Over on his Drums of Nyumbani blog, Charles R. Saunders has posted an entry entitled, “In Memoriam: Frank Frazetta.” Mr. Saunders reminisces about his discovery of Frazetta’s work, depictions of blacks in Frank’s art and also speculates about what a Frazetta cover for an Imaro novel might have looked like. CRS does an admirable job covering the latter two topics, but I have few more factoids and opinions to add. Feel free to click the link above, read the post and click back here.

I was happy to see Saunders make mention of  Fritz’s Edgar Rice Burroughs covers for Ace in the early ’60s. Frank was still honing his painting chops at that point, but several pieces, especially some of the Tarzan covers, are bonafide classics in my book. I find it strange that nobody has tried to claim that Frazetta “made” ERB’s career as they have in regard to Robert E. Howard’s. I know I’ll never think of Tarzan at the Earth’s Core without Frank’s savage and dynamic cover painting springing to mind. J. Allen St. John, for all his unquestioned talent, never matched that particular painting.

CRS then looks at sub-Saharan Africans that feature in Frazetta’s art. He brings up Frank’s “Masai Warrior,” a piece I’ve loved since I first saw it about ten years ago. Saunders also mentions “Lion Hunt,” which, like “Masai Warrior,” was featured in the Frazetta art books published by Underwood a few years ago. Charles couldn’t find a scan and my scanner’s down, so take our word for it that the painting is off the chain.

Saunders cites “Swamp Demon” as an example of Frank depicting a black woman in his art. Fritz painted that for John Jakes’ Witch of the Dark Gate. Reportedly, Jakes’ publisher sent Frank the title, Frazetta did the painting and then Jakes wrote the rest of the book to match it. I’d do the same thing to get a Frazetta cover on my book.

One Frazetta painting that CRS seems unaware of is a piece that Frank did for a Mandingo-style novel published around 1970 called Black Emperor. The protagonist on the cover looks much like how I have always envisioned Saunders’ iconic hero, Imaro: massive, brooding and unmistakeably black (as opposed to the silly first cover for Imaro). The painting by Frazetta (see a cropped version below), despite being rendered for a sub-standard piece of hack-work, still retains that trademark Frazetta power. Frank Frazetta, like Robert E. Howard, always gave one hundred percent, no matter what the job was.

Only a short while after I did an overview of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land That Time Forgot for the anniversary of his death, it seems that the tale of Caspak–or at least, the first two parts–will be adapted into the comic medium. When dinosaurs are involved, you don’t have to twist my arm particularly vigorously, particularly if they’re based on a classic author’s interpretation.

There are some crossover ideas that just make sense.

Much like BOOM! Studios, Campfire is a relative unknown to me, but a trip over to their About page has piqued my interest considerably. Why? The Classics section. Adaptations of Verne, Wells, Conan Doyle, Stevenson, Haggard, London–I’m a complete sucker for this sort of thing. Burroughs has another adaptation in The Lost Continent (aka Beyond Thirty), and it would be very interesting to see how they interpret the high-concept story. There are also stories based on mythology, biographies, and original fiction, but the Classics library is by far the most expansive.

As is tradition, Campfire have split up The Land That Time Forgot, with the first section using the complete tale’s name. Having looked through the seven-page preview, it looks interesting. The comic put me a bit in mind of Herge: the atmosphere was a bit Tintin-esque at times. I was delighted to see Bowen’s loyal airedale terrier Crown Prince Nobbler has made his triumphant return, looking about as lovable as Snowy. Indeed, it’s only on seeing characters illustrated that the similarities to Tintin come to the fore. The first chapter, though heavily truncated, was mostly adhered to.

About the only disappointment to me is in the cover, which depicts a fairly typical post-Jurassic Park Tyrannosaurus. While I naturally appreciate up-to-date palaeontology in most dinosaur works, particularly those where they are in their natural environment–time travel stories being the most usual–I have to think there could be a bit of leeway for artistic license. In the case of The Land That Time Forgot, the Tyrannosaurus does not appear until the third part, “Out of Time’s Abyss,” though there is a case of grim foreshadowing in the first part. There, it has a very interesting description:

Bradley was in the lead when he came suddenly upon a grotesque creature of titanic proportions. Crouching among the trees, which here commenced to thin out slightly, Bradley saw what appeared to be an enormous dragon devouring the carcass of a mammoth. From frightful jaws to the tip of its long tail it was fully forty feet in length. Its body was covered with plates of thick skin which bore a striking resemblance to armor-plate. The creature saw Bradley almost at the same instant that he saw it and reared up on its enormous hind legs until its head towered a full twenty-five feet above the ground. From the cavernous jaws issued a hissing sound of a volume equal to the escaping steam from the safety-valves of half a dozen locomotives, and then the creature came for the man.

This monster is later called a Tyrannosaurus by Bradley, who saw a picture of its skeleton in a magazine. Obviously, Bradley isn’t a palaeontologist, so whether this creature truly is a Tyrannosaurus–or was intended to be one by Burroughs, who was clearly acutely aware of evolution’s capacity for change–is up to debate. There certainly is nothing in the palaeontological record that suggests it had anything resembling armour plating, nor can I find any references of such a suggestion among palaeontologists. Taking the Dinosaur Summer route, one could simply assume that this was an “evolution” of the Tyrannosaurus into an even more terrible form, akin to Dougal Dixon’s Ganeosaurus tardus.

In my opinion, a Tyrannosaurus with thick folds of skin like that of an Indian Rhinoceros, or even hard plates like an armadillo or pangolin, would be pretty unique and imposing. Hopefully when Campfire get round to “Out of Time’s Abyss,” they’ll go for an illustration of Burrough’s creation, rather than attempt to update There seems to be a tendency to do this in other stories where dinosaurs are involved in a modern world, even though the nature of evolution could easily rationalize the differences. Though there are instances of basic animal body-types persisting more or less unchanged for hundreds of millions of years–crocodiles, sharks, turtles, lizards–it seems a shame to me, to basically alter a story for scientific considerations.

