Rebels of Mars

Blasting off with SPACE VULTURE

By the time I started reading science fiction seriously as a kid, Dangerous Visions was rocking the genre and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was tucked into every teenager’s backpack. The so-called New Wave had taken hold. But even so, an early visit to Barsoom, my discovery of Edmond Hamilton’s creaky Captain Future stories, and Channel 9’s Saturday morning broadcasts of the old Flash Gordon serials starring Buster Crabbe and — gasp! — Carol Hughes got me hooked on old-fashioned space opera. I read “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen books in between rounds with John Brunner and Roger Zelazny. I even began collecting those tattered copies of DC’s Showcase that featured spaceman-hero Adam Strange.

So I had a grand time with Space Vulture, a new “retro” space opera novel by Gary K. Wolf, the man who created Roger Rabbit, and John J. Myers, the archbishop of Newark, New Jersey. This odd pairing of two lifelong chums has produced a slam-bang homage specifically to Anthony Gilmore’s 1952 sci-fi adventure novel Space Hawk. Writes Wolf in his preface to Space Vulture, “I’m not exaggerating when I say Space Hawk changed my life. I grew to love science fiction so much that in later years, I wrote and published science fiction stories and novels of my own. Without Space Hawk, I would never have created Roger Rabbit. One led directly to the other.”

From its faux-pulp dust jacket, featuring the smirking visage of interstellar villain Space Vulture, to its naïve, cornball hero, Galactic Marshal Captain Victor Corsaire, to its two preadolescent protagonists and their gorgeous mom, Space Vulture is a joyful ride through every SF cliché imaginable and, surprisingly enough, a few clever ideas that might never have occurred to the likes of Anthony Gilmore, Edmond Hamilton, or “Doc” Smith. The book is a 1950s space opera with a 21st century sensibility. I grinned the whole time I was reading it. I’ve stuck my copy of Space Vulture on the shelf right alongside my old Lensmen books.

Posted by Wally Conger, whose only problem with Space Vulture is that it features just one real Space Babe.

The Worst Burroughs Imitator Ever

"Edward P. Bradbury," who, in reality, is Michael Moorcock.

Maybe he was short on cash. I dunno. But this book is unreadable. I read three pages and gave up. Everything is lifted straight off of ERB: some sort of astral travel to Mars, big spiders, princesses, the whole bit. Only Moorcock is really, really, really bad, and worst of all, boring.

I think this is a trilogy. I'm not even going to try to read anything else, and I suggest you don't either.

Posted by Bob Wallace,  who sez, cool cover at least.

Finding ERB with Google Book Search

Many Edgar Rice Burroughs and Burroughs Tradition books are in the public domain.  So that means that if you use Google Book Search you can find them and download them to read for your own pleasure.

For EXAMPLE:

posted by Tom Novak, who says, remember these things may not be copyright free because they have been altered from the originals so you better not try to resell them ... unless you know what you are doing!!!

Otis Adelbert Kline

Otis Adelbert Kline was a contemporary of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and successfully imitated him out of admiration. They even had the same publisher, and the same studios made films out of their books.

I've only read two of Kline's novels -- The Outlaws of Mars, and Planet of Peril. He's a better stylist than Burroughs, but a far worse storyteller. That, I'd guess, is why he's not read today -- ERB was only an adequate writer, but he could tell a heck of a story. Kline couldn't.

Still, if you're interested in the Burroughs Tradition, you might want to take a look at Kline's writings, and compare him to ERB, to understand how in those days he gave ERB a run for his money.

Posted by Bob Wallace, who still wants a sword and a radium pistol.

Tarzan and the City of Gold

I've owned this Tarzan hardback book for as long as I can remember and this is the first time I've ever actually read the copyright (that I know of anyway) - it says :

Tarzan and the City of Gold by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Copyrighted by EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS, INC. in the Dominion of Canada, Great Britain, and the Pan-American Union, 1933. Printed in the U.S.A. by Western Printing and Lithographing Company. All names, characters, events in this story are entirely fictitious.

What??? Tarzan is entirely fictious? Hmmm, somebody tell Phillip Jose Farmer. He insists that Tarzan is a real guy and that he's still alive and PJF even proved it ... but that's another post.  Anyhow, like a dope I gave away all of the ERB and "Burroughs Tradition" books I had as a kid except for this one and I probably only kept it because it was lavishly illustrated in line drawings and blue wash by Tony Sgroi for the Whitman Publishing Company of Racine, Wisconsin.  This edition of Tarzan and the City of Gold is a Whitman Classic.

  It's a pretty darn cool book too. No wonder I kept it.

posted by Tom Novak, who will someday rule in Cathne ...  provided he can clear it with the lawyers from Tarzan Inc.

