is not the sort to accept such a loss. Carnelian and Osidian are abducted, making it impossible for Osidian to attend his own coronation and causing him to lose the election by default.

The Chosen

A group of scientists, including psychologist Norman Johnson, mathematician Harry Adams, biologist Beth Halpern, and astrophysicist Ted Fielding, along with U.S. Navy personnel, are dispatched to a deep sea habitat at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to explore a crashed spacecraft. To their surprise, they discover the spacecraft is not alien, but an American spacecraft constructed in the future and apparently sent through time, crashing 350 years before its creation. On further exploration, the team discovers a mysterious spherical artifact, clearly of extraterrestrial origin, which quickly becomes the focus of their attention. Harry becomes quite certain that, because the ship''s future builders didn''t seem to learn that their ship had already been discovered, the members of the team aren''t likely to survive. At this point, a storm traps the scientists on the ocean floor without contact or support from the surface for over a week. The crew soon focuses on asking questions about the sphere and then on attempting to open it and learn about its nature, contents, and origin. Harry eventually succeeds in opening it and goes inside. Upon returning, he has a terrible headache and he remembers little about what happened inside or how he opened it. The scientists are eventually contacted by an intelligent, seemingly-friendly lifeform which calls itself Jerry, apparently from within the sphere. It first contacts them via a numeric code, which Harry translates. But while they struggle to communicate with Jerry, increasingly bizarre and deadly events occur, including the appearance of sea creatures that Beth claims don''t exist. Jerry tells them he is "manifesting" the creatures. Members of the team start to die in various attacks by sea life, and the dwindling survivors struggle to placate the unthinkably powerful, childlike, and temperamental Jerry. Norman suddenly has an important role when he realizes he must use psychology to keep the surviving team (now only himself, Beth, and Harry) alive by placating Jerry. Translating the original code himself, though, Norman discovers that Jerry is actually Harry: by entering the sphere, Harry acquired the power to manifest his subconscious thoughts into reality. As Harry noted his childhood fears of squids and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, he has unconsciously created them as an enemy. Beth and Norman tranquilize Harry with a powerful mixture of sedatives and wait for contact to be re-established with the surface. However, although Harry is sedated, the manifestations continue. Beth accuses Norman of having entered the sphere and gaining access to the power. Though unable to recall this incident, Norman is close to yielding until he watches a security video of Beth entering the sphere herself. Concluding that Norman is a threat to her, Beth irrationally plants potent explosives around the spacecraft and habitat and then attempts to suffocate Norman with the habitat''s climate systems. Norman escapes to the spacecraft and, figuring out at last how to open it, enters the sphere. Norman begins to ascend by himself in the submarine, but realizes that he could never leave the others to die. Now with the same power of thought as Harry and Beth, Norman fights Beth and brings both her and Harry to the escape submarine before the explosives destroy the site. Afterward, while in a surface decompression chamber, the three survivors ponder what to tell the Navy about what happened. Realizing they could not control the power, they decide to use the power to remove it from themselves and their memories simultaneously, replacing it with memories of a technical failure. Afterwards, as they mourn the colleagues lost to this scenario, Norman compliments Beth''s appearance, saying that she looks lovely despite their hardship in the deep. Beth only smiles.

