Youthful Indulgences
OK — I followed my own advice and read Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars, and Warlord of Mars. This de facto trilogy was originally published between Mid-1912 and Early 1914 as three separate serials in The All Story Magazine. They later came out in book form during 1917, 1918, and 1919.
Wrap-around cover from the first edition of Warlord of Mars -- touting the previous two novels. Many thanks to ERBZine for the scans of antique artwork used in my treatise!
I think it is important to note that Son of Tarzan, the FOURTH installment of Burroughs’ dominant series of Tarzan stories was published as a hardbound book six months before A Princess of Mars. ERB’s rollicking tales set Under the Moons of Mars may have initiated his career as a Pulp writer, but the public favored Tarzan over all his other creations. In 1918, First National Pictures released a movie called Tarzan of the Apes starring Elmo Lincoln, beginning a very popular film franchise that endured ups and downs throughout the XX Century, and spawned successful adaptations in additional media too.
Pixar/Disney’s upcoming film John Carter marks the 100th anniversary of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ introduction to the world of Pop Culture, and the first time a MAJOR studio has taken a chance with his archaic and anarchic vision of Barsoom — the red planet we call Mars.
Mercator projections of the Red Planet: (Above) From Percival Lowell's sketches from Earth-based telescopes; (Below) Derived from satellites orbiting Mars itself.
When Burroughs first began writing his Barsoomian romances the biggest name in Mars exploration was Percival Lowell, an American astronomer who strongly advocated for the prospect of not only life on Earth’s neighbor, but a high civilization that constructed planet-wide irrigation canals. Here is a link to Lowell’s book MARS (1895). Sketches and later astronomical photos showed definite polar caps, and dark areas contrasting with light areas in roughly stable patterns. The images above show that although Earthbound observations were fuzzy at best, they weren’t totally wrong.
There was never any repeatable scientific evidence for either Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli’s “channels,” or Lowell’s canals, but it was still a lot of FUN to speculate about life on Mars — H.G. Wells ascended Jules Verne’s literary throne with his novel War of the Worlds in 1898, and the Red Planet became a popular playground for the imagination. The name Edgar Rice Burroughs eventually joined Wells and Verne atop the step-pyramid of Pulp fame, along with H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Wallace, climbing up via word-play on the dry orchre sea-bottoms of Barsoom, or in boat-like fliers cruising its skies, with two moons careening overhead.
(L to R) Cover by top-rank painter N.C. Wyeth; Artist J. Allen St. John began a long association with Burroughs by illustrating the third Tarzan novel -- notice Barsoom's moons Thuria and Cluros in his drawing from 1920.
I can’t recall reading anything by Burroughs after about 1970, although I collected many of his various illustrators, but that means at least forty years have elapsed since my last visit to ERB’s Blood-Red Planet. So what did I think after reading those initial explorations of Barsoom?
A Princess of Mars, was compelling — when I initially read it, and even now. It made me want to see what would happen next. The action was dizzying, and when it slowed down just a little, after John Carter wed Princess Dejah Thoris, a stray thread from the middle of the story led to a cliff-hanger ending, and separation from his true love.
Gods of Mars was the first book of this series I read as a youth. I borrowed an old hardbound copy from a neighbor. There was a palpable sense of exploration in the text, and its many references to John Carter’s previous adventures fed my curiosity enough to seek and find some more Mars books — awaiting readers on the shelves of the Spencer Branch Library, located right next door to where I would later attend Junior High School.
A slight diversion
I had already read Burroughs’ Tarzan and the Forbidden City – featuring a comely heroine, nasty villains, outsized monsters, an underwater temple, a lost civilization ruled by an exotic goddess-queen, with an invincible hero making everything right by the end.
Strangely enough, this minor potboiler was the only example of Burroughs’ 50-odd books which saw widespread circulation during the Eisenhower years, because it was licensed to Whitman / Western who printed the Tarzan comic books. The book industry had changed very much after WWII, and his former publishers went out of business around the time of Burroughs’ death in 1949.
Back to Mars
Because of Whitman’s orphaned volume, though, I had my engine primed and ready for the Pulp Fiction joy-ride promised by Gods of Mars — following John Carter through a long string of battles, predicaments, escapes, and captures — with more monsters, unknown races, hidden cities, a resourceful female ally, an old friend, an enemy-turned-friend, heaps of slain enemies, and a few surviving villains — all culminating in a return to his Martian home, where he finds his princess gone, plus most of her family missing too!
