Episode 50.1 transcription - Edgar Rice Burroughs - "A Princess of Mars" (1912)

(listen to episode on Spotify)

(music: Chrononauts main theme)

introductions, non-podcast reads

Nate:

Good evening and welcome to Chrononauts, a science fiction literature history podcast. I'm Nate and I'm joined by my co-host JM and Gretchen. How are you guys doing tonight?

Gretchen:

I've been doing well.

JM:

Enjoying that it's been cooler here. Yeah, working and reading and exercising and doing all that good stuff and try to keep busy. So yeah.

Gretchen:

It still is pretty hot around here. It has started to feel a little bit more like fall. So hopefully we'll be getting things a little cooler here in the coming weeks or so.

Nate:

Yeah, it's definitely fall here, but I don't spend a nice break from some of the 100 degree days, which I certainly don't mind.

But yeah, before we get into tonight's discussion on some very interesting planetary romance, sword and planet stories, you can find us on all major podcast platforms, Spotify, Apple. We also post our episode to YouTube. And you can check out our blog spot at chrononautspodcast.blogspot.com where we post text translations and transcriptions of our episodes. And in particular, there's a few new translations up on the blogspot by the time you'll be listening to this. In particular, the story, "Humanity the Parasite" by Juan Bustillo Oro is just awesome.

JM:

Cool.

Nate:

And we're definitely going to be talking about that one a little bit down the road, but read it before we get there so you can know what we're talking about.

You can follow us on Twitter @chrononautsf and on Facebook at Facebook/chrononautspodcast or email us at chrononautspodcast@gmail.com.

So before we get into the books that we read tonight for the podcast, what have you guys been reading outside of the podcast?

JM:

Well, I've been reading a fair bit. I've got some new toys to read with. So it's been, I've actually been able to read while out and about, which is not something that I was able to do for a long time. So I don't have to be at home all the time to read. And so it's been nice. And so I've read a few books.

I read "Piranesi" by Susanna Clarke, which is a modern fantasy book. I believe it was published in 2012 or 13 or thereabouts, maybe. I'm probably getting that wrong, but somewhere in that vicinity, maybe a little later. It's basically inspired, I think, a lot by, well, there's actually a quote in the epigraph at the beginning that pretty much gives it away, but it's kind of inspired by the chronologically first Narnia book by C.S. Lewis. Well, I would not say that this is a children's book. It's kind of told in an interesting way by an amnesiac person who's living in this labyrinthine structure full of mysterious statues and basically halls that are inundated by the sea. And he lives with one other person there and he thinks that they're only two humans alive, basically. It's kind of a mystery unfolding as to how he got there and what were the circumstances that led to that and why he keeps losing his memory and stuff like that.

And I don't know, it's an interesting mystery, very well told. I thought the ending was very emotional. I don't know, I felt like I was kind of one step ahead of the protagonist most of the time, but I think that's mostly because I've read a fair amount of this kind of fiction before, so I kind of felt like I knew where it was going. And I wasn't too far off, but I found it very satisfying and it's a quick read, so much shorter than her other novel, "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell", which is quite a voluminous tome that I haven't read yet.

But I've also been in a classic crime kind of mood lately, so I've actually been reading a bunch of that stuff. I read "The Asphalt Jungle" by W.R. Burnett, which was made into a pretty famous movie in 1950, starring Stuart Hayden and a very early role for Marilyn Monroe. And the book was really good, definitely a little bit nasty as some of these old crime novels tend to be, but also very sympathetic portrayal of all the crook types to the point where I really didn't want any of them to get cut or killed. Even the crooked lawyer character was kind of sympathetic in the end, I thought, and yeah, it's definitely a noirish kind of tragedy.

And I also read "Jack's Return Home", which is written by Ted Lewis, and it's the basis for the film "Get Carter", which is a really, really good British gangster film starring Michael Cain. And the book was really brutal, just fascinating, I guess, depiction of a very, very unlikable character on a quest that you think would be pretty noble in anybody else's hands, basically trying to track down and eliminate the people responsible for killing his innocent brother. But there's no light in this story. It's pretty much every time he talks to somebody, you're kind of getting ready for that person to get killed brutally or something really bad to happen to them, and the guy fights really dirty. And the style was really witty, though, and fun. It's very, very English. It starts with the shortest, most memorable opening paragraph I've read in a long time. The paragraph is simply, "the rain rained". Doesn't get any more English than that. It's very, like, very seedy, North England late 60s time period, kind of like everything is very drab, and nobody is really depicted in a likable way. So the book kind of made me feel a little misanthropic, but I liked it overall. 

Because there's a scene in the movie where he's actually reading this book,  I decided to follow that up with "Farewell My Lovely" by Raymond Chandler, which is one of the Philip Marlowe books that I haven't read yet. And it's been many years, so I totally forgotten how much I enjoyed Philip Marlowe's deadpan witticisms that are pretty much in every line of dialogue that he delivers and even his internal monologues. It's really, really funny at times. The plot in a Chandler book isn't, I don't know, sometimes it doesn't seem that important. It's just sort of, you get too wrapped up in the mystery. I think you kind of miss the thought of the book, which is more of the style and the depiction of setting as character almost. And yeah, the book is a little uncomfortable at times with some pretty heavy racial stuff, and it's definitely of its time. Some of the language used is definitely not something that anybody would be able to get away with today. I don't think the author means it maliciously, and there's definitely some social commentary there, especially on how the murder of black people in 1940s Los Angeles was not taken very seriously and hardly made it into the newspapers. He's definitely on point with that, but Philip Marlowe himself is not a very, he's kind of an abrasive character. So I guess there's a caveat if people want to read some of these, especially some of these earlier American crime classics. I wouldn't say this is extraordinarily sexist like Mickey Spillane or anything like that, though it's much better written than that. The characters are actually really well done, so it's a classic for a reason, but definitely feels like a relic of the past of the United States, I guess, in a way, just the way that certain things are depicted. And it's a bit of an adjustment at first, but really, really cool book, all the same, and you never really know where it's going. So yeah, it's surprisingly a laugh out loud, funny at times, so really good time with it.

Gretchen:

One thing I will say about working at a library that's really cool is you kind of are able to take out whatever books you want on the job, which is a pro and a con because I do have several books out that I still need to read. But one of the ones that I did read is a relatively recent, I can't remember if it's 2024, it might even be from last year, a book called the "Stardust Grail" by Yume Kitasei. And it is a science fiction novel about an information science student, like an Academy, who is a former thief that then uses her, her knowledge to get her through university, and kind of her going on like one last heist. And it was a really fun read, just kind of a very neat little adventure story that I really liked and kind of felt a bit fitting to the topic we're discussing today, which is a lot to do with adventure stories. So pretty fun read. 

I also got to read "The Stone Door" by Leonora Carrington, which I just finished, which is now the fourth book I've read by Carrington. I have read her "Down Below", which is like her autobiography. I've read "The Hearing Trumpet" and her collection of short stories. So this was the fourth one. I will say it is perhaps my least favorite of the four. It is a longer work than her short stories but has the same feel of them, a little more esoteric in that vein where I feel like "The Hearing Trumpet", while still being very surreal and having a classic Carrington flair. I feel like "Stone Door" is a little bit less grounded, which I did like, but I still think I prefer "Hearing Trumpet" to her longer works that I've read. And I also went to recently one of my favorite bookstores in Albany, which is Dove & Hudson, for a reading of several translated works, including the novel "Rosa Mystica", which is a Tanzanian work. And the translator was there, like I think it was just published either last year or this year, and I got to hear him present a couple of excerpts. So I think that might be my next read. I haven't started yet, but really looking forward to that.

Nate:

Yeah, that sounds really cool.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

Yeah.

Gretchen:

It's really interesting to find out that it's in Tanzania, one of the major like high school assigned books. And I always think that's interesting to hear like what those types of books are around the world outside of the US.

Nate:

Yeah, interesting. 

JM:

Yeah, the first book that you mentioned, I've heard of that one. I saw that on a list somewhere. Yeah, I can't remember in what context it is. I know I was looking at one of those lists on Goodreads, I think, and it came up. That sounds like, oh, okay, that sounds interesting. 

Gretchen:

Yeah, definitely some interesting reads recently.

Nate:

Cool. Yeah, I've read some decent stuff myself. I finished up with Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Talents" and I really, really liked the Earthseed books. I did kind of wish that we would see more of a spiritual progression of Lauren. She just kind of gives us the theology at the very beginning of Parable of the Sower and that's kind of the mantra throughout the whole series is "God is change". And you don't really see her progress that much spiritually, but like a lot of stuff happens to her and see her reactions and how she survives through these traumatic events. Due to the religious angles that it takes in both the imagery and the title and all that. I kind of thought there would be more of that stuff there, but yeah, regardless, I really liked how it portrayed her as a character and the, I guess, future world. A lot of people have commented that there are elements of "Parable of the Talents" that are very close to the modern day.

Gretchen:

It is this year, isn't it 2025 that it takes place.

Nate:

It takes place over the span between like 2024 and in the 30s 2025 is kind of early in it so I think when the political stuff gets going it's in like the early 2030s or something like that. But yeah, yeah, it's really not too far off from the overtones of the political movements that really only come out in the second book. And after that I concluded this arc of Feminist utopias by reading "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood and yeah, I really, really liked this one. I wasn't really sure what to expect going in so that I never saw the TV series, but I really liked her writing style. I liked how quirky and weird and funny it got in places, which I wasn't kind of expecting, but yeah, definitely enjoyable despite the kind of bleak subject matter. And I remember we were debating whether or not we wanted to cover this or "Children of Men" for the Fertility episode. And I think we made the right choice covering "Children of Men" because it's a bit more sci-fi than this though I think that this is the better novel of the two.

JM:

Yeah, probably.

Gretchen:

Yes. Because I would say I have also read "Handmaid's Tale" once on my own and also I read it for an English class in high school. And I do prefer it to "Children of Men", but I feel like it is one that is incredibly popular in that topic. So I think that covering "Children of Men", which is a little less known and perhaps not one as discussed, I think, was a good move.

Nate:

Yeah, definitely. And it's more of our vibe anyway with what we were going with that episode, but yeah, I really like this one for sure.

Then I started to read something totally different, something that we talked about on the very early days of the podcast and episode one. And that is the "Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night". The complete Richard Burton translation, which I have in a three volume set with the Valenti Angelo illustrations. I've seen this edition a whole bunch around like thrift stores and flea markets and things like that. So it's a pretty common, but it's a really good addition. Like the illustrations are great. The notes are incredibly, incredibly thorough.

JM:

That's cool.

Nate:

I don't think I'm going to read it all in one go because it's absolutely enormous. So I'm going to be interleaving this with other books about every 10% or so. So I got around to like Night 35, which is a convenient break spot.

JM:

Yeah, you should take a thousand and one nights to read it.

Nate:

I think it'll be go a little quicker than that. But yeah, it'll take a while.

So in my interleaving, I guess, of sections of the "Thousand Nights and a Night", I started Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World". And I've been really enjoying that so far.

JM:

That's cool. Yeah, that's one, right, I don't know. I mean, it kind of fits in with the first book that we're doing tonight, I guess, in a way. I mean, it's published, I think, the same year.

Nate:

Yeah, it is.

JM:

Yeah. I guess there's some similarities to ERB. Of course, Conan Doyle's different. We'll get to our thoughts about ERB in a short little while.

Nate:

Yeah, I think Sir Arthur is a much better writer than Edgar. But yeah, definitely a lot of the same yellow flags come up in the Doyle kind of early on, as we'll be talking about in the Burroughs. But Doyle just has an amazing, amazing talent that we've definitely talked about a couple of times on the podcast before.

JM:

Oh, yeah.

Nate:

It might be possible that we do this in the future.

JM:

That's one that we definitely talked about. I mean, if we want to return to some of the themes that we always say this, like we're covering a theme, and we say, well, we're not going to cover everything. I'm sure if people are listening, they're probably thinking, what about this? Right? We can come back to some of this stuff, right? And no doubt, some of these other classics that we've missed out on before, we just didn't have time to talk about that much. We'll be coming back to during the host choices or perhaps during other escapades.

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background on space opera and planetary romance

JM:

Yeah, cool. So for now, we're talking about something rather specific, but in getting into this topic, there are some interesting, I guess, contradictory definitions and confusions. And it's sort of interesting to go into. So I'm going to talk about some of that to begin with. So while we were preparing for this episode, we'd marked it as "sword and planet" in our plans. And we could use that or we could use other terminology like "planetary romance". That seems to have been quite common for a while, likely following on from the "scientific romance" designation common in the 1890s and early part of the 20th century. H.G. Wells, of course, called his works scientific romances. And this seems to have caught on pretty well to the point where there's a fairly recent anthology edited by Brian Stableford, dedicated to scientific romances that were written by people other than Wells. And I do believe Verne was sort of retroactively co-opted as well, even though his stuff is certainly earlier and maybe a different character. But certainly I would classify something like "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea". Feels like a scientific romance to me, I don't know.

But the planetary romance grew out of that milieu and we'll discuss in a little while some of the early examples of adventure trips to Mars or Venus, maybe Mercury and some other solar planets. And it's important to note that these are largely adventure narratives and not either utopian screeds or explications of hard scientific principles. And this becomes more and more obvious as we go on.

So there's another term we have to bring up here, one that's related but not exactly synonymous with the two already brought up. It's one that's still used today and in a very different way than it was when it was coined. And that term is "space opera". And it seems like both early on and now people have different ideas about what a space opera actually entails. But it's almost certain that in its earliest iteration, space opera was intended as a pejorative. Early on though, some day to take the term space opera back, as I were, and see it as a positive recommendation. But the difference between the space opera and the planetary romance is probably best described as one of scale. The space opera often spans huge vistas of space and perhaps even time. It could encompass entire galaxy spanning quests, dozens of planets.

Another related term to further confuse the issue, "science fantasy". Now, space opera may concern itself with hard science, but it's more likely to be a Western in SF clothing. And the earliest known usage of space opera was from a letter Bob Tucker published in his own fanzine, "La Zombie", in July 1941.

In it, he said, "in these hectic days of phrase coining, we offer one. Westerns are called horse operas. The morning housewife to jerkers are called soap operas for the hacky, grinding, stinking outworn spaceship yarn or world saving. For that matter, we offer space opera."

And then in Fancyclopedia 2 in 1959, the editors wrote simply a "hack science fiction story addressed up Western so called by analogy with horse opera for Western bang bang shoot them up movies and soap opera for radio and video yellow drama."

So in the book "Space Opera Renaissance", a huge anthology that tries to sort of codify and sort out all the contradictory and chronological development of the space opera subgenre. David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer in their excellent introductory essay. "How Shit Became Shinola: definition and redefinition of space opera",  they explain: "what used to be science fantasy, along with some hard SF is now space opera, and what used to be space opera is entirely forgotten. Space opera used to be a majority of locution designating, not a subgenre or a mode at all, but the worst form of formulaic hack work, really bad SF. A lot of people don't remember this, and that distorts our understanding of both our present and our past in SF perfectly intelligent, but ignorant people are writing revisionist history, especially in the last decade," which would have been the 2000s. "Inventing an elaborate age of space opera based on wholesale redefinitions of the term, made up in the 50s, 60s and 70s to justify literary political agendas. To say it flatly, before the mid 1970s, no one in the history of science fiction ever consciously and intentionally set out to write something called space opera, except Jack Vance and Samuel R. Delaney. Vance accepted an assignment from Berkeley Books in the late 1960s to write a novel to fit the title 'space opera'."

And just as an aside, that's a really funny pun because it's actually about an opera company in space. So China put on operas on barbarian planets and stuff like that. And this was at the same time, Philip K. Dick got an assignment to write a book called "The Zap Gun". And these were editorial jokes to be shared with the fans. Delaney, as usual, ahead of the literary curve, wrote several intentionally literary space operas, most significantly his novel, Nova, which I want to do in the podcast at some point, but he described to David Hartwell as to his surprise at the time in 1968. As grand space opera.

So continuing to directly quote, though, from the book: "Nevertheless, some of the surviving writers from the early days of adventure SF now call their work and the work of others space opera as a kind of ironic badge of honor, perhaps following the lead of Leigh Brackett in the 1970s."

More on her, not too long from now.

