Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars, Part 11: John Carter of Mars

Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars, Part 11: John Carter of Mars

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john-carter-of-mars-canaveralSo it ends here, not with a climatic epic, but with a bit of house cleaning almost fifteen years after the author’s death. The final book in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s career-spanning Barsoom saga is a slender volume containing two unrelated novellas.

I’ve called this review series “Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars,” but that title is a smidgeon deceiving when discussing the two stories here. One doesn’t take place on Mars, and the other was not written by Edgar Rice Burroughs. My apologies going forward.

Our Saga: The adventures of Earthman John Carter, his progeny, and sundry other natives and visitors, on the planet Mars, known to its inhabitants as Barsoom. A dry and slowly dying world, Barsoom contains four different human civilizations, one non-human one, a scattering of science among swashbuckling, and a plethora of religions, mystery cities, and strange beasts. The series spans 1912 to 1964 with nine novels, one volume of linked novellas, and two unrelated novellas.

Today’s Installment: John Carter of Mars (1964)

Previous Installments: A Princess of Mars (1912), The Gods of Mars (1913), The Warlord of Mars (1913–14), Thuvia, Maid of Mars (1916), The Chessmen of Mars (1922), The Master Mind of Mars (1927), A Fighting Man of Mars (1930), Swords of Mars (1934–35), Synthetic Men of Mars (1938), Llana of Gathol (1941)

The Backstory

Edgar Rice Burroughs died in 1950, two years after the publication of Llana of Gathol. Two novellas from the Mars series remained orphaned, having only appeared in magazines: “The Skeleton Men of Jupiter” and “John Carter and the Giant of Mars.” It wasn’t until 1964 that Canaveral Press published them together under the deceivingly archetypal title John Carter of Mars.

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Bad Habits

Bad Habits

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Little, BigI’ve been thinking a fair bit lately about how I read what I read, and how I enjoy it. Or, what’s in it that I enjoy. It seems to me that much of the pleasure in my reading comes about from bad habits. Which is to say, habits that I can’t help but think ought to be bad, but which nevertheless feel central to the act of reading. Maybe that feeling’s an illusion; maybe it’s the secret why bad habits become habits. At any rate, I thought I’d be self-indulgent this week and throw out what I’ve come up with, as I’d love to hear if any of it resonates with anyone else’s experience of reading.

My first bad habit is a tendency to make a preliminary judgement about a book after only a page or two. Maybe even less. That’s a judgement that can, and often does, change as I read on. But it still feels like I’m having a response — equal parts emotional, imaginative, and rational — based on incomplete information. Of course one has the right to a first impression, and of course it’s worth keeping an eye on whether the book you’re reading is repaying the time you put into it. But the reaction I have is something broader than that; it’s a kind of synecdochic sense of the book that derives from reading a small part of it. And it can be not just misleading, but horribly misguided.

A book like The Lord of the Rings grows as it goes on; it grew as it was written, and its shape as a story tends to reflect the way its characters go on journeys to unexpected places. A book like Little, Big (which I think is the best post-Tolkien novel of the fantastic I’ve read) keeps building thematically and narratively as it goes on, and makes that act of building into a structural principle of the novel: the fact that the story gets bigger the further in you go relates directly to one of the major themes of the book. So in both cases, you can’t really judge the book from the opening pages, and in both cases it may be a while before you really get a sense of what’s going on. In both cases that distance, that development, how the registers change over the course of the story, is key to the whole experience.

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Galaxy Science Fiction, November 1950: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, November 1950: A Retro-Review

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galaxy-science-fiction-november-1950-smallI’m slowly making my way through my collection of Galaxy Science Fiction, continuing with the second issue, dated November 1950.

“Honeymoon in Hell” by Fredric Brown: In the futuristic year of 1962, due to some unknown cause, all of Earth’s babies are born as females. With their own ideas running out, the U.S. government turns to Junior – the largest cybernetic computer in the nation. The computer hypothesizes there could be something local to the planet causing the issue.

It suggests testing the theory by sending married couples to the moon – to see if conception in a different environment would produce males. The government chooses Ray Carmody, a former rocket pilot who was one of the few people ever to land on the moon.

