Or Who Was That Mighty Swordsman in the Leather Harness?
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or Tremble Not, My Naked Princess! or who was that Mighty Swordsman in the Leather Harness? Thuvia, Maid ofMars by Richard A. Lupoff Illustrated by Clyde Caldwell the unfortunate result of an unsuccessful .owa urchins sneaking off to thrill the I to pun. Burroughs— had meant it to be "Normal yarns in All-Story Weekly, urban Arabs, Bean" "Sane Head. " When a proofreader tired businessmen, and unliberated women did him the "favor" of changing Normal to who snuck glances at the male-oriented Norman, Ed gave up and went back to his pulp magazines, certainly got their charge real monicker. from this stuff. The year was 1912. They Who was this Burroughs/Bean guy any- were reading the first published work of a how? new author, Norman Bean, "Under the He was a Midwestern business flop, Moons of Mars." washout onetime soldier, pots-and-pans That was the magazine version. The peddler, magazine staff-man, advertising author was really more interested in beau- checker, military academy teacher, rail- tiful princesses than in hurtling rocks, and road cop, goldminer himself, onetime cow- for the story's book version he retitled the boy, ex-proprietor of a sundries shop and saga A Princess of Mars. Under that title bookstore in Pocatello, Idaho. Pushing it's still alive and kicking. middle age by now. He wrote A Princess of "Norman Bean," of course, was Edgar Mars in 191 1. It was serialized in '12. Rice Burroughs. The odd pseudonym was He lived what we might politely term a e . <^ *** ^iffl&l? *Z!j£r ^^B ^ *i^BP^ B^^k. fv it^v M ^1 W^*r 1 . W. ^\_ *v^ ^^r r lea Ji iM> -— vivid fantasy life. plenty of swordplay and adventure. Hmm, The baby was crying, Mama had another but kind of lacking in the potential for (to in the oven, Papa was broke and out of put it delicately) love interest. Read care- work. He used to lie there at night. Visions fully. Burroughs seemed to be edging in of unpaid bills danced in his head. A lot that direction for awhile, but he couldn't pleasanter to fantasize. quite bring himself. Gee, if he could only be something glam- Green folks had their limitations; bring orous. How's about a cavalry captain? Rid- in some mi ones. ing his sleek mount across the arid Arizona Convenient, too, that nobody wandered plains, fighting fierce savages, searching around Mars (they called it Barsoom) for gold. overburdened with bulky clothes. In fact, VVhere do we go from there? the custom tended more towards going What happens after the Arizona schtick? around in the buff. Whoo! Burroughs's Martians didn't much favor Jump to the angry red planet. Grumpy anti-weapons laws. In fact it was custom- green Martians up to herel Ten, twelve, ary to keep at least a longsword and a fifteen feet high. With tusks no less. Funny shortsword handy, not to mention a little ears. No hair. Six limbs. pigsticker concealed here or there in case Lots of room for excitement there, of emergency, and if you aren't outfitted " 35- with any togs, you might find it handy to a strangely enhancing effect. deck your body with an assortment of Okay. Got some more? straps, hooks, scabbards, and the like. "She was as destitute of clothes as the Frees up I he hands for more urgent green Martians who accompanied her: in- tasks, don't you see? deed, save for her highly wrought ornaments So, bring on the red Martians. We start off she was entirely naked, nor could any apparel with a prisoner of the grumpy green giants, have enhanced the beauty of her perfect and one Dejah Thoris, who turns out to be the symmetrical figure." daughter of the biggest Jeddak (emperor) on You betcha, pal! the whole planet. John Carter, intrepid earth- Ed provided Barsoom with a complete his- man and hero of Rurroughs's Martian novels, tory, geography, zoology, botany, economy, tells us about this princess: "...the sight technology. The works. At no time forget- which met my eyes was that of a slender, ting to keep the landscape well populated girlish figure, similar in every detail to the with gorgeously undraped women, most of earthly women of my past life ... Her skin whom he generously furnished with perfect was of a light reddish copper color, against and symmetrical figures. which the crimson glow of her cheeks and the Well, why not? ruby of her beautifully molded lips shone with Not only did he scatter the landscape with — ^3 c/i Co green folks and red folks, but also (in due solar detonators. Funny to think of those course) with yellow, black, and white folks; gigantic ginks with radium-powered rifles at plus