They go on to say that the vast majority of Hugo award winning winners in the novel category from the early 80s and onwards have been space operas. The essay and introductory notes also go on to explain how the term was first used to describe a parody of a certain type of writing in the field that was popular in the 1940s, especially. It even includes something that we could have very easily covered in our fandom episode is a short story published by Clive Jackson in a 1950 fan magazine, Slent. And it's called "The Swordsmen of a Varnis", and it's a short distinctly parodic jab at the style, which in the book immediately follows the Brackett story we'll be covering not too far from now. Well, this "Swordsmen of Varnis" is just a couple pages and it's got a punchline at the end that just sort of, I guess, justifies the whole thing. Apparently, I don't know exactly. It's been a while since I watched the movie, but I'll be watching it again sometime soon. But apparently they used the gag in "Raiders of the Lost Ark".

So that's kind of funny. That's obviously not a space opera, but obviously Lucas especially was pretty into this kind of stuff. We'll be talking about "Star Wars" a little later on as well a little bit.

But it's important to point out, as Hartwell and Kramer do in their book, that as a pejorative, this had some political connotations. So it was often used to describe the stuff being published in Amazing Stories at the time, but not, for example, most of the "respectable" contents of Astounding. It was also not generally used, though I'm sure there were exceptions, to describe well respected authors in the field at the time, like Edmond Hamilton, Jack Williamson, and even E.E. Doc Smith, who's now considered sort of the poster child for early space opera.

Nate:

Yeah. He's definitely somebody I would like to cover on the podcast at some point.

JM:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely. I think covering Burroughs and Smith in one episode would be stretching our tolerance threshold just a little bit. In fact, this early iteration of the term didn't limit itself to stuff on other planets or have a particularly retro sensibility that came later on, mostly after the 1950s. The term was still largely perceived in a negative way in the 50s. So I want to quote this funny example. So we've talked before about Galaxy magazine, new and upcoming magazine in 1950, purporting to publish serious SF. And they very much wanted to distance themselves from Westerns and SF closing, and they even had ad copy about it on the back cover under the headline, "you'll never see it in Galaxy".

Okay, I need to take a drink before I do this.

So what we have is a comparison of short comparisons.

So here we go.

"Jets blasting, Bat Durston came screeching down through the atmosphere of Bbllzznaj, a tiny planet seven billion light years from Sol. He cut out his super-hyper-drive for the landing…and at that point, a tall, lean spaceman stepped out of the tail assembly, proton gun-blaster in a space-tanned hand.

"'Get back from those controls, Bat Durston,' the tall stranger lipped thinly. “You don’t know it, but this is your last space trip.'"

Okay. 

"Hoofs drumming, Bat Durston came galloping down through the narrow pass at Eagle Gulch, a tiny gold colony 400 miles north of Tombstone. He spurred hard for a low overhang of rim-rock…and at that point a tall, lean wrangler stepped out from behind a high boulder, six-shooter in a sun-tanned hand.

"'Rear back and dismount, Bat Durston,' the tall stranger lipped thinly. 'You don’t know it, but this is your last saddle-jaunt through these here parts.'"

"Sound alike? They should—one is merely a western transplanted to some alien and impossible planet. If this is your idea of science fiction, you’re welcome to it! YOU'LL NEVER FIND IT IN GALAXY! What you will find in Galaxy is the finest science fiction. Authentic, plausible, thoughtful, written by authors who do not automatically switch over from crime waves to earth invasions, by people who know and love science fiction. For people who also know and love it."

And I think this is particularly amusing because yeah, a lot of the pulp authors. I know Robert E. Howard was particularly known for this. A guy who churned out hundreds of stories before he sadly died at a very young age and he's pretty much trying to support his family. So when a story didn't sell to one market, he would just take it and rewrite it and change the tropes a little bit and the setting. And boom, suddenly a western became a sword and sorcery story. And you just do this, right? And didn't think twice about it. And I guess, you know, if you've written something and spent your time on it, I guess fix it up to make it work. Why not, right? But it's just, I guess, obviously, so-called serious science fiction writers would not really, I mean, the whole idea of the genre is supposed to be, as Campbell and others were saying in the Astounding of the time, you know, it was supposed to be like a thought experiments and, you know, basically not just westerns in space.

But it's about this time that space opera really started to be associated with, well, the space western, more or less. And others like Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett, who were, in a sense, polar opposites, even though they were a married couple by then, not like Kuttner and Moore at all. They had their original standout work and their hack work too. Damon Knight praised Brackett's book, "The Long Tomorrow", a rural, post-apocalyptic dystopia featuring Mennonites after a nuclear holocaust, while dismissing, in a thinly veiled way, her often beloved science fantasy work. "A startling performance from the gifted author of so much, but so entirely different, science fantasy, Miss Brackett is celebrated among fans for her intense, moody, super-masculine epics of doomed heroes on far planets, all extremely poetic and fantastical, and all very much alike."

So the term science fantasy was often used, again, I think largely in the 50s, to refer to Burroughs and the post-Burroughs tradition. And this includes stories by C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, and Ray Bradbury, who I suppose we might be slightly remiss for not covering in this episode block, but we'll get to it. But their stories violated some known contemporary scientific facts. Science fantasy was still around decades later, sometimes referring to the work of Marion Zimmer Bradley, and I would argue probably Andre Norton as well.

Again, critic and writer Damon Knight seems to have maybe had some influence here, referring to writers like Hamilton and maybe Brackett, in folding the planetary romance style into space opera. In 1962, Knight wrote in another review, "space travel stories in American SF magazines began somewhat soberly, but quickly turned into wild and woolly space opera, in which larger and larger fleets of rocket ships went faster and farther, with less and less regard for fuel and acceleration. The king of this kind of space adventure was Edmond Hamilton."

But according to Hartwell and Kramer, you can see nostalgia for this kind of stuff creeping into serious fan circles throughout the 1960s. And to me, this isn't at all surprising. Michael Moorcock, for example, was a huge fan of some of this stuff, though others in a new wave like J.G. Ballard and maybe Brian Aldiss, although I would say that's an exception, but they didn't seem to have much interest in it at all. And the writers of the book cite many examples of reviews of books from the late 60s, where the term is used with some grudging admiration and affection.

In 1968, George O. Smith in the "Brass Tax" column, remember the letters column of Astounding, referred to Star Trek as "our favorite space opera". And despite mentioning Aldiss' somewhat dismissive tone earlier, he edited a whole two volume anthology set called "Space Opera and Galactic Empires", and it's worth quoting from some of this introduction. Early on, he claims, "this is not a serious anthology. Both volumes burst with voluptuous vacuum. They have been put together to amuse." But he also says in one of the typical Aldis-ish expressions of wry wonder and kind of complex layered appreciation that I really appreciate for, even though he does sometimes come down pretty viciously on some stuff. He says, "the term is both vague and inspired," referring to space opera here, "and must have been coined with both affection and some scorn. Its parameters are marked by a few mighty concepts standing like watchtowers along a lonely frontier. What goes on between them is essentially simple, a tale of love or hate, triumph or defeat, because it is the watchtowers that matter. We are already familiar with some of them, the question of reality, the limitations of the knowledge, exile, the sheer immensity of the universe, the endlessness of time."

So all this train of thought is a little confusing, but Harwell and Kramer posit that Aldiss is mostly responsible for redefining Space Opera to mean essentially, "the good old stuff". And it starts to encompass all types of adventure SF, including the good kind of science fantasy.

At this point, we could go on to talk about Planet Stories and Leigh Brackett, who I think is our next really important player in this in what I would like to call now, Leigh Brackett strikes back. But I think we'll wait for a little bit until when we discuss the Enchantments of Venus in a short time.

So, Nate, I think you wanted to talk about some precursors to the book we're talking about right now.

Nate:

Yeah, the, I guess, selections of titles for tonight, I figured it would be cool to take a look at how this genre evolves from various points from Edgar Rice Burroughs, who published this novel in 1912, to C. L. Moore, this story from the 1930s, and then Leigh Brackett from the next generation in the late 1940s. But this is kind of almost at the beginning of the sword and planet, planetary romance subgenre, as I was only able to find four, though that's not to say that there is not more out there, precursors to this.

These are two English language works and two French works. The earliest one is by Gustavus W. Pope, which is a pretty awesome name, but his "Journey to Mars" from 1894. He was an American author. There's almost no reviews of it, which is sometimes a bad sign, but the only coherent review on Goodreads is negative. It's really long. It's like 150,000 words, so it's definitely like way longer than most of the stuff that we cover on the podcast.

The other English language work is by a British Edwin Lester Arnold, and that is "Lieutenant Gulliver Jones, His Vacation", also known as "Gulliver of Mars" from 1905. And the reviews say it bears a fair amount of similarities to "Princess of Mars", but they note that it's far weaker than the borough, so I guess if you want to read a less good version of "Princess of Mars", then that one is easily available on Gutenberg.

The other two French works sound a lot more interesting. They are Arnould Galopin's The Omega Doctor from 1906. Reviews say it has some similarities to William Hartnell era Doctor Who, which definitely sounds pretty interesting from that early on.

And there's also the two-part novel "Vampires of Mars", which combines the "Prisoner of the Planet Mars" from 1908 and the "War of the Vampires" from 1909, which is written by Gustave Le Rouge, which is one of the many, many French works from this time period translated by Brian Stableford, who's done a ridiculous amount of translation work in this area from French language stuff.

So some of that stuff would be cool to check out. I think that "Vampires of Mars" just sounds pretty awesome. It has a great title, but "The Omega Doctor" I think would be interesting to check out too if it bears similarities to Doctor Who. I'm not really too sure about "Journey to Mars" or "Gulliver of Mars". But yeah, really not too much out there that I could find any way that is like a precursor to this style. And even these precursors aren't like super, super far before, as the novel we are taking a look at tonight, which is "Princess of Mars" by Edgar Rice Burroughs, was published in 1912. So these are only a few years before.

JM:

I was just going to say if we ever talk about "Doctor Omega", that one's translated by Jean-Marc Lofficier, who actually is responsible for some Doctor Who reference works. And while I'm not sure about this, I read some of disturbing thing from somebody who reviewed the book and they thought that she had actually altered the text significantly or to some degree to make it resemble Doctor Who more. And I'm not saying that's true because I don't know. But it would certainly be an interesting thing to find out.

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

I would presume that he translated the work because he genuinely loves the work and thinks that it's good, but I don't know. It seems like if he hijacked a text for his personal purposes, that's, that wouldn't be good. But I don't know. I don't know. Again, I'm not making any claims about this, but it was something kind of disturbing that I read. Like, well, that's like, I mean, there's literally no other English translation of this work, right?

Nate:

We'll have to do a side-by-side compare in French and maybe produce a edited version.

JM:

So does the "Vampires", by Gustave La Rouge. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely cool sounding stuff.

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"Princess of Mars" non-spoiler discussion

Nate:

But yeah, Burroughs is pretty much at the beginning of this whole thing. And we talked about Burroughs in depth previously, pretty far back in the podcast, in episode nine, when we talked about "At the Earth's Core".

JM:

It's episode 50 now.

Nate:

Yeah, it's crazy.

JM:

Happy anniversary.

Nate:

Yeah. Thank you to everybody for listening to us for this long. We appreciate it.

Gretchen:

Hear to 50 and 50 more.

Nate:

Yeah, I think we'll get there.

JM:

Hell yeah.

Nate:

But yeah, you can check out that episode for biographical information on Burroughs. There's a number of biographies written on Burroughs in particular. "Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Man Who Created Tarzan" by Irwin Porges and Edgar Rice Burroughs by Erling B. Holtsmark. Rather than repeat all the stuff that we talked about in that episode, I'll just get a brief ground for the context of this story tonight.

So after a brief stint in the 7th U.S. Cavalry in the 1890s, Burroughs worked as a rancher and then a manager of an unsuccessful mine and then as a pencil sharpener wholesaler. And he took up writing in 1911 due to the low paying wages of being a pencil sharpener wholesaler. And his first sale is what we're reading tonight and is what started his career in the pulps. And I was thinking it's been a while since we've read anything from the Muncey pulps. We definitely read stuff from before Amazing kicked in, but I can't really think of the last thing we've covered from All-Story or Argosy, which was the major vehicle for American science fiction in magazines before Amazing.

So that's where this one appeared. It was serialized in All-Story from February to July of 1912 and written under the pseudonym Norman Bean, though Burroughs had submitted under the title Normal Bean and the editor thought it was a typo and just changed it. The original title was also "Under the Moons of Mars".

JM:

Which I kind of like better.

Nate:

Yeah, I do too.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

Because it seems to fit the work a little more. I mean, it would be interesting if this was really about the Princess of Mars, but it's not really.

Nate:

Yeah.

Gretchen:

A bit of a Legend of Zelda sort of moment.

Nate:

Yeah. But yeah, this has a bunch of titles and Burroughs cycled through a lot of them. I guess before it got to publication. So the one he initially wanted to do when he sent it to his editor was ЬDejah Thoris: Martian PrincessЬ. I think it was like the third or fourth title he had stumbled upon.

But Burroughs had initially started to write it in early 1911, finishing up a partial manuscript by August, which the editor from All-Story, Thomas Newell Metcalf, gave him detailed feedback on basically telling him to quicken the pacing and cut out the background world building stuff and to resubmit a finished version. So Burroughs completes the manuscript in September, the feedback inspiring him to go in a different direction with the ending than he was initially planning. And he received an acceptance letter on November 2nd with a $400 check for the sale.

JM:

And the sequel was really quick and coming.

Nate:

Yeah, he was incredibly prolific.

JM:

Wasn't just writing these at the same time either.

Nate:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I wrote a bunch of these and Tarzan started up shortly after the first Tarzan novel was also in All-Story. And the first installment appeared in October of 1912. So yeah, really not that far apart. And it's obviously Tarzan that launched him to super stardom in the popular consciousness.

This was also a prolific series as well as I believe it is the first of nine complete novels with the 10th and 11th Barsoom books being short story collections from after the ninth novel.

JM:

Not a lot of stuff involving John Carter after the third one.

Nate:

Yeah.

Gretchen:

Yeah, because it's known mostly as the Mars trilogy because that's John Carter. And then it's like his descendants.

Nate:

Yeah, I was briefly looking at some of the plot descriptions for the later works and it does seem to get a little bit complicated of the lineages.

JM:

I looked at this synopsis for the next two because I haven't read them myself. And the main reason I looked was because I watched the "John Carter" film. I was like, where the hell did all this stuff come from?

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

And yeah, some of it comes from the next two books.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

It is kind of its own thing.

Gretchen:

I also watched the film and luckily I went in knowing like I saw that you had mentioned that there was some stuff from the other books in there. So I was like, okay, I know I won't be as confused now.

Nate:

Yeah, we'll definitely talk about that. And yeah, I haven't read any of the other books either. So I'd be curious as to what they imported from there. But the, I guess, well, we'll get to the ending when we get to the ending. But yeah, initially in All-Story and republishing book form on October 10th of 1917 with the chapter. "Sola Tells me Her Story" reinserted, which Metcalf told him to cut for the magazine version. So that was where the Princess of Mars title comes in. But by that point, he was already very, very well established author. So yeah, also extremely prolific.

The Pellucidar series starts off in 1914. So he's pretty much doing all three at once.

JM:

Yeah. And he was doing other stuff besides those three series as well.

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

Stand-alone books and shorter series of like two or three books. There was one that Michael K. Vaughn, a YouTube guy, I sometimes watch mentioned recently called "The Moonman" that I'd never even heard of before. So I think that was a two book.

Nate:

Yeah.

Gretchen:

When was at the Earth's core from you both recall that?

Nate:

That's 1914. So pretty close to this.

Gretchen:

Okay.

Nate:

He had like, I think three Tarzan novels out at the time. And then the, yeah, the three first Barsoom novels.

Gretchen:

Okay.

Nate:

So yeah, juggling a whole bunch of stuff. The novel from 1913, "The Monster Men" is unrelated to any of the series, which sounds interesting. Not sure what the deal with that one is, but yeah, prolific for sure. Even though, I don't know, this one I'm definitely mixed about.

So now that we've talked about, I guess, when it was published, why don't we talk about what we think of it?

JM:

Well, it's too bad. I mean, you know me, I like to go to the originators of genres, classic science fiction, I don't know, classic rock and roll, classic heavy metal, whatever, like going to the source is always really interesting. And you can tell this inspired a lot of people because almost every biography of any golden age science fiction writer and even some were from later mentioned these books and how important they were to them as as children, basically. So it gives me some pain to say that I wish this was better than it was. I mean, it was kind of cool that there were some enjoyable concepts in it that it wasn't that difficult to read, but I had some issues with the previous book and I was kind of thinking, well, "Princess of Mars" will probably be better. And I don't know, I thought it was about the same.

