The Purple Wizard - Volsted Gridban (John Russell Fearn)

I’ve been aware of John Russell Fearn’s reputation as a prolific British science fiction author for a long time but hadn’t read anything by him until a short story in an issue of STARTLING STORIES not that long ago. That story was okay but didn’t impress me all that much.

I was still interested in reading more by Fearn, though, so I picked up a few e-books by him, reprints of British paperbacks he wrote during the paperback explosion in England following World War II. The first one I’ve gotten around to reading (because the description sounded interesting) is THE PURPLE WIZARD, a novel published originally by Scion Books in 1954 under the pseudonym Volsted Gridban, a pen-name that originated with E.C. Tubb but was used only a few times before Fearn took it on and was much more prolific under it.

This is a time travel novel in which a scientist invents a device that will transport people forward and backward in time. For the first full-fledged test of the gizmo, he sends his daughter and her fiancee back to the year 828, chosen on a whim because that’s the family’s phone number. The fiancee’s name, by the way, is Arthur. Hmmm . . . sending somebody named Arthur back to medieval England . . . I wonder what’s going to happen.

As it turned out, however, my suspicion about where the plot was going turned out to be completely wrong. I hope it’s not too much of a spoiler, but this is not a King Arthur story at all. Arthur and Kitty (the scientist’s beautiful daughter) do have a number of adventures when things go wrong and they’re marooned in the past, while in the present Kitty’s father struggles to retrieve them. They wind up being condemned to death by King Egbert, the first king of England. Will science save them in time?

THE PURPLE WIZARD is a novel of missed opportunities. There’s quite a bit I like about it. A very dry sense of humor runs through the book. The professor who comes up with the time travel device isn’t your typical mad scientist. Instead he’s a rather stuffy, middle-class British guy whose laboratory is a converted garden shed in his backyard. The thing that goes wrong and strands the time travellers is about as prosaic as you can get, which is also a nice change from the stereotypes. The explanation for how time travel works at least sounds good, no matter how far-fetched it really is. Fearn does a nice job with the setting, and there are a few action scenes that are okay, although I think they could have been more dramatic.

That low-key approach is THE PURPLE WIZARD’s main flaw as far as I’m concerned. It’s fine for a while, even appealing, but eventually in a book like this I want higher stakes and more blood and thunder. Even at its relatively short length, I think it could have achieved more of an epic feeling.

Despite that, I enjoyed this book enough that I intend to read more by Fearn. If there are any of his books those of you reading this can recommend, please do.