Pseudonym of Indian-born soldier and writer Martin L Gompertz (1886-1951), probably in UK from infancy. His adventure novels, usually set in remote regions of Asia and show very clearly the influence of H Rider Haggard; several are of sf interest, the best-known being perhaps the two novels making up the Harilek/Sakaeland sequence, Harilek: A Romance (1923) and Wrexham's Romance: Being a Continuation of Harilek (1935), both assembled as Adventures in Sakaland: Comprising Harilek and Wrexham's Romance (omni 1978) – note variant spelling. The protagonists of the series, following hints from an ancient manuscript, trek into regions beyond the mountains of India, where they find a Lost World inhabited by a various races, including one of deepest Aryan stock with some Telepathic powers; the second volume is mostly a love story.
This general pattern evinces itself variously in Ganpat's subsequent work. In Snow Rubies (1925) the pattern is enriched by the discovery of an Underground tribe of troglodytes (> Apes as Human) who worship a supernaturally huge cave bear; the Lost World featured in The Voice of Dashin: A Romance of Wild Mountains (1926) houses an ancient tribe of Indo-Europeans, the People of the Hand, who are hunted for sport by Tibetans; Mirror of Dreams: A Tale of Oriental Mystery (1928), whose possible influence on James Hilton's Lost Horizon (1933) has been noted more than once, is set in a hidden valley whose inhabitants guard ancient relics against the day, soon to come, when Western civilization will fall, as confirmed by the eponymous mirrors, which allow them to far-see and also serve as Time Viewers; the pre-human Lost Race depicted in The Speakers in Silence (1929), who speak a language inaudible to humans and who plan to conquer the world, are exposed when a Canadian engineer invents (> Invention) a wireless capable of picking up their messages. A few later novels eschew the lost-race topos: Walls Have Eyes (1930) again features a Time Viewer, a camera capable of photographing the past; The Three R's (1930) revolves around a Mad Scientist's Invention of an atomic bomb; Fairy Silver: A Traveller's Tale (1932) returns to a Lost World in Central Asia; and The War Breakers (1939) is a tale of derring-do of a sort very popular before World War Two showed its true nature. By this point the imperialist and racist underpinnings of the Lost Race/Lost World tale had begun to seem fragile, and Ganpat – whose world-view had not changed since the turn of the century – stopped publishing. [JC]
Martin Louis Alan Gompertz
born India: 23 February 1886
died Chagford, Devon: 29 September 1951
works
series
Harilek/Sakaeland
individual titles (selected)
- Stella Nash (Glasgow, Scotland: William Blackwood, 1924) [hb/]
- Snow Rubies (Glasgow, Scotland: William Blackwood, 1925) [hb/nonpictorial]
- The Voice of Dashin: A Romance of Wild Mountains (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1926) [hb/]
- High Snow (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1927) [hb/]
- Mirror of Dreams: A Tale of Oriental Mystery (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1928) [hb/]
- Dainra (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1929) [hb/]
- The Speakers in Silence (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1929) [hb/]
- Walls Have Eyes (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1930) [hb/]
- The Three R's (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1930) [hb/]
- Fairy Silver: A Traveller's Tale (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1932) [hb/]
- The War Breakers (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1939) [hb/]
links
Previous versions of this entry