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I I . Ice"~! ~ I i: ,.I , I I .\ .. I, S urrou //I ,f I John Carter, The Land that Time Forgot, Tarzan - Sean Egan remembers the many creations of the larger- than-life adventurer ~ y,ij!911, ~ and writer. 'Rdgar.Rid~ ..~ 'Burroughs ~ - been aicavahy of$ker, a . "OWboy, "",1\>"", "'>t' Bproprietor and~the ',manag<;Fof a irarge ":Danton is biased of Sears catalogue oHke, a;,:Jj11ongo~her a pioneer , reflect those of ventUres. Bomi1-WiChicago iin 1875, lie to ERB. was at;tl1eh11le atte,mptiiil1gtoi11la'ke a living as apencitsharpener agent. !J'he LIFE ON MARS businesswasn'tgoilng well and'he found There w01itld eventually be ten Mars he hadernpty hours t:oti~JiI.Hep.ad tail'es pt~ntedlim Bnrroughs's lifetime. ctabbled'with writing before bht.never !J'heiFlitia>l tri~bgy - the first story was atte11lpted to sellan.yt1)liiQg. Now he Below,iMan.ofmany talents, printed1j,n book fbrrruas A Princess of dhided to tpyhis hand at writing theitfltra.iprolific Edgar Mars i111917 and was followed by The so,metihing for the "pUlp" fiction RicelBurroughs; Gods of Mars anifWarlords of Mars - are magazines that; in an era oefope, J;Qovies the strongest. Burroughs arguably and !J'V,were massively popJtiilar. demeaned the series by writing less Under the Moons of Mars was writtep interesting sequels, but Oll'ly 1939's on the backs of pages carrying the Synthetic Men of Mars is reekoned to mastheads of a previous failedBurroughs be truly bad. » business. Its protagonistJohn Carter is, on Earth; merely amustered-ouJ CiviJi War soldier turned gold prospector. On Mars he becomes a fearsome warrior through the lighter Martian gravity, which eaables him to make 20-yard leaps over the heads of the brutal six- limbed green men he soon finds himself in battle against on the side of the planet's more cultured red race. Carter ludicrously finds his way to the titular planet by the simple manoeuvre of wishing himself there and learns the language of Mars preposterously swiftly. Nonetheless, Burroughs'dirst foray into his new profession - printed in All-Story n).agazine in Febru;J:ry 1Q,a2 - saw 1/lim ~exploiting superbly the then stilil widely Eheld belief. t;b,'at«Marswas i:q'hab'ited lor :)had bee~) by creati~gane~~cat:iVe and ~ intricatelyiJ;Qa?ineOiJ5JIoliUl;eof aplanet I@whose cuLtupe was (jJfiadec~YiJt1g!ll1ajestY. ,g . iBurro~g"p-s ha~Hin.a'~ly f()E.hda career .s ~hat'qi'd~tirhake himVJ;estfless.oIl€was a

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1I - aJRe-speaJk;tor "white-skin" -'by siJ!J?}iallfamily, he ~I gf0WS u.P to di£cover 4!hat he is iFlybabfll Jblm Clllyton, aI)!'English\r!.;0~d. r; Tl1'e savagery of jun:g'Ye1J.~d'eis thrillingly depictediby B1:'LrrougJ;isbut'he is equal:ly adept at the touoh1ng love 11 story he devises between Tarzan andi, . Miss JanelPorter of Badhmore. Th,e tigel1

11 references were corrected when, Tarzan I1 of the Apes ,beca~e BlfIrrouighs's first i' publisYred book in:Ij;9;14i.'Fh0Ug4. I. f' Though "Me Tarzan, you Jane" is a I' Burroughs :bad'little',trouble plaoing I. myth - you won:t actually hear it in 'I work witheook,,:pulb'lishers from. her I any Tarzan movie - this famous I ever. a canny businessmaJi~- s !t phrase does capture the inaccurate I ens'uredhis works "'TIpeared.in tfu.epu~ps ! flavour of almost all of the Tarzan .l1irstfor the extra,remuReratioR.He I films, The chivalrous knucklehead I! depicted by screen adaptations of . unashamedly wrote ,for JJ1imney,,pby.ing Tarzan gives no indication of the hardbaM over fees and measuring out, a 1 multi-lingual sophistication of story's worth in the t,i!me it took him.,to J Burroughs's character. I Nonetheless, Tarzan on the silver I: : screen has always been successful. Tarzan'ssuperheroqualities , Elmo Lincoln may have been , lud icrously beefy as the first arenolesserthanthoseof , cinematic Tarzan in Tarzan of the r , Apes (1918) but as Hillman points out, Batman- whoalsorelies f it was "One of the first million-seller 1 movies", The dozen pictures starring multi-medal-winning Olympic onreflexandmuscles swimmer Johnny Weissmuller from 1932 to 1948 provided the iconic 11 complete it more ~han any aesthetic the physicsuperhero qualities no greater or the title of the first novel in its sequence, Ilesserthan those of, sa,y,Batman - who The Land That Time Forgot (1918). also relies on refJex and muscles rather Tfhough clearly inspired by Arthur Conan than special powers -Ibut many of the Doyle's The Lost World, Burroughs's own Tarzan novels featured science fiction land in which dinosaurs still place their elements..II,n Tarzan the Teuible(1921), fuunderous steps also features real which was used purely as a vehicle for 'TIarzan stumbles into'Pail"Ul-Don, a ' his missus, sex bomb Bo Derek, who originality inthe.