29 November 2015
I recently interviewed Sydney about SACRIFICE, an early story which departed from the usual sci-fi formulae and which was a precursor to several others in the same mould. All these stories ( including Sydney’s favorite THE WONDROUS LAMP) explore ancient myths and mysteries but explain them in terms of extra-terrestrial intervention in the affairs of Earth. SACRIFICE was written a decade before von Daniken published his best selling “Chariots of the gods” which was a pseudo – scientific exploration of he same theme of ancient aliens, but Sydney remembers that the notion of ancient aliens was already present in the fifties . He recalls that he was familiar with the works of Emmanuel Velikosky, whose book “World’s in collision”,
while not going so far as to suggest alien intervention, proposes that ancient Earth history was directly influenced by celestial events. According to Velikovsky , at around 1400 BCE Jupiter ejected or re-directed a comet which passed close to the Earth and eventually became the planet Venus. Its close flyby caused many disasters on Earth which Velikosky believed were reflected in many ancient mythologies which spoke of mass destruction, an example of which was the biblical flood. Like “Chariots of the gods” a few years later, “Worlds in collision” which was published in 1950, received a storm of criticism and scorn from the scientific community , but became an instant best-seller. Its imaginative appeal was irresistible and it is this element that caught the fertile imaginations of Messrs Jordan and Patterson.
Another theory which was present in the zeitgeist of the nineteen fifties and which was, according the Sydney, responsible for his choice of Tiahuanaco as the setting for SACRIFICE , was that contained in the works of H.S.Bellamy. First published in 1943 “Built before the flood” again explored ideas of celestial events influencing the ancient history of the Earth. His theories were based on the study of the strange calendar carved on the Sun Gate at the Tiahuanaco site. The calendar is one of only 290 days and from this oddity , Bellamy and others before him constructed a bizarre theory that a pre-lunar
satellite orbited our planet 100,000 years ago and that this object rotated so close to the Earth ( and eventually crashed into it) that it caused a more rapid rotation of our planet. And of course much concomitant devastation and destruction followed its eventual impact. The book achieved some success and was re-printed three times, its third iteration “The calendar of Tiahuanaco” coming out in 1956, just three years before SACRIFICE. Again, like “Worlds in collision”, although the science and archaeology of the work were discredited, it provided fertile soil for a writer of science fiction.
The last strand which, according to Sydney, formed the seed of the ideas in SACRIFICE, was the KON-TIKI expedition of Thor Heyerdahl. This voyage which took place in 1947, was an attempt to show that Inca technology could have built ships capable of crossing the Pacific ocean and colonizing Polynesia. His journey and subsequent book and documentary caught the attention of the world and Thor Heyerdahl became a household name. Viracocha , the name of the Incan sun god was adapted by Sydney into the Viracochan the alien power source which lay in the heart of Tiahuanaco in SACRIFICE. This theme of two cultures meeting for the first time, specifically in the history of the Incas , who originally thought that Pizarro and his conquistadors were Viracocha-cuna or gods, provided Sydney with the scenario of ancient
contact between the inca and an alien race, by a quick transposition of Spaniards for Aliens!
SACRIFICE is a subtle and well-paced blend of Mythology and science-fiction , which Sydney was to explore again in later stories; It is interesting to note that its theme pre-dated “Chariots of the gods” by almost a decade. Skipper Prossit
