The John Carter Trilogy: a princess of mars; the gods of mars; the warlord of mars. OF EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS a princess of mars; the gods of mars; the warlord of mars. — A Pulp-Lit Annotated Edition — By EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS Edited and annotated by Finn J.D. John I sought out Dejah Thoris in the throng of departing chariots. (See Page 91) Copyright ©2014 by Pulp-Lit Productions. All rights reserved, with the exception of those portions of this book written by Edgar Rice Burroughs or published in his original works, on which copyright protections have expired. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Pulp-Lit Productions, Post Office Box 77, Corvallis, OR 97339; or e-mail [email protected]. Second PDF edition 2021 ISBN: 978-1-63591-208-1 Book design by Fiona MacDaibheid Pulp-Lit Productions Corvallis, Oregon http://pulp-lit.com table of contents. Front matter: Preface .......................................................... ix How to Use This Book ................................... xiii Introduction ................................................ xv Book One: A Princess of Mars ........................................1 Annotations .................................................195 Book Two: The Gods of Mars .....................................209 Annotations .................................................433 Book Three: The Warlord of Mars .................................443 Annotations .................................................597 preface. ear Reader: Before we begin our journey through Edgar Rice Burroughs’ storyworld of Mars, I feel it is important that I tell you a brief story Dfrom my life. Call it, if you will, a full disclosure. You see, Edgar Rice Burroughs is a particularly important author in my life, and that fact has had an effect — and, I hope, a good effect — on how I’ve approached my work in editing and annotating this, the first Pulp-Lit Annotated Omnibus Edition. Here’s my story: As a very young lad, well before my teenage years, I stumbled across a book titled, “The Lost Continent.” This, you may know, was the novel Bur- roughs wrote in 1915, after war broke out in Europe but before America got involved. Its plot, in brief: America reacts to the First World War by sealing itself off from all contact. A hundred years go by and then the hero of this book, Lieutenant Jefferson Turck, the commander of an “aerosubmarine,” is marooned at sea and makes his way to Europe, where he finds that European civilization has literally bombed itself back to the Stone Age. Two civilizations have arisen in its place: one in Asia — China; and the other in Africa — Ab- yssinia. The Abyssinians consider the white barbarians of Europe to be a race of inferior beings, and take them as slaves. Lieutenant Turck himself is so enslaved, becoming the property of a colonel in the Abyssinian Army. xi Eventually, he escapes and liberates the leader of the British barbarians, belief in exaggerated physiological differences among races, even if he did not a ravishing warrior-queen beauty named Victory, and the story works its way share the era’s accompanying belief that those differences could be objectively toward the ending that you sort of know is coming. But the key point in this judged and arranged in a hierarchy of moral worth. And although we do have story, the part that affected me personally, was the point at which Turck settles to judge Burroughs by the standards of his own time rather than ours, I do into his life as a slave. Outrage at the idea of a black person enslaving a white think it’s fair to judge his work by the standards of the early 2000s, because guy bubbled up in my youthful mind, unchallenged — for the nonce. But we’re not reading A Princess of Mars in 1912. We’re reading it now. And by then, a few pages later, Turck’s master learns who he is and where he’s from, those standards, yes, there is racism here. and their relationship changes. Turck is still a slave, but it’s like the Colonel’s But that leads me to my main argument in Burroughs’ defense: In 1912, eyes are opened to the fact that an “inferior” white could actually be a man white America was not just racist, but very comfortable in its racism. Why like himself. The two of them become friends, moral equals — but still legally would Burroughs talk about it so much, and incorporate so much of it into his unequal. And every time Turck leaves the house, he is treated with rankling stories, if all he wanted to do was reinforce it? If casual racism is in the water contempt by every Abyssinian citizen. you drink every day, why would you remark on how that water tastes? For me, it was almost as if Burroughs deliberately pushed all the but- My inference is that Burroughs did not like the casual racism of 1910s tons that would bring the latent socialized racism out in an 11-year-old white America. He talked about it not to reinforce it, but to challenge it. And he did boy with no black friends or acquaintances, and then with gentle mocking, that with a subtlety and finesse that has been chronically underappreciated for show that boy the absurdity of his reaction. Why wouldn’t black people en- decades. slave white people, if the power roles were reversed? What was the difference? As you proceed on your journey through Burroughs’ world, you will find Wasn’t sauce for the goose also sauce for the gander? that he talks a lot about the different races of Martians. You’ll have much op- I was a different boy when I closed that book. And I am probably also a portunity to probe the meaning behind that aspect of his storyworld, and to different man than I would have been had I not read it. decide if you agree with me on this point or not. But regardless of whether you So when I read accusations that Burroughs was a toxic racist, my natural are convinced, I think you’ll have to agree that it’s a more complicated ques- inclination is to rise to his defense. tion than it appears to be, from far away. And it’s not hard to find such accusations. There is a sort of received wis- I hope you enjoy reading this annotated edition of works from the dawn dom on Burroughs, a position that you will quickly encounter if you should of pulp literature as much as I have enjoyed assembling, annotating and nar- explore some of the critical literature on him, that he was a classic, unreflective rating it. Edwardian-age racist of the Rudyard Kipling type. His defenders will argue Cordially, that he was a man of his time, and that the whiteness of his heroes and the — finn j.d. john. tropeyness with which he depicts ethnic groups should not be held against him; but rarely does one encounter the argument that I would proffer — that Burroughs was in fact a powerful and subtle voice in direct opposition to rac- Corvallis, Ore., USA ism. March 15, 2014 I do want to acknowledge that the accusers have some good points. Bur- roughs was a 19th-century man, steeped in a culture of racial chauvinism and manifest destiny. My argument is that he did not subscribe to either of these philosophies; but to suggest that he was not in any way influenced by them would just be silly. He certainly, at the very least, shared his era’s unquestioning xii xiii how to use this book . lthough scholars may find it useful in the study of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ books, this book is primarily intended to be read for pleasure. All the annotations and other literary discussions have beenA written with that in mind. The reason we have included annota- tions is that the world is considerably different today than it was in 1911, when Burroughs created this storyworld. Knowing a few tidbits of histori- cal context can make a big difference in understanding and appreciation. However, the annotations are strictly of the “book-club discussion” type. If you’re looking for a work of literary criticism that will delve deeply into a Freudian analysis of John Carter’s relationships with Dejah Thoris and Phaidor, you’re reading the wrong book. This omnibus has been designed to be read through, from beginning to end. The annotations are arranged all in one chapter, at the very end of each book, going through the book with brief cues to keep the reader oriented to where in the story he or she is. The goal of this approach is to avoid the dis- ruptiveness of footnotes, and to make it easier to immerse oneself in the story. That is the approach we recommend. However, readers who wish to skip the annotations and just read the story will find it very easy to do that, by simply skipping the chapters that contain them; there are a total of three such chapters, one at the end of each of the three books. For readers who prefer a more traditional scholarly “footnote-like” experi- xv ence, each regular book chapter ends with a page-number reference (or, in the e-book edition, a hyperlink) to the page on which annotations for that chapter appear. (For obvious reasons, this feature isn’t in the audiobook edition.) In addition, the annotations include page numbers or links back to the beginning of each chapter, which means the annotation chapters make excel- lent guides to the plot of the story, which you can use to quickly and easily find any chapter you’re looking for. In that way, they function almost like narrative indexes.