A pox on the tyranny of scientific relevance, says I. Even so, Campfire’s second volume, The People That Time Forgot, seems to honour some of the obsolete scientific depictions: the “pterodactyls” are portrayed as bat-winged Pteranodons–toothed Pteranodons at that, which is rather funny being as their name means “winged & toothless”–and I can imagine other common mistakes might turn up.

Still, at only£6.99 for each, they might be worth a gander. Though I don’t buy everything with dinosaurs–more due to lack of funds than lack of desire, believe me–I’ll be getting them. Should you? If you’re a fan of Burroughs, comics, or classic adventure literature, checking them out can’t hurt.

After all, it has dinosaurs.

History is littered with examples of brands trying to reinvent themselves to appeal to a new generation, but for one of literature’s most successful franchises, all that’s required is a return to its roots – literally. Since he first swung onto the world stage in 1912 the bare-chested, savage yet principled character of Tarzan has struck a chord with generation after generation as he fights to protect the jungle, its resources and its inhabitants. Now, almost a hundred years later, a partnership between the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate and one of Britain’s hottest writers is set to bring Tarzan the Eco Warrior to the PlayStation generation, with a new series of Tarzan novels.

Above is the first paragraph of an article posted on Bill Thom’s Coming Attractions website last weekend. I assume it all originated as a press release from Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. The ERB estate would seem to have big plans in store for the iconic Lord of the Jungle.

“We’ve seen plenty of examples of literary brands being reinvented by new writers anxious to engage new young audiences, but it can be dangerous territory” said branding expert KD Adamson. “However, in the case of Tarzan there’s no search for a new angle: he’s been saving the planet for nearly a hundred years. On this occasion it’s a question of the audience catching up with Tarzan rather than the other way around.”

The power of a global brand isn’t an absolute guarantee of success and before committing to the new series, the first of which ‘Tarzan, The Greystoke Legacy’ is set to appear in 2011, the Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate looked carefully for an author who could match the vivid storytelling which originally brought Tarzan to life and inspired millions including environmentalist Jane Goodall.

Andy Briggs, whose credits include the highly successful ‘Hero.com and Villain.net’ book series, now in negotiation for an animated TV series, and a string of scriptwriting credits for the likes of Disney and Paramount Pictures has already been involved with iconic franchises such as Highlander and Judge Dredd. For him, the character of Tarzan and his beliefs are ripe for re-booting. Tarzan remains the iconic hero, the man raised by apes and protector of the wild but in the 21st century he is edgier and more feral.

Hmmm. Lots of interesting stuff therein. In regards to the “edgier and more feral” remark, I have to wonder if the writer of this piece is familiar with Burroughs’ original version of Tarzan, or just the screen iterations of the Ape-Man? ERB’s Tarzan preferred to eat raw meat, fresh and bleeding from kills he made himself. In The Beasts of Tarzan, the adopted son of Kala broke the neck of his son’s captor (much as Conan did that of Baal-Pteor, though decades earlier), despite the pleadings of his wife. In Tarzan the Untamed, Lord Greystoke attacks German soldiers with unbridled blood-lust and then devours a live vulture in a scene which presaged the one in “A Witch Shall be Born” by fifteen years. Exactly what does John Clayton have to do in order to be “edgier and more feral” these days?

“Tarzan has more perils to face now: warring rebels, poaching of endangered animals, illegal logging and the decline of the environment are all issues that resonate with younger audiences” explains Andy. “He combines untamed savagery and power with a deep morality and love for the environment which genuinely speaks to them, as does the perennial love story of Tarzan and Jane, although Jane now carries an iPod.”

The combination of strong writing, a global icon and the up-coming Tarzan centenary provide the perfect springboard for what looks likely to be a major series of books with an inevitable cross-over to film and merchandising. It is a combination which Julian Friedmann, agent to both Andy Briggs and Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. believes has all the right ingredients.

“Avatar was a huge movie but the story behind it was really about respecting and protecting indigenous species and communities at the expense of profit, and those are Tarzan’s brand values in a nutshell” said Julian Friedmann. “We will have the first chapters ready shortly and will be presenting them to publishers at the London Book Fair in a couple of week’s time.”

Ah. Apparently, the character of Tarzan is being updated all the way into the twenty-first century, complete with an iPod-toting wife. I’ll be interested to see how Andy Briggs (with whose work I am utterly unfamiliar) is going to transplant Tarzan’s origin story to the late twentieth century.

It is certainly true that present-day sub-Saharan Africa is at least as dangerous as it was in the first half of the 1900s. If “danger” equals “adventure,” then there is nowhere else on the planet more suited for modern-day escapades of Tarzan. Between military/political/religious conflicts, rampant poaching and widespread human trafficking, the Ape-Man should have his hands full.

Andy Briggs has a tough row to hoe (or tree to climb, in this instance). Heavy hitters like Fritz Leiber, Philip Jose Farmer and Joe R. Lansdale have all tried their hands at continuing the adventures of the Lord of the Jungle. In my opinion, none of them were more than moderately successful at capturing that elusive spark which fuels the best adventures of Tarzan.

If ERB, Inc. needs a cover artist for the new series of novels, I suggest Simon Bisley (see below). Biz knows “edgy” and “feral.”

Friend of The Cimmerian G.W. Thomas is publishing Masters of Adventure, a public domain anthology. It is fully illustrated by M. D. Jackson and the multi-talented Mr. Thomas himself.

The title isn’t exaggerated since the line-up is simply incredible, as you can see for yourselves in the table of contents. I think that ‘Grandmasters of Adventure’ would not have been a too strong a superlative.

