I think that with the whole CGI effects revolution the genre is set for a revival. i managed to get hold of a copy of THE LOST CONTINENT as a German edition titled BESTIEN LAUERN VIR CARACAS (Destination Caracas- I Think!) it’s totally brilliant and well worth the postage.

If there was to be more lost world movies,decent adaptations of Burroughs Pellucidar series may be a good place to start(there’s even lots of elements of Pirates of the Carribean in a few of the books!), also Lin Cater superb ZANTHODON pastiche series.

Dirigibles seem to survive in fiction out of a feeling that an opportunity was missed. There’s more romance with them (despite the Hindenberg) than there is with planes.

I always regard Wheatley’s example as a caution to authors now who might be hugely popular but whose work is unlikely to last (I’m looking at you, Dan Brown). Wheatley sold millions of books while he was alive but his work now reads like reactionary trash. People who are only writing adventure are easily replaced by newer writers when their work becomes old-fashioned; the ones that last are those that offer some unique vision of their own beyond a thrilling read.

The challenge of cultural translation should be to try and find a clever equivalent. The Asterix books do this; the original French stories being full of puns which the English translators then find comparable examples of in English. Very clever some of them are, so much so it’s made me wonder sometimes whether the originals worked as well.

At least some of Hodgson’s Sargasso Sea stories are very good, but they get a bit tedious if you read too many at once — the Night Shade collections are fantastic. (There are also a lot of other stories in those collections. Carnacki, of course, which was my introduction to Hodgson (”The Whistling Room” in a collection my parents had apparently gotten through a book club), but also a wonderful series of stories about the very clever smuggler Captain Gault, and some really good horror/fantasy (e.g., The House on the Borderlands). Most of the other sea stories are quite good, but you might want to avoid reading too many of those trapped-in-the-Sargasso-Sea, seaweed-and-giant-crabs-and-fiendish-octopi-or-squid stories in a row.)

Also, on the translated Harry Potter note, there are a whole slew of changes made in the U.S. editions; see this website for a list. As an example, in the U.K. editions, there’s a joke about Spellotape. They don’t have cellotape in the States (by that name), so they changed the name, and it no longer reads as a joke. Supposedly the translations got better (i.e., less thorough) with later books.