Posted by Nick Kismet from ppp-4-pm1-beaverton.spiretech.com on June 15, 1999 at 17:03:06:
In Reply to: Re: Adventures Unlimited posted by Rockhammer on June 15, 1999 at 12:52:56:
Yes, yes, I've read the author's notes to Dino's Eggs, too. My point is that there are quite a few rogue adventurers from the early part of the century who laid the pattern for Indiana Jones. Mike Mitchell Hedges, for example who discovered the Crystal Skull in a Mayan city (or did he??) and Henning Haslund from earlier mentioned book.
The era between about 1870 and 1960 was truly an age of adventure where people like the afforementioned were not only real-life Indiana Jones', but were actually considered heroes of their day. This tells me, as a modern adventure writer that this is the ideal era for all kinds of adventurers.
: : I have discovered a publishing house that deals in adventure travel books, including reprints of many books from the 1930's and onward. Some of these are incredibly similar to the adventures of Indy. I have been reading a contemporary book called Lost Cities of North and Central America, but there is one from the early 1930's called Men and Gods in Mongolia that sounds very similar to IJ & the Dinosaur Eggs. The link to their wesite is below.
: Well, Indiana Jones and the Dinosaur Eggs was inspired by the real life travels/adventures of the great Roy Chapman Andrews, one of my personal heroes. It is no secret. He explored and mapped a large portion of the Gobi desert, and found a huge number of Dinosaur fossils, for which he is famous. Everybody who is anybody in the world of Paleontology, geology and zoology knows who Roy Chapman Andrews is (or was, may he RIP) and what he did. He served as director for the American Museum of Natural History in NY for a number of years as well.
: It is the opinion of many (myself included) that he was one of the main inspirations in the creation of Indiana Jones.
: Hence,it is not surprising that you may see a lot of similarities between IJ & the dino eggs and Roy Chapman Andrew's books, or other books written about his adventures. Or even books like the one you have, written about the same area during a similar time as what we're talking about.
: I checked the website, BTW. It's kind of cool to know that there are people with explorer's hearts out there in this day and age, but I was very dissapointed to see that these people take things like "alternative science" and "cryptozoology" seriously. Moreover, stuff like the alien bases in the moon they talked about made me laugh out loud. They'd all make a good science fiction plot, though :)