“Ms. Found in a Bottle” by Edgar Allan Poe
“Smith and the Pharaohs” by H. Rider Haggard
“The Brazilian Cat” by A. Conan Doyle
“The Grove of Astaroth” by John Buchan
“Tarzan Rescues the Moon” by Edgar Rice Burroughs
“A Thousand Deaths” by Jack London
“A Tropical Horror” by William Hope Hodgson
“The Breath of Allah” by Sax Rohmer
“The People of the Pit” by A. Merritt
“Wings in the Night” by Robert E. Howard

This anthology was announced in November 2008 by Mr Thomas. It is a true pleasure to finally see its release.

The Robert E. Howard tale contained in the anthology is “Wings in the Night,” one of his Solomon Kane yarns  recounting the gory fight of the iron-willed Puritan from Devonshire against the horrible, bat-winged akaanas.

*The wraparound cover featured at the top of this blog entry is by M. D. Jackson, while the following illo for an A. Merrit’s story was done by G. W. Thomas.

While civil rights leaders are justifiably outraged that Gov. Robert F. McDonnell’s proclamation declaring April 2010 to be Confederate History Month in the state of Virginia fails to mention slavery, Martian science fiction fans are irked that the proclamation mentions famed General Robert E. Lee but does not mention legendary Captain Jack Carter of Virginia, a courageous Confederate cavalry officer who served the South in the War Between the States and who is better known as John Carter of Mars.

That’s the entry for April 7, 2010, which can be found at the web log, Marooned — Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror books on Mars. Helmed by the mononymous “Paul,” Marooned maintains an admirably Mars-centric focus as the blog post above amply demonstrates. Paul’s breadth of coverage and commentary is as vast as the dusty Martian sea-beds, ranging from suggestions that Rob Zombie should direct a remake of Mars Needs Women to news about the publication by Haffner of Edmond Hamilton’s The Magician of Mars. Of course, Leigh Brackett and ERB get regular shoutouts.

With all kinds of Martian-related fiction seeing print and the production of John Carter of Mars in high gear, Marooned is a much-needed clearing-house for newcomers (and old Martian hands) to check out cool updates on the Red Planet.

Oxford University Press will release Tarzan of the Apes on April 15, the first novel featuring John Clayton, Lord Greystoke written by Edgar Rice Burroughs. First published in the pulp All-Story Magazine in October 1912, ERB’s novel introduced a character who would become iconic, so popular that Burroughs would write more than two dozen sequels about “White-Skin.” Robert E. Howard had more books by Edgar Rice Burroughs in his bookshelf than by any other author. The Bard of Cross Plains thought that ERB was a “highly imaginative writer of fiction.”

The blurb:

A central figure in American popular culture, Tarzan first came swinging through the jungle in the pages of a pulp-fiction magazine in 1912, and subsequently appeared in the novel that went on to spawn numerous film, full-length cartoon, and theatrical adaptations. The infant Tarzan, lost on the coast of West Africa, is adopted by an ape-mother and grows up to become a model of physical strength and natural prowess, and eventually leader of his tribe. When he encounters a group of white Europeans, and rescues Jane Porter from a marauding ape, he finds love, and must choose between the values of civilization and the jungle. Jason Haslam’s engaging introduction situates the novel not only in the pulp fiction industry, but also against the backdrop of adventure stories, European exploration in Africa, and the debates over nature versus civilization. This edition also features an up-to-date bibliography, chronology, and helpful notes as well as appendices that include selections of letters from readers to the editor of The All-Story magazine where the novel first appeared, histories of feral children, African explorers, and American advocates of self-reliance.
Product Details
288 pages;
ISBN13: 978-0-19-954288-8
ISBN10: 0-19-954288-0
Price: $8.95
Jason Haslam is Associate Professor in the Department of English, Dalhousie University.

So Tarzan will be published by the largest university press in the world, in the prestigious Oxford World’s Classics series, along with the most eminent authors. Oxford University Press was already the first academic organization to bring recognition to Edgar Rice Burroughs as an author of ‘classic’ literature in 1962 when a study of A Princess of Mars was published for British school use, as one volume about a book from the sole American writer in a series including native authors like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson and Shakespeare.

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Other ERB-related news: the latest (#81) issue of the Burroughs Bulletin is entirely devoted to science-fiction and fantasy writer Philip José Farmer and on the numerous links between his works and ERB’s. It is illustrated in black & white with full color front and back covers and has been available since February.

Its table of contents:

“Philip José Farmer’s Tarzan Alive” by Win Scott Eckert
“Philip José Farmer’ and ERB: A Shared Mythology” by Christopher Paul Carey
“Philip José Farmer’s ERB-Related Work” by Henry G. Franke III
“Philip José Farmer’s Incarnations of Tarzan” by Henry G. Franke III
PICTURE GALLERY: Boris Vallejo‘s THE MAD KING
“Burroughs and Himself: A Study of THE MAD KING” by Arthur David Adams
“Some Thoughts on TARZAN AND THE LOST CITY” a poem by Kim L. Neideigh
“Joe R. Lansdale On TARZAN: THE LOST ADVENTURE” by Henry G. Franke III
Bibliographers Corner
Letters to the Editor

*Art by Boris Vallejo

—The best steel goes through the fire

Ronnie James Dio, Hide in the Rainbow

If you’re a fan of heavy metal music, you’re probably aware that legendary frontman Ronnie James Dio, aged sixty-seven, is in the midst of a grim battle against stomach cancer. On November 25, 2009, Dio’s wife broke the news and announced that he was starting immediate treatment at the Mayo Clinic. Her message: Dio was ready to fight back, tooth and nail, to achieve victory against this dreaded disease:

After he kills this dragon, Ronnie will be back on stage, where he belongs, doing what he loves best, performing for his fans. Long live rock and roll, long live Ronnie James Dio. Thanks to all the friends and fans from all over the world that have sent well wishes. This has really helped to keep his spirit up.