Sphere

Harold Shea''s wife Belphebe of Faerie suggests he undertake a transdimensional expedition to retrieve his colleague Walter Bayard, who is stranded in the world of Irish mythology. Walter’s long absence has put him in danger of losing his tenure at the Garaden Institute that employs both him and Harold as psychologists. A secondary advantage to Belphebe will be to get Harold out of her hair; she is pregnant with their first child, and he is getting on her nerves. Harold prepares for the trip more carefully than on previous occasions, reluctant to risk his life as cavalierly as before now that he has a family. In particular, he replaces the épée he formerly favored with a stronger cavalry saber, and dons a mail shirt for greater protection. To ensure he is able to locate Walter amid the uncertainties of transdimensional travel, he makes the goal of his expedition not Eriu but the Land of Oz, whose rulers are possessed of an artifact "effective as a teletransporter," the Magic Belt of the Gnome King. (De Camp prefers the standard spelling of "gnome" to Baum''s idiosyncratic "nome.") As usual, things immediately go wrong. Instead of Oz, Harold ends up in a decidedly more sinister place, the University of the Unholy Names in Dej, a world of vaguely Islamic and Arabic antecedents. There he encounters the student Bilsa at-Tâlib, who enthusiastically suggests a magical contest between them and conjures up a gigantic snake that immediately snaps Harold up. Fortunately, the latter''s mail shirt protects him long enough for him to repeat the spell that transports him between worlds, and this time he really does end up in Oz (thankfully sans snake). The Oz he encounters is greatly changed from the land of which Baum had written, the enchantment that had kept its inhabitants ageless having been broken through a misuse of magic by a dabbler in spells named Dranol Drabbo some years prior. Dorothy Gale and Princess Ozma are now grown up, married, and with children of their own. Moreover, Harold finds Ozma''s husband, King Evardo of Ev, a much more canny and realistic ruler than Ozma in her youth; the royal pair is willing to help him, but only for a price! Lengthy negotiations ensue, as a result of which Harold finds himself committed to rescuing their son Prince Oznev, who is being held captive by Kaliko, the current king of the Gnomes. To facilitate his foray into the Gnome Kingdom Harold demands and receives the service of former gnome king Ruggedo, an old enemy of Oz, as guide, along with tarncaps to render them invisible. He also commissions the local blacksmith to forge a pair of bolt cutters under his direction with which to free Oznev. Meanwhile, Ozma uses the Magic Belt to summon Walter from Eriu. Much to her embarrassment Walter arrives in bed and with a bedmate, having recently acquired an Irish wife, Boann ni Colum. On the way to the underground Gnome Kingdom Ruggedo, pondering his past failures, consults Harold in his psychological capacity. His problem, it turns out, is that he is an unscrupulous, treacherous, selfish, greedy, lying, thieving scoundrel, and at the same time an irascible, ornery, cantankerous, ill-mannered, bad-tempered old grouch. Harold informs him that he will never be popular while remaining both; to succeed, he must overcome one trait or the other. Afterward the two penetrate the Gnomish Kingdom and manage to liberate Oznev. Ruggedo, determined to apply Harold’s advice, stays to dispute the throne with Kaliko. Meanwhile Harold and the prince duel with and defeat Drabbo, who has become Kaliko’s chancellor. Rescuer and prince return to Oz amid general acclaim. Harold then prepares for his return home, whence Walter and Boann plan to follow in the wake of the banquet celebrating Oznev’s deliverance. As for Ruggedo, when last seen he had expelled Kaliko from the Gnome Kingdom, declared monarchy obsolete, and proclaimed himself Lifetime President and Founding Father of the Gnomic Republic.

Sir Harold and the Gnome King

This module expanded significantly upon the plot of the original Tomb of Horrors, revealing that the tomb of the first adventure was merely an antechamber to the lich Acererak''s true resting place, and the demilich "slain" in the first adventure was both decoy and key to proceeding further. The dust from the destroyed skull opened a way to the cursed city of Moil in a pocket universe of eternal darkness and ice, and beyond that to Acererak''s fortress hovering at the edge of the Negative Energy Plane itself. Acererak is revealed in this publication to be near the completion of a multi-thousand-year project to achieve godhood, powered by souls consumed over the years. He now needs only three additional souls to complete the process, but they must be of exceptional purity and strength; to this end he constructed his tomb to serve as an ultimate challenge for heroes, hoping to winnow out all but the very best. He would then consume them when they reached the center of his fortress, where his own undead essence resides in his phylactery. If the player characters fail to defeat Acererak in the course of the adventure they themselves could wind up serving in this role.

Return to the Tomb of Horrors

Eight year old Princess Irene lives a lonely life in a wild, desolate, mountainous kingdom, with only her nursemaid, "Lootie" for company. Due to her sheltered upbringing, her father being absent attending to affairs of state and her mother being dead, Irene has never known about the existence of the goblins, which lurk in the underground mines. These goblins (also known as "gnomes" or "kobolds") are grotesque and hideous beings, who centuries ago were once human, but due to varying reasons, were driven underground and were malformed and distorted by their new lifestyle. This caused them to despise the humans above the ground and vow revenge against them. Irene and Lootie &ndash; who knows of the goblins &ndash; stay out late one night and are chased by the goblins, who only appear on the surface at night as sunshine repulses them. Lootie and Irene barely escape the goblins after a miner''s child, a boy named Curdie Peterson, appears and sings loudly to the goblins, which drives them away. Curdie states that goblins are repelled by singing, and he and Irene begin to become friends. However, Curdie soon discovers, after he ventures into the mines and accidentally enters the realm of the goblins, that the goblins are planning a war against the humans on the surface, where they plot to abduct the Princess and marry her to Prince Harelip, the heir to the throne of the goblin kingdom, therefore forcing the humans to accept the goblins as their rulers. The driving force behind this scheme is the vile Goblin Queen, the stepmother of Harelip, who hides a secret &ndash; she has toes, a physical trait that goblins do not have and therefore regard with disgust. WIth the help of Irene''s ethereal great-great grandmother, the Princess and Curdie must hatch a plan to defeat the goblins and save the kingdom.

