In this bi-weekly series reviewing classic science fiction and fantasy books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of the field; books about soldiers and spacers, scientists and engineers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement.
In the days before the First World War, while the term “science fiction” had not yet been coined, there were authors beginning to write works that would clearly fit into that genre, authors who included H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. In 1911, an American author joined their ranks with his first published story, “Under the Moons of Mars,” which appeared in All-Story Magazine. That story featured a Confederate cavalry officer from the Civil War named John Carter, who found himself mysteriously transported to the planet Mars and propelled into one adventure after another. The readers loved the story, and demanded more—and some of those early fans went on to become writers themselves: writers who would forever remember, and be influenced by, the evocative world that inhabitants called Barsoom.
Edgar Rice Burroughs’ most widely known character is Tarzan, the Englishman who was raised by African apes after his parents were killed, and became known as the Lord of the Jungle. The Tarzan books were wildly popular, and are easy to find to this day. I reviewed one of those books, Tarzan at the Earth’s Core, here. Tarzan’s popularity became even more widespread due to the many movies based around the character—especially those starring Johnny Weissmuller—which made him a fixture in popular culture.
But, despite Tarzan’s fame, it is Burroughs other iconic creation, John Carter, who is most beloved by those who enjoy the science fiction genre. So beloved, in fact, that I am rather overdue in turning a spotlight on the character’s adventures here in the column. The proto-science fiction stories that preceded John Carter’s introduction certainly contained elements of action and excitement, but I can’t think of any that moved with so much sheer energy and exuberance from one adventure to another.
In fact, John Carter’s adventures spawned an entire sub-genre of science fiction now known as Planetary Romance. These stories don’t dwell much on how the adventurers travel from planet to planet, but instead focus on the dangers and wonders that they encounter at their destinations. And many of them, like the tales of John Carter, blend elements of science, magic, and fantasy together with wild speculation involving strange creatures and exotic settings. I have previously reviewed work in this vein from Leigh Brackett, C. L. Moore, and even some newer anthologies influenced by the older works here. And while Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles explores Mars from a different perspective than that of Burroughs, he credited Burroughs with igniting his youthful interest in the planet.
About the Author
Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) was an early American science fiction author who had a tremendous impact on the genre in its early days and remains a lasting influence many decades after his death. Whether he was depicting the adventures of John Carter on Mars, Tarzan on Earth, Carson Napier on Venus, David Innes and Abner Perry in the Earth’s core, or any of his other myriad of characters, the emphasis was always on action and romance. His scientific speculation had little grounding in the real world, but was always wildly imaginative and evocatively described.
If there is one common element throughout Burroughs’ wild tales, it is the concept of wish fulfillment. His protagonists are generally large, strong, skillful with weapons, and brave. They have strict moral codes and do the right thing without hesitation, throwing themselves into the fray without the second-guessing that hampers the actions of most people. Burroughs portrayed heroes who are not as we are, but as we wish to be.
The character of John Carter, a former Confederate cavalryman prospecting in the American West, was strongly rooted in Burroughs’ own life and experiences. He had grown up hearing Civil War veterans describe their wartime service, had himself served in the fabled Seventh Cavalry, and had at one point had prospected for gold.
Burroughs’ writing sometimes reflected the pervasive racism of his time, although this is not as apparent in his Barsoom stories, where the races that hate each other are fictional Red and Green Martians, as it is elsewhere. And in A Princess of Mars, John Carter acts as an agent for peace, refreshingly, between those warring races. While Dejah Thoris’ primary role in the story is as a love interest, she is a remarkably independent and outspoken female character for her time, with plenty of agency.
As with many authors who were writing in the early 20th Century, a number of works by Burroughs, including A Princess of Mars, can be found free of charge on Project Gutenberg.
The Adventures of John Carter in Other Media
Unlike Tarzan, who is widely known in popular culture from all sorts of appearances in various media, John Carter is known primarily from the book series. He first appeared in pulp magazines, and then in a series of ten novels published from 1912 to 1948, with another appearing posthumously.
John Carter appeared in a few Big Little Books, which were a kind of short, fat, illustrated novel geared toward children. There were apparently discussions for the character to star in a daily newspaper comic strip in the 1930s, the heyday of this form of entertainment, but sadly no agreement was reached. Eventually, a short-lived newspaper strip appeared from 1941 to 1943, but the war years proved to be a difficult time to launch a comic strip.
John Carter comic books have been issued over the years by a wide variety of publishers, including Dell, Gold Key, DC, Marvel, Dark Horse and Dynamite Entertainment, with all of them lasting for fairly short runs. The fact that Barsoomians went about their lives mostly naked presented a challenge for comic illustrators, who mostly decided to give the characters at least scanty clothing. The recent comics from Diamond Entertainment, however, focus more on Dejah Thoris than John Carter, and the nakedness is treated more as a feature than a bug.
Because of the popularity of John Carter within the science fiction community, quite a number of John Carter appearances and homages have appeared in other works over the years.
At one point, there was an animated anthology cartoon based on the characters of Edgar Rice Burroughs, which included John Carter. It was unfortunately short-lived, and I never got to see it, but it did lead to some nice action figures, which allowed me to display John Carter, Dejah Thoris, and Tars Tarkas on a shelf in my den. I also have a number of 25mm gaming figures portraying Barsoomians, so there must have been role playing games available in that setting at some point.
There have been two movies based around John Carter, one a low-budget film released in 2009 that went directly to video/DVD. The second film, however, was a big-budget Disney film, John Carter, directed by noted animated feature director Andrew Stanton. The release of this 2012 film marked the hundredth anniversary of the character. Unfortunately, the film’s advertising campaign did not capitalize on the history of the character, and the trailers, to people unfamiliar with Burroughs’ work, made the movie seem like a derivative copy of many other science fiction films. The fact that the John Carter books had been the original source for so many of the classic tropes we now consider clichés was lost in translation. The film was very expensive to produce, did not do well at the box office, and is largely seen as a failure—this is a shame, because I, along with many others, enjoyed the film, which was largely faithful to the original source material.
A Princess of Mars
The book opens with an intriguing statement informing us that John Carter is far older than most humans, and doesn’t remember his birth. His connection with the Carter family is more of an “honorary uncle” than a blood relation. It is hinted that his adventures on Mars are only one aspect of many strange things about this man’s life, but this idea is never expanded upon.
Carter is at loose ends after the Civil War, a warrior without a conflict, and heads West to find his fortune. He runs afoul of some Native American warriors, who pursue him into a mysterious cave, where he inhales a mysterious gas. The warriors see something in the cave that frightens them away, and Carter suddenly finds himself standing above his own body, in some sort of astral form. He steps out of the cave, looks up at Mars in the sky above him, and suddenly finds himself transported to the faraway deserts of that planet.
The planet Burroughs describes is actually quite current with the scientific thinking of the time in which the story was written. It was thought that while the atmosphere of Mars might be thinner than that of Earth, it would still be breathable, and that the lines astronomers seemed to see on the surface might be canals constructed by inhabitants of that very dry planet. And Burroughs paints an extremely evocative picture of this alien world. One thing immediately convinces Carter that he is now on another planet: His muscles have a far greater effect than they did on Earth, and he has gained the ability to make prodigious leaps. He encounters a mysterious incubator full of eggs…and then some giant four-armed humanoid warriors, who don’t like the attention he is giving those eggs. Carter is saved from immediate death by his leaping ability, but is taken captive.
