Ivory Extraordinaire

About the Book

Ivory Extraordinaire is a collection of five science fiction stories of big-game hunting and the ivory trade, taking place not in the past, but in the future: the middle of the Twenty-First Century, to be precise. While being a science fiction book, it is also very much a book of adventure on the hunt, a fictional version of the true-life hunting adventures written down by everyone from Captain William Cornwallis Harris of Victorian times to Peter Hathaway Capstick today. This is a book of men with guns who are experts in their use, and of the beasts they use them on. During the Twenty-First Century, time travel has both been discovered and led to still another technological breakthrough: the ability to travel to any type of alternate world imaginable. Aside from boosting history and paleontology through research of “what ifs”, it has led to both a vast wave of nostalgia sweeping the Earth and to the colonization and exploitation of many of those worlds. In particular, the big-game hunter, both the professional hunter and the sport hunter, has been revived after almost dying out by the end of the Twentieth Century. With a literally endless supply of alternate worlds filled with wildlife but no humans, the most adventurous sportsmen of the future seek their fortune on those worlds, sending back a steady supply of trophies, furs, meat and other food products---and ivory. Now that ivory can be procured without wiping out Earth’s own elephants, the second most valuable natural substance (after mother-of-pearl) has once more come into its own, being desired by all. And yet, so great is the gap between demand and supply that even the least-valuable ivory costs $1,000 a pound. Thus, the ivory hunter is the professional hunter with the greatest potential to strike it rich, as well as the man who hunts some of the mightiest game. The main character in the book, Sir Reginald Carter-Smythe, is an English nobleman who comes from a long line of great white hunters. His family impoverished long before his birth, he is rebuilding both his birthright and his fortune by stalking the elephants of another world. A tall, powerful, clean-shaven, sandy-haired man, he is the personification of his profession: a big man hunting big game. With nothing between him and death but his own wits and the relic Continental .600 elephant gun that was one of his few positive inheritances, he ranges far and wide in the wild, even when he must travel upriver alone on an armed motor barge that takes three men to properly handle and fight. Like all professional hunters, he has an arrangement with Interdimensional Industries (II), the corporation that first developed interdimensional travel. In exchange for an initial grubstake and the chance to go hunting on a wildlife-rich world, he shells out half the money he earns until he can once more be his own man. We venture forth with them on the hunt, play mind games with them in elegant clubs, and clink glasses as we make the standard toast of success: "To heavy tusks and light casualties!" Epic adventures demand a stage where they can be played out on an epic scale, and Ivory Extraordinaire provides this in the alternate world of Proboscidia. Scientists have long known that in intelligence, eating efficiency, and sheer size and power, the elephants are among the most successful herbivores of all time. On Proboscidia, they have been so successful as to drive into extinction all other large and medium-sized mammalian herbivores, evolving into new forms to take over all of their niches. Here elephants of modern type coexist with mammoths, mastodons, and a host of more archaic species, all evolved to fit into a particular niche. As is the case on Earth, they have also spawned the sirenians: sea cows, manatees, and dugongs. These are not, however, the nearly-extinct losers they are on our own world, for on Proboscidia they are superabundant, taking over the niches of everything from walruses to hipp

About the Author

As with many children, Gregory W. Detwiler's first love was prehistoric life, which turned into a general interest in evolution and the new field of "alternate evolution". Unable to find any buyers for “alternate evolution” books, he has turned to pure science fiction to see at least some of his fantastic creatures come to life. He has been a major contributor to Dragon Magazine and other role-playing publications. In the nonliterary field, he holds an Associate Degree in Accounting and recently graduated as a medical coding specialist. He lives in the wilderness of west-central Pennsylvania.