The Princess and the Goblin

The Remains of the Day tells, in first person, the story of Stevens, an English butler who has dedicated his life to the loyal service of Lord Darlington (mentioned in increasing detail in flashbacks). The novel begins with Stevens receiving a letter from a former colleague, Miss Kenton, describing her married life, which he believes hints at an unhappy marriage. The receipt of the letter coincides with Stevens having the opportunity to revisit this once-cherished relationship, if only under the guise of investigating the possibility of re-employment. Stevens''s new employer, a wealthy American named Mr Farraday, encourages Stevens to borrow his car to take a well-earned break, a "motoring trip". As he sets out, Stevens has the opportunity to reflect on his immutable loyalty to Lord Darlington, on the meaning of the term "dignity", and even on his relationship with his own late father. Ultimately Stevens is forced to ponder the true nature of his relationship with Miss Kenton. As the book progresses, increasing evidence of Miss Kenton''s one-time love for Stevens, and of his for her, is revealed. Working together during the years leading up to the Second World War, Stevens and Miss Kenton fail to admit their true feelings towards each other. All of their recollected conversations show a professional friendship which at times came close to crossing the line into romance, but never dared to do so. Miss Kenton, it later emerges, has been married for over 20 years and therefore is no longer Miss Kenton but has become Mrs Benn. She admits to wondering occasionally what a life with Stevens might have been like, but she has come to love her husband and is looking forward to the birth of their first grandchild. Stevens muses over lost opportunities, both with Miss Kenton and with his long-time employer, Lord Darlington. At the end of the novel, Stevens instead focuses on the "remains of [his] day", referring to his future service with Mr Farraday.

The Remains of the Day

The main characters, John and Dave, are friends from an undisclosed town in the Midwestern United States. The story opens as Dave is discussing the unusual events he has experienced with a reporter named Arnie. The first story opens as Dave goes to help John''s band play at a local party, just outside of town at a lake. At the party, Dave finds Molly, the dog, and meets a strange "Jamaican" dealing a drug called "Soy Sauce." After taking the drug, John begins to see things. Thinking John is having a bad trip, Dave decides to take John to the hospital but, after Dave receives an impossible phone call, they end up at the home of "Big Jim" Sullivan and his sister Amy, trying to return Molly to its owner. Amy tells Dave that she''s afraid that Jim is dead, and he didn''t come home after the party. Not knowing what else to do, and wanting to put the whole episode behind them, the two go to work at the local video store. At work, Dave accidentally cuts himself on the syringe that contained John''s dose of the Soy Sauce and begins having unusual experiences as well. Dave and John are brought down to the police station for questioning regarding others who have taken the drug, and are now missing or dead. While they are being questioned, John mysteriously collapses and is taken to the hospital. Dave receives another strange phone call, telling him to go to the pseudo-Jamaican''s trailer. Dave finds the fake Jamaican''s stash of ''Soy Sauce'', but is interrupted by the police, getting shot in the process. However, due to a miraculous occurrence, he survives relatively unharmed. Molly rescues him from the burning trailer and leads him to John''s comatose body, which has been kidnapped by an evil force on its way to Las Vegas. That evil leads them to the Luxor Hotel, where Dr. Albert Marconi is having a conference on the paranormal. The conference descends into chaos as the evil attacks, and Dr. Marconi helps send it back to where it came from. The second major incident Dave explains to Arnie happened a year later. Dave and John are called in to help investigate a strange death apparently caused by Molly. It turns out that the evil is on the loose again in Undisclosed in the form of a sports reporter, Danny Wexler, who has been possessed by a shadowy entity, likely after taking Soy Sauce. With the help of Wexler''s girlfriend, Krissy, John and Dave have a car chase with a man made of cockroaches, and are led on a video-game inspired chase through the abandoned mall, where they have a stand off with the entity that has taken Wexler. There the evil possesses Dave, but it is ultimately defeated. The third story starts the next summer as Dave notices that someone is watching him through his television set. The feeling continues until one winter night he has an episode of missing time just as Amy disappears. While they investigate Amy''s disappearance, Dave begins to feel that he may have killed her, and peeking into his tool shed and seeing what appears to be a dead body, he is sure of it. When Amy reappears, however, the mystery deepens. As the darkness descends on them, Dave has to come to terms with how his paranormal encounters have irreversibly affected him.