His captor is a chieftain called Tars Tarkas, of a tribe Green Martians known as the Tharks, and he is placed in the custody of one of the women of the tribe, Sola. He is also constrained by a fierce ten-legged doglike creature named Woola (in general, Martians have two to six legs more than their Earth counterparts). Carter befriends this creature, and instead of a guard, finds he now has a loyal companion. Before long, Carter has learned the language, and has killed some of the white apes of Mars that threaten the community, which impresses the Tharks. A fleet of airborne vessels flies over the ruined city where the Tharks are encamped, and are partially destroyed by them in a fierce battle. From one of the warships, a woman is captured—a woman who, save for her coppery skin, looks a lot like Carter. And he is immediately smitten.
The captive is Dejah Thoris, daughter of the ruler of the mighty city of Helium, which is inhabited by a race called the Red Martians, who are at constant war with the Green Martians. Carter witnesses her interrogation, and when one of the Tharks attacks her, he immediately swings into action and slays him. Instead of punishment, he finds the action wins him status among the Tharks. He also gains the gratitude of Dejah Thoris, who is intrigued by this pale-skinned man living among her people’s enemies.
The Tharks plan to take Dejah Thoris to their greatest chieftain for judgement; during their journey, Carter accidently says something that offends Dejah Thoris deeply, and she begins to give him the cold shoulder, just as he realizes he loves her. But he refuses to talk about his feelings, creating a dilemma that may seem odd to modern readers, who live in a time where everyone shares a little too much of their feelings with each other, on occasion. Carter faces a dilemma. He has won a place with the Green Martians, but he feels no love for them, and he has a bond with Dejah Thoris that calls him to protect her, despite her coldness. I won’t give any more details here, because if you haven’t read the book yet, I don’t want to spoil the fun. Before the book ends, though, Carter will forge an unlikely friendship with Tars Tarkas, protect his princess, fight many battles, completely upend the culture and political situation on Barsoom, and save the entire population of the planet from certain death. And along the way, the headlong action and adventures Carter experiences at every turn will sweep the reader right along with him.
Final Thoughts
For anyone who loves science fiction and is interested in the history and roots of the genre, A Princess of Mars is a mandatory read. While modern readers might roll their eyes at some of the science, the impossibility of some of the battle scenes, and the behavior of some of the characters, it is impossible to read this book without having fun. Burroughs’ work is the opposite of boring, and keeps you turning the pages right up to the end.
And now I’m done talking, so it’s your turn: What are your thoughts on the book, or any other tales by Burroughs? Did you see the movie version, and if so, what did you think? And what other planetary romance tales have you enjoyed?
Alan Brown has been a science fiction fan for over five decades, especially fiction that deals with science, military matters, exploration and adventure.
Another “might have been” adaptation of “A Warlord of Mars” was an animated cartoon series proposed in 1936 by none other than legendary Warner Bros. animator Bob Clampett. Clampett worked with Burroughs to develop a test-reel for presentation to studios, but nothing came of it. Here is a fairly good copy of that test footage–looks like it could have been amazing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTAlgZlqwnQ
My main thought on the recent big-budget depiction is how to you blank that up? How do you BLANK that up!
Disney needed to have a little more faith in the source material and just fly with it; particularly since the lead actor and actress seemed to be plausible as a couple, usually where these sort of adventure movies tend to fail.
@1 Thanks for that, I wasn’t aware of that particular film project.
Another film attempt I had heard of was by Kerry Conran, the director of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, who proposed using the same green-screen-heavy approach to John Carter of Mars that he brought to Sky Captain’s adventures. I suspect that the first film’s lackluster business in the box office is what killed that proposal.
@Russell H — That is amazing!
I did like the 2012 John Carter movie (although I have issues with some of the liberties they took, and wasn’t happy with the design of the green men in particular), but I think my ideal film version would have starred Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (or maybe Erroll Flynn), had special effects by Ray Harryhausen and been directed by, I don’t know, Cecil B. De Mille, maybe?
I’m pretty sure I had already been reading whatever Tarzan books I could find on the public library paperback spinners, but Dad gave me a copy of A Princess of Mars (the Ballantine edition with the Gino d’Achille cover) and it pretty much blew my mind. While Lord of the Rings remains my favorite series of books, Barsoom is probably my second-favorite fiction world (immediately below M.A.R. Barker’s Tekumel which was, of course, greatly influenced by Barsoom and other pulp sources). I just reread the books last fall and they still hold up remarkably well; and they’re so concise! The entire Princess/Gods/Warlord trilogy is shorter than any single Wheel of Time or Game of Thrones installment.
I owned the book ages ago, but I remember little about it beyond the unexpected mysticism of the opening where Carter basically gets to Mars by astral projection or wishing. That and Dejah’s nudity, which was a highlight for me as an adolescent. Oh, and the fact that it conformed to the standard writing style of the time where works of fiction were presented as true stories narrated to the author by their heroes, or manuscripts found by the author, or the like. I always figured this was done with SF/fantasy to give it more of a feel of verisimilitude, but much the same was done with other fiction, like Sherlock Holmes.
I’m not sure, but I suspect that John Carter was an influence on Superman, since Siegel & Shuster basically took the idea of an Earthman being superstrong on an alien planet with lighter gravity and reversed it, with a heavy-worlder being superstrong on Earth. Superman originally just leaped really high like Carter, rather than actually flying.
I agree that the Andrew Stanton movie is an underrated gem. It suffered from a bad title and marketing campaign and a weak opening (I think it would be better if it started two scenes later), but it was otherwise an excellent, magnificently made adventure movie with a mostly pretty effective cast, and I liked the attempt to give a better explanation for how Carter got to Barsoom. And Lynn Collins was superb as Dejah Thoris. I was particularly impressed by Stanton’s discipline with the CGI shots. Rather than putting in a lot of gratuitous sweeping camera moves that scream “Hey, look how fake and CGI this all is,” he kept the camera movements and placements more restrained and naturalistic as if he were shooting on live-action sets and locations. It was a terrifically made film and I’m convinced it’ll become a cult classic (and reactions like yours suggest it’s already well on the way), but it’s a pity that Stanton didn’t get to make any sequels.
I had a free period my Senior Year in High School, which I usually spent at the library, where I first discovered these books. I don’t remember too many details about the book, but I do remember enjoying them.
Quick question: Are you going to cover C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy, or at least the first book, Out of the Silent Planet?
Alan, I have never heard of the animated anthology based on ERB’s characters. When was this, exactly? Who produced it? Is it available anywhere?
There was a Saturday morning cartoon around 1981 called “Blackstar.” Although probably motivated by the success of 1980s “Thundarr the Barbarian,” it was in most ways such a close copy of John Carter that I’m surprised ERB’s heirs didn’t sue the producers for copyright infringement.
John Carter’s influence on popular culture expresses itself in a number of ways that are probably not that obvious to younger fans. For example, the lighter gravity of mars as an explanation for Carter’s superhuman strength was adopted by Siegel and Schuster as the original rationale for Superman’s powers (this was before he had become so powerful that the alternate, yellow sun-based power set had to be cooked up). John Carter was also the direct inspiration for Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, which in turn begat Star Wars (as George Lucas has acknowledged). And James Cameron has stated that “Avatar” is his version of Jon Carter.
I finally got round to reading this only a few years back and then told people it was the best novel I had read that year. Oh I read books that were stylistically better, had more nuanced characters and so on, but A Princess of Mars does exactly what it sets out to do, which is to entertain. Enjoyed the film too.
@7/wizardclip: Blackstar was produced by Filmation Associates, which had produced Tarzan: Lord of the Jungle from 1976-79, so they had an established relationship with the Burroughs estate. If they’d wanted to do John Carter, they probably could have.
