![]() ![]() (The first Barsoomian tale, A Princess of Mars, was actually written beforeERB’s first Tarzan novel) Would I rather follow John Carter and Woola across the Red Planet or do my math homework? What kid could resist? In my mind I was sailing in a Helium airship above the ancient seabeds while my teacher chalked her equations on the blackboard. They encouraged me to read more and more, and that’s always a good thing.īarsoom was a more inviting place to explore than my school textbooks provided, too. Burroughs trod the same paths in dozens of novels.īut so what? They were like mental popcorn: lightweight and easy to digest, and although satisfying left one with a craving for more. LIST OF BARSOOM AIRSHIPS FULLThey were all easy reads, fun, full of excitement and adventure, wild escapes, great battles and true romance, although even for a youth the formula was evident in all of them – kidnappings, escape and pursuit, battles of honour, bold rescues, a single hero resolving brink-of-war differences between competing cultures or races. I read most of them too, although I haven’t still got a bookshelf full today, as I do with ERB. Many a night I stayed up late, well past my bedtime, trying to read just one more chapter…Īt the same time I discovered ERB, there was a revival of pulp stuff in general, with paperback collections of Fu Manchu, Doc Savage, Conan and others being reprinted. I had a shelf full of Tom Swift adventure novels, too, but ERB’s tales were more entertaining and thrilling. I read my favourites among them many times over. Wild, crazy stories, but I couldn’t get enough of them. LIST OF BARSOOM AIRSHIPS SERIESI think I can still boast to a complete collection of most of his series (the novels I never really appreciated as much were his two late Poloda books and I can’t even say today why they didn’t appeal to me as much as any of the others, but which may have been one of his most creative exercises – nor did I really care for his western series although they were probably his most realistic, since he wrote from some experience). I still have a shelf full of those paperbacks, some dating from back in the early 1960s. I bought and read them all, his Mars series, his Venus series, Tarzan, Moon Maid, Pellucidar… I consumed them like candy. So much fun that the tale stuck with me until I was in high school, when I enjoyed the mid-60s resurgence of interest in Edgar Rice Burroughs, and a renewed printing of his works in inexpensive paperback form. But I’ll never know – it disappeared from the family book collection decades ago.Įven for a callow youth in the early 1960s, Tarzan – first published in 1912 – was wildly improbable: a tale so fantastic and outrageous, it stretched all credibility. Tarzan may have been a first hardcover edition, too – the Boy’s Own Annuals were pre-WWI (I still have a couple of them) so it might have been from that same era. It was on our family bookshelf, a green hardcover beside a few aging Boy’s Own, Punch annuals, and some other old British books. I don’t know how old I was when I first read Tarzan, perhaps 10 or 11. After hearing these two audiobooks, I thought I should share it again here, albeit somewhat edited and updated. This month I have books 2,3 and 4 burned to CD and ready to play. Back in 2007, on my old blog, I wrote the following piece about ERB and my lifelong love of ERB and his tales. Last month I manged to hear A Princess of Mars, the first of the series, written in 1912, and the fifth book, Chessmen of Mars (1922). Librivox has many, and some are quire well read. I recently downloaded several of his novels in audiobook form, to listen to on my visits to my mother, in her nursing home or on my iPhone when walking the dogs in the park. I periodically read a Burroughs’ tale just to remember the pleasures of reading him. I still have the entire set of Ace paperbacks from the 1960s or 70s on my bookshelves. I have read that opening – indeed the whole series of his 11 Martian novels – several times. So opens the fifth book in the prolific Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ Barsoom series, The Chessmen of Mars. With a wooden stick she tapped upon the bronze disc, lightly, and presently the summons was answered by a slave girl, who entered, smiling, to be greeted similarly by her mistress. A scarf of silken gossamer crossing over one shoulder was wrapped about her body her black hair was piled high upon her head. Her carriage was that of health and physical perfection-the effortless harmony of faultless coordination. Tara of Helium rose from the pile of silks and soft furs upon which she had been reclining, stretched her lithe body languidly, and crossed toward the center of the room, where, above a large table, a bronze disc depended from the low ceiling. ![]()
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