Fortunately for metal fans, it’s a battle Dio appears to be winning. The latest news according to Dio’s web site is that the man who made the sign of the horns a household symbol recently had his seventh chemotherapy treatment, and that the main tumor in his stomach has shrunk considerably. I hope it’s a fight he ultimately wins and that one day we’ll see him back on stage, belting out Holy Diver while wielding a two-handed sword.

At this point you may be thinking, that’s cool and all, but why write about Dio on a web site devoted to the works of Robert E. Howard, J.R.R. Tolkien, and other authors?

To which I would answer: Have you ever listened to Dio’s lyrics? They’re fantasy fiction set to music, man.

I have a confession to make: I’ve always preferred the Ronnie James Dio Black Sabbath years to Ozzy Osbourne. While I acknowledge the greatness of the Ozzy era, the Dio-fronted Heaven and Hell is my favorite Sabbath album. Does this make me a heavy metal heretic? Maybe. But I’ve always liked my metal mixed with fantasy, and Dio has carved out a brilliant career melding both elements together to create, well, magic. His first two albums with Black Sabbath—Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules—contain some of my favorite fantasy-inspired hits, including Children of the Sea, Sign of the Southern Cross, and Falling Off the Edge of the World. I’ve often said that I could pen a swords-and-sorcery novel or run an entire Dungeons and Dragons campaign, using Dio’s lyrics as my sole inspiration. His best songs make you feel like setting off on some epic quest or girding up for a great final battle a-la Camlann. For example, Neon Knights:

Circles and rings, dragons and kings
Weaving a charm and a spell
Blessed by the night, holy and bright
Called by the toll of the bell

…and The Last in Line:

We’re off to the witch
We may never never never come home
But the magic that we’ll feel
Is worth a lifetime

Dio’s lyrics are loaded with references to rainbows, witches, black magic, evil tomes, and wizards. Note that he didn’t just pull these elements out of mid-air; they are a direct result of his love of fantasy and medieval literature. For example, in an interview from 2005 with Rough Edge.com Dio admits to being a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter, and Walter Scott (of Ivanhoe fame). From that interview:

Ronnie James Dio: Well, it was always about reading for me. I was an only child. I like to read to a lot, so I used to read a lot of things like Walter Scott books, Edgar Rice Burroughs books, John Carter of Mars books …

RoughEdge.com: Cool.

Ronnie James Dio: A lot of science fiction books which are all very related Medievally. A lot of the stories are told within that aspect with those trappings, and so having used my imagination and putting myself in a world that we never could see …

Heavy metal musicians and their fans are often saddled with the stereotype of being strung out on drugs and alcohol and/or dopey and mindless slackers (I blame hair bands, for which this stereotype contains a kernel of truth). But Dio and some of metal’s greatest lead singers—Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson and Judas Priest’s Rob Halford—make this fallacious mischaracterization Open Up and Say …Ahh! before shoving a broadsword down its throat. If you listen to their lyrics, it’s obvious that these guys read widely, incorporating everything from fantasy fiction to military history into their music. I’m convinced that it’s given bands like Judas Priest and Sabbath and Iron Maiden staying power (i.e., their songs mean something more than just sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll, and are worth returning to again and again), in addition to lengthening their careers and allowing them to keep making relevant albums when other bands have settled for greatest hits tours ad nauseum.

On top of being a talented songwriter with an obvious love of fantasy, Dio not only talks the talk on stage, but walks the walk in his personal life. Here is a Youtube link to a video tour of his house conducted in the mid-80s, replete with armor and swords and medieval trappings. Check out his library around 1:30—awe-inspiring! (I wonder if whether there’s any Howard or Tolkien on those shelves). At 3:15 is his bar, of which I’m insanely jealous.

But it all comes back to Dio’s inimitable voice. I was fortunate enough to see him in concert on a couple of occasions, including once in a smallish theatre setting (the Worcester Palladium). There, watching him down close to the stage, I was absolutely blown away by the man’s vocal power. Not surprisingly, I have him ranked in my own personal top three heavy metal singers of all time.

Up until he was derailed by cancer Dio’s career was still going strong. He put out a very solid album with Black Sabbath last year, The Devil You Know, which contains at least one instant classic in Bible Black. While Dio’s voice doesn’t quite have its old range and power anymore, he’s still pretty damned amazing. And even if he’s lost a little off his fastball he sounds arguably more evil and “metal” than ever.

Let’s hope that he slays his cancerous dragon and then embarks on at least one more earth-shaking world tour. There may come another day in which Dio will take the stage like a veteran warrior, shaking off the rust and finding his stroke like Druss from David Gemmell’s Legend, showing the world that he remains brilliant, formidable, and awe-inspiring as hell.

DEUCE ADDS: I’ll admit to finding guilty pleasure in the works of RJD.  To me, one of the most Howardian tracks off the newest Heaven and Hell cd is “The Devil Cried.”  REH wrote more than one “interview/sup with the Devil” poem, and that song is in the same tradition.  The “punchline” at 4:35 is also Howardian, in my opinion.

"Swords of Mars" by Frank Frazetta

The Albin Polasek Museum and Sculpture Gardens in Winter Park, Florida is currently hosting “Maidens and Monsters: The Art of Science Fiction, Adventure, and Fantasy,” an exhibit of original illustrations from pulp magazines and book covers by some of the most renowned artists of the 20th century. Around fifty works by over twenty different illustrators are on display, including pieces by Frank Frazetta, N.C. Wyeth, John Allen St. John, Margaret Brundage, Hannes Bok, Virgil Finlay, Frank R. Paul, Alex Schomburg, Michael Whelan, Kelly Freas, and Roy Krenkel. All of the artwork in the exhibit is from the famous collection of Stephen D. Korshak, an Orlando-based attorney and the author of A Hannes Bok Treasury (1993), Grandmaster of Fantasy: The Paintings of John Allen St. John (2008), and From the Pen of Paul: The Fantastic Images of Frank R. Paul (2009).