In Lou Scheimer: Creating the Filmation Generation by Scheimer and Andy Mangels, Scheimer does acknowledge John Carter as an influence on Blackstar, along with Flash Gordon (which Filmation had adapted beautifully in a 1979 feature film and TV series, though the film was only aired once in the US in 1982 due to Dino DeLaurentiis controlling the movie rights). But it also drew on high fantasy, since the premise was that John Blackstar (who was originally meant to be African-American, hence the name, but ended up being non-specifically bronze-skinned) was an Earth astronaut who fell through a wormhole into a world of magic, dragons, sorcerors, and troll-hobbit hybrids called Trobbits. (Blackstar had a really cool, horselike dragon steed called Warlock.) The show was basically a prototype for He-Man from two years later (He-Man’s mother even had the same origin story as Blackstar).
So Blackstar’s origin was basically the same as DC’s The Warlord.
I have the series on DVD and have revisited it a few times and my feelings are … complicated. Well, not THAT complicated. I like just about everything about the series until the Trobbits show up on screen and make me want to stab myself.
Agreed with many about the 2012 film. It is indeed an underrated gem. It actually contains one of my all-time favorite “goosebumps” scene in a movie: the part where John Carter is fighting and piling up dead bad guys as it cuts back and forth with scenes of him finding his dead wife and child and pounding the cross into the ground.
I read ‘Princess of Mars’ as part of a class on Science Fiction literature and loved it. I now have the whole series on my nook.
One additional comment for anyone who might be interested in checking out the books: At the same time that the John Carter movie was coming out, Disney published the entire 11-book series in three omnibus editions. DO NOT get these editions! Somebody in the Disney publishing arm saw that many of the books (including Princess of Mars) inexplicably decided to remove all of the Prologues and Forewords and Author’s Notes from the books, this despite the fact that they’re an integral part of the narrative (they’re where Burroughs was mostly establishing his framing devices).
I’m still baffled that Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., hasn’t done more to keep his books in print (not just John Carter, but everything) and/or made authorized eBook editions available — you can’t swing a dead sorak without hitting a dozen dubious Kindle editions of those of his works that have fallen into public domain.
@10/hoopmanjh: I guess there’s a broad similarity, although DC’s Warlord is more a knockoff of Burroughs’s Pellucidar books, with Skartaris being an interior world inside Earth. Blackstar‘s Sagar was a planet in a parallel universe where magic existed. And it was on the other side of a black hole, not a wormhole as I said before (that term was infrequently used in fiction prior to Carl Sagan’s Contact, with Star Trek: The Motion Picture being a rare exception), so that’s another meaning to the title.
Yeah, I was thinking more in terms of the stranded pilot/astronaut thing; and I had misremembered Blackstar’s ship as looking more like the SR-71 Blackbird that I think the Warlord was piloting when he ended up in Skartaris.
I have read A Princess of Mars and several of its sequels and enjoyed them all.
The first book is probably my favorite. It has plenty of action, cool sci-fi concepts, and as Alan said, is just a lot of fun. The world of Mars as Burroughs imagines it is a fascinating place.
I enjoyed the mystery of some of the story, too.
I have not read any of Burroughs’ Tarzan stories, though I have seen many film versions.
I like the film, too. I actually saw it before I had read the book.
I hate this book. I am 40 years old, been reading classic and modern genre my entire life, but somehow I didn’t get around to this one until just a few months ago. I hated that the protagonist was a Confederate. Hated the casual racism. Hated how the story jumped (pun!) from one adventure to the next. I even hated the writing style. I guess I didn’t hate the giant Mars dog. He was ok. I knew going into it that many of the cliches and tropes of the genre we’re established here, and I can’t help think that maybe so many of the worst aspects of sci-fi wouldn’t be as bad as they are if this had simply been a better story?
Honestly, I have loved these books since I was about…. oh, let’s say 10ish? I have at least two complete sets of them, with different cover art, and they are something like comfort reads or re-reads for me.
That said, I really cannot agree that the movie is largely true to the books. Parts definitely are, and it’s very recognizably Barsoom — though there’s too much clothing, ha — right down to some of the scenes being nearly identical to my inner imaginings — and the costume design and set design are stellar. (I also liked the addition of the piece of technology which allowed the transit between earth and Barsoom, instead of the woo-woo astral projection thing, ha.) But they added that whole thing with the fridged family as motivation for John Carter, which, ick, and his entire character was so very different. As you said in the review, John Carter of the books was the hero we like to think we are — decisive, doing what is right because it is right, driven by a strong sense of morality and conviction. The John Carter in that movie is so far from that; he is whiny and indecisive and, yes, driven by the ‘manpain’ of the fridged family. I watched the movie with my husband, who had not read the books, and his verdict was like, “wow this guy is really annoying.” As I recall, there was also some really iffy stuff added with Tars Tarka’s daughter, Sola, being whipped for disobedience all the time, etc?
I watched the movie on the big screen…didn’t really have any exposure to John Carter…heartily enjoyed the movie!! And then I heard it bombed. Ah well. I apparently like random sci-fi big budget movies that bomb (Valerian is another example that comes to mind). Anyway, enjoyed the movie so picked up Princess of Mars…and wasn’t really impressed. Maybe I need to give this one another try. Usually I don’t mind “old books” (indeed, reading Austen’s Emma right now..such a fantastic novel!), but I bounced off this one. Reading your article makes me want to try reading it again though. Thanks for the good read, Alan.
Barsoom games. I’ve had a set of miniatures rules on my book shelf for quite a while. The miniature rules are Warriors of Mars: The Warfare of Barsoom in Miniature by Gygax, Gary & Blume, Brian, TSR 1974. Heritage published something similar in 1978 and produced the necessary 25 mm figures. All of the RPG focused rules that I could find were published much later. Though arguably the TSR rules were adequate for running an RPG if the DM was familiar with the stories.
@6 No plans to do C.S. Lewis, unfortunately.
@7 I wish I knew more about an animated show, I just know I found the John Carter toys in a bargain section of Toys R Us, and the packaging referred to a show. Perhaps the toys were as far as they got…
Count me among those who love the 2012 movie, too. I think that the Thark design is…OK, and Carter’s actor is of somewhat limited range (if I’m to be charitable), but I am always impressed by the sheer alien-ness of the first scene with Carter and Tars. Those first scenes on Mars are a damn triumph, and connect to what I feel is the soul of this classic adventure-fiction genre.
@11: Ooh, yeah, that was a well-done scene, too. Crosses the line from cool to horror and effectively reinforces the character’s fragile emotional state.
I was also impressed with how they removed all the early-20th-century casual racism. Much more effective than whatever that Tarzan reboot movie with Margot Robbie tried to do (Leon Rom was evil because he was abused as a kid? REALLY? Pull the other one.).
As a pulp adventure junkie, I’m always hungry for works that capture the alien interactions and general spirit of the pulp and planetary romance novels of the early 20th without including the needless racism. We deserve a planetary romance starring, for example, a black Union soldier leading a slave revolt on another world For Lincoln and Liberty, Too, or a really really gay planetary romance, something more inclusive like that. After all, don’t LGBT people, don’t women, don’t nonwhite people deserve some fantastic entertaining adventures about people like them?
Oh, and to be honest? Adding a defined villain was a good change in the movie. Mark Strong as Matai Shang was, as usual, a fantastic Big Bad. He’s got that Evil Brit routine down pat. Sab Than wasn’t bad either as an evil sidekick, he was certainly good for some swashbuckling sword fights.
Everything ubxs113 says is true but I have a ridiculously high tolerance for political incorrectness and more importantly I am a total sucker for world building. I just LOVE Barsoom.
Yeah, one should probably expect at least a little casual racism from pulp adventure stories written over 100 years ago. I mean, it seems to go with the territory. That, and incorporating former Confederates into stories. That too was common. Heck, they were still doing that in the 60’s and 70’s with things like The Outlaw Josey Wales.
