Everything ERB

[Jaqhama]

Here's a link to the continuing popularity of all things Edgar Rice Burroughs.
(I read the whole illustrated Princess of Mars this afternoon...hasn't been concluded as yet. Bit over the top in terms of breast size, apart from that a good effort I think.)

Tarzan, Mars, Venus, Pellucidar...it's all here.

And many ERB novels free to read online at www.arthursclassicnovels.com

Cheers: Jaq.

[Craig Herbertson]

Good one. can't fail with the master ERB. Unfortunately for me, I started collecting his books when I was nine and since then he became so collectable you might as well forget it unless you're a millionaire.

I bought a few facsimille covers for my tatty old first editions here

www.recoverings.com/

He's a nice bloke. Wish I was rich sometimes.

I love the old whacko covers

[Calenture]

Mar 20, 2009 13:23:37 GMT Jaqhama said:

Here's a link to the continuing popularity of all things Edgar Rice Burroughs.
(I read the whole illustrated Princess of Mars this afternoon...hasn't been concluded as yet. Bit over the top in terms of breast size, apart from that a good effort I think.)

Tarzan, Mars, Venus, Pellucidar...it's all here.

And many ERB novels free to read online at www.arthursclassicnovels.com

Cheers: Jaq.

Thanks for this, Jaqhama. I've woken at 2:30 a.m., so this seems as good a time as any to catch up with posts I missed.

I read a massive amount of Burroughs in past days. These days I'd have probably have difficulty with them, but there's no denying the magic of those books.

For any who haven't read them, the Martian novels open (if I remember right) with John Carter seeking shelter from marauding Indians in a cave, then falling asleep and waking up under a Martian sky, where he's immediately attacked, then finds that on Mars he has eight times his Earthly strength. Within a few pages he's been taken to a deserted city in the desert, and a great sky boat is being forced out of the sky by airborne pirates.

And among the captives is the magnificent Dejah Thoris.

Now some of those details I might have confused with the Carson Napier of Venus stories. Anyway...

Here's a probably rare Ace edition of Mastermind of Mars, which like most good things I found in a junk shop in my teens. No publication date, but probably late '60s. The novel was first published in 1928.

Art by Roy Krenkel, Jnr.

Here's the cover text:

"Ulysses Paxton, USA, awakened from a battlefield in France to find himself the prisoner of the strangest super-scientist of a strange planet. Paxton, it seemed, was valuable to that master mind as an apprentice because he would have no loyalties to interfere with the work he was called to do.

"For Ras Thavas' weird experiments involved transplanting the brains of ape and man, and of beauty and hag. But Paxton was an Earthman similar to John Carter, the Warlord of Barsoom, and Paxton realised that he had to undo the evil he had helped to create.

"The story of Paxton's fight to right the wrong done to a lovely woman is a Burroughs Mars novel that ranks with the best."

Frontis illustration by J Allen St. John

Here's another of Krenkel's covers, just found online whilst Googling. The cover below is linked to The Sudden Curve where I found it:

Roy Krenkel

[Craig Herbertson]

The Eternal Lover: Edgar Rice Burroughs

‘NU, THE son of Nu, his mighty muscles rolling beneath his smooth bronzed skin, moved silently through the jungle primeval. His handsome head with its shock of black hair, roughly cropped between sharpened stones, was high held, the delicate nostrils questioning each vagrant breeze for word of Oo, hunter of men.’

So begins ‘The Eternal Savage’ or as my older edition terms it ‘The Eternal Lover.’ The latter is the title I prefer. Just look at that for an illustration by one of the giants of the Arts, J. Allen St. John.

Burroughs was a master story teller and as prolific as they come. This one was written in 1925 after the ninth Tarzan novel (Tarzan and the Antmen) and the fifth Martian (The Chessmen of Mars) and is, as always with Burroughs, a flawed masterpiece. It would be easy to harp on about the plot coincidences and inconsistencies – Nu travels forwards (and back) in time and his girlfriend Victoria Custer travels back (and forward) so that they can consummate their eternal relationship. There are earthquakes occurring when you need them and extraordinary luck as heroes stumble on villains just before they ravish the maid. It would be easy but unfair; because Burroughs is not about literature or reason; he is about stories and escapism.

If you have seen A Million Years BC (and perhaps admired Raquel Welsh and a cohort of savage women) you will have seen a film largely stolen from Burroughs’ Eternal Lover. The Pterodactyl scene is a direct lift. The meeting of tribes, the generally wrong facts about the life of our ancestors. It’s more or less The Eternal Savage without the clever bits on reincarnation and time travel.

As a hopeless romantic I would recommend this book highly. It breathes a strange life of its own. The romance between the two lovers is vivid and touching (if you suspend all rational judgment and allow for some non PC moments) The characters are unforgettable and its simply a great tale.

[Craig Herbertson]

Tales of Three Planets Edgar Rice Burroughs
Posted in SF Dystopia, reviews on September 8th, 2010 by Craig

An unusual collection published long after Burroughs had died. It contains four tales. Jimber-Jaw was initially published in Argosy. The rest have a colourful history. My copy is the 1969 Edition published by Canaveral Press and illustrated by Roy G. Krenkel.
Cover by Roy Krenkel

Cover by Roy Krenkel

“The Resurrection of Jimber-Jaw” (1937)
“Beyond the Farthest Star” (1942)
“Tangor Returns” (1964)
“The Wizard of Venus” (1964)

All of these have an interesting publishing history best left to Lupoff’s fine introduction.

The Wizard of Venus is the final short tale in the Venus series where Carson Napier meets – yes you’ve guessed it – a wizard.

Jimber-Jaw: Burroughs, dealing with the primitive in us; an early and rather clever hint of cryogenics but nothing particularly special beyond American humour of the era.

However, “Beyond the Farthest Star” and “Tangor Returns” are something else altogether. These novelettes are the first intimation that Burroughs was somewhat tired of the glories of war. The second was discovered in his posthumous papers the other published in 1942.

The man who calls himself Tangor, to protect his family name, is shot down on earth in an air battle in 1939 and is miraculously transported to the farthest star where he finds a world at war. The woman are weary and stoic, the men brave and resigned. It’s a chilling picture, well told with all the feel of realism and sadness of war. The story for me remains one of the first truly modern sf tales with its barren and bleak prose and terse war correspondent style. The first part ends on a chilling,‘Listen! The sirens are sounding the general alarm’, as the eternal war continues.

The second part of the Tangor tale is more typical Burroughsian with Tangor becoming a spy. It reads like a journal critique of communism but is nonetheless effective in a sparse and predictable way.

Recommended reading for those who would write Burroughs off as a loincloth and brawny muscles fellow

[Calenture]

I was about to shut down the laptop, but instead took a slightly dozy last look and started looking more carefully at this thread. It's become a showcase of some really elegant artwork, hasn't it?

You say you have this 1969 Canaveral Press edition... That drawing seems much older that '69, doesn't it? Really something of beauty.

Krenkel's covers are quite something, so thanks for posting them (and the others). I've said before that I have difficulty reading Burroughs these days (read loads of them way back). But with his fiction providing an outlet for work like this, it's a good argument for keeping his books on the shelf.

[Craig Herbertson]

He is a master story teller - even bad Burroughs is somehow readable but certainly he provoked so many illustrators to their best work. his themes were primeval and generic: tough guys, scantily clad babes.