plant-men, six-limbed giant apes, rats, their disposal, fighting it out with broad- dogs, and horses. Plus some bizarre, ucky swords. creatures something like a cross between a Or is it? Ever see a photo of a U.S. in- crab and a tick, that specialized in riding fantryman walking guard duty over an atomic around on the shoulders of a race of head- howitzer with a fixed bayonet on the rifle on less, brainless humans. his shoulder? Not to mention ray-powered "fliers," air- One thing about the s*x in Burroughs's craft that swooped or zoomed or wobbled Barsoomian books (or for that matter, in any their way through the thin Barsoomian at- of his others)— there's nothing explicit there mosphere while sword-plying soldiers that could turn an Iowa schoolmarm gray, swarmed their decks and polished up their even in 1912. grapnels and belaying pins. Nothing explicit. Those green nomads of the dead sea bot- But there was plenty below the surface, toms also had some advanced weapons and not too far below the surface at that. rifles that fired radium bullets, guided by- You have to judge any creative work radar sights, with a range of miles, and with against the milieu in which the author/art- " 2s s 3 a- ist/whatever worked. You just don't expect of England anyhow? Burroughs was a Chi- Rembrandt and Dali and Lichtenstein to do cago boy, American to the marrow. Fatso the same work. You don't expect the same Billy Taft was president of the U.S., and kind of script from Euripedes, Ben Jonson. Teddy Roosevelt, who had handpicked Taft and John Carpenter. as his successor three years before, was So what kind of world was it that Bur- preparing to handz<«pick him and resume the roughs worked in? presidency. He started writing "Under the Moons*7A Tops-in-pops music that year ran the Princess ofMars in 191 1. gamut from Irving Berlin's "Alexander's Rag- It wasn't exactly the Victorian age any time Band" to "Woodman, Woodman, Spare more. The old lady had been dead for ten that Tree!" There was also "Parade of the years. Her son Edward, that notorious rake- Wooden Soldiers" and "Oh You Beautiful hell and perennial Prince of Wales, had Doll. reigned for nine years and then he, too, died. Hottest book of the year was Clarence His son Georgie had just come to the throne Mulford's Hopalong Cassidy. Hottest tickets when E.R.B. was dreaming up Dejah Tee and on Broadway were "The Blue Bird" and Johnny See. "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm." And in San But who gives a damn about who was king Francisco the board of censors closed some thirty-two motion pictures, including The out by the upper crust. But even the "accept- Black Viper and Maggie, the Dock Rat. able" literature of the day was jammed with Thing is, during that age of Victorian sublimated sexualitv. repression — which was when Burroughs Old Sir Henry Rider Haggard, greatest of was raised, albeit before he wrote—when the grand Victorian romancers, was full of it. they put pants on piano legs and wore flannel Look at his books: She, King Solomon's bags to bed so their limbs would not be ex- Mines, Montezuma's Daughter, and scores of posed, s*x didn't cease to exist. Little boys others. They're full of nudity, of gloriously and girls wondered where they came from, shining women, sweaty, muscular men, love- and even if their elders told em about fairies goddesses and love-slaves. and cabbages, the little ones must have And along came Ed Burroughs who poured figured out something better or eventually his frustrations and repressions into his there would have been no more little girls stories, and out came naked princesses and and bovs. supermacho warriors in leather harnesses. Contemporary' books like My Secret Life In between volumes of the long Barsoom- and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and later books ian saga, Burroughs worked away at other like The Other Victorians tell a very different books, turning out Tarzan novels and west- story than the sanitized "official" version put ems and more science fiction like The Moon Maid and The Land That Time Forgot and the Amtorian saga, about one Carson Napier who travels to Venus and discovers a planet of beautiful princesses, monstrous creatures, and leering villains. And the splendid Pel- lucidar series, At the Earth's Core and its sequels, the adventures of David Innes of Connecticut in the strange timeless region that lies 500 miles straight down through the crust of the planet. (Would you believe that it's full of beautiful women who don't wear much clothing?) But science fiction fans in Burroughs's day put Barsoom at the top of their reading lists.