John Dies at the End

A restrained, precise man, Brande has an elevated sense of his own importance, believing his qualities have been overlooked in a series of postings around Europe which have failed to result in promotion. His other abiding resentment is the failure of his marriage to his wife Marion, who left him when his dispassionate and obsessively controlling nature overwhelmed her. Brande’s paranoid need to be loved and respected are focused on his hobby, a manuscript on Malbranche, a French philosopher, and on his nine year old son Nicholas. Nicholas is a delicate child who has been reduced to a state of invalidism by his father’s overprotective and restrictive regime. At San Jorge, the Brandes take a villa for which a couple, Garcia and his wife Magdalena have been engaged to act as butler/chauffeur and cook/housekeeper. Nicholas takes an instinctive dislike to Garcia, fearing his dead fish eyes and his tendency to appear unannounced, but Brande sees the man’s obsequious servility as recognition of his own superior qualities. At Nicholas’s suggestion, a gardener, the 19 year old José, is hired to tend the neglected garden. José’s amiable and ingenuous nature, despite his poverty and the responsibility of providing for his family members, soon attract Nicholas’s curiosity and the pair strike up a friendship. Nicholas helps José in the garden and his health improves. However, Garcia informs Brande of their friendship and, intensely jealous of Nicholas’s affection, Brande forbids the boy to speak to the gardener again. He has no justifiable cause to dismiss José, so he sets out to punish him and break his spirit by ordering him to build a rockery from boulders. Nicholas, however, realises that he only promised not to speak to José, and this does not preclude writing and exchanging secret notes with each other. Brande then receives a letter summoning him to Madrid and informing him that his predecessor at San Jorge who was promoted to First Consul, has suffered a stroke. Elated and assuming that he will be appointed to the vacant post, Brande hurries to Madrid. José takes advantage of Brande’s absence to take Nicholas by train into the mountains on a fishing trip. Their enforced silence is broken and the day is the idyllic highlight of Nicholas’s life so far. Yet when Nicholas returns it is to find a drunken Garcia wielding a knife and abusing Magdalena. He spends a terrified night in his room and, when José learns of it the following day, rather than leave the defenceless boy alone for another night, takes him home with him. A distraught Brande returns early from Madrid. He had merely been summoned to Madrid to temporarily fill the vacancy until a permanent appointment could be made and, upon telling his superior that he expected to be appointed permanently, is effectively laughed at and told he has no hope. He refused the temporary posting and writes to summon his friend and psychiatrist Eugene Halevy. On returning to his villa, he finds Nicholas missing and Garcia informs him Nicholas has spent the night with José. He further shows Brande a scrap of Nicholas’s correspondence to José saying how much he loves to spend time with José. When Nicholas returns, Garcia and Magdalena deny his version of events and he is confined to his room where Professor Halevy ‘examines’ him, intent upon reading something sinister into his relationship with José. Garcia then informs Brande that he is missing sums of money and suggests Brande checks his jewellery, all of which has gone. A pair of Brande’s cufflinks are found in the lining of José’s jacket and he is arrested. José is to be sent for trial in Barcelona and Nicholas learns from his grandfather that he will attempt to escape from the train and hide in the old mill where they went fishing. Nicholas sets off to meet him, while his father accompanies José and the police to act as witness in the trial. He has received a letter from the employment agency stating that Garcia is very likely to be a criminal the police are looking for, but he decides to do nothing about it until after José’s trial. On the train, José makes his escape attempt, but Brande, anticipating his action, catches his sleeve, spoiling his jump so that José falls onto the track and is killed. In a violent storm, Brande then has to find the missing Nicholas. Seven months later, Brande is posted to Stockholm but his relationship with Nicholas is irretrievably broken. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Nicholas told Brande that he hated him. He asked for his mother’s photo and her address and has been writing to her. In Stockholm, Nicholas informs his father that he wishes to go and live with her in America. fr:Le Jardinier espagnol pt:The Spanish Gardener