I don’t know, I kind of like the irony of a Confederate going to another world and fighting alongside downtrodden people there. Some kind of strange redemption, I guess.
Hi all
My wife and I also enjoyed the movie, it can be added to the long list of movies we loved that bombed and never saw a sequel. When I began collecting, was well as just reading science fiction, Burroughs with his many series was one author I focused on. Not only were there lots of editions but also wonderful illustrators like Roy Krenkel and J. Allen St. John. Then there were the strangely similar works, at least in their subject, they were not was good, by Otis Adelbert Kline. Also as you pointed out Burroughs with John Carter created the Planetary Romance which is still going strong today, and kindled a lot of young imaginations, some of whom went on to create their own characters and worlds.
Thanks for this.
Guy
Actually John Carter isn’t all that racist. He is able to accept Green Martians as people and seems to judge the Black and White Martians negatively based on their behavior not skin color. He actually admires the looks of the Black Martians more.
There are far more racist works of early SF than John Carter. There’s the whole H.P. Lovecraft canon, for one thing. And don’t get me started on the two Anthony Rogers novellas that inspired Buck Rogers — they’re blatant white-supremacist fantasies of genocide against the Yellow Peril, so extreme even for their own time that they had to tack on a handwavey epilogue saying that the now-exterminated Han race had turned out after the fact to be half-alien, as if that somehow made it not racist.
John Carter isn’t particularly racist, even for the times, although it does suffer badly from Planet of Hats – all red men are this, all green men are that, etc.
Count me as another who really liked the 2012 film. It’s a real shame it got marketed so badly – the acting was good, so were the effects. And Woola was awesome.
$.99 for the whole set on Kindle. I am happy. Thank you for the reminder.
ETA: #19, I saw Speed Racer in the theater with my then 6 year old son. We both loved it. I never understood why it tanked so hard either. I’ll have to rent John Carter now.
@9/Christopher: Ah yes, I should have remembered that it was Filmation that made Blackstar, thus largely negating any messiness regarding intellectual property.
@21/Alan: I think I may have seen the Tarzan figure from the toy line you mentioned. I suspect the proposed animated series never got off the ground. More’s the pity.
Regarding casual racism and John Carter’s status as a Confederate, the question I’ve always had is why he would fight for the Confederacy since it’s entirely possible that his birth predates the existence of the southern slave culture, and perhaps even the presence of Europeans in North America. Burroughs implies that Carter is essentially immortal, or at least unnaturally long-lived, and states that he had always been a soldier. I picture him fighting down through the ages, Highlander-like. Maybe he fought out of loyalty to the Carters of Virginia, a family that may have shown him kindness at some point. Or am I rationalizing way too much here?
My personal theory is that Carter is part martian himself. Burroughs says the inhabitants of Barsoom have something like a 1,000 year lifespan, so that would explain Carter’s long life and his affinity for the red planet.
@25/Dan: Not at all surprised by the heroic Confederates of Josey Wales. The novel it was based on was written by Forrest Carter, aka Asa Earl Carter, former KKK leader and composer of George Wallace’s infamous “Segregation Forever” speech. It’s a great movie, but it’s also pure Lost Cause mythology. Carter also passed himself off as Cherokee in his fake autobiography, the formerly much-revered The Education of Little Tree. Ironies abound.
Ooooh …. Just like the “Tarzan” series, this book holds a very special place in my heart. When my father was young, it was published in the newspaper as a sequel, and he collected it. The rest of the newspaper was in regular, modern print, but for some reason, this story was in old Gothic letters. So that’s where I learned to read Gothic font. I still have the clippings, leaves worn to being frayed, tucked away safely in my cupboard (and have a newer print on the shelf, too). I cannot remember which I read first, “Tarzan” or “A Princess of Mars” (I suspect it was “Tarzan, as it is the very first book besides the learn-your-A-B-Cs and some similar children’s books that I can remember myself reading, but I believe “A Princess of Mars” was very close to it as well. I have found many new favourites I adore (the works of Tolkien, Jordan, Sanderson), but I will love “Tarzan” and “A Princess of Mars” for as long as I will live.
Also, count me in as one who thoroughly enjoyed the movie (hmmm … time for another rewatch, perhaps?) and am sad that it got such poor reception and rep. It deserves more.
*I wished to add a photo of a page of my clippings, but seem to have technical problems as it is in my computer and I don’t know how to upload it here.
@31/wizard clip: Unfortunately, there was a systematic and very successful propaganda campaign to rehabilitate the Confederacy in the eyes of popular culture, to make them seem like noble warriors defending their lands and homes and glossing over the fact that they were explicitly fighting to preserve slavery and white supremacy. So there are a ton of heroic Confederate or ex-Confederate characters in generations’ worth of popular fiction, from Gone With the Wind to DC Comics’ Haunted Tank. You can also count the Alamo — mythologized as doomed American heroes fighting for a noble cause, but glossing over the fact that they were slaveowners and slave traders who seceded from Mexico when it wouldn’t let them keep slaves anymore. Even today, when we should know better, we still romanticize them in fiction.
CLB, that issue is why I still can not watch Firefly AKA “Outlaw Josey Wales IN SPAAAAACCCEEE!!!!” Even when young, the Clint Eastwood movie bugged me more than the usual, but then I always was a Union Cav kind of guy. Why didn’t we have a Buford rather than a Stuart?
Which brings me around to this – when I was young and dumb, I dearly loved and bought every issue of “GI Combat” for that damn tank. Looking back years later, the addition of Gus Grey was an interesting way to attempt to fix some of those issues though I hardly noticed at the time.
The biggest favor Heinlein ever did for me was in one of his more problematical books: The Number of the Beast. His throwing in so many of the fictional characters/worlds he himself liked caused me to look up and read Burrows; Smith; and Dickson; greatly improving my SFF horizons in the early 80’s.
@34/wlewisii: Well, to be fair, while Firefly was somewhat inspired by the idea of telling a story about a Confederate soldier after they lost the war, the cause that Mal and Zoey fought for had nothing to do with slavery or white supremacism (obviously a Gina Torres character wouldn’t have fought for that), but just the independence of the frontier colonies from the central state. So it’s not an exact analogy.
Also, we weren’t necessarily meant to think that Mal was on the right side. Part of why Joss Whedon did the show was because he liked the creative challenge of writing a character he disagreed with and probably wouldn’t have gotten along with personally.
But then, I’m unfamiliar with The Outlaw Josey Wales, so I’m unaware of any resonances.
“Which brings me around to this – when I was young and dumb, I dearly loved and bought every issue of “GI Combat” for that damn tank. Looking back years later, the addition of Gus Grey was an interesting way to attempt to fix some of those issues though I hardly noticed at the time.”
You remind me of my issues with The Dukes of Hazzard. I always thought it was this cute, harmless live-action cartoon about two good ol’ boys never meanin’ no harm, and I want to believe that its use of Confederate iconography was intended innocently without understanding what that flag really represents in postwar usage; but knowing what I know these days, I just can’t stomach the show anymore. (It adds irony that they put that flag on a car named the General Lee, since Lee himself wanted that battle flag to be retired forever as the symbol of a failed cause, and it was 20th-century racists who revived its use to protest civil rights reforms under the guise of “state’s rights” and Southern pride.)
Slavery of course also exists on Mars, Few if any of the slaves we meet were born to their condition. All that I can recall whose origins are are stated were either captives taken in war or kidnapped and sold. It is thus something that can, and probably will happen to every Barsoomian at some point in their thousand year lifespan. And that’s probably why nobody seems to take the social evil very seriously. When you can expect ten centuries of life one or two spent serving a master just doesn’t seem that big a deal. Assassination is also an accepted practice and constant warfare and raiding the rule, not to mention conquest and colonization.
