Before Adam Jack London Books
Download As PDF : Before Adam Jack London Books
Pictures! Pictures! Pictures! Often, before I learned, did I wonder whence came the multitudes of pictures that thronged my dreams; for they were pictures the like of which I had never seen in real wake-a-day life. They tormented my childhood, making of my dreams a procession of nightmares and a little later convincing me that I was different from my kind, a creature unnatural and accursed.
Before Adam Jack London Books
Anything I read by Jack London I liked a lot and this novel was no exception although it wasn’t about sea adventures or wild dogs as is usually expected of him. I found Before Adam to be original, beautifully written and highly imaginative, which I think the author must have been inspired by Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species published in 1859 as this book was first serialized in 1906 and 1907 in Everybody's Magazine. I read its Kindle version.The book begins with the dreams of its main character, a 20th-century man. In his dreams, he becomes a hominid who lived during the Mid-Pleistocene era. The modern man tells the readers the story of this hominid he calls Big Tooth, of the difficulty of survival in that time period, of grave dangers, love, hate, family, and friendship, but without melodrama.
Big Tooth’s best friend is Lop-Ear and Swift One is his love interest, later his partner. In the beginning, these people live in caves together with their tribe, the narrator calls the Folk. The Folk has a bigger hominid, Red Eye, among them who cruelly lords over them. Red Eye is Big Tooth’s mortal enemy. In addition, there are other hominid groups, like tree-dwelling Tree People who are Big Tooth’s original clan and much more advanced, goal-driven, but violent Fire People that easily take over the caves and kill or eat the cave-dwellers and they may have a crude form of language that the other groups lack. All hominids must also be mindful of the dangers of the savage nature and wild animals like the Saber-Tooth Tiger, wild-dog packs, boars, and snakes.
It is in this environment that Big Tooth lives and has his adventures. To find out what those adventures are, this story is well worth reading it.
Jack London, in the first several pages of the book, tells the readers in detail a theory of genetic inheritance, in which he claims the earliest human experiences are imprinted inside our genes, and he generously improvises details of the lives of early proto-humanoids. One thing I’ve appreciated is that he didn’t push on those early characters our humanly assets or vices.
Plus, the descriptions of the settings and the characters are excellent, and even though, the reader knows it is coming from the writer’s imagination, s/he tends to believe that they are real. Also, that the narrator puts this story together from his disjointed dreams excuses the holes left-out in the plot's construction.
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Before Adam Jack London Books Reviews
The book arrived quickly and in good condition.
I read another edition of the book, so the format of this was a little odd - the typeface was generic, widely spaced, and larger. The front cover is a bit "cheesy" - the graphics/illustrations seem to be scaled to a smaller page but enlarged to this size (4"x7" ?). This was a gift so I didn't actually read it to compare the differences between this and the other edition, but it seemed right on.
The book itself is good. I'm not familiar with other London books, except by name, but I loved the idea presented. The mental imagery it conjured up is great, whether you're 15 or 45. Definitely a good, quick read about an interesting topic. Presents some intriguing ideas regarding human evolution despite being written in a less than formal way (as far as the presentation of the science is concerned).
I recommend this book.
