THE DAY OF RESIS (1897) ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION

THE DAY OF RESIS (1897) – This sci-fi novel was written by Lillian Francis Mentor. The main character is Enola Cameron, a strong-willed 20-year-old American woman from a well to do family. She purchases a very old goatskin document describing a hidden African kingdom called On.

The goatskin also features a rough map of the route to On. Enola proclaims that men don’t have a monopoly on leading lives of adventure and names herself the commander of a co-ed expedition to find On.

The participants consist of her lady friends, mixed male and female relatives and Henry, who is in love with her. In a gross element common to a lot of stories back then, he is also her cousin. Enola boldly leads the expedition to Africa and a march to the interior.

At length the party reaches the mountain range which supposedly conceals the Kingdom of On. Enola and company manage to find the secret tunnel that leads to the enormous canyon which houses On.

Enola Cameron’s expedition members learn the secrets of the kingdom. Its inhabitants are descended from ancient Egyptians who fled their homeland to escape the plagues unleashed by Moses.

Applied eugenics and the nutritional content of the food grown or hunted in the area has resulted in the men all being roughly seven feet tall and the women six feet, six inches tall. The enormous lake contains dinosaurs whose species have survived from prehistoric times.

Culturally, the isolated Onians practice a form of socialism which functions because of the honesty and work ethic of the people. Husbands and wives are assigned to each other via periodic lotteries. The most sacred aspect of life in On is the Day of Resis, which is never discussed with the outsiders.

All that the Onians will convey to Cameron and her party is the belief that life in On “works” because of the Day of Resis. The eight-feet-tall King Onrai is hospitable and falls in love with Enola but still won’t open up about the sacred day.

His attraction to Ms. Cameron makes him open to co-leading an expedition exploring the out of the way sections of On’s enormous canyon. The contented Onians have never been motivated to explore them.

Enola and King Onrai lead Henry and other Americans on an outing that discovers the entrance to a subterranean land inhabited by dwarves who live like ancient cavemen. The dwarves control the size of their population through occasionally excavating newer and deeper tunnels and rely on accidents from the hazards of such projects to kill off several people.

One day a massive earthquake strikes the canyon, opening up a very wide entranceway through the mountains to On. Before long, external tribes at first probe, then militarily invade the kingdom. Incredibly outnumbered, even the imposing Onians are getting their butts kicked.

At last, Enola is permitted to lead her band of Americans into the fray. Their superior 1890s weaponry enables them to drive back the invaders. A large-scale engineering project carried out by the allied Onians and Americans erect majestic barriers to once again make the canyon safe from the outer world.

King Onrai is now comfortable enough to demand that Enola Cameron marry him to cement relations between the Onians and the American government. Enola feels she must go along with the marriage for the sake of the United States, which will then have an extreme Favored Nations status with gold-rich On.

Our heroine has fallen in love with her cousin Henry (eeww) during their adventures but she tells him her duty to their home country must come first. The day of the royal wedding is set for the Day of Resis. 

Eventually, that mysterious day at last arrives. To the horror of the American party, the wedding ceremony is preceded by the major activity of the Day of Resis – the king leading a slaughter of all Onians who have reached the age of 65 since the last Resis “celebration.” 

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Amid much action, Enola manages to lead all of the Americans out of the canyon safely when the Onians take violent offense to their disapproval of the extermination of the elderly. The Cameron Expedition then returns to the coast and takes their ship back to the U.S.

The Day of Resis has plenty of “female version of H. Rider Haggard” elements, but the science fiction elements are equally essential to the story. There are the growth nutrients which make the Onians so tall, the dinosaurs in the massive lake, the impossibly abundant gold mines and the subterranean civilization of primitive dwarves. 

This novel’s distinction of a female author and a woman being in charge of the exploratory venture make it stand out from the many, many other Lost Civilization stories from the 1800s. 

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