To Carmody’s dismay, the U.S. teams up with Russia for the first of multiple missions, and he is married remotely to Anna Borisovna, also a rocket pilot. They land separately in Hell Crater and begin assembling a shelter, but their work is interrupted by unexpected arrivals.

This is a story that gives away its age with numerous details, but it moves along really well. It’s an interesting idea, and I liked how the plot unfolded.

“Forgotten Missionary” by Isaac Asimov: Humans land on Saybrook’s Planet, taking caution to establish a barrier between themselves and the indigenous species. Because they must. The previous explorers, under Saybrook’s guidance, found that the planet was like a single organism, and it wanted to add new species to its body. Given the opportunity, the planet’s organisms could impregnate other species, which would later birth scions with green patches of fur where their eyes should be.

When the barrier fails for a brief moment, one of the planet’s organisms sneaks aboard, disguising itself as part of the ship. Its mission is to wait until it encounters the humans’ home world before affecting all other specimens of life – otherwise, the humans would simply destroy themselves as their first explorers had.

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Black Gate Online Fiction: “The Renunciation of the Crimes of Gharad the Undying”

Black Gate Online Fiction: “The Renunciation of the Crimes of Gharad the Undying”

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gharad-small1We’re slowly capturing all the online fiction we’ve published here over the past 12 years as part of our Black Gate Online Fiction series. This week we present the complete text of Alex Kreis’s “The Renunciation of the Crimes of Gharad the Undying,” one of the shortest tales to ever appear in Black Gate.

I am very sorry about seizing the throne of Falland and establishing a dictatorship based on terror and intimidation. As ruler of Falland, I enforced a number of highly unfair and immoral policies for which I now feel very badly, including putting all orphans raised by any forms of wildlife to death, and ordering the execution of all wandering bards (although I must say in my defense that that decision was not entirely unpopular).

Alex Kreis is a graduate of the Viable Paradise workshop and a member of BRAWL, the Boston SF/F writing critique group. He lives with his wife and two children in Massachusetts. “The Renunciation of the Crimes of Gharad the Undying” was his first fiction sale.

You can see the complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Mark Rigney, C.S.E. Cooney, Donald S. Crankshaw, Aaron Bradford Starr, Sean McLachlan, Harry Connolly, and Jason E. Thummel, here.

“The Renunciation of the Crimes of Gharad the Undying” originally appeared in Black Gate 14.  It is a complete 960-word short story of satirical fantasy offered at no cost. Art by Bernie Mireault.

Read the complete story here.

Vintage Treasures: Solomon Kane: Skulls in the Stars

Vintage Treasures: Solomon Kane: Skulls in the Stars

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skulls-in-the-starsBack in October, I featured the Robert E. Howard collection Solomon Kane: The Hills of the Dead, the second of two Bantam paperbacks published in the late 70s. The first was Skulls in the Stars, released in 1978.

The Solomon Kane tales are some of my best-loved Howard fiction. “The Skull in the Stars” was one of the first Robert E. Howard tales I ever read, and for many years it was my favorite of his short stories.

He was the Puritan, who flinched not from the gates of Hell. Tall, gaunt, hollowed-eyed in his opposition to the forces of darkness, he defied the devil himself. Kane, cold, steely-nerved duelist, snatched his long rapier from its sheath and thrust it into the heart of evil. Ghoulish laughter follows him. Foul horror haunts his way. Kane, a man whose blood quickens with adventure. Kane, a man more dangerous than a famished wolf.

These slender paperbacks both have fold-out cover art (click on the image at right for the full version). The art is uncredited for this volume, but some sources claim it is Jeff Jones, and the style seems right to me. While the contents aren’t pure Howard (both books contain fragments completed by Ramsey Campbell), it’s a pleasure to see both the poetry and Cambell’s introductions. Here’s the complete TOC:

“The World of Solomon Kane” by J. Ramsey Campbell
“Skulls in the Stars”
“The Right Hand of Doom”
“Red Shadows”
“Rattle of Bones”
“The Castle of the Devil” (Completed by Ramsey Campbell)
“The Moon of Skulls”
“The One Black Stain” (poem)
“Blades of the Brotherhood”

Solomon Kane: Skulls in the Stars was published in paperback by Bantam Books in December, 1978. It is 178 pages, with a cover price of $1.95.