In other words John Carter’s racism may have been overstated but Barsoom is a VERY un PC place.
To be fair though, Josey Wales’ motivations aren’t about Southern pride or slavery either. Even though the story begins with him falling in with a pro-Confederate militia, it’s really a revenge tale caused by the border war between Kansas and Missouri. Then the rest of the story shows him building a family of sorts with Natives and different settlers. It’s more western than Civil War story.
That’s the way it is in the movie; the book may be different.
Thanks for this review. Look forward to reading your series. 75-some years ago I read Princess of Mars at my dad’s insistence. It was a seminal experience for me. First, it got me reading…a life long joy. Second, it exposed me to new ideas, and later to real science fiction. I have read all the Burroughs books, the Tarzans, Pellucidars, Venus, etc since several many times over. I have a collection of First Editions from Apes to the last Canavaral Press books, and have a couple of the pulp first printings.
Burroughs writing is pretty simple, but he was a very intelligent man with lots of forward ideas. He knew science fairly well for the time, which for Mars was dominated by the “canals”. Why he picked John Carter’s confederate cavalry experience is a bit strange. However, any Southern sympathies the author may have had don’t really seem to be reflected in the books. You are right….Carter was a straight arrow, played by the book, honorable and noble. His villains are…well, villains. The ladies are all beautiful, but tough, independent and sometimes headstrong. But the women are very good characters, not weaklings at all…often in peril, but game. The heroes are all military types, all of whom have memorized the Barsoomian Code of Military Justice, but fearless, curious, and due to gravity, unbelievably athletic.
Since the early 20th century, much science adventure/fiction is derived from Burroughs books. Thus, the movie does itself seem, derivative. But I too was disappointed, even though the characters are pretty well developed, Woola is great as are the Tharks, and the cities, old and new are good…the Thurns are nasty…with more powers than Burroughs gave them. The airships/flyers are terrific in their sophisticated crudeness. But the movie needs a lot of fine tuning, and a better set up in marketing to acquaint the audience who had never encountered Burroughs.
In sum, Burroughs is indeed very important in this incredible genre.
So glad to know I am not the only one who enjoys and appreciates the 2012 John Carter movie! I gushed about it for a blog I was writing for at the time, and I stand by it. I have yet to move on to the other John Carter books, but they are definitely on my “to read” list, and I did enjoy Princess. (Wish the Disney folks had given their movie that title… given their predilection for princesses over at the House of Mouse, Disney’s A Princess of Mars would seem a natural, although I recall there being some foolishness about movies with “Mars” in the title not doing well… similar reason Baum didn’t call his first Oz book The Emerald City, because “emerald” was supposed to be the kiss of death)
@40/mpoteet: The idea of Dejah Thoris as an official Disney Princess (TM) amuses me. Would they have included her in Ralph Breaks the Internet? I was going to say that maybe only animated princesses count, but then, Disney these days seems to be obsessed with making live-action remakes of their old animated films anyway.
I read A Princess of Mars almost immediately after Ballantine reissued it in January of 1963. I just did a quick count on isfdb, and not including books published later, I read 52 ERB novels (many more like novellas in today’s terms) between then and May of 1963. This includes everything that Ballantine and Ace had reissued up to that point. It’s a good thing I finished by May, because I saw Dr. No in June of 1963 which started The Great Espionage Fiction Binge that lasted a couple of years and found me reading hundreds of espionage novels from Eric Ambler to Adam Hall.
FYI, for all you fellow fans of the 2012 film version, it is now streaming on Netflix :) Found it last week scrolling through the selections after it was on cable.
If you don’t think Burroughs was racist because of the John Carter books, then read the Tarzan books. I think I liked the low-budget film better than the big-budget one. One of them re-created a Frazetta painting. That’s super cool. I liked “A Princess of Mars” but not enough to pick up the rest of the series. Maybe I will one day, maybe I won’t. One thing sci-fi people might like to know about this desert planet setting is that it is also the home to creatures called jeddak. https://barsoom.fandom.com/wiki/Jeddak This setting also features flying creatures called sith. https://barsoom.fandom.com/wiki/Sith
@38/: I almost added a similar statement concerning Josey Wales’ motivations to my original comment. Of course, the Union guerillas are depicted as bloodthirsty butchers, while the Confederate guerilla’s are only trying to, as one character says, “make it right.” That’s part of the Lost Cause Mythology as well, that the Confederates weren’t actually fighting for slavery. But the guerilla band Wales joins is led by Bloody Bill Anderson, a historical figure who more than earned his nickname as one of Quantrill’s Raiders, where Frank and Jesse James got their start. And yes, the story is absolutely a Western. Many Western heroes are ex Confederates.
Like most mythic Westerns, it’s more a reflection of the era that generated it than the era depicted. The movie was released in 1976, placing it firmly among the ranks of post-Vietnam reconciliation Westerns (Jeremiah Johnson is another, even though the US was still in Vietnam at the time of its release). Eastwood’s last line in the movie is telling: “I guess we all died a little bit in that damn war.”
As I said, it’s a very good movie, and Eastwood’s haunted Wales is a very sympathetic character. And it’s no more or less of a historical whitewash than most Westerns.
@44: Burroughs was a white guy, and a very not leftist white guy, writing in an age when not being racist was a fringe leftist position and even then it was still a very primitive understanding of not being racist.
Of course he’s racist by our standards.
By the standards of his contemporaries, like Woodrow “White people deserve national self-determination, the darkies and yellow men need whitey to show them how civilization is done” Wilson (AKA one of the ultimate causes of the Vietnam War, thanks to pissing off Ho Chi Minh by blowing off the Vietnamese independence delegates at a time when America was Vietnam’s anticolonial model–seriously, to Hell with Woodrow Wilson), Warren “let the Klan into the White House” Harding, and that dirtbag who made “Birth of a Nation”, Burroughs’s Planet of the Hats and crude broad-scale stereotyping are downright progressive, because at least he considers non-white people capable of social virtues.
That said, I really do wish we’d have a resurgence of the planetary romance and adventure fiction genres, now that most of us have grokked to the idea that racism is bad.
@44/Raymond: “If you don’t think Burroughs was racist because of the John Carter books”
I think you missed this sentence in the article: “Burroughs’ writing sometimes reflected the pervasive racism of his time, although this is not as apparent in his Barsoom stories, where the races that hate each other are fictional Red and Green Martians, as it is elsewhere.”
We’re not talking about whether Burroughs was racist. The work and the author are two different things. The point is simply that the Barsoom series is relatively less racist in content than Burroughs’s other works.
Here’s a link to someone selling some of the John Carter action figures I owned: http://www.zanaducomics.com/vintage-merch/tarzan-epic-adventures-af-2pk-john-carter-vs-o-mad-zad
From the packaging, it looks like they were tied not to a cartoon, but to a syndicated show called Tarzan: The Epic Adventures, which ran for a single season, according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarzan:_The_Epic_Adventures. Why they produced action figures from Barsoom for a Tarzan show is a mystery to me. Although Wikipedia does mention that in one episode, Tarzan is transported to Venus to meet Carson Napier, so perhaps another crossover to Barsoom had been planned but never executed.
@48/Alan: Tarzan: The Epic Adventures wasn’t half-bad. It was part of the wave of syndicated action-fantasy shows trying to ride on the coattails of Hercules/Xena, and I found it one of the least inept ones. It used more concepts from Burroughs than any other Tarzan adaptation I’ve seen since Filmation’s animated series, and it was actually filmed on location in South Africa, treating its African tribal characters fairly positively (although there was a jarring contrast between the real African locations and the fake soundstage jungle used in some scenes).
