The People That Time Forgot

The story opens with a weary clerk delivering a suspicious manuscript to a wealthy family, hoping to prove its authenticity after a wartime torpedo sank a passenger liner. Inside, the recovered survivor, Bowen Tyler, recounts his and Miss La Rue’s desperate escape aboard an English tug, only to be swept far into the South Pacific by chance and misfortune. As the men wait for the missing yacht, they begin to wonder whether the wild tale they have been handed might be more than a tall yarn.

Tyler’s account leads to a hidden island called Caspak, a volcanic basin where the climate feels ancient and the world seems frozen in a prehistoric age. The island is populated solely by fully grown humans, strange tribes, and a bewildering menagerie of pterodactyls, dinosaurs and even dragons, all living under a sky of perpetual heat. The narrator, and the listener alike, are left to imagine how these strangers will navigate a land where every danger is as old as the Earth itself.