£orm of an ingenious forgotten and isolated land iR which truncated i.nternal evolutionary system I I played Jane. Ironically, it provided in Miles O'Keefe possibly the most triceratops and men with tails roam. spanning not millennia but an convincing looking celluloid Tarzan of Tarzan and the Ant Men (1924) is a individual's lifetime. A film appeared in them all. It took fully 66 years from Lilliputian yarn. 1933's Tarzan and the 1975, with a sequel in '77. 'I the first Tarzan film for a screen Lion Man depicts goriHas that through These series and others have garnered adaptation even halfway faithful to genetic experimentation, speak English. Burroughs the title the Grandfather of Burroughs's original vision to make it In two stories - Tarzan's Quest (19351 ScienceiFiction, though Burroughs fan 1.1 to celluloid when Hugh Hudson's and Tarzan and the Foreign Legion and supervisor of the official ERB classy Greystoke was released in 1984, Christopher Lambert starred. (book 1947,)- ]3urroughs gives his ape- website,Bill Hillman says, "I've always A couple of Tarzan books nodded man artificially extended life, via a qualifie'd'tl;1at by saying American toward their own movie spin-offs. "Is cache of longevity pills and a witj'ch Above,'Bijrroughs'smost scierice fiction." As well as being the dat Johnny Weissmuller?" mutters a doctor's spell respectively. famous~reationTarzan f~rstn)iajO)j US SF novelist,Hillman says debuted in 1912. 'I character in 1947 book Tarzan and the Tarzan at the Earth's (Jpre k1930c)sljes of'Burrougfus, "Science fantasy or ~\Foreign Legion when encountering Burroughs dovetail the 1'al'zan senies $"ciencefahtasy adventure - somewhere ~e ape-man. with the third franchise lie Piadcreated ip a niche tJiiere you could'put him as a ~ - as thellord of the jungle visits Be'llupik[iar, li pioneer, as a~irst." Burroughs was never

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- --=-. ==- .-= ;;,,~ Other Burroughs SF and fantasy novels, V ---, almost all worth checking out, are: The Moon Maid trilogy 11926), an anti- ERB's Non- communist alien invasion story; Beyond 'Pib$rty alJ.~il The1E@q;{j GiI!l'i1iiip'~n~i(~$>,#,5I,a, Fantasy and rare BtlIroughs future-set'story; The 11 Eternal Lover aka The Eternal Savage, a ;t high quality story concerning a primeval SFWorks . man who awakens in modern Africa, The prolific Burroughs tried his hand at virtually every writing genre going. I published in two parts in 1914 and 1915; The least interesting of his non- The Mopqter Me,q+1913j, acrossbetwee~ ': fantasy fare are jungle-set Tarzan Frankenstein antl'The Island of Doctor variants like The Cave Girl, Jungle Girl 1 I Moreau with a romance thrown in; The 1 and The Lad and the Lion (though in I Resurrection of Timber-Taw (1936), a I 1917 the latter became the battle of the sexes story featuring a I first Burroughs fiction to reawakened preserved caveman. be filmed) and realistic works such as The Towarc\§ the end of his life, a cer,tain I I,II Oakdale Affair, The fatigm\¥ iIiregan .1ii6'setlih 1\r:1lb6tlrfhis Efficiency Expert, The Girl writil.i1g and his private life. His Tarzan IIIFrom Hollywood, The Girl books particularly had become from Farris's and Marcia increasingly formulaic. When he of the Doorstep. The returned to civilian life after World War latter, a novel with an ingenue protagonist i written in 1924, even III , Burroughs could not bring himself to "In his own way, !Edgar The Mad King, the play You Lucky Girl! (published in H,!EIJ,\rroUg.1Ils'spll1Jlishing company - 1999) and 13th century England-set I The Outlaw of Torn. I Am A Barbarian I which he had set up in 1931 because his 1 hardball-playing had cut his previous was also historical but its narrative of a 11I publishers' profit margins to counter- I slave of Caligula was high quality. Also I impressive was the uncategorisable productive levels - issued three more (and possibly intentionally parodic) books, one each in the Tarzan, Mars and The Mucker, the story of a Venus series, before he passed away no-good bum who in 1950. However, a new generation discovers an inner moral ic of SF writers who had idolised fortitude when he is swept up in high sea adventure. 