Friday, December 05, 2008

Forgotten Books: A Fighting Man of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs

Nostalgia is about to be wallowed in. Consider yourself warned.

In the summer of 1964, my sister’s boyfriend had been telling me about this science-fiction author he’d been reading named Edgar Rice Burroughs. The name was familiar to me, probably from the Tarzan movies that one of the local TV stations ran constantly on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, but I’d never read anything by him. I asked John to loan me one of the books, and so one Friday evening when he came over, he brought along a copy of A FIGHTING MAN OF MARS, the sixth book in Burroughs’ Martian series, in what was then a fairly new Ace Books edition with a cover by Roy G. Krenkel. (At the time, of course, I had no idea who Krenkel was, and Ace didn’t mean a whole lot to me, either. Those things were soon to change.)

According to John, these Mars books by Burroughs were a blend of science-fiction – they had flying machines and invisibility rays and four-armed green men in them, after all – and swashbuckling adventure. So I sat down on that Friday evening to read the book, expecting to be entertained. Let’s just say that A FIGHTING MAN OF MARS more than met my expectations. Most of Burroughs’ Mars novels feature his iconic hero John Carter, an Earthman transported to Mars, or Barsoom, as its inhabitants call it, where he fights monsters, mad scientists, evil cults, giant white apes, and assorted other villains, all the while romancing the beautiful princess Dejah Thoris, who loses her clothes more than any heroine short of a Spicy pulp. I discovered all that later, though, because this book, while it uses the same background, features a Martian hero, Hadron of Hastor. To tell you the truth, I don’t recall all that much about the plot. It’s been a lot of years since I last reread the book. But I recall vividly how I sat up late reading it that night, flipping the pages until I just couldn’t stay awake anymore. I finished it first thing the next morning and was hooked. I had to have more Burroughs, all the Burroughs I could get my hands on, as soon as possible.

So I read all the other Mars books, pretty much in order from that point, although I skipped around a little because I couldn’t find some of them right away. It doesn’t really matter all that much, anyway, except for the first three books of the series, which need to be read in order. I found a copy of TARZAN AND THE LOST EMPIRE at the library and read it. That was my first Tarzan novel, but over the next few years I read most of them, too, often in Ace editions with Krenkel covers. Those babies were everywhere back then. John loaned me some of the books from the Venus series. In the more than four decades since then, I’ve read probably three-fourths of Burroughs’ novels. Every now and then, I still pick up one that I haven’t read and go back to being eleven or twelve years old again for a while.

But it all started on that summer weekend in 1964 with A FIGHTING MAN OF MARS, a book that, as it turns out, is really a fairly average entry in Burroughs’ canon. I love it anyway, and always will.


10 comments:

Randy Johnson said...

Yes, another one of my loves as a young man. John Carter and Tarzan were probably my favorite series.
But Carson Napier, the Pellucidar books, the moon pair, the westerns...
I could go on and on.
I probably haven't read all of Burroughs' books, but it's nice to haul a Tarzan or John Carter out every now and then and revisit those long ago days of youth.
I'm even working on a new generation. I have a great-nephew who's just turned fifteen that loves to read(his mother says, "He's another you!") and he gets books for Christmas every year. The Heinlein juveniles were followed up the next year by a three volume set from the SF Book Club of the Mars books.

Anonymous said...

When I was 12, I discovered Burroughs by way of a twine-tied bundle of all his Mars books at a junk shop in the little town I grew up in in northern Vermont. Bought the lot for $1. I wish I still had that stack--house fire a few years later--but they led me to so many books and adventures and authors and genres that I'll be grateful forever. Long live ERB!

Cheers,
Matt Mayo

Anonymous said...

Those Krenkel covers remain, to this day, the definitive covers (for me) for the Burroughs books. I suppose a previous generation would have felt the same way about the St. Johns covers. Three was so much expressed energy in those covers. Nothing else since has ever really captured that since of energy and excitement.

Oddly, I never got into Tarzan, though I did read the first novel. School was having a Secret Santa thing and the guy I got I happen to know read SF so I got him Taran of the Apes, then sat up half the night reading the books, under the covers, before wrapping it up and giving it to him.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and Dejah Thoris was never losing her clothes all the time. That would imply that she WORE clothes, which she mostly didn't.

Scott D. Parker said...

Since my dad is an SF reader, we already had numerous ERB books in the house. Shoot, it was my mom who bought and read the Tarzan books...and I still have them. To be honest, the first time I heard of John Carter was in Carl Sagan's Cosmos, TV and book. When he mentioned that he would stand outside his house and hold his hands up to the sky wanting desperately to be transported to Mars a la Carter, I was intrigued. By then, the books were reissued with great 70s-era covers (forgot the artist) but I can remember Thoris in her typical no-clothes attire. Loved that cover and loved the books. I still have all 12 (?) books in a box somewhere. I think I'm going to break them open and revisit Barsoom.