Last weekend, I had the privilege of seeing the exhibit while I was in Orlando attending MegaCon and for a science fiction fan and pulp enthusiast like me it was an amazing experience. I was joined on the Saturday afternoon excursion by my wife and a few of my fellow REH fans and comic book and pulp collectors. The museum is located near downtown Winter Park, about twenty or thirty minutes north of Orlando, depending on traffic. The grounds are beautifully landscaped gardens accented by original sculpture and the staff was very friendly and enthusiastic about the exhibit.

The first room held several works by surrealist Hannes Bok, including the cover to the REH collection Skull-Face and Others published by Arkham House in 1945. This provided an immediate thrill to the group I was with as three of us own copies of Skull-Face and it was quite a treat to see the original painting for the dust jacket. Bok (whose real name was Wayne Woodard) was a regular artist for Weird Tales, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Planet Stories, and a number of other fantasy and science fiction pulps and digests throughout the 1940’s and 50’s.

Altar of Melek Taos

The next works to catch our eye were two large pastel renderings by Margaret Brundage. I have to say that while there were bigger names on display in this exhibit no other pieces transfixed this viewer like Brundage’s “Altar of Melek Taos,” from the cover of the September 1932 issue of Weird Tales. Breathtaking is the best word I can use to describe it. Just being able to see one of her rare works (much less two) is a privilege in and of itself, as very few of her originals survive. She worked in pastels in the days before fixative spray was available and many of her works were smudged, wiped away, or obliterated over time. In fact the “Altar of Melek Taos” was not in pristine condition, and suffered from a vertical tear at the bottom. One of the most interesting things I noted about the originals is that both “Altar” and the other Brundage on display, “The Witch’s Mark” from the January 1938 issue of Weird Tales, were both nudes, with the female subjects depicted topless. This is not the case on the final published covers, so somewhere in the production process a bit of flimsy drapery was added here and there to discretely cover the female subject’s nipples. I can not help but wonder now about some of her other provocative covers, including those illustrating Conan stories, and whether they survive and if their originals were also subject to such editorial sensibilities.

The Brundages were followed by several works by Frank R. Paul including a cover painting from Wonder Stories. Paul is a legendary pulp artist and one of the pioneers of science fiction illustration. He began his career working for Hugo Gernsback’s magazines and his run of covers on the first several years of Amazing Stories was hugely influential.

The next room contained a work that I had highly anticipated — an original Frazetta painting. I was never able to make the pilgrimage to the Frazetta museum and now that that ship seems to have sailed, I had to take advantage of this opportunity to see one of his works. The painting on display is “Swords of Mars,” which adorned the Science Fiction Book Club Edition of Swords of Mars and the Synthetic Men of Mars (1974). I have always been more of a John Carter guy than a Tarzan guy, so I was very excited to see one of Fritz’s Barsoom covers. In the casual atmosphere of the Polasek Museum I was able to study it up close with my face inches from the canvas, admiring every brushstroke. The man is truly a master.

"The Eternal Lover" by John Allen St. John

Burroughs’ sword-and-planet swashbuckler is well represented at this exhibit. Just to right of the Frazetta is Michael Whelan’s painting for the cover of Mastermind of Mars. The Mars paperbacks from the 1980′s with the Whelan covers are the ones I had as a teenager so this was a pleasant surprise. I also learned from one of the staff that Whelan himself will be at the museum on the last Saturday of the exhibit (April 17).

Continuing on, we saw a Tarzan pen-and-ink by Roy Krenkel, and works by Kelly Freas and Virgil Finlay. My wife was quite taken by Finlay’s black and white illustrations and actually purchased a few postcards of his work at the gift shop. Next was a series of science fiction paperback covers from the 50’s and 60’s by a number of different artists, including Alex Schomburg, who is best known for his Golden Age comic book covers.

The last room had several paintings from two of the greatest book illustrators of the early twentieth century. First were several works by John Allen St. John including the gorgeous painting for the dust jacket of Burroughs’ The Eternal Lover (1925). Another painting on display by St. John is one of my favorite depictions of John Carter of Mars, the cover of the March 1941 issue of Amazing Stories illustrating “The City of Mummies.” Finally the exhibit concluded with a painting by the patriarch of America’s First Family of artists, N.C. Wyeth. Wyeth is best known for his illustrated children’s books like Treasure Island and The Adventures of Robin Hood, but he also did some work for the early pulps. The piece exhibited here was from the February 1914 issue of New Story magazine, illustrating The Story of Allan Quartermain by H. Rider Haggard.

The exhibit was the highlight of my MegaCon weekend and it was a real pleasure to see so many original works by some of my favorite artists all in one small, intimate venue. The exhibit will be open for another month, until April 18. If you are in the Orlando area and are a fan of the pulps or fantasy and science fiction art, then you owe it to yourself to check out “Maidens and Monsters.” You will not regret it.

Those TC readers who have bothered to check the links I’ve posted in my ERB-related entries probably already suspect that I hold Bill Hillman’s ERBzine website in high regard. Such suspicions would not be unfounded. Mr. Hillman hath builded a mighty temple to the Lord of Tarzana that hangs amidst the æther in erudite splendor. 

This last January, Bill presented to his readership a most excellent symposium betwixt two major Edgar Rice Burroughs fans: Richard Lupoff and Michael Chabon. Mr. Lupoff, a long-time Friend of The Cimmerian, authored the first serious look at ERB and his works, Master of Adventure, as well as editing ERB volumes for Canaveral Press. Michael Chabon (a past recipient of the Pulitzer Prize) is on record as being a fan of of Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber. In his ERBzine interview (conducted by Lupoff), Chabon reveals his life-long love for the fiction of Burroughs.