Burroughs, definitely, his prose is not very magical, which I think keeps some of the stuff going keeps it alive. You know, because sometimes the stories are pretty primal and pretty like dealing with all these archetypical things and you have to like actually buy certain tropes and be convinced by them and think that oh yeah, this is awesome. And I think the way that the writers do it is by giving it a certain verve and certain passion. And I think like this is something Leigh Brackett was really good at. This is something CL Moore is really good at. This is something that even Robert E Howard, even though I think he has just like one story set on another planet and it was finished by somebody else. I think he actually does it really well, too. And I've never really reminded a lot of like that classic sort of sorcery stuff by all this. And I mean, that's no accident that one of the terms for this kind of stuff is sword and planet. Because I was reminded I was definitely reminded of like the Conan stories and stuff like that.

But I just think that, I don't know, Burroughs is curious because reading about him for the last episode, the previous one, I should say, when we covered him in. I kind of got the impression that he tried his hand at so many different things in life and a lot of it didn't work out that great. So eventually he's like, well, all right, I can try my hand at writing, see how that goes. And boom, he happened to strike gold. And there you go. Hey, good for him. He did something that he could do and he mastered it in his way, right? I mean, it was extremely popular. And that's what blows me away. You know, he's like, this guy still has a lot of fans now, right?

So I don't know. And I just want to say, I don't know what you guys are going to say about all this. And like, I'm sure we'll bring up the points that we thought were cool and everything. But just because we're hard on this book doesn't necessarily mean that we don't respect the tradition that we like. I don't know. I can only speak for myself, but I really like the concept behind these kind of stories. I love the ancient alien civilizations and lost buried cities and elder races with godlike powers. You know, the sacred talismans that are also technological devices. And like, you know, I love that stuff. For some reason, since I was a kid, I'm just like, oh, that's so magical and cool. So reading this was like, yeah, I can see, I mean, but then I'm always thinking of writers who do this stuff and do it really, really well. And even just in this generation with Burroughs, even though, yeah, I don't think he set one on Mars or Venus, but Abraham Merritt, we talked about him before and it's always like lost race stuff and all that. And all his magical, powerful, ingenious ancient aliens are already on the earth. And it is like hidden corners of the earth where all this, I mean, I guess "At the Earth's Core" is not that dissimilar. But yeah, and again, his writing is flamboyant and over the top, but it sings.

Burroughs just sounds cocky sometimes. It just doesn't seem like there's a lot of words in the sentences. And sometimes you're like, yeah, I wish it was snappier. I wish it was like not told it this way. I wish it was, I don't know. Yeah, or maybe more over the top, maybe that would be all right too. But it's just doesn't sing for me. I'm sorry to say that. And there are weaknesses that I'm sure we'll get to when we talk about specific elements of the book. This is like, wow, I'm surprised that's a weakness, but we'll talk about it. I'll point out one of the big ones because I mentioned it last time too. And I'm like, is he really just not good at this? Or is it we catch him on an off day? And I guess he's not as good at this as I would expect him to be.

But I'm keeping that a secret. So we come to it in the summary because I just have to point out that thing.

But anyway, yeah, anyway, I've gone out for long enough. It was kind of cool, but not my favorite. I don't know. What about you guys?

Gretchen:

Yeah, well, I'll spoil it here. I greatly enjoyed the other two works in comparison to this one. I do agree with J.M. And that there are some interesting concepts in this book and I can respect the influence that this work had. But I think for me, the major problem with this work is John Carter. I just think that part of the reason I think that the writing doesn't sing, which is very true. I think that in comparison to even the other two works for reading, this is very clunky. This doesn't have prose that I can sink my teeth into. It is in first person and we are hearing entirely from John Carter. I think that it is because of that writing that it really reveals some of the real flaws of these kinds of protagonists and some of the ideas that can be found in this science fiction. Like some of the worst kinds of tropes that we can see coming from science fiction of this kind.

Yeah, I feel like probably when we get into more specifics, I can speak a little bit more on that. But yeah, I was not that impressed by this work.

Nate:

Yeah, I was also mixed on this. I think the setting is great. I mean, I just wish that somebody else had written it like I was mentioning earlier. I started reading "The Lost World" by Doyle and if Doyle had written the story, it would be awesome. And yeah, I didn't mind this overall, but there is definitely some issues I had with that. Gretchen, when you were saying John Carter is a big issue, I definitely agree as he is more or less invincible. And once you get the sense of that, it just takes away a lot of momentum and suspense and stakes that the novel could have otherwise had. Especially when we're going to be talking about "Shambleau" and "Enchantress of Venus". Next, those protagonists are much more vulnerable and it adds something to how the story flows and how the action pays off.

JM:

I noticed that most of the best of this kind of stuff does seem to be told in the third person.

Gretchen:

Yes.

JM:

Maybe because it lets the writer's flits of fancy carry it away a bit. Here, yeah, we're stuck with John Carter the entire time and it's right there in his head. Maybe, I mean, I don't require a likable protagonist. I just finished talking about all these crime novels that are just so misanthropic and everything. But it's like, yeah, I might say we can blame the fact that John Carter is not really an awesome person to hang out with on ERBs writing? I think it's possible to make John Carter all right. It's possible to make it interesting. Like, I don't know. I mean, I don't have too many really, really great things to say about it, but I do think maybe the movie was kind of trying to do that in terms of like...

Gretchen:

Yes.

JM:

...showing how he might have grown as a person or something like...

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

Yeah. And I'm like, I didn't love the movie.

Gretchen:

No. I think that we can talk more about the film later, but I will say something that's very interesting to me about the film. Is that there are times when it definitely tries to improve who John Carter is as a person. And I think that it's... I think that that's an interesting approach to take. There are just very significant moments where you can tell that the filmmakers are trying to make a better John Carter.

Nate:

Yeah, they tried, and I could give that to them for sure.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

Nate:

Which is, I don't know, I guess...

JM:

It's two books, though, because I do feel that there probably will be more... More obvious character, but it's... Yeah, like, this was not... This was not a great start. Like, there was a review I also read on Goodreads where somebody was saying the same thing. They were just so annoyed by how John Carter was always like, well, a duty has always been really important to me. So I made sure that I did this. And he was just very annoyed by that. And I thought to myself, I'm not that annoyed by it, but I totally get it, right? To me, it's just like, yeah, it's like he was blaming it on John Carter as though he were a real person. I'm like, well, I don't really think about books like that. If you're thinking that, that maybe the writer just could have done a better job of making him somebody that you were interested in spending time with. Even if you didn't like, necessarily, right?

Gretchen:

Yeah.

Nate:

He's a very Mary Sue type character.

Gretchen:

That is exactly what I was thinking. I was going to bring up... That is the term that came to mind when I was reading it. He was very Mary Sue. And just a perfect, wonderful man who is... Yeah, because he always...

JM:

All the characters that he talked to also say so.

Gretchen:

Yeah. Perfect and great and always in the right. And isn't violent until he is incredibly violent and then he's great at being violent. He is a perfect gentleman and also ready to kill with the drop of a hat. The contradictions of John Carter is part of, I think, this... John Carter himself is very tied to some of the more imperialist and very supremacist sorts of ideologies that sometimes come up in certain strands of this kind of science fiction. And I think that's why he specifically makes me a little... He leaves a bad taste in my mouth because of that.

Nate:

Yeah, there's definitely some weird race stuff that pops up here. It's not like dominating throughout the course of the entire novel like it could have been. And Burroughs only kind of makes it as like a minor plot point, which I'm assuming may surface in later novels. But yeah, it definitely does feel a descendant of those earlier dime novels.

JM:

Well, yeah, we even had the Apaches in there and everything.

Nate:

Right.

Gretchen:

It comes on so strong in like the very opening of the novel that it sort of kind of lingers for me throughout the rest of the work, even though it isn't as intense as it could be throughout the entirety of the novel. I think it's just that it starts off very...

JM:

You seem to be trying to get at something with this whole issue because it's not really talked about that much here. But yeah, we have the red Martians and the green Martians.

Gretchen:

Yes.

JM:

And later on in the series, we get introduced to the black and white Martians and the yellow Martians. And the white Martians are horrible cannibals that pass themselves off as gods, which I think is a really interesting way to do it. But the black ones are just as bad, right? I mean, it's like, okay, yeah, I guess, I don't know. You might be... And the, "yellow" Martians are like the oldest... They're really old race Martians that are... A lot of them got into seclusion or something like that. And they're like, okay, so now we have maybe a oriental stereotype kind of thing going on a little bit. The black Martians think that they're very, very special because they're the first born. And so they're supposedly the first humans on Mars, and they believe that that gives them something. I don't know.

Again, I still want to read these books because I want to see really where he goes with all that. And I definitely know that reading synopsis on it, admittedly, surprisingly, very detailed Wikipedia article about all the books in this series, doesn't give you the full experience. And I'm well aware of that. I just had to find out what was up with this movie.

Yeah, and I kind of got my answers, though.

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

We'll talk about that at the end.

Nate:

Yeah.

Gretchen:

I am curious what the books without John Carter are like. I feel like I would be interested in seeing what those ones are like, how the work continues when it isn't really about his character anymore.

JM:

Yeah, it's funny because, yeah, it seemed like there was a bit of misdirection in the title there because Dejah Thoris is not in it very much. And even in the later books, it seems like she's not in it very much. And I definitely noticed this "At the Earth's Core". And it's definitely a thing in "Tarzan". But the women in Burroughs books are always getting kidnapped.

Nate:

Yeah.

Gretchen:

The damsel in distress. That isn't just Burroughs there. That's pretty much a lot of romances and a lot of adventure stories.

Nate:

Yeah, I was disappointed because it started off in the first half like they might be, he might have strong women characters.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

Nate:

And it's like Dejah is a scientist that she's intelligent and can do stuff. And Sola and Sarkoja are, I guess, set up to be interesting characters, but they're just kind of dropped from the narrative at some point and never really come back in. And then, yeah.

Gretchen:

I was extremely disappointed with, I was very interested in seeing, like, yeah, because it starts out where you have Sola. And I was very interested to see what they would do with her. And I feel like they kind of, it becomes, of course, more about Tars Tarkas near the end.

Nate:

Yeah. And Dejah turns into more of like a trophy who's kidnapped and passed around, which is, again, not the greatest character.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

Weird thing about Sola. I just realized her name is Sola. And I think she's the only character in the entire book who only has one name. Well, doesn't Sarkoja also have just one name?

Gretchen:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. It does seem like it is established with men, get their titles from the others that they kill. So I wonder if that's the same with, they say that women are able to fight other women, but maybe they aren't able to take their names.

Nate:

Yeah. I think Sola and Sarkoja are the only two women Tharks that we see in the novel.

Gretchen:

Yeah. I don't remember any others.

Nate:

Yeah. But yeah, they could have been handled better, I think. And it's kind of disappointing how Sarkoja exits the novel.

Gretchen:

Yes.

JM:

Obviously they're more like both Dejah Thoris and Sola returned, but it looks like they spent a lot of time kidnapped in the other books too, as well as the other women that got introduced.

Nate:

Right.

JM:

But then there's like an evil queen as well, right? She's the evil queen of the, I can't remember if she's the third or the firstborn, but her name is Isis and she's like this. Yeah. She's the evil goddess of Mars, right? If Carter is to be believed, I guess they all fall in love with John Carter to some extent.

Nate:

Of course. Cause why not?

JM:

John Carter is so awesome. And yeah, I mean, this is one reason why like reading a Conan stories by Robert E Howard, for example, you're never like sitting there with Conan in his head, thinking all his thoughts, right? I think Howard, even when he, when he kind of started to think that maybe Conan was living out his welcome a little bit because he'd written like 15 stories, he changed the formula a little bit and made Conan even more detached and told the story entirely from the point of view of somebody else. That was doing third person with Conan as this like dangerous interloper. And the character who is a point of view character in most of the story didn't even survive to the end of the story. And, you know, I was like, yeah, I mean, you know, something like that would have made this book more, like a little more detachment from John Carter and a little more different ways of looking at the situation. Maybe I don't know. Dejah Thoris,  I'm just thinking like it is so funny because, I mean, again, I'll preview for a couple of hours for now when we talk about it, but with Brackett, she obviously really, really loves ERB and she would probably credit him with a lot of inspiration to herself. But yeah, she would never have the characters just get kidnapped and pulled out of the narrative completely like that and not have any power agency at all. And just like, yeah...

(music: Ferd. K. Hill - "General Grant's Polka" on brassy synth)

spoiler summary and discussion

Nate:

"Princess of Mars" or "Under the Moons of Mars" or whatever title you want to use opens up with a prologue written by Jack Carter's nephew who is none other than Burroughs himself. Captain Carter was a southern gentleman, of course, beloved by all the slaves and went to fight for the Confederacy and when he came back he was unaged in 1885, writing a manuscript which is presumably the book we're about to read. He dies suddenly of a heart attack in 1886 and the manuscript is to remain sealed for 21 years after his death, which Burroughs unseals for us.

The manuscript opens with Carter saying he is well over 100 but has never aged and has already died twice, and will shortly die a death where there is no coming back from. For 10 years his corpse lay undiscovered in an Arizona cave. When the war ended he went with some other Confederates to prospect for gold in the southwest. Their equipment wasn't the greatest so his partner Powell leaves for better equipment and Carter is set to watch their spot. 

He doesn't make it very far though and Carter sees signs of trouble and shows up with guns to an Apache raiding party who have killed Powell. Carter shoots a bunch of them and takes them by surprise scattering the rest of the band and takes Powell's body to a cave where he hides and himself collapses from fatigue.

The Apache party finds him but a strange noise from the cave frightens them off and in a surreal scene Carter breaks from his own body and sees his own corpse on the floor. 

JM:

Yeah. Psychedelia.

Nate:

So menace by an unknown cave creature Carter flees out of the cave into the Arizona desert high on a cliff overlooking a gorge when suddenly the red light of Mars starts intensely pulling him. He falls asleep and like Señor Nic-Nac before him gets telepathically pulled through the ether and wakes up on Mars, a well vegetated Mars at that. 

JM:

Yeah and he just knows it and takes it for granted it's the most blasé. It's so funny because I thought that was a modern thing where you know you got all these like people are like oh I'm on an alien planet now, cool, and like it's like this is one of the originators from what it's like. He just wakes up and he goes oh hey I'm on Mars interesting. 

Nate:

Yeah. Yeah, good I guess calculation through the nighttime sky there. But yeah so on Mars there is lower gravity which is initially a mobility issue but he quickly finds a glass enclosure with several hundred eggs inside hatching these grotesque creatures. While he's watching these hatch he's taken by surprise by a Martian guard at spear point. Their leader is 15 foot tall on some giant horse looking thing. However he's able to use his human legs to bound up 30 feet into the air and then slip away from him. But what is he going to do now there are these giant green demons, four-armed, and all different sorts of terribleness with these high power radium rifles. And one of these warriors approaches from afar and offers a gesture of his amulet to him and says something in a language he can't understand and Carter bows back. 

JM:

Yeah and you know it's cool that that obviously we weren't going to get a Star Trek gimmick seer saying we can right away speak their language but it was still remarkable how with which facility he was able to you know just pick this up and conveniently everyone on Mars all speaks the same language. Yeah even though the races are actually so far apart I think don't mix.

Gretchen:

What does it take, a few days?

Nate:

Yeah, it's not very long at all. Yeah and the films speeded up even more both in different ways but by introducing an edible substance in the 2009 one they make them eat a bug and then the Disney one he drinks like a milk-like substance or something that makes him automatically understand the language. 

JM:

It's telepathy I guess. 

Nate:

Yeah. 

Gretchen:

It's like the Babelfish or the the microbes in Farscape where it's sort of like at least with those like there's a substance that just kind of changes your brain a little bit. 

Nate:

Yeah but John Carter's just so good that he is able to pick up this Martian language in like a week so. 

Gretchen:

Yeah a piece of cake for John Carter.

JM:

I'm not saying this to be like a snob. I don't even know if this would really help him, but John Carter doesn't seem like he'd be a particularly educated man in terms of linguistics or anything like that. I mean, he does seem a remarkably adept at doing all sorts of things as your heroes generally tend to be.

Gretchen:

Who needs any talent with linguistics when you have pure force of will?

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

Yeah. And not only that. He's an alien planet, right?

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

So it's not like he could draw parallels. I do like the fact that unlike the Martians, he's not telepathically broadcasting, but somehow he can receive better than most Martians, too.

Nate:

He does a lot of things on Mars that the native Martians, you think, would have figured out how to do in the however many thousands or millions of years they've lived there, but John Carter just figured us out better than them in the course of like a week, or sometimes even instantly.

