Whipped up by Charles Darwin's new perspective on life and by visions of lost worlds conjured up by Jules Verne and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, that was an age of discovery.

BBC: New age of exploration in the hunt for extreme life

Bull's books are filled with fascinating facts about the times in which they are set: the social hierarchies, menus, food preparation, the way characters see these now-lost worlds, how they comport themselves, how they travel.

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D'Souza himself has qualms about"worlds we have lost"in capitalism's earthquakes.

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Claptrap breaks the fourth wall with gusto, assigning absurd MMO-styled instructions (collect brown rocks, then defeat a high-level monster, find a lost staff, bring him the head of the Destroyer of Worlds and then dance for his amusement) to complete a quest which, it turns out, can be finished by clicking on a door six feet away.

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