Sources for The Hidden Chronicles of Oz

THE HIDDEN CHRONICLES OF OZ is a new Oz series covering the further adventures of Dorothy, an orphan living with her aunt and uncle on a remote Kansas farm in 1900—and famous from the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Lyman Frank Baum (1856-1919), a book published in 1900.

The books of ‘The Hidden Chronicles of Oz’ are in sequel to that book, and to that book alone.

The series retains the spirit of Baum’s imagination and the fantasy land revealed in his first Oz book. To do so, the books draw lines of action and even dialog from other books by Mr. Baum. For example, the  first book of the new series, The Mysterious Tintype of Oz, derives much from Baum’s second Oz story, The Marvelous Land of Oz, a book without Dorothy, published in 1904. A few other features and dialogue in Tintype have been purposefully extracted from Baum's later books, for example The Road to Oz (1909). 

The books of ‘The Hidden Chronicles of Oz’ do not attempt to be consistent with all the later Oz books by Baum. That would actually be impossible. Those books contradict each other in respect to many of the most basic facts about Oz. Even the maps vary greatly. (Below we will show our proper map.)

Most importantly, Tintype leads the reader into a new and larger story about Oz and a mysterious and magic-ridden world of planetary dimensions called Erdavon, of which Oz is only a part.  This Erdavon might today be called an 'alternative Earth,’ a place that exists in some as yet undiscovered ‘alternative dimension.’

Erdavon is shown as tied to our world (Alpimar) primarily by high atmosphere, winds, flight by balloon, etc. It is not gotten to by such means as plunging through a train station wall to ‘Platform 9 3/4’ in order to board the Hogwarts Express. (Mysterious portals to Erdavon may have existed in the past, but that’s another story.)

Later books by Baum about Dorothy in Oz often ramble through a sequence of loosely related adventures. She visits a ‘King-of-This,’ here and then a ‘King-of-That’ there. Thus they were more in the earlier fashion of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland than in the style developed by twentieth century series like those of J. R. R. Tolkien or C. S. Lewis.

There was little or no character development—personal growth—shown in Baum’s Oz series. Such is an important feature of most of the more recent fantasy series involving young protagonists like Harry Potter.

Yet the Oz books have been beloved over the years. Toto, Tin-man, Scarecrow, Lion, and even that humbug of a Wizard are all iconic characters around the world. None is transmogrified in this series. Nor is Dorothy, though she does grow older and finds boys more interesting—and frustrating.

Thus the series ‘The Hidden Chronicles of Oz’ remains quite consistent with Baum’s first book. Nothing in it comes from any of the Oz books that were later written by other persons. Nothing is derived from any of the many stage plays, motion pictures, or television shows that have appeared using Oz theme.

 

The Land of Oz is but a small part of an entire alternative world where magic reigns—not science and technology. This world is called Erdavon, and it mirrors our world in many ways but differs sharply in others. Oz is cut off from other lands of Erdavon by deadly deserts and an impassable sea. These barriers, called haltracs, are ancient. 

The map below will show how that the Oz of this series follows that of Baum’s first Oz book, but it will reveal some new dimensions as well. The lake shown within Emraldian territory is, by the way, named Lake Mystikin.