Charles Gramlich said...

This takes me back, for sure. The Barsoom series was and still is my favorite ERB. The influence is clear in my Talera books. I remember this one well, and liked hearing about a hero other than John Carter.

AndyDecker said...

Among the first fantasy I ever read when I was 14 or so was some of Burroughs Venus books. A neighbour gave me a box of used sf and fantasypaperbacks, among them also Howard´s Conan and Alan Burt Akers dray Prescot. Oh, and Heinlein's Starman Jones, which I loved - even if I can´t stand most of Heinlein´s work today. Needless to say I was hooked on the stuff.

I think it is sad today that the new generation never will read these books. I can understand that they are perceived as dated - and most are no longer avaiable which doesn´t help - and are not very attractive for boys growing up fused to an xbox and GTA. They just don´t know what they miss.

When has this become a nostalgia thing only?

Fred Blosser said...

James, I believe that Ace later recycled that beautiful Krenkel cover for one of the Venus books -- never mind the two moons in the sky. One hazard of the Burroughs pb boom: nearly all of his books were back in print for (when I started) 40c from Ace or 50c from Ballantine, so if you were new to a series, you might find Mars #4 on the rack but not the first three. I re-read THE MONSTER MEN recently, expecting from my dimming kid memory circa April 1963 that it would be jam-packed with action. In truth, the first half was mostly build-up, and the bone-crunching mainly occurred in the last part of the novel. But the big fight scene was exactly as I remembered it (the jungle hero in a canoe wading with a bullwhip into a tribe of kreese-wielding headhunters, as his Frankenstein-monster buddies fought alongside). Even tho as a kid I knew that the cost of FX made a decent Mars movie problematic in those days, I was always puzzled that Hollywood never latched onto THE MONSTER MEN or THE MUCKER, which were full of movie potential and could have been shot on a lower budget.

Anonymous said...

Actually, James, you are incorrect in stating this:

"he brought along a copy of "A FIGHTING MAN OF MARS, the sixth book in Burroughs’ Martian series,"
FYI...The 6th book in the "Barsoom Series" was " The Mastermind of Mars"(1928)
The complete list of the "Barsoom/Martian" series is as follows:

1) A Princess of Mars (1912)
(Project Gutenberg Entry: [2])
(LibriVox.org MP3 recording [3])
2)The Gods of Mars (1914)
(Project Gutenberg Entry:[4])
(LibriVox.org MP3 recording [5])
3)The Warlord of Mars (1918)
(Project Gutenberg Entry:[6])
(AudioBooksForFree.com MP3
recording [7])
4)Thuvia, Maid of Mars (1920)
(Project Gutenberg Entry:[8])
(AudioBooksForFree.com MP3
recording [9])
5)The Chessmen of Mars (1922)
(Project Gutenberg Entry:[10])
6)The Master Mind of Mars (1928)
(Project Gutenberg Entry:[11])
7)A Fighting Man of Mars (1931)
(Project Gutenberg Entry:[12])
8)Swords of Mars (1936) (Project
Gutenberg Entry:[13])
9)Synthetic Men of Mars (1940)
(Project Gutenberg Entry:[14])
10)Llana of Gathol (1948)
(Project Gutenberg Entry:[15])
11)John Carter of Mars (1964)
"John Carter and the Giant of Mars" (1940) (Project Gutenberg Entry:[16]) Actually written by Burroughs's son, John Coleman Burroughs.

John Carter of Mars, the eleventh and final book in the famous Barsoom series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is not actually a novel but rather a collection of two John Carter of Mars stories.

The first, "John Carter and the Giant of Mars," is a juvenile story penned by Burrough's son John "Jack" Coleman Burroughs, and claimed to have been revised by Burroughs. It was written for a Whitman Big Little Book, illustrated by Jack Burroughs that was published in 1940 and then republished in Amazing Stories the next year.[1]

The second story, "Skeleton Men of Jupiter," was first published in Amazing Stories in 1943. Intended as the first in a series of novelettes to be later collected in book form, in the fashion of Llana of Gathol, it ends with the plot unresolved, and the intended sequels were never written. Several other writers have written pastiche endings for the story.

The first edition of John Carter of Mars (a title that Burroughs never actually used for any book in the Barsoom series) was published in 1964 by Canaveral Press, fourteen years after Burrough's death. This book is not highly regarded by fans of the Barsoom series and is generally considered something of an afterthought. However, in the book Master of Adventure: The Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Richard A. Lupoff, the editor of the 1964 Canaveral Press edition of John Carter of Mars, writes that it is interesting for its contrast between "real" Burroughs ("Skeleton Men of Jupiter") and "ersatz" Burroughs ("John Carter and the Giant of Mars").

Just thought you might like to know...

James Reasoner said...

Anonymous, you're absolutely right. My memory just played tricks on me there. I appreciate the correction, and also the comments on the other Mars books.