New Treasures: American Gothic Tales

New Treasures: American Gothic Tales

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american-gothic-talesI’ve had my eye on this collection for a while, but it was Matthew David Surridge’s fascinating four-part series on Joyce Carol Oates’s Gothic Quintet that finally nudged me over the edge. I ordered it last week, and have been enjoying it ever since.

To be honest, while I was prepared for a survey of American horror, my brief perusal of the contents before I laid down my money led me to believe it was slanted towards modern writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Anne Rice, Peter Straub, Harlan Ellison, and Stephen King. And while they’re all represented, the book doesn’t neglect the classics either.

They’re all here: Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” Herman Melville’s “The Tartarus of Maids,” Poe’s “The Black Cat,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Henry James’s “The Romance of Certain Old Clothes,” Ambrose Bierce’s “That Damned Thing,” and many more.

How does it manage that? By being nicely huge: the trade paperback is 546 pages.

Something else I appreciate is the nice selection from modern authors who aren’t usually represented in horror anthologies: Paul Bowles’s “Allal,” Robert Coover’s “In Bed One Night,” E. L. Doctorow’s “The Waterworks,” Don DeLillo’s “Human Moments in World War III,” Raymond Carver’s “Little Things,” Joyce Carol Oates’s “The Temple,” and Steven Millhauser’s classic “In the Penny Arcade.”

And if that’s not enough for you, there’s also a varied selection from horror writers more associated with the genre, including Thomas Ligotti, Nancy Etchemendy, Bruce McAllister, Kathe Koja and Barry N. Malzberg, Katherine Dunn, John Crowley, and Lisa Tuttle.

It’s not perfect — where are Fritz Leiber, Frank Belknap Long, Hugh Cave, or Dan Simmons? — but it’s damn close. American Gothic Tales, edited by Joyce Carol Oates, was published in trade paperback by Plume in December, 1996. It is $21 for 546 pages; there is no digital edition.

Saturday Round Up: Talk to the Hand

Saturday Round Up: Talk to the Hand

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bluetooth-handset-glovesLast Saturday, I posted the Black Gate Christmas Gift List, crammed with gift-giving ideas for the discerning fantasy fan. For the last week, I’ve been receiving additional suggestions from readers.

By far my favorite comes from Todd Ruthman, who pointed me to the Bluetooth Handset Gloves offered by ThinkGeek, shown at left. For only $69.99 you can talk to your loved ones just by extending your thumb and pinky. Described as “warm and comfortable capacitive-touch gloves with a Bluetooth headset built in,” they seem ideal for impressing friends and passers-by. I love this gift idea more than I can say. If the right-handed glove comes with a wall-climbing feature, two of my childhood dreams will have totally come true.

George Dew at Dark City Games points out that DCG products make great stocking stuffers, and that unscientific studies (conducted by watching episodes of The Big Bang Theory) show that the amount of time that families spend playing board games is inversely proportional to the chances of children getting involved in drugs, alcohol “and anything else bad.” I’m a believer. You can find Dark City’s splendid catalog here.

Finally, a few readers complained because the number two item on the list, Howard Andrew Jones’s The Bones of the Old Ones, was not yet on sale. Our tireless team of minions have reported that it is now, in fact, on shelves all across the country. In other BotOO news, the esteemed Mr. Jones tells us that a major studio has optioned The Chronicles of Sword and Sand (AKA the Dabir and Asim novels), and the hunt is currently on for a screenwriter.

Last-Minute Kickstarter Alert: The Game of Books

Last-Minute Kickstarter Alert: The Game of Books

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azj-and-rothfussToday, with finally a free minute between holiday commitments and work deadlines, I took a minute to hop over to Patrick Rothfuss’s blog, because I had not yet donated to the Worldbuilders charity and, as you can see on the right, Rothfuss and I (and my wife) are all pretty tight … and contemplative.

