The Wold Newton Meteorite: An Extraordinary Stone and the Birth of a Superhero

In a remote part of North-East England called the Yorkshire Wolds, an incident took place on Sunday 13th December 1795 that not only became talking point of late 18th century London society but also gave birth to a modern literary legend. However, as is so often the case, the real facts associated with this event are just as intriguing as the fictional tales that subsequently arose from it!

Wold Newton Fiction: Radioactive Tarzan

In the early 1970s, the American science fiction author Philip José Farmer (1918 – 2009) was engaged writing the ‘biographies’ (as if they were real-life people) of two well-known fictional characters, namely Tarzan and Doc Savage (the latter is better known in the US than the UK). Farmer was toying with the idea of whether they and similar superheroes of pulp and popular fiction were in any way related since, if they were real, their paths would have inevitably crossed in life. In addition, Farmer was intrigued with how these characters originally gained their superpowers.

Book covers for Tarzan novels, 1912 and 1914 (Public Domain)