'JjfY~r ~, Burroughs as kids were already The Wild West was no making a mark. ~ mythological place to ex- "" 'W"~ His swashbuckling blend of cavalryman Burroughs so . ~ fantasy and SF is evident in the it's unsurprising that his feted by the critics however. " " .', ~. works ofRobert!E'Howard, westerns are the most "He was panned a lot," admits '. ~ ~ . ~ Ray Bradbury and Michael m"'" interesting of his non- his grandson. Hillman says, . fantasy works. The War "He was writing for a /' \ " ~\ and Isaac ASlmov were Chief (1927) and Apache Devil (1933) ~) " ' t.f!: ~ t\. Moorcock. HP Lovecraft :! . also devotees. Meanwhile, are not only fine reads but predate certain market and he was I - - top of his field. In his own Philip Jose Farmer has Dances With Wolves by a good hal century in their sympathetic portraya 1 JJ way, he was a great writer." 11written what is ahnost Burroughs's other major Burroughs fan fiction of native Americans. IJ ., novel sequence was the throughout his career with n ~ , ~ Venus series, debuted in several novels featuring c 1932's Pirates of Venus. Tarzan-esque characters. featuring Victorian morality, an over- ij Opinions on these stories are ~ ..- Burroughs even influenced reliance on coincidences and a frequent '3 divided. Many find them dull ", hack Western writer JT Edson, flamboyancy of dialogue, but he can ~ and their protagonist Carson ~.. .. who wrote a series of novels about teach a thing or two about captivating, .g Napier irritating. Others feel Napier's liJ;I .~dUki' Tm'o', ,dop«d gmo"'on pacey narrative, leavening of futuristic ~ unheroic nature was an indication of -~~ visions with romance, and worlds F Burroughs's development as both writer Above:Burroughsmriedon21ST CENTURY MAN imagined to the tiniest detail to S and human being, the glorification of writinguntillateinhislife Burroughs's imagination continues to contemporary writers of speculative § battle - and at times homoerotic - completingnearly70 enthrall. ERB Inc is planning deluxe fiction who may feel a sense of ~ celebration of muscle-bound heroes - of novelsbeforehisdeathat new editions of all"Burroughs's series. superiority about their more edgy styles. :3 his earlier books giving way to a more theageof74. Meanwhile, a movie based on the Moreover, a patina of age has not !!J mature outlook, just as his writing style Martian series is in pre-production at precluded much of Burroughs's work ':is had become leaner and less inclined to Pixar, Angelic films is discussing an being immortal: who of his disciples has ~ floridity down the years. Certainly a adaptation of the Carson Napier series createdthe likes ofTarzanandJohn 1! more mature attitude was evinced by and Warner Brothers are preparing a new Carter, characters so iconic that they are ':; Beyond The FartheSt Star (1942), whic.h Tarzan movie. On top of this, the Tarzan still the subject of adaptations nearly a ';;; depicted a planet, Poloda, in the midst of musical is successf:ully making its way full century after, they first captured0the ~ a hundred years war that is a matter for around the world. Danton Burroughs - imaginations of readers in'a world barely .s depression rather than derring-do. who still has vague but fond memories of recognisable as our own? SFX € Ironically, Burroughs proceeded to sitting on his grandfather's knee - says, (') @ become World WadI's oldest war "It's never ending. It still keeps us busy." Thanks to: Bill Hillman and Danton correspondent after being an eyewitness Burroughs'sbrand of SF and fantasy Burroughs. See www.erbzine.com for at the bombing of Pea,rl~iI:iarbor. I.1i\ayseem, oldJfashioned to some today, all t'he latest'BRB news. I1 ---www.sfx.co.uk June 20081 SFX MAGAZI",.EI97