Anyway, so I go to donate to Rothfuss’s charity, only to be sucked in to a completely different fundraiser! Like Rothfuss, I need another project (or even another way to spend money!) like I need a hole in the head, but this one seems extremely worthwhile, so here it is …

The Game of Books

There’s a Kickstarter project for The Game of Books, created by the Book Genome Project. As of this moment, it’s about $20,000 shy of its goal with only 56 hours left to go.

Why do I care? Because I have two sons, and I suspect that this project will help them find books that they love as they get older.

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Pro Se Presents – the Eclectic Voice of New Pulp

Pro Se Presents – the Eclectic Voice of New Pulp

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psp15Pro Se Press is one of several New Pulp specialty small presses that have sprung up over the past few years to give voice to new writers. While Pro Se publishes pulp novels like their peers, they have largely set themselves apart in the field by also publishing a monthly print magazine, Pro Se Presents. Issue 15 was just published and presents five diverse examples of New Pulp from five very talented writers. The periodical is also published as an e-book each month and is affordably priced in keeping with traditional pulp titles of decades past – something most small presses are unable to otherwise do thanks to the economics of print on demand or small print runs.

208894_334665373281612_920378856_n1Sean Ali’s striking cover art and moody interior illustrations do an excellent job of capturing the unique feel of each tale. The magazine’s stellar editorial staff [Tommy Hancock, Lee Houston, Jr., Frank Schildiner, Barry Reese, and Don Thomas] has done an excellent job of capturing the mix of genres that were found under the pulp banner in the heyday of the 1920s and 1930s. From a modern standpoint, there is a bias to favor the superhero prototypes (such as Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Spider, etc.) or the more famous offshoots of the pulps, the hardboiled detective and the sword & sorcery barbarian hero. This tends to shortchange the many boxing stories, westerns, romances, and humorous tales that were also staples of the pulp world. Happily, Pro Se Presents restores this balance.

Issue 15 gets underway with David White’s “Doc Panic.” While the title may recall Doc Savage, White has crafted more than the simple knock-off it might suggest in this clever blend of pulp archetypes and Japanese martial arts. Phineas Montgomery is the man behind the mask. An heir to a fortune, Montgomery grew up scarred as a witness to his Satanist parents’ murderous rituals involving the human sacrifice of abducted children and derelicts. A Japanese servant stole young Montgomery away from his parents’ house of madness and smuggled him to Japan, where the boy was trained in the arts of Ninjitsu and Akido. Along the way, the young man also picked up an addiction to certain illegal powders that help him manage his pain. White has achieved an interesting balance between the masked vigilantes of the Golden Age and the Men’s Adventures paperback originals of the 1970s with their mix of martial arts and gritty urban crime. There is little doubt that this is only the first of many appearances for the character. White has stumbled upon a winning formula here that makes Doc Panic a character worthy of commanding the cover slot for his debut.

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Goth Chick News: Troll – Rise of Harry Potter

Goth Chick News: Troll – Rise of Harry Potter

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image0021Honestly, I don’t know where to start with this news.

Back in 1986, Sonny Bono, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Noah Hathaway (who played the lead character “Boxy” in the original TV version of Battlestar Galactica and “Atreyu” in The NeverEnding Story), got together in a cinematic train wreck called Troll. This film, such that it is, is not to be confused with Troll 2, called “the most beloved-best worst movie of all time,” which was released in 1990 and had zilch to do with the plot of its namesake.

In Troll, the sister of Hathaway’s character (played by ex Charlie’s Angel Shelly Hack) is possessed by an evil wizard in the form of a troll.

Hathaway’s character in Troll was “Harry Potter Jr.”

Since JK Rowling first published her famous book series about a boy wizard in 1997, I rather doubt she stole the character from John Carl Buechler’s wretched film (or even saw it for that matter). But the people behind Troll do have a claim on the name Harry Potter; and we are in the middle of a remake craze…

Can you guess where this is going…?

If you guessed a remake of Troll called Troll: Rise of Harry Potter, you’d win. You’d also likely win a lawsuit from Rowling and Warner Brothers Studio.

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