Chabon starts off the interview by telling Lupoff about when he first moved to LA in the mid-’90s and tried to get his screenplay, The Martian Agent, filmed. Turns out that one of the many auctorial hats Chabon wears is that of “steampunk author.” The basic premise of the screenplay was that the British Empire managed (through precocious technology) to reach the Red Planet in the 1890s.

The project was optioned by Fox and FX spec work was done by ILM, but the whole affair was stillborn when the annointed director, Jan de Bont, fell from grace. However, in a happenstance worthy of a Burroughs novel, Chabon met one of the former ILM guys who’d worked on the project at a Christmas party in 2008. By way of that chance encounter, Chabon was put in touch with Andrew Stanton, the director for the Disney production of John Carter of Mars. Faster than a Barsoomian panthan could shout, “Kaor!”, Chabon was doing the rewrite on Stanton’s and Mark Andrews’ script for the John Carter project.

According to Chabon, the script was already in “good shape” when he got to it. When asked by Lupoff as to whether the script would be closely based on ERB’s first novel, MC explained it this way:

I guess I’d say if all goes as planned, the first three films — were there to be three films — would more or less cover the same ground as the first three novels in terms of where we would end up, and what would be known to be true.

But the books — they’re serialized novels, from a pulp magazine in 1912 and 1915 or whenever. They weren’t really written with a two-hour, 21st-century major studio motion picture in mind.  There are changes that have to be made. There’s not a precise one to one correspondence, as with the Harry Potters — it’s not like that. Nor is it a complete departure, not by any means. The idea was to gather up the important threads of story from all of the first three novels and weave them into a coherent, three part whole, yet with each part standing on its own. As if ERB had conceived the first three books as a trilogy, which he did not, since even with his wild imagination he had no reason to believe, as he was writing the first John Carter novel, that there would ever be a second.

Dick Lupoff then goes on to note that, after a recent rereading of A Princess of Mars, he didn’t find it that good of a novel. Chabon basically concurs. I, myself, concur to a certain extent. As a novel, “APoM” has many faults. However, it should be kept in mind that (other than the only-recently published Minidoka) A Princess of Mars was the first work of fiction that ERB ever put to paper. As a boy, Burroughs was actively discouraged from any activity that smacked of imagination by his domineering father. In fact, an argument could be made that Robert E. Howard was proffered more encouragement in his formative years than ERB ever was. So (as Chabon notes), Burroughs poured out all of that stifled creativity into his first novel. Some elements, like Barsoomian telepathy and ”radium guns” with ranges over fifty miles, were quietly dropped (on the whole) by ERB when he returned to Barsoom in Gods of Mars and later novels. In my personal opinion, a truly great editor could have sent back the manuscript and requested Burroughs change or tighten up the elements that bother people like Lupoff, Chabon and myself here in the twenty-first century.

Newell Metcalf, the editor for All-Story Magazine, wasn’t up to such a task, but he apparently requested some changes (several of which were rescinded for book publication). Still, Metcalf deserves a place at the Table of Editors in literary Valhalla for recognizing that he had a storytelling genius on his hands. For all his faults, ERB could spin a yarn. Just as importantly, Burroughs was possessed of an imagination of almost unprecedented fertility. With the merest of terrestrial inspirations, the Man From Tarzana could extrapolate worlds nearly undreamt of by previous authors and set therein tales which still stir the imaginations and pluck the heart-strings of the less-earthbound among us today.

For those following along at home, we have now reached the point in the Lupoff-Chabon interview that I hold in slightest regard. Firstly, Lupoff cocks off something about Barsoomian ”ray guns,” artifacts which never existed on ERB’s Mars. Apparently emboldened by Mr. Lupoff’s blunder, Chabon goes on to say that ERB’s Tharks were inspired by Afghani tribesmen from the works of Kipling. Lupoff then volleys back that faux pas by implying that the British Empire never ever defeated the Afghans.

In all fairness, Chabon correctly calls Barsoomian firearms “radium rifles” (essentially, guns firing explosive-tip shells, according to ERB) in his response to Lupoff. However, MC then goes on to compound Lupoff’s technological error by making a major ethnological one of his own. “Afghani tribesmen”? Really? Exactly where is this stated by Edgar Rice Burroughs? In my humble opinion, when one speculates on the sources for freshly-wrought peoples/species in the works of an author of imaginative fiction, it is always best to look closest to home first. At the very least, examine what peoples/species profoundly interested said author.

To the best of my knowledge, ERB never once mentioned Afghan tribesmen in his fiction nor in his correspondence. On the other hand, he chased Geronimo’s Apaches with the 7th Cavalry in the late 1890s. In case either esteemed author forgot, I’ll remind them that A Princess of Mars begins with a hostile encounter involving Apaches. Burroughs’ Tharks are a caricature of Apache culture as Edgar Rice Burroughs saw it at the dawn of the twentieth century (he later made amends in Apache Devil and The War Chief). Such is my opinion and I stand by it.

Then Lupoff opines that the British “got whipped” by the Aghans. This comment is presented without modifiers. Lupoff and Chabon seem to think that the First Anglo-Afghan War ended in January of 1842 with the massacre at Gandamak, the casualties of which were overwhelmingly civilians (and the result of a broken treaty on the part of the Afghans). They appear to forget (or simply not know) that the army of the British East India Company returned and accomplished nearly all of its objectives by the end of 1842.

Chabon mentions “gatling guns” (which the British never used in Afghanistan to the best of my knowledge). Chabon couldn’t be referring to the Second Anglo-Afghan War because the British Army didn’t begin employing the similar “Maxim gun” until 1885. Once again, in the end, the British did not get “their asses handed to them” (as Chabon states).