Unfortunately, they couldn’t get funding for season 2 or something, and just repackaged an older, dumber half-hour Tarzan series into hourlong blocks in place of a proper second season.
I still want to put in another fruitless vote for Out of the Silent Planet. :)
Went out and got a copy of John Carter tonight. That is a very good little movie. Thank you folks, though now I need to buy a copy :)
@@@@@ 32, Celebrinnen:
I cannot remember which I read first, “Tarzan” or “A Princess of Mars” (I suspect it was “Tarzan, as it is the very first book besides the learn-your-A-B-Cs and some similar children’s books that I can remember myself reading, but I believe “A Princess of Mars” was very close to it as well. I have found many new favourites I adore (the works of Tolkien, Jordan, Sanderson), but I will love “Tarzan” and “A Princess of Mars” for as long as I will live.
My first grown-up book was a Tarzan story. My older brother warned me away. “It’s too deep for you.” It was certainly confusing. It was one story filling two books; I started with book II.
@45:”Many Western heroes are ex Confederates.”
And many were not.For example, Wild Bill Hickok, Virgil Earp, and Buffalo Bill all fought for the Union during the Civil War.
I was introduced to aPoM by my 6th grade book pal (different English class sections would trade books that they liked and wanted to introduce to others) who knew I loved fantasy and sci-fi . He shared the version with the Michael Whelan cover which at the time was my first introduction to THAT type of book cover (I was used to LOTR and Star Trek covers which never really got into female or male half nudity). I remember reading it once and thinking ‘eh’. Then when the movie came out, I reread it and thought it was much better than 6th me had thought. And the version I read this time had the gorgeous art decoish Frank Schoonver cover.
It’s been several years so feel free to tell me this is BS. What I picked up at the time was that Disney had undergone a regime change and John Carter had been set up by the previous regime, also Disney had gotten the rights to Marvel and was releasing The Avengers 1 or 2 months later. So supposedly a lot of JC’s problems came from being relegated to the second string. There is also the issue of how a studios administrative costs are shared among the various productions as well as few other tricks (see James Garners story about what happened with his Rockford Files profits) so the actual cost of the movie could have been a lot less. ( Bronco Billy: how much is a million dollars after taxes? With a good CPA a million dollars) In actual fact in terms of fans in the stands close to 200 million is a lot of tickets sold especially compared to something like a quickie horror show that’s made for 2 million makes 10 million and is celebrated as a success by all true worshipers of Mammon.
The battle of Zodanga, later on in the first book, seemed very strongly to me to involve a subtext, never explicitly noted in the book, of course, related to Carter becoming reconciled with the fate of the South – what General Sherman had to do to Atlanta, Carter had to do to Zodanga.
@45: To clarify, I was referring to fictional characters like Josey Wales, rather than historical figures.
@55/raaj – I believe you are correct on this. I’ll put in an unsolicited plug here for Michael Seller’s book John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood, which details the whole ugly story of the Disney John Carter debacle. Bob Iger not only had Marvel but knew the Star Wars deal was on the horizon, so a Disney John Carter universe never really stood a chance. (I believe that is the long and short of it.) Too bad because, yes, a movie based on a book, but so full of originality and pure artistic creativity. Marketed properly and with some conviction behind it, it could and should have been a huge hit.
@41/Christopher – I am now waiting for Disney to announce “an animated remake of the hit live-action remake of the beloved animated classic…” — and then their catalogue can truly be a self-perpetuating loop ;) I kid, but only a little. I like Disney but, as Sellers says in his book, they seem to be more about acquiring and repeating than they are about really being original and creative any more. That said, take my six bucks a month for Disney+, please. … (So I cop to being part of the problem!)
I first read the Mars series in Junior High, and enjoyed it. I see it now as the equivalent to the old Saturday Afternoon manitnee- action/adventure and romance, with a veneer of science fiction. The science coating didn’t hold up well, but the books were a gateway into the more complex and more science based stuff, and I periodically pick up one of the books in the set and read again for nostalgia.
In imaging making movies, I see the arc of the first 3 books of good fodder for two movies, the first one ending with the cliff hanger of the PoM (did the atmosphere plant get back on line in time to save Mars????!!!) and the second movie ending with John Carter declared WarLord (all his friends did a great fake out of him there).
I love this. I love, love, love this.
I don’t think I spend enough time being happy about this crazy internetted world. More that forty years ago when I was a lonely, nerdy kid who’d inherited a love for Tarzan, John Carter and David Innes from his father, I tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to get other kids interested in reading these books.
Little did I know that some kind of amazing online world was coming, a world in which everyone could find detailed, thoughtful posts and discussions about all our atomized interests.
I just spent half an hour of my work day (that I’ll probably have to make up for this evening…) reading over this post and everyone’s responses.
I loved it all. Rock on, Jeds and Jeddaks.
Don’t forget Jedarras and Princesses! You can’t throw a rock on Barsoom without hitting a princess. And most of them are much brighter than our heroes. Burrough’s heroes are famously if selectively thick headed.
Great article with one omission worth nothing. Modiphius (makers of the current Conan rpg) have just released a John Carter roleplaying game, entitled John Carter of Mars: Adventures on the Dying World of Barsoom.
There was also a board game from Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI) in 1979.
John Carter: Warlord of Mars
I have all 11 of the John Carter books. Read them when I was deployed to one of our endless Middle East wars and took them home with me (thank you whoever you are for sending boxes of books to us in the field!).
I quite liked the 2012 movie, but was disappointed that Disney didn’t market it right. How hard could it have been to open with “based on the works of Edward Rice Burroughs”?
Books for the troops, what a truly brilliant idea! I’d love to know who’s it was.
And apropos of nothing, I was amused when I first twigged to the fact that in the John Carter movie, Edgar Rice Burroughs is played by Daryl Sabara, who also played Juni Cortez in the Spy Kids films.
(And little Timmy from Jurassic Park grew up to play bass for Queen, for that matter.)
@66/hoopmanjh: I know Daryl Sabara mainly as the voice of the title character in Cartoon Network’s Generator Rex.
@65,
We had pallets of books, snacks, letters, etc. So much stuff at points that we had to push the pallets off into the sand to make room on the cargo ramp. People, when given the chance, will do good things for each other. Thank you all, whoever you are, for sending them. (as to when it started, I think you’d have to go back decades, but there are several programs today that continue it)
I could go on and on about my favorite novel but I’ll just say if Disney had been able buy ERB Inc like they did Marvel and Star Wars, we’d have a shared Tarzan/Mars/Venus/Caspak/Pellucidar movie universe.
Thanks, enjoyed this article.
It’s definitely of its time, but I love the John Carter / Barsoom series.
I first read ‘A Princess Of Mars’ before the 2012 movie came out, as I sometimes read the original source before watching the movie adaptation, and instantly fell in love with it. I loved the characters and world so much I then burnt through the entire 11 book series, and followed that by reading through Burroughs’ Venus, Caspak and Pellucidar series too, plus a couple of his ‘Tarzan’ books too (before I went to see that recent movie). Which then opened up a new world of pulp sci-fi as I wanted more, and I discovered Otis A Kline’s similar Mars and Venus books, and then read through a few of Leigh Brackett’s pulp sci-fi stories too as well as reading other pulp sci-fi stories. All of which I enjoyed a lot. These books even inspired me to have a go at writing a story (still currently wip) with similar elements. I also love the 2012 movie. It’s one of those movies, as are the books, I can watch for a damn good time, similar to the Harryhausen ‘Sinbad’ movies I also love – a bit cheesy at times, but full of swashbuckling action and adventure!
one of my favorite authors![.](//s04.flagcounter.com/mini/Jkzv/bg_FFFFFF/txt_CCCCCC/border_DBDBDB/flags_0/" alt="Free counters!" border="0"></a>)
I would disagree that ERB invented sf adventure; there were these guys named “Jules Verne” and “Arthur Conan Doyle” who had something like sf adventure before the Barsoom books were published.