Suppose you were having dreams of a previous life. Not just from someone who lived a generation or two ago, but an ancestor that lived thousands of years ago and who was not human. Written by Jack London in the early days of the 20th century, Before Adam was first published 1907 (serialized) in Everybody's Magazine then later, in book form, as a novel. The hero of the story is a modern day man with two personae; in the wake-a-day world the modern man, in the sleeping dream-world a kind of semi-arboreal proto-hominid that lived in the Mid- Pleistocene. The modern man is the narrator of the story and he explains how he pieced it all together from fragmented dreams over the corse of his lifetime. The story is one of hardship, danger, love and hate. It has all the elements that make up our lives but acted out in a very different world. The author makes it all come to life with his brutal, in your face, narrative. The characters are Big Tooth, the dream-world persona, Swift One, his love interest and Lop Ear, his friend. They all live in caves with a band of other hominids, who call themselves the Folk. The band's leader is called Red Eye, an "Atavism", who rules the Folk with an iron-fisted brutality and seems to desire Swift One and hates Big Tooth with a passion. There are other, more primitive, kinds of hominids living in the surrounding woodlands. Some, called the Tree People, are more arboreal than the Folk and may be Red Eye's original people. As a general rule the Tree People are no threat to the Folk but the Fire People definitely are, and being a more advanced kind of human they often hunt the Folk with bows and arrows and they have also learned to use fire. These, then, are the players in this prehistoric drama. They face, not only threats from each other but dangers from animals and the environment. Part of the story deals with a kind of cultural shock that the modern-day persona must deal with. Why is he different? Who can he trust, what is real and what is dream? The first time I read this book, as a child, I was totally blown away by it's unique concept. I found my self drawn back to it time and again over the years and with each rereading I discovered a kind of reawakening of all my original feelings. London was one of a rare breed of writer that not only wrote about adventure but lived it as well. People like Zane Gray and Teddy Roosevelt (non-fiction), as well as London, spent time in the out-of-doors and often faced danger and hardship in their pursuit of the "vigorous life". In this book Jack London again proves himself as one of the best writers of action-adventure stories. As always, London's stories are infused with his fatalistic out look on life man, standing alone, against a vast, uncaring universe. This is, of course, a work of fiction and not a paper meant for publication in a science journal so don't look for 21st century scientific accuracy. In 1907 not many people knew about genetic theory or human evolution so just set back and enjoy the action. If you're careful, and lucky, you just might make it through the night. This 2014 edition includes numerous sketches and paintings by Charles Livingston Bull that add real depth and clarity to the story. I had no technical or formatting problems with this edition but apparently no longer offers it. Too bad.
LastRanger
Anything I read by Jack London I liked a lot and this novel was no exception although it wasn’t about sea adventures or wild dogs as is usually expected of him. I found Before Adam to be original, beautifully written and highly imaginative, which I think the author must have been inspired by Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species published in 1859 as this book was first serialized in 1906 and 1907 in Everybody's Magazine. I read its version.
The book begins with the dreams of its main character, a 20th-century man. In his dreams, he becomes a hominid who lived during the Mid-Pleistocene era. The modern man tells the readers the story of this hominid he calls Big Tooth, of the difficulty of survival in that time period, of grave dangers, love, hate, family, and friendship, but without melodrama.
Big Tooth’s best friend is Lop-Ear and Swift One is his love interest, later his partner. In the beginning, these people live in caves together with their tribe, the narrator calls the Folk. The Folk has a bigger hominid, Red Eye, among them who cruelly lords over them. Red Eye is Big Tooth’s mortal enemy. In addition, there are other hominid groups, like tree-dwelling Tree People who are Big Tooth’s original clan and much more advanced, goal-driven, but violent Fire People that easily take over the caves and kill or eat the cave-dwellers and they may have a crude form of language that the other groups lack. All hominids must also be mindful of the dangers of the savage nature and wild animals like the Saber-Tooth Tiger, wild-dog packs, boars, and snakes.
It is in this environment that Big Tooth lives and has his adventures. To find out what those adventures are, this story is well worth reading it.
Jack London, in the first several pages of the book, tells the readers in detail a theory of genetic inheritance, in which he claims the earliest human experiences are imprinted inside our genes, and he generously improvises details of the lives of early proto-humanoids. One thing I’ve appreciated is that he didn’t push on those early characters our humanly assets or vices.
Plus, the descriptions of the settings and the characters are excellent, and even though, the reader knows it is coming from the writer’s imagination, s/he tends to believe that they are real. Also, that the narrator puts this story together from his disjointed dreams excuses the holes left-out in the plot's construction.
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