JM:

I will definitely point out once again, though, that before anybody else says it, yes, I'm aware that the future books get into more of this kind of stuff, and there's all kinds of strange things on Mars that we haven't encountered yet in this book that we can't really talk about with any authority. There's a lot. There's a lot. The world building in this book is not really, sometimes it's a little insufficient. It kind of feels like, yeah, actually, even though he's not as exciting at doing this as something like a Vance, for example, in my opinion, we could have done with more of that. We could have done with more, like, okay, I don't know.

I mean, something like "The Coming Race" by Bulwer-Lytton, which we covered a long time ago as well. He spent a lot of time going into stuff like that and trying to explain how the society worked and stuff like that. And I feel this is so vaguely sketched in sometimes that I'm very confused about how things work. I'm even confused about how the Martians reproduce. Like, I don't know, there's details that are missing that would have helped, I think, a little bit.

Nate:

It is interesting that the editor at All-Story told Burroughs to go away from that direction to focus more on the swashbuckling adventure stuff and all that.

JM:

Exactly. Yeah, it is interesting.

Gretchen:

I feel like that was some of the most interesting stuff. It was some of the more speculation about how these beings work and their culture works. But that's not why a lot of other people are reading it. They're reading it so they can get the planetary romance.

Nate:

Yeah. And the setting is great. Like, I really do enjoy the weird races we get on Mars with the Martian dogs and the Martian horses and the Martian mastodons and the...

Gretchen:

The white apes.

Nate:

Yeah. Yeah.

JM:

Everything has an equivalent, right? The Martian dog is, like, so obviously a dog. Every now and then he'll remind you kind of that it's not a dog. But generally, the first description is, oh, it's this really hideous thing and it's not just the dogs, right? It's the other creatures as well. Even the Martians, like, is like, oh, in the beginning we get these giant green-skinned aliens with four arms apiece and stuff and then legs that could double as arms. But then later on it's like, oh, but now we have the red Martians. And they're, like, pretty much normal human. As the series goes on, the green Martians become less and less a part of the story. So it's like, he's basically just turning the Martians into normal humans.

Gretchen:

Yeah. Which to also bring back the point of some of the racist stuff that's going on, immediate response to seeing the green Martians is John Carter being like, I instantly connected them with the Apache that were my enemy, the savages back on Earth. And it's like, oh, OK. So it is kind of interesting that the green Martians, who are the ones we kind of immediately are supposed to associate with indigenous people, are the ones that are like the least human and at least of the two that we get. And then they kind of are sidelined a bit during a lot of the story, except for the good ones.

JM:

And there was some of this in "At the Earth's Core" as well, I can't quite remember now. But I think Nate and I talked about it at the time a little bit.

Nate:

Yeah. And I mean, you definitely see these same tropes from Westerns applied to the Tharks, which are unfortunate racist tropes and depictions of natives. But yeah, so here the warrior beckons for him to follow them. And he's pulled up by one of these giants, and they all ride off. They make their way to an enormous city in the mountains, where we get some overviews of Thark society, as that is the name of the green four-armed beings that he's fallen in with here on Mars.

The most common deaths are violent ones, either in duels, war, or eaten as a child by one of Mars's great apes. There is a voluntary suicide type pilgrimage that Tharks take when they reach the age of 1,000, but most don't make it that long.

JM:

So that becomes a major plot point in the later books.

Nate:

Yeah, there's some things in here, these details, I guess some more that we'll get to later that definitely seem like they would be hooks for future books. I'd imagine Burroughs very much had the dime novel model of serialization in mind where some of these heroes had dozens, if not hundreds of books where they get in different adventures for stuff. And I guess planning the seeds early of possible future adventures in the first book is a smart way to go about it, and it looks like a lot of that did come to fruition if you got basically 11 books worth of Barsoom stuff out of it.

So Tars Tarkas is his main captor and exhibits him to the chieftain. The whole main hall is examining him with wonder and jest. And right here, Carter decks one of the Tharks who's being extra disrespectful right in the face, which at first stuns the assembly, but then they burst out and laughter.

Tars then commands him to jump by saying "sak".

JM:

Yeah, of course, this bit had to be in the movie.

Nate:

Yeah, I mean, it's a fun scene, but it's kind of interesting how impressed all the Tharks are with this. And I don't know that Carter seems to be able to adjust to this low gravity environment very, very quickly and have it be like a superhuman ability rather than something that would be an obvious disadvantage, I would think.

But he is then sent off with a younger woman, Sola. She leads him to some sort of sleeping chamber and in walks her pet, this 10 legged creature that is about the size of a pony, but looks more frog-like in the face. And Sola gives it some orders, presumably to guard Carter, and she walks out returning later with some food and drink, a milk producing plant.

JM:

Yeah, so this is another funny John Carter thing. So the Martians, right? They tame a lot of beasts. They have the things that they ride. They have the things that carry huge burdens. They have the dog things, but apparently the Martians are at least the green Martians, to an extent, maybe the other Martians too, because he keeps saying how warlike they always are, right? They may have trained these beasts, but they're never kind to them. And John Carter is the only person who's ever been kind to them before, so all the animals love him, right? Yeah, especially though, Woola, right? I mean, Woola just says, yeah, he's so cute.

Nate:

Yeah, he is great.

Gretchen:

Yeah, I do like Woola.

JM:

But the way Woola is used is not always great either, because to me it's like Woola is not there most of the time, because he's sending him off to take care of, for example, a person that gets kidnapped anyway, and then see Woola for ages, and then all of a sudden, like you're in the middle of a scene, and Carter is finally alone or something, and he's like, but then this hideous thing jumped upon me, and I was like, oh no! And I realized it was Woola, and suddenly, you know, like I covered him in kisses, and he's like, oh, oh, he's back!

Nate:

Yeah, it is very convenient sometimes.

JM:

It reminded me of a song I have on a tape when I was a kid, and it was called "The Cat Came Back." Oh yeah, right.

Gretchen:

Oh, I love that song.

JM:

The Cat Came Back. The very next day, The Cat Came Back, they thought he was a goner.

Gretchen:

I do like the idea of whenever, like, if you had a cat, and it just jumped on your lap, your first thought every time was, oh god, what is this thing? Every single time, like you're just like disgusted, and then you're like, oh no way, it's just my cat.

JM:

Yeah, yeah, it's amazing.

Nate:

But yeah, I guess at first Woola isn't so friendly. He's watching over Carter, and Carter is viewing him as an adversary. He escapes quite easily. His jumps are no match for Woola's great running speed, though. However, he jumps up onto the wrong building and is pulled inside by a white ape-like creature closer to an earthling than a thark.

JM:

Carter keeps saying there's only one mammal on Mars. He says that in the beginning of a book, and then it kind of seems like it's dropped. Is that the ape? Is that the only mammal on Mars? I was confused by that.

Nate:

Yeah, I'm not sure either. I mean, the Tharks seem to lay eggs somehow, so presumably they wouldn't be mammals. I don't really know if he goes into what the red Martians do.

Gretchen:

Well, the red Martians, deja has an egg at the end. So it does seem like all of the Martians lay eggs, that they are not mammals. I don't know what the logistics are for that, but that does seem to be the case.

Nate:

Yeah, he doesn't really go into that level of detail.

JM:

Yeah. I just say that it's just confused about, I mean, obviously, and again, the whole question of how do the Martians reproduce, never mind that, how do John Carter and Dejah Thoris make a kid?

Gretchen:

Right.

Nate:

Yeah, that's what I mean.

Gretchen:

That's the one. I feel like the idea of the Martians, two Martians reproducing, I don't feel like you can kind of assume something's going on with that. But yeah, the John Carter and a Martian is kind of the big improbability there.

JM:

Yeah. And you know, okay, so you know what else is bizarre, right? So, so far we have the green and the red Martians. The red Martians are like somewhat more "civilized", than the green Martians. They have like an aerial navy and stuff like that. But they're also very warlike, whereas the green Martians are like brutal barbarian types, right? Except, apparently, the green Martians are not into, maybe a lot of the other Martians who are not into sex, they're like, they're not into it. He specifically pretty much says that. This is like, it's not really that, it's not of interest to them. There's no, no talk whatsoever, except for this one Martian, because he's supposed to be particularly decadent and messed up. This one Martian who ravages women, but every other Martian is like, it never even enters their head. Like, the book is almost hilariously chaste, right? But I mean, the way it's written is just so odd, I don't know, it's just like, he doesn't want to talk about it, but he makes a point of saying, that's not really a thing here. Like they don't really care for that. So I was like, okay, again, how does reproduction work with these Martians exactly? I'm really not understanding.

Nate:

Yeah. Yeah. The laying eggs, I guess, doesn't really set the mood.

But yeah, now Carter is engaged in hand to hand combat with, I guess the only mammals on Mars, these white ape-like creatures. The second ape comes in and swings a giant stone cudgel at Carter, which he avoids. And while the watchdog creature attacks the ape, it's quickly thwarted and severely injured by the ape's superior strength.

JM:

So this was kind of fun. This was very "At the Earth's Core". I kind of mentioned this, and this is what I'm leading up to the thing now. So this is something I mentioned "At the Earth's Core" when we talked about it. So I'm sorry, I've already forgotten his name, and I meant to look it up, but I forget. For some reason, the only name I remember is Professor Perry, but he wasn't the hero at the Earth's core. He was some other guy, a buff, handsome American football player type.

Nate:

Right. Yeah.

JM:

He had this distinctive fighting style, basically walking up to anyone or anything, whether it was some annoying guy who was like threatening the woman he liked, or some kind of prehistoric monster and just pounding it in the face/overhead as hard as he possibly could and hoping it would go down. And you know, it was really funny because that was his one technique, right? And John Carter does some of that too, but this leads me to crystallize the thing that I'm thinking, did anybody else think the fight scenes in this book were kind of weak?

Nate:

Yeah, that was one issue.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

You didn't think that's something that he would be good at?

Gretchen:

Well, no one stands a chance against John Carter.

Nate:

Yeah.

Gretchen:

So of course all of the battles, it's like he's just going to be the sole person that's winning, and no one really that has any sort of, there's no tension. Because obviously John Carter is going to win.

Nate:

And one character, I mean, I've been a note of it when we get to it later, but yeah, one character who they set up to be like a main antagonist is killed in like a single sentence, and it just feels like so anti-climactic.

JM:

Right.

Gretchen:

Yeah. I do remember once or twice after they had set up a person that was going to be like, it seemed like a significant person being taken out immediately, and I had to like go back and reread for a second and be like, that's it? That's all?

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

Yeah. I mean, again, you know, comparing this to like other writers who do this kind of stuff, but yeah, even like the crime novels and stuff, it's like, I mean, unless you're like really averse to violence in fiction, which I'm not, you find this kind of stuff exciting. Like the way these authors do it, and I would argue even the way somebody like Brackett does it, it gets your pulse pounding, it makes you feel like the tension and suspense of the fight. Burroughs has a lot of fight scenes, but they don't have that. Sometimes they're a bit ridiculous. Sometimes it's like they're over really, really quick, and you're just like, oh, okay, that was it.

It is just like, he's been building up to this fight, and there's one we'll get to later on where it's just like, okay, that was a massive anti-climax, you know, like that's the fight, that's the big fight. There's a reason for that is because John Carter himself was not actually in the fight. So John Carter could not describe how awesome he was. Therefore, the fight scene was not, was not awesomely described at all. He was just like, oh, and that's done.

When I'm reading a Robert E. Howard story, I'm like, okay, whatever else happens, there's going to be some good skull pounding and like, like, raucous fight scenes that make you throw up your hands and go, yeah, like, no, you don't really get any of that here. It's a ton of fight scenes, but yeah.

Nate:

Yeah, I don't know. The beast fight scenes are probably better than some of the other ones. So this introductory one isn't bad. And it does kind of set the tone for how sometimes ridiculous they can be that a couple of fight scenes that get a laugh out of me when I first read them, which is probably not what he was trying to go for.

But yeah, so here he takes one of the giant stone cudgels and just smashes the ape in the head with it and throws the cudgel at the second, punching it in the face and just bringing the cudgel down on it. So again, just smashing it and smashing it in the head until it dies. And at his victory, he hears laughter from behind him courtesy of Tars Tarkas, Sola and some other warriors, one of which is going to euthanize the watchdog with his pistol. But Carter slams the gun up at the last moment.

JM:

Yeah, it probably really sounds like I'm trashing this book because I'm going to point out another thing that bugged me. I hated the names in this book. I hated the names of the characters, the Martians. I couldn't keep any of them straight. The only one that I do remember really clearly is Tars Tarkas. And I'm not sure if this will mean anything to you Gretchen, but it probably will to you Nate. Do you know how I remembered that name? No, I thought of a certain armadillo tank character on it.

Nate:

Oh, yeah, right.

JM:

Yeah, even though that's spelled differently, T-A-R-K-U-S. Yeah, I'm like, oh, that's Tarkas. That's the armadillo guy. Cool. So yeah, this is the second Emerson, Lake and Palmer album, which is like this concept album about this cyborg animal tank thing or something like that. Yeah, prog rock, epic, lots of lots of awesome organ and whatnot. I'm sure some listeners know it.

Nate:

Side A is great. Side B is not great. Yeah, but yeah, good record, cool tank. So yeah, I didn't make that association with Tars Tarkas here, but...

JM:

It helped me because I needed to remember at least some of the Martian character names.

Gretchen:

Yeah, I feel like some of them it was just like it would just be yeah, alphabet soup to me, even Dejaх's name, the titular character. I would sometimes really would kind of like it would gloss over for me a little bit sometimes just because I feel like they are just it's very reminiscent of the name of that planet in the Galaxy ad that you've read.

JM:

Oh, yeah, yeah, OK, carry on. Let's let's let's forge ahead.

Nate:

Yeah, so Carter saves the watchdog from getting shot by one of these Tarks and they're puzzled at this act of compassion, but Sola and the watchdog seem to have a greater understanding. At breakfast, a number of chariots pulled in by telepathically controlled beasts come in and after a display of his jumping prowess to Lorquas Ptomel, the Jed, Carter is shown the operations of the Thark incubators. After five years in the egg, the most promising ones are hatched, which is a very small percentage. They're taught speech and weapon use and for Thark children, only the strong survive. The rest are shot.

Carter, meanwhile, makes rapid progress in the simple Thark language and telepathy, including the ability to intercept telepathic messages not meant for him. So, yeah, he immediately has an advantage over the Martians as far as telepathy goes.

JM:

He's somehow even still better than the Martians at this of all things. So there's something I thought was kind of interesting. I'm not sure. Sorry in advance, Nate, if you were going to bring this up. But yeah, he talks about the Martian children and how they're brought up and stuff like that, right? And he emphasizes the fact that they're raised by the community and their parents are not directly involved in raising the children. And he highlights this as a major problem with Martian culture, things that needs to be like that should be altered if they're to be civilized, basically.

Gretchen:

Yeah, yeah, don't don't worry, guys. John Carter is going to bring traditional family values to Mars.

JM:

Yeah, yeah.

Gretchen:

I will say, I do think that the part, as we were saying earlier, not much detail is given to how the eggs are created. But I do think it is interesting that we get that insight into the incubation period of the eggs and sort of the raising of the children. I think that's kind of an interesting little detail. That was probably one of the chapters that kind of like, I wish there was kind of more details like that because I thought that was kind of interesting to see.

Nate:

There's a bit one note at times, but yeah, more of that stuff would have helped.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

I think it's also kind of a chicken and egg scenario, though, like I kind of see. I think if that's something you'd gone more into, but I think just the way that it's talked about with the way that it's brought across in the book is like, oh, yeah, that's the big problem. Whereas like, OK, maybe the problem is that there are war-like cultures so if they're going to be raised by the community, they're going to be instilled with those kind of values. And then I have somebody like Sola, who is like the one extremely maternal Martian that we see in the book, right, who actually had a mother who really, really cared for her. And again, it's kind of an interesting angle that I think could have been explored more like it was like, OK, if you're going to raise that point, it's a fair point. Like, you know, they had something I thought about ever since I was in high school and we talked about the Republic from Plato and we're talking about how he hypothesized this communal society where where the children are raised like that and like, OK, if you're going to, if your children are going to be raised by, I don't know, this is in Plato's dialogue. So let's say, yeah, Greek philosophers or something like that. Maybe the result would be different, right? Whereas here, the children are raised by a pack of hungry warmongers. So it's like, yeah, of course, they're going to turn out like this, right? I mean, OK.

Gretchen:

I think what's also interesting is that even in the narrative, John Carter raises this point of, well, this idea of Mars itself has so limited resources that the culture is sort of bent to like accommodate the fact that they can't support all of these lives, which is why it's so violent and which is why there are so many violent deaths before people can live out their entire lives. That's the kind of an interesting point of like looking at why the society formed the way that it is, which I do feel like kind of is thrown out the window when you get all of these other species that have the same sort of, I mean, I guess that you could say they've adapted differently, but the way that John Carter sees it is, oh, well, they're just more civilized. So obviously they have developed a better culture than just being war mongering savages.