I would argue that H Rider Haggard was more relevant to sf/f adventure than ERB. While H Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs were both writing “lost world” romances; Haggard’s in a semi-fictional Africa and Burroughs on a completely fictional Mars and a nearly as fictional Africa, Haggard’s adventure novels preceded Burroughs by close to 30 years. They may well be more problematic than Burroughs, but not by much.
I’d say that Haggard is less problematic than Burroughs in most respects — he had actually lived in Africa, so he at least had some amount of experience to draw on and his portrayals are relatively (RELATIVELY!) respectful, while Burroughs’ Africa seems most closely related to the portrayal of natives in King Kong or Gilligan’s Island.
But I think Barsoom in particular, especially appearing as it did in 1912, is an unprecedented fictional construct, with its multiple intelligent races, dungeons, monsters and aerial navies, amongst other features.
And while Verne and Doyle were also writing adventure stories, none of them came close to Burroughs’ breakneck pacing.
@73/hoopmanjh: I remember reading somewhere that the “jungle” depicted in the Tarzan books was closer to the South American rainforest than to any ecosystem actually found in Africa.
And of course there’s a white-savior element at the core of all of Burroughs’s series, Tarzan most blatantly. But the suggestion someone made above that perhaps John Carter was an immortal of Barsoomian origin all along would ameliorate that.
Since I’ve never been able to hear the name “John Carter” without thinking of the books (which can make ER a very strange show) and I barely heard about the movie before it came out, I’d say Disney shot themselves in the foot on advertising. I was the low-lying fruit. Wave “John Carter of Mars” in front of me and watch me fall into your advertising hands. Instead, I didn’t get to it till it was on DVD.
It would explain a lot, but making John Carter a Barsoomian all along smacks of that small-universe, destiny storytelling that keeps creeping into modern blockbusters. I prefer it when it’s just some hapless dude who gets dropped into a weird world.
I recently did a re-read and made it through #5, Chessmen of Mars, before I had to put it down.
The period-endemic racism is pervasive in the first, mostly anti-Native American, with a side of Cozy Slavery. And Dejah Thoris steadily loses her agency through the first three until she becomes little more than a Macguffin. The writing clunks here and there–“We stole stealthily from the shadows” being one of the more memorable–and the serial nature is obvious when reading large chunks.
For all it’s flaws, the series still swept me away and I got to be nine again, cruising the thin air of dying Mars, fighting my way from frozen south pole to frozen north pole, encountering all the weird and wonderful creatures from an imagination unfettered by realistic science.
Disney made John Carter as part of the contract to keep Tarzan, and made it their “dump movie” to hide a bunch of accounting issues. Since when does Disney fall down on Marketing? Why wasn’t there a Woola plushie and a Princess of Helium telescope and Martian Sword with Realistic Battle Clang in every store in 2012? Disney movies only fail when they are made to fail. And I waited 40 years for that movie.
What’s wrong with the “John Carter” movie? So much it’s a beautiful mess. The sets, the aliens and more are lovingly inspired by illustrations in the 1930’s and 1940’s printings of the books.
But the story? Oh the barsoomanity!
Let’s begin with the character of Dejah Thoris. In the books she’s a no-nonsense, kick-butt warrior princess of the city-state of Helium. (My inner voice pronounces it with a short e vowel.) Not suitable for the PC patrol. They decided she had to be a scientist, but a *misguided* one, and nerfed the warrior princess aspect.
That leads to the next “What the HELL were they thinking?!” piece of *gack*. DT is researching and promoting Eighth Ray Energy. As yet unproven, and her demonstration gets sabotaged to knock her down a peg. A clear stand in for *horror of horrors* Nuclear Power. Nevermind that in the books Eighth Ray Energy is only the *power source for most Barsoomian technology*!
In the books Zodanga is another city-state like Helium and several others. To further crazy warp the movie into an environmentalist screed, they made it mobile, on giant stomping legs. A part of the reason why Barsoom’s environment is becoming mostly desert. The inhabitants have abused poor Barsoom to the point where it’s dying and life is edging towards unsustainable. The mobile city seemed like a ripoff of “Strength of Stones” by Greg Bear.
The book reason is simply because Barsoom is a really freaking old world, so old it’s lost so much of its atmosphere that most of the water has also blown away. That leads to the next major problem with the movie.
No atmosphere plant! In the books the only thing keeping Barsoom habitable is the single massive installation called the atmosphere plant. It pumps out the massive amounts of oxygen needed to keep the air breathable. It is the one thing on the planet all the Barsoomians have sworn to never ever attack because damaging it could be death for everyone. Naturally, one of the books involves a battle around the atmosphere plant which endangers it. But the movie totally tossed out this extremely important item to prop up their environmentalist posturing and preaching.
The Therns in the books don’t show up until book 2 “Gods of Mars”. Why are they in this movie?
There’s so much more that’s just so pointlessly altered.
There are also some weaknesses in the sound design. In the big air battle every time the big airship guns fire the movie uses the exact same sound effect. Every time the gun crews turn them to aim, the exact same old timey clanking gears effect is used. Reminds me of the old “Sergeant York” movie where they recorded one explosion for the artillery barrage then used it over and over a few hundred times.
HBO could have done a much better job, could have shot scenes with both book accurate costumes and PG costumes. ;) Of course that’s assuming HBO would’t upend a dumpster fire of political correctness onto the story like Disney did.
Edgar Rice Burroughs spent a few years working on a ranch in Idaho, which inspired a lot of elements in his writing.
Having lived and worked on an Idaho ranch inspired ERB to take his big profits from his Tarzan books and buy a ranch in California, which he named Tarzana. Well, he found out that *owning* a ranch was a very different thing from just working on one. The failed Tarzana Ranch got subdivided and incorporated as the town of Tarzana.
P.S. Edward Elmer Smith also spent a bunch of time in Idaho, also with inspiration on his writing, including the first interstellar spaceship, the Boise. A bit disappointing to this native Idahoan that the good ship Boise got left out of the action after its debut book.
Barsoom! A great place to visit and solid fare read early by many a fan of my generation. Ballentine’s re-issue of the series helped in that regard. They also produced a map of Barsoom as a poster that really ought to be re-issued.
I’ve only one bone to pick and that’s regarding the (awful) John Carter movie.
I get that we all have different tastes and you can’t make someone dislike something they like, but there is no way that the film can be described as “largely faithful”.
First, Stanton admitted that he was only familiar with the Marvel comic series (which shows). Then, he eliminated a good third of the book, and perhaps the most important third (at least if one is contemplating a series of films) – Carter’s aculturation with Green Martian society and the blending of “Virginian Gentleman” with alien roughness.
Nonsense like walking cities, flying ships powered by light, Kong-sized white apes, the whole added on shape-shifting Thern plot to take over the solar system, 9th ray crap, and, perhaps the worst affront to anyone who really cares, Tardos Mors, the Jeddak of Mighty Helium, turned into a feckless coward who would sell his daughter into sexual slavery rather than die defending the honor of his city, his family and his daughter.
Feh! That’s NOT Barsoom.
PS. the 25mm figures are probably from Martian Metals and most likely meant for use with the John Carter, Warlord of Mars RPG, published in 1978
These are the books that brought me to SFF. I got them one Christmas from my aunt and uncle. I knew nothing about them, but it was the whole set, and I felt instantly rich – 11 new books all at once!
I hated the recent movie, though. It looked okay, but the story was nonsensical, even when (at the halfway point) I decided to treat it as entirely unrelated to Barsoom.