Before Gods of Mars is done, Carter leads a fleet of airships back to the south polar region from which he spent half the novel escaping, and battles three other armadas before seeing Dejah Thoris, but the bad guys recapture her, and it’s cliff-hanger time again! I think that my lack of exposure to A Princess of Mars helped maintain my capacity for surprise throughout this not-exactly-graceful sequel to a much better book.
As it was, I eagerly checked A Princess of Mars out of the library mentioned above, and had a thoroughly good time absorbing that unique quirky yarn — I might have even re-read Gods of Mars before tackling the third book.
Today we use the cliche lather, rinse, repeat for repetitive formulas, and I could say the same about Warlord of Mars, but while going through puberty I totally enjoyed those familiar rhythms of violent action, fantastic creatures, strange lands, and weird pseudo-science.
Burroughs entertained with his literary pyrotechnics like speedy Heavy Metal guitarists would entertain similar teenagers later. He was a much more confident writer by the time he concluded this mad barbaric arabesque, with his interplanetary lovers reunited in triumph after their bloody quest between South Pole and North Pole on Planet Mars. I enjoyed the metaphorical ride of rereading this three-part Pulp Epic, even if it originated in the years when my long-dead grandfather was a lad.
Prominent Western artist Frank Schoonover's illustrations of 1917-18 were quite literal, but Burroughs' words painted better pictures in his readers' minds.
Criticisms? Are you kidding? If anybody pauses to think while reading these things, the spell dissipates quicker than dry ice. When I sat down as a kid to make my own drawings of Barsoomian subjects, it became quite clear that there was no real logic behind any of that stuff — St. John’s best illustrations relied on strategic vagueness for their power.
Big Time Burroughs
Paperback books created a Post-WWII media revolution, and all of the sudden EVERYTHING written by Edgar Rice Burroughs was published in this form as the 1960′s began. One thirtieth of all softbound sales were titles by Burroughs in one year, according to Time Magazine.
What it meant to me and my friends was that we could share our enjoyment of these formerly arcane entertainments much more easily than before, and personally delve into entire series’ that Burroughs wrote about Mars, Venus, or At the Earth’s Core, if we so desired.
The character of the literary Tarzan emerged from Johnny Weissmuller’s shadow too, simply because people could buy the original books at corner stores, sporting well-designed artwork by a variety of creative modern illustrators.
(L to R) Art by: Robert Abbett; Roy G. Krenkel, pen & ink; Roy G. Krenkel, painting.
Burroughs’ unique gift for storytelling was based on pacing and amazement. Plots emerged, grew, and intertwined like Art Nouveau tendrils. As long as he kept a reader baffled and playing along, he prospered. Some of his ideas were better than others, of course. Contradictory or ridiculous details and indifferent characterizations were serious flaws in his work, but I think he was at his very best creating fantastic sub-worlds with broad facile strokes of language. I invite you to make up your own mind:
Online Versions of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom Novels:
A Princess of Mars ; The Gods of Mars ; Warlord of Mars ;
(John Carter’s initial blood-soaked trilogy);
Thuvia, Maid of Mars ; The Chessmen of Mars
(Adventures of Dejah & John’s offspring);
Mastermind of Mars
(An totally-unrelated WWI officer wakes up on Barsoom);
A Fighting Man of Mars
(An intrepid private soldier from Carter’s armed forces);
Swords of Mars
(ONE MORE TIME! John Carter, Dejah Thoris, plus an inhabited Martian Moon);
Synthetic Men of Mars
(Sequel to Mastermind);
Llana of Gathol
(Interlocking short stories featuring Carter and his granddaughter);
… and a half-baked posthumous collection called John Carter of Mars:
Skeleton Men of Jupiter — a magazine story by the old man himself;
Giant of Mars — ghost-written by John Coleman Burroughs for a Whitman Better Little Book, originally entitled John Carter of Mars — the title of Jack’s syndicated Comic Strip.
If you think it is high time, and that THAT is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out … (You’re quoting Shakespeare)
Shaunna Hall’s Elecrofunkadelica — just let it play while you read!
Johnny Melville and Jango Edwards continue to fool around the cinema.
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