The Spanish Gardener

The novel concerns the issue of personhood and what it takes to be considered a member of the moral universe. There are three main characters: Herbert the vacuum cleaner, who is modified by his owner, David Jantille, a scientist who specializes in figuring out how to "mindload". Mindloading is the act of a human downloading their mind into a machine. A successful mindload entailss the death of the human. It is a way for humans to become immortal, if only in the form of vacuum cleaner. The book begins with the arrest of Herbert, the vacuum cleaner, for David''s murder . David''s wife, Suzanne Jantille, is a trial attorney who is a quadriplegic as a result of a car crash that also paralyzed her husband. She lives through a "Remote person" who has all human senses except for the ability to feel by touch. She can guide the remote person through a helmet attached to her "bio body", and retrieves all "video and audio" signals through the remote. She can function as a whole human being, but the outside world notices that she is a remote, does not approve. Suzanne defends Herbie, with the help of an astute journalist and a police officer who has access to documents that she wouldn''t otherwise. The book ends with a recognition of David’s humanity due to the ultimate confusion in the courtroom. It also ends with the death of Suzanne’s bio-body, and in turn, her ultimate death.

The Modular Man

;Dunyazadiad The Dunyazadiad is a retelling of the framing story of Scheherazade, the famed storyteller of the One Thousand and One Nights. The story is told from the point-of-view of Scheherazade''s younger sister Dunyazad. Its characterization as metafiction can be understood as a result of the use of several literary devices, most notably the introduction of the author as a character and his interaction with Scheherazade and Dunyazade. The author appears from the future and expresses his admiration for Scheherazade and the 1001 Nights as a work of fiction, of which Barth''s Scheherazade has no knowledge. Realizing that he has appeared to Scheherazade on the eve of her first encounter with Shahryar, and seeing her without a solution to her predicament, the author himself suggests the stratagem of using a chain of interrupted stories to forestall her execution, and offers to tell her a new story every day with which to regale the king the following evening. Taking the author for a genie, Scheherazade agrees. ;Perseid The second novella entitled Perseid follows the middle aged Greek hero Perseus in his struggle to obtain immortality. Told from Perseus'' point of view, the first part of the story revolves around the retelling of Perseus'' life history while the following part details his rise to, and eventual immortalization as a constellation of stars. ;Bellerophoniad The final novella, Bellerophoniad, chronicles the story of Bellerophon, yet another ancient Greek hero. While somewhat rooted in the myth as told by the Greek and Roman poets, Barth''s version of the story is not a direct retelling, but instead a re-imagining. Much like the Perseid, the Bellerophoniad surrounds a middle aged mythic hero who struggles with coming to terms with his past accomplishments and a desire to secure his future glory. It is, for the most part, told from the point of view of Bellerophon, with various interjections by unknown narrators, one of which is presumed to be the author Barth. Of the three novellas, it is by far the longest and&mdash;more so than in Dunyazadiad and Perseid&mdash;makes numerous references to the other novellas, further connecting common themes and events between the three.

Chimera

Roland Crane, a wealthy map collector and dilettante archaeologist, is visited by Polly Gould, a cousin of an army friend who has disappeared. She is obsessed with locating a map of Ireland, torn down the middle, that her cousin discovered just before he vanished. This same map had formerly been in the possession of Roland and his family, and transported them into a strange alternate dimension. Polly believes the map holds the key to recovering her cousin, and that Roland can help her find it. Roland reluctantly agrees to help. The two travel to Ireland and begin their search, soon learning that someone else, a mysterious and sinister man, also seeks the map. The mystery deepens when they witness the apparent abduction of another man by a strange "eye" in the sky. Finally they are offered the map at an enormous price by an old man who speaks of having used it to travel to another place, full of both treasure and terror. He fears to go back himself, as his son-in-law was trapped there. Accepting the challenge, Roland and Polly buy and follow the map, and when they reach the place place corresponding to the tear in the map, they are transported into the alternate dimension hinted at. Though this novel bears some thematic similarities to Bulmer''s later Keys to the Dimensions series, it is otherwise unrelated.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

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Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar

By Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Chosen

By Ricardo Pinto

Sphere

By Michael Crichton

Sir Harold and the Gnome King

By L. Sprague de Camp

Return to the Tomb of Horrors

No Author Listed

The Princess and the Goblin

By George MacDonald

The Remains of the Day

By Kazuo Ishiguro

John Dies at the End

No Author Listed

The Spanish Gardener

By A. J. Cronin

The Modular Man

By Roger MacBride Allen

Chimera

By John Barth

Land Beyond the Map

By Kenneth Bulmer