Nate:

Yeah. And it definitely, again, feels in line with that dime novel tradition of espousing the American imperialist views over, well, pretty much everybody else. He he doesn't really incorporate a lot of the races in this book, though. He does hint at them and it's pretty clear at what he's getting at in the way that it's framed and the way that it's presented.

JM:

I just think it's interesting, though, because he seems to like want to bring up some issues, but he's not willing to fully tackle them. And like, even if he had a position that I don't necessarily agree with or something, it just seems like, like, yeah, maybe again, maybe this is the editor at All-Story. Maybe that's the saying, well, the action is way more interesting than that kind of stuff, right? So focus on that. But I'm not sure if even that's what Burroughs is really good at. Honestly, because, yeah, I mean, I just complained about the fight scenes, right? Boy, there's more coming.

Nate:

Yeah, I guess one coming up here. So these chariots are leaving quickly to intercept the number of incoming airships and they fire at them with deadly accuracy, downing many of the ships. And they begin to loot it of its treasures. A beautiful woman is also dragged off the ship, more resembling an earth woman. She's taken prisoner in exchange's glances with Carter, fleeing for help, which he doesn't understand.

Thark society is gendered. Women make a lot of the weapons of war and ammunition, while the men make the laws and the military strategies. It would appear that the woman who they took prisoner will be killed at the great games before Tal Hajus. Sola seems to be the only one there not eager for blood.

Sola tells Carter not to wander outside of the city. And Woola, the watchdog, will prevent him from doing so. But Carter wants to test his loyalty. With a bit of affection and treatment like an earth dog, Woola is now totally loyal to Carter. So Carter figures out how to tame Martian animals in just a couple of days and break its guard dog duty. So he sneaks a glimpse of the prisoner woman's proceedings show trial. And he learns not only is she severely mistreated by the guards, but her name is Dejah Thoris, daughter of Mors Kajak of Helium, a member of a scientific research party, as they're the ones who are able to maintain the supply of breathable air and drinkable water on Mars, despite all the efforts of the Green Barbarians to the contrary. 

She's quite eloquent, at least compared with the other Martians and invites them to come back into the fold of civilized culture when one of them just decks her in the face. And Carter leaps in and beats the warrior to death, which puzzles Dejah Thoris as she thought he snubbed her when they first met that very Jane Austen comedy of manners type moment that we get here.

He tells her that he's a prisoner, too. She asks him, then, why does he wear the arms of a Tharkian chieftain? It would turn out that he killed the first stark that he fought is body being stripped and possessions given to him like it's conveniently happening now with the guy that he just beat to death.

Gretchen:

And, you know, John Carter can just take out his enemy with one punch.

Nate:

Yeah, he does that a lot.

Gretchen:

He does it less in the film. He does it once, but here he just kind of, again, he does just beat a man to death in front of everyone.

Nate:

Yeah, I mean, it's a good trick if you can pull it off, right? But yeah, the film, I don't know, I guess we'll get there when we get there. But he has almost like more super heroish powers in some ways and in other ways is less. It's it's I guess kind of interesting how they do that. But yeah, I mean, throughout this entire book, he's just pretty much invincible not only with his physical prowess.

JM:

Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's like this big man vacation where he gets to go off and kill things and just punch shit and it's always awesome for the most part. And it's like.

Gretchen:

But he is a gentleman.

Nate:

Yeah, throughout the entirety.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

Nate:

And yeah, his language learning skills impresses the natives. So Tars Tarkas is surprised and given that he's not from Barsoom. This is quite an achievement. He tells him he'll be treated like a chieftain. Carter declares that anyone who harms Dejah will be accountable to him and threatens Sarkoja, Dejah's previous mistreater and installs Sola as her guard instead, who was happy to obey him as he is the 11th ranking chieftain among the Tharks. Tars Tarkas is number two and Lorquus is number one.

Dejah expresses surprise that he's not from Barsoom as Barsoom speaks a mono language aside from a rumored language in a lost island called Korus, which I'm assuming is a plot in a later book. But it doesn't come up really here at all.

JM:

Yeah, I'm not sure about that.

Nate:

Yeah, that definitely feels like one of those like hooks for a later book to explore the lost island of Korus.

JM:

There's a lot of things that kind of do feel like that.

Nate:

Yeah. But he tries to explain that he's from Earth and is having a hard time getting her head around it. She knows a lot about Earth, though, being able to observe it through an instrument that projects any planet in the cosmos on a screen. And they're able to ascertain not only the geography, the flora and the fauna, but the history, too.

JM:

Yeah, so this kind of reminded me of the Conan Doyle that we read earlier, "The Maracot Deep" where these beings from Atlantis can see all these projections of like mental projections and stuff like that. Although here, apparently, we're actually able to look on Earth and watch everything. And like, that's just thrown away as well. And yeah, I mean, so it seems like the red Martians are not like in the later books, they're not more technologically advanced than some of the other Martian races. So they don't necessarily have all the best. It seems like the Therns and the Firstborn have even more advanced technology. So but it's weird because, yeah, in other ways, the red Martians technology seems sort of primitive in comparison with John Carter, but in other ways, it seems like it's more advanced, but we're mostly hinted at that. And then, yeah, later on, we see the atmosphere plant. But we don't even know who runs that, really. That's definitely another thing of the book where I'm just like, what? How? How is that even a thing? How does that work? Right?

Nate:

Yeah, so here is where the racism starts to creep in with all the different Martian races stuff, with Dejah explaining the ancient artwork in the chamber that they're in being a product of this ancient civilization and that there were these three races of more intelligent Martians, the white ones we see depicted in the artwork, in addition to the black Martians and a reddish yellow race. And the intermarriage results in the race of red men, of which Dejah belongs and the ancient white race is now lost.

So in the world building data dump conversation, Carter is summoned by Lorquus to appear, who informs him that he's a great nuisance, that they would take any excuse to kill and that he mustn't interfere with Dejah being delivered to Tal Hajus. This is no doubt Sarkoja's doing. Tars shows him to his quarters and is confused by him giving his woman to a captive and may select any women from the retinues of the chieftains he killed that he would like.

Carter would prefer some help in procuring furs and with ammunition and stuff, which isn't a problem as property is more communal with the Tharks. Carter won some of the thoats, which is like the Martian horse thing. And like with Woola, he treated them like an earth horse and they immediately fall in love with him. And he shows the rest of the Tharks his techniques and earns great respect because I guess they just never figured it out.

JM:

They never. Yeah, those damn Martians. They're just a mean lot. 

Nate:

Yeah.

Gretchen:

Yeah, for eons, all they did was just like beat their animals to death because I mean, what else were they supposed to do?

Nate:

Yeah, it's really appears that way. Yeah. So Carter and Dejah flirt a whole bunch as they walk. And Carter is debating confessing his love, but his two loves struck to do so. On their day of departure to Thark, Carter notices that she's manacled to her chariot. The key is held by Sarkoja. This is to keep Carter there as they know he won't escape without her. Dejah has become quite angry with him and deems him unfit to, quote, polish the teeth of her grandmother's sorak, which is the Barsoom equivalent of a cat.

After a brief stop to examine and later destroy some warhoon eggs, Zad suddenly approaches Carter and strikes down his mount, initiating a one on one duel as Zad drew a sword. Carter must use a sword or a lesser weapon. It's a long, even battle for a while. But above Sarkoja temporarily stuns Carter by flashing light into his eyes by a mirror, which Dejah strikes away. So Sola descends on her with a dagger.

JM:

Yeah, this was like a classic gladitorial scene. And yeah, I mean, this was kind of fun up till the end, I guess.

Nate:

But yeah. Yeah. So Carter is wounded and in one last effort dives on Zad with his sword.

JM:

Carter is wounded. So this guy's stuck a sword. Basically from Carter's chest up to his shoulder blade or collar bone or something like that, right? Probably just missing the heart by an inch or something like that. Carter is like, oh, that hurts. And he pulls the blade out like he just like and I pulled the blade out. And then I went over here and I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute.

So I'm sorry, weird aside, but I just rewatched one of my favorite classic movies, which is "North by Northwest" by Alfred Hitchcock. And so in this movie, right? Cary Grant's character is he's been taken to the house. He's basically been kidnapped and he's been taken to the house of this like dignitary guy and being questioned by this person. And he finds out that the house that this he was taken to doesn't actually belong to the kidnappers, that it belongs to somebody else who's like this UN guy who's at a conference right now. So what Cary Grant's character does is he had a bright idea of going to this conference and meeting up with this person that the people in the house that he was kidnapped into were impersonating. And so he goes to this conference and he talks to this guy and the guy's like, oh, thanks for telling me. Thanks for letting me know. And then somebody throws a knife at this guy and stabs him to death like with one awesome throw. The guy falls into Cary Grant's arms and he's bleeding everywhere. Cary Grant's like, oh, no. Then he pulls the knife out of him, which probably ensures that he dies of shock or something else, right? Just like bleeding even more profusely. So now not only did he probably kill the guy by pulling the knife out, but now he's got the knife in his hand and there's blood all over him. And the UN security people are like, oh, no, he's murdered this guy.

Like, I don't know. I just was reminded of that because even though, yeah, like, OK, it's supposed to be a legit fight and everything. But he just like pulls this blade out of himself without a second thought. And one thing the Martians are very good at is they're very good at the healing arts and Martian women can patch him up as good as new, right? So even if he extra damages himself by just going, oh, yoink. And like everything will be fine. Everything will be fine. It'll be, yeah, this is really funny to me. Just like it kind of reminded me of like the things around stabbings in movies are often really funny to me because I've known a couple of people who got into situations where they got stabbed over something. And in the movies, a lot of the time, somebody will get stabbed and they'll be like, oh, they'll fall over and like all of a sudden they're dead.

It's just like it's not, I don't know. It's usually not like that, unless you get really, really lucky and happen to like strike a main artery or like, I don't know, maybe get the right in the heart or something like that, I guess. But that's protected too by lots of bones. So it is unrealistic to me. Like very much so.

But anyway, yeah, again, the fight scenes are not as strong as they could be. I think that's it's weird to me that Burroughs isn't better at this of all things.

Nate:

Right. But yeah, I mean, it's he pretty much wrote tons of these adventure novels. So I don't know, maybe he gets a little bit better as he goes on.

Gretchen:

I think that finding out this was like his first work. I will say that I'm a little more lenient towards some of the stuff like that, I think.

Nate:

So honing his craft, I guess.

Gretchen:

Yeah. 

JM:

Oh, yeah. It's never as bloody as you expect it to be. I don't know. I think it's just it's on. Yeah.

Gretchen:

I will say what I think is the funniest fight scene hasn't come up yet. We'll get to that one.

Nate:

Yeah, well, I mean, this one he learns of his heroics almost secondhand because as he dives in to stab the guy and gets stabbed himself, everything goes black. And when he regains consciousness, it's that he learns from Sola. I believe that he, yeah, just got ran through and then he stood up and pulled out the blade, and then he was quickly attended to by the women who are quite used to this sort of thing by now.

Sola's blow, however, barely injured Sarkoja, just inflicting a flesh wound. And Dejah weeps for Carter when crying is rare on Mars. Sola only saw it before with her mother years ago. And Sarkoja just now, who wept out of rage. Sola will tell Carter of her family later that night, but first day must march in a giant procession, including zitidars, the Martian Mastodons. And when they camp, Sola tells him her story.

Her mother was too small for maternity and falls in love with a young warrior and they keep their love a secret for six years from the social stigma. And thus in secret, Sola's egg was incubated. Mixed in with the young, she learns languages and customs. But when her mother relates this, Sarkoja hears most of the story and reports her. Her mother is soon tortured and killed, but she doesn't reveal the name of the father who only Sola knows and is still present and with them. Though he doesn't know it, of course.

Of course, as a perfect gentleman, John Carter is the first person she gives this secret to, who is none other than Tars Tarkas himself.

Gretchen:

The only other good green one, yeah, if you can believe it.

JM:

Yeah, yeah, it's kind of funny. I mean, again, I just like, we can't really say too much about it now, but like there's the Brackett story coming up and there's also two women of a sort of similar type, I guess, like this in that story. Although the real love interest is more of a "hellcat" as the protagonist of that story puts it and she's not really nice. But there's also like this really motherly, but also very childlike female character. You actually really do feel a feel sorry for her. And like she makes her like, even though she's kind of pathetic a little bit. She's just still a pretty sympathetic character, right? Whereas the Sola story, yeah, I mean, it kind of works, but I don't know. It just there's lacking some emotional connection with it, I think.

Gretchen:

One thing I will say is I was much more interested in Sola than I was in Dejah. I kind of wish that there was more to do with her.

Nate:

Yeah, and it's disappointing because they do set her up to be this character who will have her own arc and journey. And she just kind of like falls out of the narrative at some point. And just kind of comes back at the end, which is disappointing because, yeah, I do like her as a character, especially one that stands out from the rest of Thark society.

But yeah, it is just pretty funny how Sola thinks the first person worthy of her secret that she's helped her so long is John Carter, because he's this. Yeah. Well, perfect.

JM:

I just think that if we spend more time, also, it kind of feels like there's not a lot of direct quoted dialogue from any of the other characters. Like there's a lot of John Carter being like, and then she told me this and then he told me that it kind of feels again, like we're too focused on John Carter. We need to see some of that other stuff and need to see what these people are thinking and feeling, right? And it's almost like he's countering that, too, by saying, well, their Martians, maybe they have this idea of things like friendship, like there's a bit of a kernel of understanding in their minds, but they don't really have those concepts.

Tars Tarkas pretty much becomes a friend to John Carter, and that's gone into more in the future books as well. But it's only because John Carter sort of taught him what it is to have friends, right? John Carter is just this awesome influence, right, on everybody around him.

Gretchen:

Yeah, the civilizing force.

Nate:

Yeah, it really is.

Gretchen:

Yeah. And I do think it's interesting that I only the Sola thing the first person she should tell the secret to that she's held on to her whole life is John Carter. But then she's like, and you can use that whenever you need to. Like it is totally up to your judgment when you, who you tell this to and when, if it saves you.

Nate:

And he definitely takes her up on that.

JM:

Yeah. 

Gretchen:

Yeah.

Nate:

But for now, their journey is relatively uneventful. They cross the water waves or the canals, as we call them, and they get to Thark. It's a huge city, about 25 communities led by Jeds all under Tal Hajus, the Jeddak of Tark. Lorquus being the number two in the grand scheme of things with the size of the living quarters corresponding between rank.

Carter finds Dejah and pledges his service, which she rejects. And Sola interrupts them and says that Sarkoja will probably have them thrown to the wild calots, which are the Martian wolves or I guess they're dogs.

Gretchen:

I assumed, is that what Woola is?

Nate:

Yeah, that's I guess.

Gretchen:

Yeah, couldn't remember if that was like ever said directly, but that been the assumption.

Nate:

Yeah. Yeah. So I guess the Martian dogs, Carter asks Sola to escape with them, which she agrees to, and they start a plot to make their way to Helium through a waterway 200 miles north of their current position. As Carter is corralling the beast, he hears talk about his capture and would appear that he's been betrayed somehow. And with some quick maneuvering and luck, he's able to get a view of Tal Hajus holding Dejah and Sola prisoner in a large jail. As he's ordering them to be tortured, Carter jumps in and hesitates killing him. But as he doesn't want to deprive Tars Tarkas of his vengeance.

JM:

Yeah, he does do the massive blow to the head thing, but it doesn't kill him this time.

Nate:

Yeah, he just punches him in the face.

Gretchen:

Not a lethal blow.

Nate:

Yeah. Yeah. I guess he hit him in a good spot or something.

JM:

So this Martian, Tal Hajus is like supposed to be the baddest of all the green Martians, like he's the most decadent, the most dangerous. He'll like fuck you up just for the fun of it. Right. That's really built up to. And that's why I'm complying because again, it's like we're not there yet. But his end is very anticlimactic to say the least.

Gretchen:

Yeah, yeah. And I will say just another moment of John Carter needing to be whatever he needs to be in that moment. There is that part in like earlier in the narration. No, there's another part in like earlier in the narrative when he's like, I never hesitate. Like I just I act and then I think afterwards. And that's why I'm so good. Of course, here in this moment, he hesitates because he's like, oh, I can't I can't deprive Tars Tarkas of this.

Nate:

He's the perfect gentleman at all times.

JM:

Yes, right. And if he's not really involved in a fight, it's not worth describing.