After reading the article and all the comments up to this time, I have to add my two cents (or is that now two dollars due to inflation?):
I get the impression that some of the readers believe that all Confederate soldiers were fighting for slavery and that, by extension, all Union soldiers were fighting against it. I suspect that the reasons individuals chose to fight (when they weren’t drafted) was far more nuanced on both sides. And probably many fought, like in so many wars, because they saw it as “adventure.” Until the reality set in at least.
Furthermore, racism was just as rampant in the north as it was in the south.
With that said, I agree with those who felt the Tarzan novels (all gadzillion of them) come across as racist by today’s standards whereas the Barsoom ones are far less so. And I really had to laugh at #46’s Planet of the Hats comment; it was right on the money.
@82/Ken: You may be right that not all soldiers are on board with their leaders’ causes, but I doubt you’ll find nearly as many former Wehrmacht or Waffen-SS soldiers as protagonists in post-WWII German fiction as you’ll find former Confederate soldiers as protagonists in post-Civil War American fiction. While Germans have actively renounced and condemned the Nazi movement, American media spent generations rehabilitating and sanitizing the image of the Confederacy.
“Furthermore, racism was just as rampant in the north as it was in the south.”
Maybe, but there’s an obvious huge difference in abolitionism/slavery defense between the North and South, that can’t be denied. And many Northern soldiers marched to war singing “John Brown’s body” Conversely, Southern soldiers were more likely to come from slaver families than the average Southern white family; Southern *officers* even more so. And Carter was a cavalry officer.
(The average *soldier* didn’t own slaves personally, for the same reason that average 20 year olds today don’t own houses — young people don’t have a lot of capital even if their families do. Still, enlistees were maybe 2x as likely to personally own slaves as white Confederates in general.)
“. . . there must have been role playing games . . .”
I do remember seeing a Barsoom tabletop RPG, back in the mid-1970s. I never played it, but the instructions displayed a sense of good fun. At one point (for example) they observed that on Barsoom, if a hero, a heroine, a villain, and a monster were all in the same vast wasteland, it was inevitable that they’d all turn up at the same place, at the same time. Which is classic planetary romance.
@84,
To add to what you said: Confederate cavalry troopers owned their horses and tack. Horses, especially those that can be used for cavalry, are expensive. So is tack. Also, officers are generally required to be literate, and the rate of white literacy in the Confederacy was decided lower than in the Union. While free public education wasn’t invented in New England, its much-derided Puritans started making it policy pretty early — Boston Latin was founded well over a century before the first free public school in the South — and just about every two-bit village in the North had a public school and mandated (at least socially, if not legally) attendance well before 1860.
In other words, while army officers generally would tend to come from a wealthier group than other ranks, in the Confederate Army, the pool officers would be pulled from — literate men — was smaller as a portion of the white population than in the Union.
“John Carter, one a low-budget film released in 2009 that went directly to video/DVD.” It was in theaters, where I saw it; not direct to video.
Great special effects. Lots of potential. Didn’t capture the real John Carter and didn’t stick to the story which would have made it extremely successful. get Peter Jackson to do it. The only one who can stick as close as possible to the actual books. Until you do stick to the actual books you’ll never have the following from the fans that you’re looking for. I for one had high hopes but was disappointed. again so much potential but not following the story and taking too many liberties with the so-called creativity is what ruined this movie and what made it lose money at the box office. It will continue to lose money until they can finally get to the right story which is why there’s never been a Tarzan that has been super successful. Follow the books follow the story. get Peter Jackson to do it or somebody that knows what the damn books are really about
@88/Tim: Wow, no. Some of the best film adaptations ever have diverged massively from their sources, for instance Strangers on a Train, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Shining, Blade Runner, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, or Forrest Gump. (Indeed, that goes for just about any Philip K. Dick adaptation — see also Total Recall and Minority Report.) The point of an adaptation is not to slavishly, unimaginatively copy a story that’s already been told; what a monumental waste of time that would be. If you want something exactly like the book, that’s what the book’s for. There’s no point in doing a new version unless you do it in a new way.
If anything, it’s insulting to a book to suggest that a film adaptation is meant to be a one-to-one replacement for it. It should be something distinct that complements the book, that does its own thing alongside and distinct from the book rather than trying to take over its place in our minds.
This is my first post.
Today, I just finished reading book 11 of the ERB John Carter series. Very enjoyable read; however, at times, the adventures tended to be repetitive and the story lines redundant. ERB was a very capable and intelligent writer.
I also enjoyed the JC film by Disney and I later bought the BR DVD. That film perked my interest in the JC series and I subsequently bought and read the entire written series. I also learned of the JC comics and illustrated versions.
Reading is far better than watching TV. If you havent read these books in awhile, then do so. The writing is that good.
@90 Thanks for picking my article for your first post! Those books are fun to read. You might want to read the Carson of Venus series if you are still looking for more ERB planetary romance.
I’ve read “A Princess of Mars” and the other 4 books in the John Carter of Mars book series. While people categorize these book as Science Fiction, I like to think of them as Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Edgar Rice Burroughs gives us descriptions of people, places, and things that, though brief, give you enough to use your imagination as to what they look like. I have all 5 John Carter of Mars books in one volume, which I bought at Barnes and Noble for a reasonable price. I highly recommend that anyone who wants to read books that have Action, adventure, and, yes, Romance, pick up this volume.
I too enjoyed the ERB John Cater books when I was younger but now that I am re-reading them now as an adult I have to wonder about John Cater’s remarkable skills at constantly losing Dejah Thoris in one way or another throughout 11 books and the gullibility of Dejah Thoris to always come to the conclusion that John Carter is dead. I know this is probably not a popular opinion but this is the overwhelming impression I get from reading these books again.
@93/Steven DuChene: With series like this, the formulaic nature of the stories is pretty much the point.
It’s not as bad as Tarzan, though, where in later books in the series it felt like every single installment featured either Tarzan getting conked on the head and getting amnesia, a lookalike getting conked on the head and thinking he’s actual Tarzan, or both.
I have a weakness for ‘Who am I?’ Stories but the trope can definitely be overdone.
One of the things that bothers me about the amnesia trope is that the sufferer only forgets things like their name and details of their personal life, but doesn’t forget how to, say, use a spoon, talk, or read.
The trope where one conk on the head causes amnesia and a second fixes it was overdone the first time.
@97/swampyankee: “One of the things that bothers me about the amnesia trope is that the sufferer only forgets things like their name and details of their personal life, but doesn’t forget how to, say, use a spoon, talk, or read.”
That basically is how retrograde amnesia generally works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrograde_amnesia
Different kinds of memory are stored in the brain in different ways, so you can forget personal facts and experiences while remembering more general facts, or forget information (declarative) while retaining skills (procedural).
Although cases of amnesia severe enough to forget one’s identity completely are rare and usually quite temporary, a matter of hours. And they tend to impair your ability to form new long-term memories for the duration. It is unlikely to forget everything about your identity and your past while still being perfectly functional otherwise.
Brain injuries tend to affect only certain functions, which depends on the area damaged. There are cases of people losing language in Reality if not fiction. And of course repeated trauma does not help!
Psychological amnesia triggered by emotional trauma fits the fictional template better. A fuge state has been described as the mind running away from intolerable pain – and taking the body with it. The most interesting cases are the ones where an entirely new personality is somehow created complete with false memories. Fuges seem to pass off as abruptly as they come leaving the victim with a hole in his mind and sometimes miles and years from where he started. More often though it’s just a few hours of lost time while the brain struggles to adjust. For example the man who received news of his fiancee’s sudden death in an accident while working in his garden and came back to himself hours later walking down an unfamiliar road.