Lupoff and Chabon both seem to off-handedly imply that the goal of the British East India Company (and later, the British Empire) during the nineteenth century was to annex Afghanistan (as opposed to neutralizing it as a threat and preventing Russia from taking it over). I’d like to see them back up that implication with anything concrete. I wouldn’t be disputing their comments so vigorously except for the fact that… 

A little later in the interview, the two authors return to the subject of “imperialism” in a big way. Mr. Lupoff  starts it off by noting that Wells’ War of the Worlds was really about the British Empire in India (news to me). Chabon’s reply is this:

Adventure fiction as we most commonly understand it is about imperialism in one degree or another. All the great archetypes, the prototypes from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan and John Carter, H. R. Haggard, and all the way up to, even the western novel, The Virginian, all the way through to James Bond — they’re all about empire — the interaction between empires and colonies as they are colonized.

My jaw dropped whan I read that. I guess all ”modern adventure fiction” should be shoved into a box (made of some imported, colonial wood, I assume) stenciled with the one, chilling word: “Imperialism.” Tarzan was born and grew up amongst hominids in an area of Africa not controlled by the homeland of his parents (ie, the British Empire). He frequently pointed out the foibles of his (genetic) countrymen and seemed to prefer his native surroundings (and the peoples thereof). John Carter wasn’t born on Barsoom, but he essentially “went native” (and sided against the “white” Therns). David Innes frequently scoffed at the attempts of Abner Perry to import concepts from the “Outer World” to Pellucidar.

All of the fiction that Chabon refers to was written by authors in a Western cultural milieu during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One facet of that milieu was “imperialism” (however one might like to define it). Chabon seems to ignore the fact that those writers were also working in a tradition stretching back to Homer. Was Odysseus (in The Odyssey) an “imperialist”? Was Cuchullain?  How about Grettir the Strong?  Is every wandering protagonist in the Western cultural tradition an “imperialist”? Is anyone (of European background) who strides beyond the fields he or she knows to find adventure and face adversity a secret agent of “imperialism”? Does this rubric not also apply to adventurers in, say, Muslim or Chinese literature? Just some wonderings by this humble blogger.

Back on more amenable ground…  Mssrs. Chabon and Lupoff also discuss Edgar Rice Burroughs’ inveterate use of subtle (and, sometimes, not so subtle) satire in his fiction. Lupoff noted this facet of Burroughs in Master of Adventure (which book I recommend). Twenty years before I read that illuminating and ground-breaking text, while still a grade-schooler, it was obvious to me that ERB was using the freedom provided by the genre of imaginative fiction to comment upon the human condition and the foibles thereof.  Monoliterate aficionados of “mainstream” or “realistic” fiction just do not seem able to wrap their brains around the idea that “weird” or “speculative” fiction allows authors to isolate and exaggerate certain concepts and thereby examine them more clearly. Why didn’t Swift simply send Gulliver wandering around Britain or Ireland? Why did Lewis Carroll dispatch Alice through the Looking Glass? I would think the answer is obvious. 

Please, gentle readers, do not be put off by my quibblings and forego reading the interview. I may have disagreements with parts of it, but, on the whole, it is well worth your while. As Mr. Lupoff announces at the end of it all: “Anyway… I’m so happy we’ve done this.” Today, sixty years after ERB’s passing, we’re all just brothers in the fraternity he created.

HERE LIES JOHN TIPPET ENGLISHMAN KILLED BY TYRANNOSAURUS

10 SEPT., A.D. 1916

R. I. P.

–The reader discovers the fate of Tippet in The Land That Time Forgot, and quite possibly the greatest epitaph I’ve ever read.

When I was nine months old, I discovered dinosaurs. So my mother tells me, at least: it all started that fateful day Mam got me an illustrated book of prehistoric life. She recited the names to me as I sat transfixed, wide-eyed and mouth agape, at these incredible creatures. While I think every boy goes through a period of going dinosaur-crazy–and, no doubt, many a girl too–my obsession went a bit beyond the average. I could pronounce the taxonomy of dinosaurs before I could read their names. I recalled the various time periods species lived in before I could do simple maths. Yup, I was a precocious little scamp at the best of times.

It was natural, then, that I would want to read more about dinosaurs beyond the old textbooks and picturebooks: what about fiction? Too young to read, I started off with the classic dinosaur films: King Kong, 1 Million B.C., The Valley of Gwangi, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, the Rite of Spring sequence in Fantasia, to more modern examples like The Land Before Time, as well as the fairly decent 1970s adaptation of The Land That Time Forgot. Even films with only a tenuous link to dinosaurs like One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing were part of my diet.

However, as soon as I could read at a sufficient level to tackle real books, I was introduced to a vast range of dinosaur fiction. My first dinosaur book was Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (or, more properly, a children’s version which was actually rather faithful), and between the iconic Professor Challenger and the setting of Maple White Land, I knew this was what I want to read. Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote another great story of man meeting denizens of a younger earth: what better day than today, the 60th anniversary of his death, to discuss The Land That Time Forgot?

I shall never forget one enormous specimen which we came upon browsing upon water-reeds at the edge of the great sea. It stood well over twelve feet high at the rump, its highest point, and with its enormously long tail and neck it was somewhere between seventy-five and a hundred feet in length. Its head was ridiculously small; its body was unarmored, but its great bulk gave it a most formidable appearance. My experience of Caspakian life led me to believe that the gigantic creature would but have to see us to attack us, and so I raised my rifle and at the same time drew away toward some brush which offered concealment; but Ajor only laughed, and picking up a stick, ran toward the great thing, shouting. The little head was raised high upon the long neck as the animal stupidly looked here and there in search of the author of the disturbance. At last its eyes discovered tiny little Ajor, and then she hurled the stick at the diminutive head. With a cry that sounded not unlike the bleat of a sheep, the colossal creature shuffled into the water and was soon submerged.