Nate:

Yeah, just punching him in the face is good enough here. And he quickly grabs Dejah and Sola and they mount their thoats and right off away from the city. And while they ride all night, they get quite lost and are nowhere near their destination. But fortunately, Woola followed them. And by now, their thoughts are getting exhausted and supplies are running low.

They spy a large party of a few hundred warriors and Carter picks off the chieftain with his rifle and tells Sola and Dejah to leave without him while he holds him off. Dejah at first refuses to go, saying she loves him, but he sends her off and is shortly recaptured by the warriors. He's not captured by the Tharks, but by the Warhoons led by Jeddak Bar Comas, a young leader who is hated by his jealous old lieutenant, Dak Kova.

This doesn't last for very long, though, as the two immediately get into a fight over a jest from Dak and Dak ends up killing Bar. This fight and Dak Kova's injuries delay their expedition, which was to raid Thark villages in retaliation for the Tharks destroying their incubator earlier.

Carter is thrown into a dungeon, but immediately kills the jailer by smashing his head with chains and six pairs of eyes approached to eat the corpse. This only seems to have the effect of him not being fed for two days. And another prisoner, Kantos Kan, from Helium, is thrown in the same cell.

JM:

Oh, yes. Kantos Kan. Yeah. That was fun. There's a couple of them that are fun to say. My favorite, though, is coming up. And it's Zodanga.

Nate:

Yeah. That is a good name for the city.

Gretchen:

Yeah. Yeah.

Nate:

After they exchange information, he tells Carter that Dejah and Sola probably made it to safety. Kanto's was part of an expedition to find Dejah, but that obviously failed. And they're soon thrown into the arena after several bloody fights with men and beasts. Kantos and Carter fight each other. But Carter tells Kantos they should escape instead. And so Carter fakes being stabbed and plays dead and easily slips out, which seems like really, really farfetched.

Gretchen:

This is the funniest fight scene for me. This was the moment I was reading this while I was like at a bus stop waiting. And I just I had to resist the urge to laugh out loud. Like, what is like the traditional children's move of like pretending to be stabbed by a sword by putting it under your arm? I was. Yeah. Very amused by that. 

Nate:

Genius plan.

JM:

Yeah, because we need the fight to last for the entire day. We need to have all this stuff. But the thing is, like, it's not even described with much gusto. I could see this part being, yeah, if it cranked it up, like my like 10 I made it like really over the top and bloody as hell. I could be like, yeah, this is awesome, right? I like reading about this. It's like reading about some crazy wrestling gladiator thing and like, yeah. But now it's not really again, it's it's not on 10. It's more like a five. Yeah. Sorry, ERB, but I want more than this.

Nate:

Yeah, this was a pretty silly fight scene among a book of silly fight scenes, for sure.

Gretchen:

Yes. 

Nate:

Yeah. But yeah, Carter gets out, no problem, but he's unable to find Kantos. And after a near deaf encounter with some creature that Woola suits him from, he eventually finds his way to a large building occupied by an old man who can't read his thoughts, but can see through his physical body. The old man runs the station that produces atmosphere on Mars. This is done by the ninth ray of a pendant like thing that he wears around his neck.

JM:

The Ninth ray, yeah. And they just randomly borrow that for the movie. And like the ninth ray is this really awesome. It's like the force in Star Wars almost, I don't know. Yeah, that's that.

So if I understand this. So the atmosphere plan is run by one guy. He runs the entire atmosphere of Mars. If he dies, everybody on Mars dies. And there's no redundancy whatsoever. Not in the personnel, not in the machinery, not in the location of the plant. What even is this?

Nate:

Yeah, they didn't really see that one through.

JM:

It kind of reminds me of the Doctor Who story from the 60s, The Seeds of Death. And how like they have this network of transport, like like transmat transport things where they use this way station on the moon to basically beam food and stuff to everybody all over the earth. And then when the station on the moon gets invaded by Martians, they can't send food to everybody anymore. And they have no way of basically picking up the slack. So there's no like now the system is shut down. Nothing else works and nobody goes into space anymore. There's no rockets. So they can't even figure out what's going on on the moon and how to fix it. Right. I was like, that story seems to be almost a commentary on how you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket and where like you need some kind of backup system or redundancy or something in case something fails and you can't fix it. Right. Like you need you need something else. And that story seems to be a commentary on that.

But this seems to be just like, again, apparently it has gone into a little more in the later books, how Mars is dying and Mars is an ecological disaster and so on that they need this basically in order to survive. But it doesn't seem like the atmosphere plant is featured that prominently in later books. And I did look into this because this is something I was very curious about because especially at the end of this book, it seems like it's leading to something where, OK, we're going to we're going to figure out what's the deal with the atmosphere plant. And like, it doesn't seem like that's something that's even addressed very much. But other than to say, like, yeah, Mars needs this now because the ecology is fucked and it's bad. And yeah, it's really cool that Burroughs was highlighting this in 1912, and basically trying to say, hey, you have to preserve the air you breathe in order to preserve the civilization, preserve the waters, keep everything going, right? Somehow. Yeah, it doesn't seem like the atmosphere plant is a weird plot point in this book that doesn't really satisfy. I think. 

Nate:

Yeah, it could use better administration for sure.

Gretchen:

Yeah. 

JM:

Yeah. 

Nate:

Yeah. So he's somewhat a prisoner here in this atmosphere generation plant. But before the old man retires, he asked the man to give him a letter to Zodanga, which is a nearby Martian city. But one that happens to be at war with Helium.

JM:

Instead of the old man saying, I could tell you, I'd have to kill you. He's like, I'm going to tell you and then I'll kill you. But he doesn't. Yeah. I mean, luckily, John Carter picks up this thought wave because otherwise he'd be unsuspecting putty in the old man's hands.

Nate:

Right. Yeah.

JM:

Get a knife in the back and die horribly.

Nate:

But yeah, in addition to that, he realizes the doors are telepathic. So he reads the old man's mind and gets out with too much trouble.

Gretchen:

I do want to say that scene really, I feel like for some reason that was a scene where I really did not like John Carter specifically doing that because he's like, I'm going to make this man reveal like this immense secret. Why is he suspicious of me? It's only after he does that that the old man is like, I've got to kill this guy now because I think he knows something. And John Carter is like, why does he think that all I did was make him reveal the biggest secret in this place?

Yeah, he's thinking, well, if I kill the old man, because initially he's like, I'll just kill him and get rid of him. And then he's like, well, if I kill the old man, everyone here will stop breathing, everyone will suffocate, which isn't that bad, except Dejah will. And it's like, what about Sola? What happened to at least Sola? Do you not care about Sola or like Tars? OK, but no, Dejah is in trouble. So now you're not going to kill this guy like that.

Nate:

Yeah. Killing the entire planet to save his crush, I guess that's that's a move.

Gretchen:

Yeah. 

JM:

No.

Nate:

Yeah. So again, he easily escapes from the old man and encounters some red Martians and says that he's on his way to Zodanga escaping the green men and they load him up with supplies, a boat and even some money. After observing the Martian irrigation system, he encounters a Zodangan diplomat who heard a rumor that Dejah was dead. And before arriving at Zodanga, bads Woola to leave and go elsewhere or something.

JM:

Yeah. So the whole Zodanga thing is kind of weird, too, because like here is he comes in, joins the Zodangan Navy, gets an airship and everything. And everything seems fine. But then we kind of like I don't know. It's like the Zodangas are the bad guys, right? It's like, why? So like, what, what do they are they that cruel? Like, what have they done exactly? Like they apparently have declared war on Dejah Thoris' city and they're holding it siege. But they don't really seem any worse than any other Martians, you know, they seem fine, right? Like, what is the deal with this? Why do we not like Zodanga?

Nate:

Yeah, it just seems like them and Helium are kind of equal, boring factions with one another. Didn't really seem like he was making any cultural commentary here, at least assigning any particular nation to the culture.

JM:

It's just like they don't like Dejah Thoris's tribe. So therefore they're bad.

Nate:

Yeah, I guess. But I mean, to me, they didn't Zodanga and Helium didn't seem substantially different from one another, at least not in the way of that Helium and Tharks seem from one another. Anyway. 

JM:

Yeah. So in the movie, the "John Carter" movie made like the Zodangan prince kind of villainous. They made him a central character almost. But in here, it's like he doesn't seem to have really done anything bad. I mean, he he's going to marry Dejah Thoris against her will. But she's basically going along with it and his father that seems to have like proposed the arranged marriage, right? So I don't know, it just seems like it's mean for no reason. You know, it's like, well, why are we even hating on these guys? Exactly. They don't seem to have really done anything any more wrong than anybody else. Right. It's just, yeah, I don't know. I didn't I don't really get the sense that it was like this dystopian dark culture or anything like that that needed to be wiped out.

Nate:

No, they're definitely going to pay for it later, though.

Gretchen:

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's just, well, John Carter has to do something to get the girl. So yeah, yeah, I don't think it's supposed to. Yeah. Well, I think the there's definitely some racial undertones with the the Tharks, definitely not as much with... 

JM:

Yeah, maybe so.

Gretchen:

Yeah, I think it is just again to have John Carter perform some feats to get Dejah back.

Nate:

Need more fight scenes for the book.

Gretchen:

Yeah. Yeah.

Nate:

So yeah, inside the city of Zodanga, he finds Kantos Kan, who's joined up with the Zodangan Navy, flying an air scout. And he gets Carter on by pretending he's Carter and taking his physical examination for him, which is another pretty ingenious method that these two come up with.

JM:

Yeah.

Nate:

These airships are powered by the eighth solar ray, which gives them incredible precision. And on Carter's first flight, he finds a party of green warriors pursuing a Zodangan and uses his plane to behead one of the green warriors causing the other two to flee. The Zodangan he saved was a cousin of the Jeddak and Carter kills the remaining two warriors in swordplay when they return.

The Zodangan is injured in the fighting, but not mortally. And this little excursion gets him a promotion to a padwar of the guards and the praise of Than Kosis, the Jeddak.

Gretchen:

Yeah. And when that happens, he has this whole w"ho me?" moment where he's like, I was so surprised to hear my name.

Nate:

Yeah. Again, impressing everybody on his first encounter and just making his way up in the world. He's given the new duty of guarding Than Kosis and income for soldiers with Dejah, who has agreed to accept Than's son, Sab Than in marriage, which would help end the war. In an effort to get to her, Carter kills her four guards in swordplay, but she tells him it's too late as she's already given her promise in marriage. She tells him the cause of her initial offense from before saying, "you called me your princess without having asked my hand of me. And then you both said that you had fought for me." which I guess she didn't really like. 

Killing Sab Than wouldn't work either. So Carter's only chances to escape, especially as noton, the psychologist, read the minds of the dead soldiers that a single person killed them all. And it doesn't take long for them to figure out that it's the strangely named John Carter and they put Kantos Kan on close watch. Carter has no trouble leaping on roofs to find Kantos Kan and he agrees to kill Sab Than, so problem solved there. Aside from dispatching a guard, they encounter no issue escaping and commandeering two air patrol crafts.

In flight to Helium, Carter is pursued and his ship heavily damaged by fire, knocking out his navigation and is eventually shot down by a group of green warriors engaged in battle with one another. It's Tars Tarkas fighting off some Warhoons and Carter jumps in to help Tars Tarkas fight them off. Woola comes back and he tells Tars about Sola.

JM:

Did you get flashbacks with John Carter in the airboat without any with a broken compass and all that? Did you get flashbacks of Mr. Jakadox in "The Air Battle"?

Nate:

Yeah, a little bit.

JM:

Because I certainly did. Yeah. I was totally my 100% thinking of "Тhe Air Battle", which I think we did not long before you joined Gretchen, but it's a weird one. One of these. When was it published? 1871 or something like that?

Nate:

No, I think earlier than that, I want to say it was 1860s.

JM:

Okay. Yeah, 1860. I always, I always get it wrong. Yeah. I'm either overestimating or underestimating the year it was published. But yeah, it was a weird one. All right. And weird, weird social political stuff. But yeah, also lots of flying machines.

Nate:

Yeah. And I mean, I guess this is an interesting time in aviation history because the Wright Brothers flight had occurred at this point, but there wasn't anything like commercial air flights now. It was just this like wild world of aviators who frequently got killed in accidents trying to do routine flights. And then, you know, during World War one, they use biplanes and, but it was very much in the early stage of aviation here where I think Burroughs conceptions of these air vehicles do descend more from that airship genre, like some of the Jules Verne novels or "Angel of the Revolution". And "The Air Battle" would definitely fit into there. But it was a pretty obscure work upon release.

JM:

It's very obscure. And, but it's also really funny because like Burroughs started this series pretty much at the start of aviation. And he was still writing it in the 1930s.

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

Right. So he got to see some of the stuff actually come to fruition, at least.

Nate:

So, yeah, this is where Sarkoja leaves. It's now that Tars Tarkas knows that she played a negative role in Sola's life. He banishes her. And yeah, that's just the end of we see of Sarkoja, just totally gone from the narrative. Again, I thought they were going to do more with her character.

Gretchen:

Yeah, they're just like, get out of here. And she's gone. And she's like, okay, yeah.

Nate:

Yeah, it's a bit disappointing. But when they enter Thark, Tal Hajus tries to have Carter seized, but he taunts him into a fight, suggesting that he should fight Tars Tarkas. And the fight happens again in text really quickly with Tars just being victorious right away. And Carter is now promoted to a higher chieftain and enlists them to rescue Dejah from Zodanga.

The city is breached. And as Dejah is about to be married, Carter smashes through the great glass window of the assembly hall. Sob then tries to stab him with a dagger, but Carter parries the blow and points outside. Zodanga has fallen and Tars Tarkas rides in.

JM:

Yeah.

Nate:

Carter, of course, kills Than Kosis in swordplay with no problems. And the fighting gets more intense. These Zodangans are killed to the last, including Sab Than.

Kantos Kan is in prison somewhere. So Carter frees him quickly by fortunately finding the corpse of the jailer, which has the keys on it. All the interplanetary swordplay impresses Dejah and they kiss. She now promising herself and marriage to John Carter, gentlemen of Virginia.

Zodangan gets sacked. And while the ground fighting has been won, the battle now turns to the air as Carter approaches Helium. Helium sends a fleet out to intercept the Zodangan fleet in pursuit of Carter, but of course the Helium fleet wins out. And Carter is held in the city as a hero with Dejah singing their praises.

Zodangans camps outside. One million men are defeated within just like a couple of sentences. And we go back to rejoicing.

Carter and Deja are married and Carter serves in the Helium armies for nine years. And they're incubating an egg when suddenly the keeper of the atmosphere plant is now dead, assassinated at that. All of Mars now just has three days to live. However, at the very last minute, Carter remembers the telepathic keys to the plant.

JM:

Yeah, he forgot the password. It's so funny, it's like, because I remember when he got those nine Martian syllables from the guy, I'm like, oh, really? He's going to remember this and he's going to be able to open it. Really? And then he did. Like, okay, fine. He got out of the atmosphere plant. He's safe now. And now at the end it's like, oh no, we need the password to the atmosphere plant. But of course, he's not going to remember that after nine years. And then he doesn't, except at the very last moment, he does. He remembers the password and he's able to save them. Just like, well, yeah. I mean, I knew it was all about the password to begin with, right? So it's just like, but it also is really funny because I kept thinking of "Army of Darkness".

Nate:

Oh, totally. Yeah.

JM:

Yeah. And Ash being like, Klaatu... barada... nik...nik...

Nate:

Yeah, it does almost feel like that here. But yeah, he pushes his way to the building, gets to the first door, the second, and then collapses while entering the third. And he wakes up in his cave in Arizona with Mars, millions of miles overhead amidst numerous corpses.

So was Mars saved? The last sentence is, "I believe that they are waiting there for me. And something tells me that I shall soon know."

(music: faint reverberations)

spoiler general discussion, film discussion

Nate:

So, I don't know. Do we find out in the next novel? I mean, there is a next novel, so presumably the entire planet just didn't die off, and it's not John Carter walking around by himself.

Gretchen:

Yeah. It is "The Blank of Mars", so I assumed about Mars, perhaps.

JM:

Yeah. The next book is "The Gods of Mars", and there is some time that's passed between what we just read and that one on Mars. The Zodangans have gotten tired of being a vassal state and rebel again, and the unfortunate thing is that when John Carter goes back to Mars, he finds that he's not in the same location, and he's in fact beyond the river Styx. It's not the Styx, but whatever the Martian equivalent is, or something like that.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

And he's on the taboo land now, and that's where he encounters the white and black Martians, and the whole thing is a ruse, and most of the red Martians who go there are like eaten because the white Martians at least are cannibals, and the green Martians just get killed because they're like a sub race, and nobody cares about them. Apparently they're like too savage to even bother with. Yeah, and then all this stuff happens. I don't know if the whole business with the atmosphere plant is ever really addressed because I couldn't find anything about that, and so I'll just have to read the book, I guess.

