The Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs

World Wanderer

World Wanderer

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Not sure if anyone's started this topic yet, so I'll do it. Edgar Rice Burroughs was a man of great imagination. He is best known for his Tarzan adventures, but he also wrote these books:
The Mars Series
The Pellucidar Series
The Caspak Trilogy
The Venus series
and more. So if you're an Edgar Rice Burroughs fan, talk about his stuff here.
 
THAT'S what was missing here! Wanderer, my friend, you don't know what you've started now! Hang on to your Barsoomian hat!

The mind of Edgar Rice Burroughs was a well of adventure, imagination, and WEIRDNESS. For one thing, he had a profound hatred of aging; so most of his prominent stories feature something that counteracts old age. Even Tarzan, who was more real-world-based than John Carter or Carson Napier, discovered a "Fountain of Youth" which kept him and Jane young while their son Korak was growing up to manhood.

Yes, I said son. And I do mean a biological son. Which leads to the fact that Burroughs wasn't the only weird one. When it came to Tarzan, moviemakers were MORE weird.

In our time, there is way too much of a green light given to fleshly desires. But at the time the early Tarzan movies were being made, the opposite problem existed: even acts of desire and pleasure WHICH ARE FULLY APPROVED OF BY GOD HIMSELF IN SCRIPTURE, could be looked on as "dirty" by some who were involved with cinema. Now, although Mr. Burroughs did not, ahem, always have his characters remain perfectly chaste, he DID very clearly establish in the Tarzan series that Tarzan and Jane got lawfully married by clergy. So there was NOTHING objectionable in their living together as the MARRIED couple they were. But the early Tarzan movies wouldn't even let them have that. In an incredible display of fatuous absurdity, they depicted Tarzan and Jane merely living as NEIGHBORS in separate tree houses, not even sleeping under the same roof! It followed that the only way they could experience anything like parenthood was to foster an orphan: hence the character of "Boy" replacing Korak, the natural-born son of Tarzan and Jane.

Thinking of this nonsense, and then of the opposite nonsense we have today, I am reminded of Martin Luther's observation that human nature is like a drunken man on horseback-- who may fall off on either side.

 
I knew that Tarzan had a son (one of the books was titled Son of Tarzan). I just didn't know that Tarzan found a fountain of youth. I was also surprised to see that his Pellucidar books were cleaner than I thought they were going to be. I'm interested in reading all of the Pellucidar books now (only have read the first two, and enjoyed the stories). I also liked the Caspak Trilogy, but I found the process of evolution on the island a little weird.
 
Burroughs had a great imagination, but his works often suffered from an almost comic book overdrama and a formulamatic feel that the lovely but repressed woman would soon find the fulfillment she craved in the fierce yet tender caress of the stranger whereby odd fate had whimsically placed her.

You enjoy reading his works, but if you ever make the mistake of reading another one right after to ease the let-down of ending a story, you'll know what I mean and it will irritate you.
 
The evolutionary concept in the Caspak stories, with INDIVIDUAL BEINGS undergoing evolutionary changes WITHIN ONE LIFETIME, was perhaps less a matter of promoting Darwinism, than a reflection of ANOTHER weird hangup Mr. Burroughs had. Not only did he not like old age--he also didn't like childhood. The Caspakian system prevented women from needing to bother with children. Similarly, John Carter in the Mars/Barsoom series appears out of nowhere, with no memory of himself having been a child; and on Mars he finds that people grow in eggs, not coming out until they are at least adolescent!
 
I have not read any of his books, but there is a nod to Burroughs in the ninth "Young Wizards Series" book. It was called "Wizard of Mars" and was about a young teen wizard, Kit, who was a fan of Burroughs and was caught up in a pseudo recreation of Barsoom on Mars. One big difference was that they wore clothing in "Wizard" whereas in the Burroughs books, they apparently didn't.

MrBob
 
Speaking of nods to Mr. Burroughs, there were at least two writers who wrote novels closely imitating his plots, though not without some original ideas of their own. They were Otis Adelbert Kline and Lin Carter, of whom the first was the better author.
 
Oh. Thanks for the info with the Caspakian system. And I have heard of Lin Carter's nod to Burroughs work (his Zarthodon series). I've been thinking of reading them, but I'm not sure if they would have the same morals as Burroughs Pellucidar series. The covers and some of the titles just seem to have been plagiarized a bit from the series.
 
Lin Carter also copycatted the Conan stories. Look for the less-remembered Otis Adelbert Kline. If I recall correctly, one of his novels was titled "Planet of Peril," and featured a time-travel concept along with everything else.
 
Let's write a crossover story called "Prince Kaspakian and the Voyage of the Mars Treader."​
 
Interesting, but this is about Edgar Rice Burroughs work. Speaking of which, in his Caspak series, it says that the island is home to dinosaurs, but the only species from that time period that were present in the series were Plesiosaurus, Pterodactyl, Allosaurus, Diplodocus, and Tyrannosaurus. The rest came from the age of the mammals.
 
Noting that an author gets imitated IS part of discussing his impact. And having a certain number of dinosaur types which ARE stated as being there, is not itself a clear statement that NO OTHERS were there.
 
I guess that sometimes there are creatures that an author imagines as part of the world they create, but they are unable to have their characters encounter them. Still, I think that sometimes when an author's book is adapted into a movie, the filmmakers will take liberties with adding new creatures. Example, the main predator of The Lost World was the Allosaurus, but films have made the predator Tyrannosaurus Rex. Sometimes films will add a creature that looks nothing like a dinosaur, and still call it one (like in this adaptation of At the Earth's Core: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yap38la5t4 )
 
Yes, I saw that "Earth's Core" movie; it was about as much a Burroughs movie as "Prince NON-Caspian" was a Narnian movie.
 
The big problem with adapting Burroughs' sci-fi books is that they were written when people did not know as much science. Now, for example, no one will believe that big six-limbed Tharks are galloping around Mars on the backs of thoats, with calots as watchdogs. So any movie adapter would be tempted to say, "Okay, we show John Carter visiting Barsoom, but when the atmosphere plant fails, he DOESN'T succeed in restarting it, so everyone on Mars dies, tough luck, and from THEN on Mars is barren, the end."
 
Yeah. Seems like they care more about making things scientifically accurate now than trying to make the places of the Burroughs novels seem like what they were supposed to be.

Some people may find the time thing in Pellucidar confusing, but it actually makes sense to me. When I went hiking in some caves a while back, it seemed like it was only around an hour that I had spent down there, yet when I checked my watch, it said that several hours had gone by.
 
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For Burroughs' novels that took place on Mars, on Venus, and (less remembered) on Earth's Moon, invoking a parallel universe might be the best way to let Barsoom be Barsoom and so on.
 
That might be best with those books. I only hope that anybody who adapts the books into movies in the future will bring the spirit of the story to the big screen.
 
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