As I slowly recalled my collegiate studies and paleontological readings in Bowen’s textbooks, I realized that I had looked upon nothing less than a diplodocus of the Upper Jurassic; but how infinitely different was the true, live thing from the crude restorations of Hatcher and Holland! I had had the idea that the diplodocus was a land-animal, but evidently it is partially amphibious. I have seen several since my first encounter, and in each case the creature took to the sea for concealment as soon as it was disturbed. With the exception of its gigantic tail, it has no weapon of defense; but with this appendage it can lash so terrific a blow as to lay low even a giant cave-bear, stunned and broken. It is a stupid, simple, gentle beast—one of the few within Caspak which such a description might even remotely fit.

–Tom Billing’s description of my favourite dinosaur in The People that Time Forgot

Since Richard Owen coined the term in 1842, dinosaurs have captured the imagination of the world. It isn’t hard to see why: here were real animals that could rival dragons, sea serpents, wyverns, drakes, wyrms, tarasques, hydras, and so many fantastical beasts of myth and folklore in size, ferocity, strangeness, grandeur and magnificence. Dinosaurs were thus natural fits for science fiction and adventure fiction: all the awesome spectacle of legendary beasts, but being creatures that actually existed lent a degree of verisimilitude. This was perfect for the Lost World genre, exemplified by H. Rider Haggard, and followed by Conan Doyle, Kipling, Burroughs, Merritt and many more.

First, a summary. The Land that Time Forgot was originally printed in three parts in Blue Book Magazine in 1918, before being combined into a single novel published in 1924. Much like predecessor The Lost World, The Land That Time Forgot centers around a time-lost island where anachronistic flora and fauna are inexplicably present in modern times. However, Burroughs’ adventure differs from Conan Doyle’s in a few key ways.

The most intriguing of the differences is in the ecology of Caspak. In most Lost Worlds, creatures from across time and space happen to end up in the same place, frozen in time for 65 million years or more. Animals not known to the South American fossil record–Allosaurus, Stegosaurus, Megaloceros–make anomalous appearances in The Lost World, at least insomuch that a lost world can have anomalous fauna. The Lost World’s fauna also picks creatures from many points in prehistory, from the Pleistocene to the Late Jurassic–a separation of 150 million years. Rather like Howard’s Hyborian Age on a geological instead of historical scale.

Caspak, however, not only acknowledges this seeming incongruity, but it is an integral part of the narrative. Evolution on Caspak is very strange in comparison to the rest of the world: rather than evolving over the course of millennia, an individual being could cross species within a single lifetime. Combined with the dislocation of a lush, verdant jungle land somewhere in the region of Antarctica, which is surrounded on almost all sides by sheer cliffs and ice, the mystery of Caspak is deep indeed, and one never truly explained within the narrative.  All the better, in my opinion: sometimes, leaving things unexplained is for the better.

Unfortunately, there are some less fortunate elements Caspak shares with Maple White Land: the descriptions of its inhabitants are sorely out of step with modern scientific understanding. The evolution of man’s interpretation of fossil evidence is fascinating in itself, and the cutting edge of 1910s palaeontology might as well be describing different animals altogether.

Take the humble Iguanodon. In the original conception of the beast, Gideon Mantell had only a few scraps to work from: teeth, claws, a mess of jumbled bones. Because of the similarity of the Iguanodon’s teeth to its modern cousin, his first sketch resembled a giant-sized version of the lizard. Even within Mantell’s lifetime, the appearance of Iguanodon evolved: the heavy-set, rhinoceros-like beast immortalized by the Crystal Palace models was believed to have more slender limbs. However, when articulated skeletons were discovered in Benissart, Germany, everything was thrown into disarray: the “horn” was revealed to be a thumb claw, its forelimbs were smaller than its hind limbs, and it was believed to be a biped. Even now, evidence and theory has changed, bringing it back to a quadrupedal creature, raising its tail off the ground.

The Land That Time Forgot was written long before modern perceptions of dinosaurs became much as they are now: warm-blooded, active, bird-like creatures, as opposed to cold-blooded, sluggish, reptilian ones. Even so, Burrough’s imagination added even more variety to the creatures that weren’t even supported by palaeontology of the period. His Allosaurus had a peculiar form of locomotion akin to a gigantic kangaroo, using its strong tail to lope through the trees. The Caspak Tyrannosaurus appeared to be armour-plated–I’d like to see Kong try his luck against that monster. Even the semi-aquatic Diplodocus, which managed to be a bit closer to the scientific conception of the time, seemed rather more skittish than one would expect a twenty ton elephantine creature to be, though that just adds to the charm.

Nonetheless, one of the great cheats of the genre can use the concept of evolution to explain such things. Who’s to say that after 65 million years, dinosaurs have sufficiently changed on Caspak into these bizarre lifeforms? Greg Bear’s Dinosaur Summer uses such a conceit, as well as The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island. I don’t see why the same can’t be said for Caspak. The other cop-out is to say it’s all fantasy anyway, so what does it matter?

Well, being a dinosaur fanatic, I’m going to notice these things. Just as a historically minded person would be hard-pushed to make it through Braveheart, so I ran the risk of disenchantment. However, a lot can be forgiven with powerful prose. Burroughs’ narrative power was sufficient to get me to acknowledge and rationalize the various scientific inaccuracies, as I saw them. It was certainly less of a problem than seeing hominids and dinosaurs sharing an ancient world in 1 Million B.C..

I’d already promised to do more posts on Almuric this year, but now that I think of it, I might do the same for The Land That Time Forgot, though not to the same degree. This is a Robert E. Howard and J.R.R. Tolkien blog first and foremost, but Burroughs was an undoubted influence on Howard, and fantastic fiction as a whole. I’ve only scratched the surface of the elements I could talk about: the politics between the American and Germans, Caspak evolution and geology, the anthropology of Caspak hominid tribes, the Weiroo, the allusions to other works by Burroughs and other authors. There’s lots to discover in the land that time forgot.