Nate:

Yeah, exactly.

JM:

It didn't seem like that was addressed. From what I was reading, the background is synopsis and everything.

Gretchen:

Well, there are eight other books and then two short story collections, correct? So perhaps they address it in one of those texts.

Nate:

I mean, you think he would, I mean, considering it's like the major cliffhanger of your first book.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

Nate:

I mean, maybe he just addresses it in one sentence and says that like...

JM:

What's also apparent to me is that he was churning out these books so fast, right? And it was just like, maybe something's got lost in the shuffle and the editing and everything, and it didn't. Like, this guy was writing so many books within like a three-four year period, right?

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

So...

Gretchen:

And it could be like, I'm not sure how the short stories are set up, but if it's something that explores like certain aspects of Martian culture that aren't explored in the novels, maybe that's where it would be addressed. Not necessarily the cliffhanger, but more about the plant.

JM:

Well, yeah. And I think it's really interesting how like, in the following generations, and in the generation after that, which would be Brackett, I guess, but in the following generation, which would be C.L. Moore, Clark Ashton and Smith, maybe a few other writers, not that Smith is... I don't know, maybe some people would dismiss that because he only wrote like four Martian stories, but it's similar in that it's like, Mars is this old decayed planet with lots of ancient secrets, and in the Smith stories, they're all horrible, right? This is like, they'll all get you, and if the interloping earthlings come in and try to dig up the buried Martian secrets, everybody's probably gonna die horribly, and it might threaten the entire future of the human race.

But it seems interesting to me that like, science fiction is often criticized for being too fascinated with how things work, and that could be a hard science perspective, but that could also be a social historical perspective, right? Where some people don't want to read the plot getting bogged down by descriptions of Martian history, or geography, or society, or something like that. Like, they think that's a purplish material. I'm guessing that probably a lot of the readers and editors of All-Story Magazine might have thought the same thing. By the way, the series moved to Blue Book eventually. I don't know if that's a less well-known publication. Certainly seen a lot of references to Blue Book from around that time period.

Nate:

I think that's something we read around the early days of the podcast was in Blue Book, but...

JM:

Yeah.

Nate:

All-Story Leader, Argosy, I think definitely has more science fiction content in it than some of the other ones.

JM:

But the masterminds of Mars ended up in Amazing. That was a real coup for Hugo at the time.

Nate:

Yeah, getting a major figure like Burroughs, I bet.

JM:

That was in like 1928 or something like that.

Nate:

Right, right.

JM:

So later on. But yeah, yeah.

Nate:

Yeah, I don't know. I wish this one was better than it was. I mean, I didn't like hate it, but it being a quick read and kind of basic in its prose style definitely helped propel it along. But yeah, I wish the characters were stronger. I wish the fight scenes were better.

JM:

Yeah, and that's just a frustrating thing. Like, of all things, why can't ERB be better at the fight scenes? I don't know. He doesn't have the blood and thunder of a Robert E. Howard or something like that, or even Brackett. Because she definitely has it. I mean, maybe it's because she's also a writer of westerns, but it's just like, and hardboiled stuff that she could do that if she makes the fights like seem very suspenseful and dangerous, right? Whereas Burroughs doesn't seem to have that in the last book or in this one.

Gretchen:

Yeah, I feel the same way. I wish I wish I did like this more than I did. I do feel a little bad because I think I did spend the majority of the summary and even before that bashing this one a little bit. But I think there are there's potential here. It just yeah, I don't I don't think that the writing is strong enough to carry it through. I don't think the execution is strong enough to carry it through.

JM:

Right. I do see like people like even in Hartwell/Cramer, I say they kind of hint that like, okay, maybe somebody who is really influenced by him and is very vocal about it and saying how awesome she thinks he is. But Leigh Brackett is a better writer than Edgar Rice Burroughs and you just can't deny that, right?

Gretchen:

Yeah, Leigh Brackett and C.L. Moore are both better writers. I couldn't help but think and we will talk about this more in a bit. But yeah, Edgar Rice Burroughs can make action seem dull, but you have C.L. Moore writing this moment of just someone waking up from a dream and it feels like you're on the edge of your seat for it.

JM:

Yeah. 

Gretchen:

I think that kind of hints that the people who carry the torch that Burroughs lit are better. I think that they improve on what he started here.

JM:

So I guess an interesting question too would be, this is like Burroughs' first novel. I mean, you know, I'm not referring to this thing a lot, but I really liked the way they tried to phrase things, even though they seemed a little not fond of certain things like the new wave and stuff like that. But the way Hartwell and Cramer phrased things, they talk about Jack Williamson and how Williamson was respected, even though he was a hack early on, because the fans felt that Jack Williamson grew with every decade and changed as a writer. And like, by the time he was writing in the 70s and 80s, he was a lot different than he was in 1929, you know, like the 1930s, right? "The Prince of Space" that we did early on was a pretty early story from him. What was that, 1931 or something like that? That was pretty early.

And he was a guy that kept writing up into his 90s. And maybe in his 90s, maybe that wasn't his best period. I don't know exactly. But the question would be, does Burroughs improve as a writer? Does Burroughs like so far we've read really early stuff from him? And I guess we would have to go forward in time into the 1930s or even the 40s and say, "Has Burroughs improved? Is he's better at doing this certain stuff now?" But the thing is, it's still these early books that seem to be the most talked about, the most praised. So I don't know.

I mean, I personally would like to read more of the Martian books. I don't know if we really need to do this on the podcast. We still haven't come to a consensus about series and if we're ever going to really tackle them as a whole on the podcast, maybe one day. Yeah, there's like 11 books or something. So I guess that's a future project for me personally. And I'm not in a rush, but I'm going to be like, yeah, I'll see if how the books are as they go on. So apparently after book three, we move away from John Carter for books like four, five, six, seven and so on. But then in, I think it's called "The Swords of Mars", which is written in the 1930s. John Carter comes back and it's like an espionage, spy-fi kind of book. And that sounds like it might be interesting to me. I'd like to see how he does that kind of thing, right?

Gretchen:

Yeah, as a fan of some spy-fi myself, that that would be interesting to look into.

JM:

Yeah.

Gretchen:

It would be interesting to see some of his later work, not just because writing styles can change, but also one of my biggest gripes with this is that sometimes people's views on certain subjects can change as well. I mean, that's what we see with Lovecraft.

Nate:

Sure. 

JM:

Absolutely.

Gretchen:

Near the end of his life was regretting a lot of his earlier ideology and perhaps that kind of thing we can also see in Burroughs. I'm not too familiar with Burroughs' life and I didn't have a chance to really look into the background. I'm sure you both covered it in the previous episode, but.

Nate:

Yeah, I don't know if we went substantially into depth on his later career, but I mean, at some point he becomes incredibly well-paid for the Tarzan stuff due to the number of film and comic book adaptations that brought in. So probably different than like a Lovecraft figure who was well-beloved by the community, but certainly not the broader world at large.

Gretchen:

Yeah, yeah. It is interesting because I feel like these two figures especially kind of have quite a bit in common just with these two very influential figures who would go on to be huge inspirations for the coming generations of sci-fi and weird fiction.

JM:

Right.

Gretchen:

I am interested in perhaps seeing what else Burroughs did later in life.

Nate:

Yeah, I mean, our next author, C.L. Moore, was definitely very inspired by Burroughs. She specifically cited the Barsoom books and an interview from October of 1941 in the Futurian War Digest. So yeah, I mean, it definitely reached a lot of people and a lot of authors who I guess in my opinion did better than Burroughs did.

JM:

I have to say though, my first impression was not great because I mean, I'd seen the Barsoom, like I'd seen the books listed before. I didn't know a lot about them. I knew roughly who Edgar Rice Burroughs was. But the first time I heard the name Dejah Thoris, for example, was in Robert Heinlein's book, "Number of the Beast", where the main characters of that book basically is a husband and wife or something. They're really weird. They're like swingers, I guess. And they basically roleplay being Dejah Thoris and John Carter. And he was unbearable.

Nate:

Yeah, I really did not like that book.

Gretchen:

I have not read that Heinlein.

Nate:

Yeah, I mean, it takes an interesting concept where characters from classic science fiction stories, film and literature come in and they're like characters in the book now. But that's definitely in his like dirty old man days. So just a lot of the stuff he writes in that book is TMI for sure.

JM:

Sure. I'd also like to point out, though, just because I'm really like kind of taken by it right now and ever since. Yeah, we read "No Man's Land in Space". Last year I read "The People of the Talisman" and "The Secret of Sinharat", which are both John Stark novels, Eric John Stark novels. But to highlight, once again, Leigh Brackett, she has a story called "The Tweener". And it's about this guy who brings a Martian animal home to his family, specifically his kids. The story is like, you know, weird stuff starts to happen and people start to get like really paranoid and xenophobic and stuff. But this little Martian creature is, I don't know, it's like a little bit rabbit-like and it's called The Tweener. And the kids are very affectionate toward it. And you know what they name that little rabbit-like creature? John Carter.

Yeah, he's like, she loves ERB and she's very unrepentant about it. It's cool to say, yeah, like she's much better at doing this, but she would probably say, yeah, but it's all thanks to ERB, right? Michael Moorcock observed this and I'll talk about this when we discuss the story. But Moorcock and Brackett somehow became friends. And Moorcock was like, yeah, like she would say that everything, that reason she loves doing this and the reason she's any good at it and stuff is because of Edgar Rice Burroughs. But we all know that she was better at it. And it's like, yeah, okay, I can buy that because it seems true to me too. Everything I've read by her is like awesome. So yeah, I don't know.

Gretchen:

I mean, so far of what we've read, I really love Brackett.

JM:

Yeah.

Gretchen:

If you guys want to discuss the film for a little bit, I should say that the first time I ever came across anything relating to John Carter was back in my preteens when I would sometimes watch the Disney Channel. And I remember an immense amount of ads specifically for John Carter, which they often would have different behind the scenes sorts of things playing between shows and films where they would show actors being interviewed and stuff. But for some reason, the John Carter ones were the ones that have stuck in my mind. I just remember there being so many of those, which unfortunately didn't seem to help the film very well.

Nate:

No, it's a really fantastic, fascinating case study of big budget motion picture filmmaking and advertising and promotion and all that.

JM:

So let's talk about this because this is really interesting.

Nate:

Yeah. So this is been something that they've been trying to film forever as early as the 1930s, in fact, but nothing came together until recently. If you can call it coming together. So they actually made a movie before the John Carter one, the one from 2009. Did either of you guys have a chance to watch that?

JM:

I didn't. No.

Gretchen:

No, I did not.

Nate:

Yeah. All right.

Gretchen:

So I actually only very late in preparing for this episode found out about it. Like I hadn't realized it before. I did not have a chance to watch it.

Nate:

Yeah. Yeah. So I just want to run through it real quick. It was an Asylum picture who make what they call mock...

JM:

Oh, no, really?

Nate:

Yeah. Yeah.

JM:

Oh, bad.

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

Okay. But you enjoyed it kind of.

Nate:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I'll get to that. But yeah, their mockbusters. And their whole thing is they release a no budget off brand movie of whatever is big at the time. And I guess they got wind that Disney was doing a "Princess of Mars" movie. So they ended up beating them to the punch by three years due to...

JM:

Oh, wow. It's like it's like "Terminator 2", "Shocking Dark".

Nate:

Yeah. Yeah.

JM:

Have any guys you guys either of you guys know about that one?

Nate:

Yeah, I heard about that, but I haven't seen that.

Gretchen:

Yeah, I've also only heard about it.

JM:

It's the Bruno Mattei sequel to Terminator that is actually a ripoff of Aliens. Like 100%. Almost dialogue for dialogue scene per scene.

Nate:

Nice.

JM:

Until it has this weird time travel thing thrown at the end that makes it like Terminator.

Nate:

Yeah, I appreciate the ripoff industries.

JM:

It's one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

Nate:

Nice.

JM:

It's like, I don't even know if it's so bad it's good.

Nate:

Yeah. The film "Lady Terminator" is also pretty amusing for just blatantly plagiarizing the film.

JM:

But it's hilarious that this Italian ripoff guy managed to make "Terminator 2" two or three years before James Cameron did.

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

Most countries is not called "Terminator 2", "Shocking Dark", but you can find copies of the movie called that.

Nate:

Yeah. So this one came out in 2009, three years before the Disney "John Carter". It stars Antonio Sabato Jr. as John Carter, who I was trying to remember what nineties thing it was that I recognize him from. And I was thinking to myself, was it Renegade? But no, that's Lorenzo Lomas.

JM:

Yeah, he's the son of a Western crime star, Antonio Sabato, right?

Nate:

Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, after looking at his Wikipedia article, I didn't actually recognize anything he's actually been in. So I think again, yeah, just one of those people who got famous through, in his case, it was modeling and just somehow been in the cultural eye ever since then. He claims that he's now blacklisted from Hollywood because he supports Donald Trump and has compared the experience to both communism and the Holocaust. And I'm sure it has nothing to do with the acting skills that he demonstrates in this film. Tracy Lords is Dejah, who looks bored for most of the time. Antonio Sabato Jr. has a Batman tattoo on his lower back, which they don't cover up for the movies. So I imagine that him and Dejah were having like an off-camera conversation where she asked him, like, what's that? And he talks at length at her about what Batman is and everything related to Batman.

In this one, he is not a Confederate soldier, but it's set in the present day. So he's a US Special Forces guy.

Gretchen:

I was about to ask. I was thinking like, imagine a Confederate soldier trying to explain what Batman is. And I thought that. I think that's actually a lot funnier.

Nate:

It is. But no, this one, he's a Special Forces guy. I believe in Afghanistan, they don't name it, but a character says that the Russians were previously there before. So I'm assuming that's just what it is.

JM:

I had no idea about Antonio Sabato Jr. either. That's all. Yeah.

Nate:

Yeah, he definitely has multiple tattoos that they didn't bother covering up for the movie. So yeah, this is John Carter in this one. And this one, he shot multiple times and the doctors have the entire data to totally reconstruct him on a 16 gigabyte flash memory stick. So pretty convenient.

JM:

Right on. Yeah. Yeah.

Nate:

He's set to Mars, but this is not the one that is in our solar system, but around Alpha Centauri. The CGI is really bad and the dialogue is really bad. But I had to say, I had a lot of fun with this. Like there's some kind of movies like the "Nightfall" movies that were really just torture to watch. But this was like, I thought was really entertaining.

JM:

That's cool.

Nate:

Yeah, there's, it's just ridiculous. Like it's definitely a bad movie, but it's one of those fun, bad movies. So I don't know if you like Mystery Science Theater 3000 or like a lot of those crappy direct-to-video action movies that are kind of along the same lines. So you might get something out of this.

There's lots of bugs and for some reason, like a lot of gross goo moments. J.M. mentioned a few episodes back when we talked about "Arrival" that the hip new thing in science fiction is spider aliens. And there are tons of battles with roving bands of spider monsters here.

JM:

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Interesting.

Nate:

Aside from that, it does kind of stick fairly closely to "Princess of Mars'" major plot points. It definitely feels closer to the book than the Disney "John Carter" one. The Kantos Kan plot is a bit different as the character named Kantos Kan in the movie is one of the people with Deja on the ship when it's shot down and he dies when he's introduced. But the character that he meets in the dungeon that he has to fight in the arena is rather one of the Islamist guys from the beginning of the frame story who also gets transported to Mars and like is like the main villain of the movie. But they give it a happy ending before Carter gets sent back rather than leaving on a cliffhanger. So it's all self-contained.

But yeah, definitely a bad movie, but I had a lot of fun with it. I laughed out loud like multiple times during the film. Like it's really crappy and put together like the costumes for the Tharks. They have these tusks that are clearly made out of rubber. So they're just like kind of flopping around. They don't look like they have any weight behind them at all.

JM:

Well, yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

Nate:

So that's that one that they made for a fraction of the cost of the 2012 Disney film, which is one of the most expensive movies ever made. And I was looking at the most expensive movies ever made and it's all films from the last like 15 years, which I think is crazy to me.

JM:

It's really crazy. So this movie reminded me of movies I watched recently. I recently watched the movie "Stargate" from the 90s. And I was totally reminded of that movie at certain points. I also watched recently "Yor Hunter from the Future" and this movie reminded me a little bit of that, but it costs like 800 times as much money to make as that movie did. Right?

Nate:

Yeah. And I'm assuming most of that money went towards the casting and some of the casting for the Tharks in particular was a little bit strange to me.

JM:

Yeah. I kind of like that the movie seemed like, I don't know, to me, I mean, I can't comment on the CGI and stuff like that, but to me, it felt like the movie was very old school and I kind of felt like it took some balls to make a movie like that in 2012. I don't have a lot of good things to say about Disney. I don't like them. I don't like the way they do things. I don't like the way they snatch up intellectual properties left, right, and center and just like, I don't know, I just, I don't like Disney, but yeah, I don't know. To me, it was fine. It was kind of entertaining. It was wild. At first I was saying, oh, it's kind of faithful to the book a little bit, but that's because I had just watched the first like quarter and then I was like, oh, this is kind of wild. And the thing is, the movie is like over two hours long, right?

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

And we were talking about this at first. I'm like, yeah, there's no short science fiction movies anymore. And I was thinking to myself, like, you could do the first book and under that. But then I'm like, you know what, it's over two hours long, but I still feel like this is like, oh, what the hell is going on? kind of story where it's not like there's not enough time. Like it says, like they're putting in all this stuff from the first three books. Plus they're kind of making their own story too. Just like there are multiple times watching the movie where it's like, what the hell is going on? Like what is even happening? Like I don't understand.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

It's like, you know what, like it takes balls, but I'm also not happy because I'm not happy that it's like it's too. It's cost $250 million to make these movies, right? I just like, you wonder why the industry is so broken is because like you realize you could fucking feed a small country for the amount of money that it costs to make these kind of movies.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

It's like, like why? Why? Like of course it's a failure because people don't know who John Carter is. It's not a Marvel character. So nobody's going to the theater to see John Carter. And it's like, if you had made the movie for a tenth of the money that it costs you to make it, nobody would be saying, oh, it's one of the biggest box office flops of all time.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

Right? Because it's like, oh, because it's cost so much money to make, that's why people are saying it's a bomb, basically.

Gretchen:

Yeah. And you know, looking back on the fact that like they were showing all these ads on Disney Channel, which was mostly watched by kids and like younger people, like I think that also kind of hints at like, they were, they did not know how to market this movie or how to do anything with this movie because I can tell you, I didn't know who John Carter was and I'm sure most people my age also didn't know and probably still don't know who John Carter is.

Nate:

Yeah. I read that they thought that "Princess of Mars" would drive away the male audience that they were going for, like the 13 year old boys. I mean, but... 

Gretchen:

Oh yeah, because John Carter is such a great name, it's just a guy's name.

Nate:

Yeah. But I mean, like "Under the Moons of Mars" would have been cool as a title.

Gretchen:

That would have been cool. That's honestly, I like that better than "Princess of Mars".

JM:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. "Princess of Mars" even has this like Disney feel like to it, right? This is like, oh yeah, Disney does princesses. Everybody knows that, right?

Gretchen:

Dejah's a Disney princess then.

Nate:

Yeah. I guess she technically is. And yeah, I did feel very Disney at times in terms of like its humor and...

Gretchen:

Yeah, what it very much reminded me and it is kind of bizarre thinking that this came out in 2012, the same year. It does give the Marvel movie vibe of like how humor is handled in it, which is kind of cheesy.

JM:

Yeah.

Gretchen:

I will say it's kind of the cheesy like they're right behind me, aren't they? Kind of like very farcical sort of like it kind of made me groan sometimes when they tried to be funny. Yeah. The Avengers came out the same year, so John Carter was kind of on top of that a bit.

Nate:

Yeah. I think that kind of production style and approaches script writing had been in the milieu of these modern mainstream science fiction movies for a while now.

Gretchen:

Yeah, that's true.

Nate:

And it does feel kind of in that vein of especially with how the CGI looks.

JM:

Okay. Fair enough.

Nate:

The Tharks look very Pixar and they're kind of like featureless, which again, I think is a little strange to cast somebody who's so expressive like Willem Defoe in these roles. It's like, why don't you just like have him like in makeup or something? I guess the insistence on CG when they're doing all these like huge set pieces and like large battle scenes. It just doesn't look as good as when you see that in, you know, in actual...

JM:

No. I guess like people were saying in 2012 that it looks really good, but for what it was.

Nate:

Yeah. I don't know. I just always feel like I'm watching a video game cut scene when I watch those kind of things, where it seems like the cameras.

JM:

Yeah, people got used to like video game effects in movies basically.

Nate:

Yeah, right.

JM:

And I mean, you're not.

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

You don't like that. And that's fair. That's like, I'd probably be the same way.

Nate:

Yeah. But I mean like the camera, if you could call it that because I don't think they're actually like using a camera to zoom around here. It's just the point of view of the viewer when you look through the animated scenery or whatever. It's just like flying through and whizzing through. Like the goal is to make whatever IMAX viewers get vertigo or something. I don't know. I think it's just like really tedious how like every big battle scene is like that, especially when you compare it with a movie that was made for the fraction of the cost that has similar battle scenes like the 60s "War and Peace".

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

So the fight scenes are not better in the movie. That's too bad.

Nate:

Yeah. Like John Carter is like less invincible even though he's still like is really good at jumping.

Gretchen:

I will say there is. And this was kind of a moment when I was like, I kind of respect the movie. One of the first things that happens to John Carter is he tries to fight somebody and immediately gets knocked out. And I was like, Oh, that's cool. I'm glad that we're not going to have him be like this Superman through the whole thing, at least in that respect. I mean, like you were saying earlier, where it's like he is still kind of overpowered in some ways, but like there is a moment like that where it's kind of refreshing to see that instead of like, Oh, he just like killed this guy.

JM:

Well, he saves a lot of shit by jumping all over the place.

Nate:

Yeah, exactly. So I mean, in the book, he they have him jumping like 30 feet, which is pretty, I guess, ridiculous.

JM:

And that's very, that's very video gamey now that I think about it.

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

It's like, it's just like randomly jumping all over stuff.

Nate:

Yeah. But I mean, in the movie, he's jumping like 200, 300 feet in the air. Like it looks really, it's just ridiculous at times. And yeah, it does feel very superhero-ish in the way that he does it.

One thing I thought was cool, and this is maybe gone into in the later books, that when we get into the temple or wherever they're at, there is Babylonian cuneiform and some kind of implied link of ancient religions between Earth and Mars. Another neat touch that I thought was in the film was the guy that they cast as Burroughs does look a lot like the real life Burroughs. So kudos to the casting department for that one.

JM:

Yeah. Yeah.

Nate:

But yeah, I don't know. I thought that was was okay. It was a bit difficult for me to get through due to the runtime. But I mean, they really do their own thing with the story, even though the characters in the setting in the book are more or less as Burroughs describe them. They just kind of do a lot of different stuff, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I mean, I think as we discussed, the book isn't exactly a flawless as-is masterpiece, and you would need to make some changes to the book to make it a good film.

JM:

It just seems really chaotic to me, like just incorporating elements from all three books, plus grafting their own stuff onto it, right? It's like at first we're like, Oh, two hours is really long. And now, now are basically like, always still feel like the story is rushed now. Like, there's things that seem very glossed over, addressed very quickly. And I'd missed it, or I'm just like, not attuned with it enough to be like, Oh, yeah. Okay, cool. And like, just go along with it. That is going to feel like, you know, like even the whole business with the Therns, like, they're villains of books two and three, right? And in the movie, they're definitely villains. They're like, even manipulating Earth, right? And it's just like, okay, where did that come from? Like now they're like the serpent people, the reptoid aliens from that everybody knows about that are controlling human destiny from behind the scenes. And like, but where did that come from? How did they, okay, they do that because of the ninth ray? Somehow. The ninth ray gives them this power. And Dejah Thoris has the secret of the ninth ray. So the Therns wanted to get rid of her and stop her experiments, I guess. This is the plot, right?

There's one of the basic ideas, but it's buried under so much other stuff. That I just, I find the whole thing just very confusing and all over the place. But again, I'm so mixed on the movie because yeah, on the one hand, I'm like, yeah, it took some guts to make this movie in 2012. We really did. And it was the 100th anniversary of "Princess of Mars".

Nate:

Yeah, good timing, I guess.

JM:

So I was like, yeah, I mean, somebody at Disney was really into this and wanted to do this. And I think that's pretty cool. But also like, holy crap, that movie was expensive, right?

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

I don't know. I think of Roger Corman and I'm like, if he made a movie and it bombed, he'd just be like, oh, well, I made six other movies the same year, so it's not a big deal, right?

Gretchen:

I feel like nowadays more directors should be like Mario Bava.

Nate:

Yeah. And I mean, I was thinking about that when we talked about Bava a lot in his approach to genre filmmaking. He's done some really cool work in genre stuff that's kind of adjacent to this. Like he did "Hercules in the Haunted World". And you know, the sword and sandal movies aren't exactly the same as sword and planet, but they definitely have a lot of the same kind of tropes and how a lot of the action unfolds and the characters that we get. And I mean, Bava would definitely do an interesting version of this. But I mean, I think even somebody like David Lynch, what he did with "Dune" or like Kurosawa's "Ran", like they look amazing and they cost like a fraction of the money that this did. And I just wonder why they just don't shoot with practical effects anymore and why they just dump everything to CGI and virtual effects.

JM:

Yeah. If you're going to spend so much money on it, why not make it real, right?

Nate:

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Gretchen:

Yeah. I will always prefer practical effects. Like even "bad" practical effects, I still will find much more endearing than like, if it's bad CGI, it's just bad.

Nate:

Yeah.

Gretchen:

But I'm always reminded of one of my favorite films when I was like younger, when I was a kid was the 70s or 80s version of "Clash of the Titans".

JM:

Oh, yeah. Okay.

Gretchen:

I loved that one. I loved like the claymation in that. I think it's great. And I remember that they remade it in like the early 2010s.

JM:

Right. I never watched that one.

Gretchen:

And I was excited about it because I was like a young kid and I was like, oh, that's one of my favorite movies. And I remembered being very disappointed that it was just CGI.

JM:

Was that one of your early moments of disillusionment?

Gretchen:

Yeah. I think so. It all started with "Clash of the Titans" and like, I think also around 2012 actually.

JM:

Wow. I enjoy that 1981 film. I have that. Yeah. I have that on DVD somewhere and like, it's fun. It's like I put it up there with "Excalibur" and other movies from around that time that had this cool like fantasy mythological feeling to them. Like that. Yeah.

Gretchen:

And very cool. Like again, like kind of claymation effects that I loved when I was younger watching it. And yeah, I just prefer that that kind of effect to the CGI that gets billions of dollars spent on it.

Nate:

Yeah, definitely. A straightforward animation, I think would be a better choice than this. That's what they try to do initially in the 30s.

JM:

Yeah. And there's even a cute animal.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

Well, it's not a dog.

Nate:

Yeah. Woola makes his way into the 2012 film, but not in the 2009 film. Woola was unfortunately cut from that film.

Gretchen:

For more bugs.

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

Yeah. And the sad thing is, you know, you know that Woola has to be a CGI craze.

Nate:

Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

JM:

Yeah. That's kind of unfortunate.

Nate:

Yeah. I mean, that's again, why they've had so much trouble finding funding for this, because they've tried in the 30s and the 50s and the 80s and just nothing really came together. But yeah, it would need to be animated as that's probably the easiest way to do it when you're doing these huge set pieces. Though, I mean, modern tasteful CGI, like they did the "Lord of the Rings" movies where they had people actually like there and do like some CGI on top of them or like how they play Game of Thrones or something like that. It still looks better than having it just like all CGI like they did with this. But still, I'd imagine like putting the sets together for a convincing Martian environment as well as all these strange beasts and just massive battle scenes would be a challenge for any filmmaker to pull off convincingly though.

Again, I always wonder why they go for so expensive productions for CGI when previous like big battle scenes can be done very well.

JM:

They could be doing like spending all this money on actual battle scenes.

Nate:

Right, exactly.

JM:

How awesome would that be, right?

Nate:

Yeah. Yeah.

JM:

I mean, even if all the budget mostly went to that, that would be worth it almost, right? Just to be able to see that happening on screen, right?

Gretchen:

The CGI ships being like actual models and stuff like that.

Nate:

Yeah, totally. Yeah. I mean, it looked good in Star Wars. It looks great in Star Trek.

Gretchen:

Yeah. Some of my favorite behind the scenes photos are when you get to see models of like certain spaceships in any show, really.

Nate:

Yeah, definitely.

Gretchen:

Like if you've ever seen the ones of like even like Blakes 7 and Red Dwarf and stuff, very cool.

Nate:

Yeah. And I think Star Wars, the original trilogy is one of the best examples of this kind of space opera, planetary romance, adjacent stuff going to...

JM:

Oh, yes. And we're going to... I'm going to bring that up. Definitely. The Brackett again. Yeah. Star Wars will be featured. We won't be doing Star Wars fiction, but it will be talked about.

Nate:

There's certainly a lot of Star Wars fiction that we could do.

JM:

Yes.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

Nate:

But yeah, I don't know. The movie was okay from 2012. I liked the 2009 movie more even though it's obviously and objectively way worse filmed. I just thought it was a lot more fun and enjoyable. Yeah, more fun with it. That's fair.

Gretchen:

I like that "John Carter" tried to make the titular character a little more likable. But at least they tried to tone down a lot of the things that kind of grated on me in the novel with him.

Nate:

Yeah, they did. And yeah, that's definitely some of the things that they need to flatten out for a modern day film to work.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

Nate:

And I definitely appreciate that they did that, that they tried to make it a more rounded story as far as the characters go, even though the plot does seem needlessly complex at times.

Gretchen:

Yeah. And we'll say, yeah, besides that, it's sort of an average sort of film experience. Nothing really stands out too much.

Nate:

Yeah. Well, I mean, Burroughs's legacy is certainly better than his filmography adaptations, I think. Yeah.

JM:

There's a lot of Tarzan films. I haven't seen any one of them. Yeah.

Nate:

I haven't either. Maybe I... Well.

JM:

There's the "At the Earth's Core" film and "The Land that Time Forgot" and the "People that Time Forgot", all those amicus Edgar Rice Burroughs productions, featuring Doug McClure mostly, I think.

Nate:

Yeah. "At the Earth's Core" was fun. Yeah. I will give them that.

JM:

That was a fun movie.

Gretchen:

I have seen actually the Disney version of "Tarzan", the animated one when I was like very, very young. I don't remember it at all, but I apparently in the beginning when his parents died, I had to leave the room because it upset me too much. That's really all I remember about that one.

Nate:

Need to rewatch it.

JM:

Yeah. Well, we talked about the "At the Earth's Core" film when we did that episode and my favorite thing about that was Peter Cushing's character, which is pretty much exactly the same as his interpretation of Doctor Who, addressing one of the mahars, the mahars who are attempting to mentally subjugate him and saying, "you cannot mesmerize me, I am British". It's amazing.

Nate:

It was definitely a lot more fun and I guess easier to film, but yeah, I don't know, these weren't bad. I didn't hate either of them and it wasn't like the "Nightfall" movies where it was a real struggle getting through that 80s "Nightfall" movie. One of those movies that are so bad, it makes time feel like five hours. I didn't really have that problem with either of these, even though I had to watch them in multiple sittings.

JM:

Yeah. Well, this was really cool. Our really awesome discussion, guys. I know we didn't all necessarily really 100% love this work. I do wanna say that I think people who are really fans of ERB and I know you're out there. I know you're out there and we respect the origins of this stuff. We respect the writer and we respect the fact that so many people read this stuff and took it in their own directions and were really, really inspired by it and it's a really amazing thing and it's powerful and the concepts behind these stories are great, even if we didn't really always love the writing.

But now I think I want to take things in a different direction and I want to talk about some of the women writers who really love ERB and yeah, you know, it's funny in both the deCamp and the Vance autobiographies. They talk about how the ERB books were in their library and how their mothers were the ones who were the fans of the books and in the literary circle of the women at the time, especially in places like California, which is where ERB was from, where he was living at that time anyway. Of course, famously, ERB himself died in the town of Tarzana, California, which is a town specifically named after his work. How many people have that kind of fortune, right? But anyway, we're going to talk about C.L. Moore and we're going to talk about Leigh Brackett to others that we've also already discussed before on the podcast. And it's with great pleasure that we're going to now discuss another story set on Mars, a very differently portrayed perhaps sort of Mars, and that is "Shambleau". 

Music:

Hill, Ferd. K. - "General Grant's Polka" (1865) https://www.loc.gov/resource/music.muscivilwar-200000454/

Bibliography:

Hartwell, David G. and Cramer, Kathryn - introduction to "The Space Opera Renaissance" (2006)

Porges, Irwin - "Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan" (1975)