There's Something About Harry

by Bob Wallace

I'm too old to fully understand the Harry Potter phenomena. I'd have to take the Wayback Machine to being 11 years old again to wholly comprehend it. Still, there is a part of me that is 11, so in some degree I do understand the appeal of the novels.

I did read the first one, and found there was some magic and wonder in it. Talking werecats slinking around at night, and a flying motorcycle ridden by a good-natured biker who couldn't quite make it as a wizard? Good stuff; in some ways great. Parts of the novel are a nearly perfect fantasy, especially the opening scenes. In other ways, though, there are a lot of problems with the book. And I do mean a lot.

Unfortunately, the second and third novels I found excruciating, and could not finish them. I'm not going to bother tackling the rest. Overall, I don't think the books are going to last, in the sense that J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis have lasted.

Even so, J.K. Rowling did hit a very big nerve with fans. Mostly, I think, because of the archetypes in her books, especially the first one. Harry is both an Outcast and a Scapegoat; he's also a Changeling. Harry fits Joseph Campbell's definition of a Hero on a Quest. He has no family; indeed what counts as "family" not only abuses him but appears to hate him. Later, when he enters wizard school he finds both true family and true community. Rowling also understands that both evil and power are opposite sides of the same coin, as exemplified by Voldemort.

Then we have the fact the books are a subculture to differentiate kids from adults. Kids always do that; in some ways they're rites of passage. I've seen kids who treats the books like Dungeons and Dragons. They know every bit of trivia in them.

Those are the good parts of the book. The bad parts are that in real life the emotionally repressed Harry would have lost that British stiff upper lip of his and gone postal and axe-murdered his entire "family" because of their horrendous abuse of him. Making him live under the stairs with spiders? Starving him? Yet throughout all of it he remains cheerful and unaffected? No, I don't think so.

He'd be a seething caldron of hate, rage and probably envy, and like almost all people like that, his first defense would be to blame his problems on others, specifically his adoptive parents. Then -- pow, machete time. Yet Rowling pretty much writes as if his horrendous treatment has essentially had no effect on him at all. Just how unrealistic is that? He'd be mentally and emotionally disturbed, rather than unaffected by everything, as if he was some sort of Ayn Randian superman.

Although the books are fantasies, they're also horror stories, and like all horror stories make people feel the same thing: "I'm glad I don't have to live like that." Kids do learn to empathize with Harry, and wipe their brows and think, "Whew, I'm glad I'm not him."

I empathized with him, too. Partly. Otherwise, I wanted to shake him. How could I empathize and despise this kid at the same time, and think that he lived in a disturbed fantasy world? But I did. That's why I don't think the books are going to last: in some ways I despised Harry. "Damn it, kid, stand up for yourself! Show just a little bit of courage! Fight back, argue, don't let them roll over you like that!" I was terribly frustrated with him.

Let's put it this way: what would the overwhelmingly majority of parents think of some milquetoast kid like that? Would they really be surprised if the kid blew his stack someday and took a log splitter to the entire family as they slept? Probably not. I wouldn't.

There is something creepily narcissistic about the books. Harry's real parents are safely dead, so he doesn't have to deal with their imperfections and can instead idealize them. The "family" with which Harry lives are "all-bad"; the people at Hogwarts are "all-good." Harry has nothing in the Muggles' world, neither community or tradition or shared meaning. Not only does he have those things at Hogwarts, he's the most famous wizard ever. In some ways the book is incoherent and contradictory, and it appears that Rowling is working through some personal issues in the book.

There is also somewhat of a multiple-personality view of magic. On one hand it did create the barely-alive Voldemort. On the other, I get the impression for the most part it seems pretty harmless -- kids are always casting spells on each other, and nothing much comes of it. This is a far cry from Ursula Leguin's A Wizard of Earthsea, in which the young sorcerer messes up one time and is scarred for decades.

And since when is middle-class existence so horrible the only out is a non-existent magic castle? Rowling is being both subversive and insulting to the class to which the overwhelming majority of people belong -- the class which buys her books.

If I was 11, would I like the books? The first one, yes, for the most part. But even at that age I don't think any of the others would appeal to me. I was raised on Edgar Rice Burroughs and his Barsoom/Mars novels, books in which cowards and bullies were skewered with sabers and then had their carcasses kicked over cliffs (not only by the men, but by the women). Yet we get poor Harry swallowing abuse after abuse, not only from his adoptive family but from bullies and cowards like Draco Malfoy. It takes way too long for the bad guys to get their just deserts.

I can't imagine an American writing novels like Rowling's, just as I cannot imagine anyone but an American writing Burroughs' novels. Neither can I imagine a man writing Rowling's novels; to me they're clearly written by a woman. There's really no physical violence in the novel, in the sense of a bullied boy turning around and justifably smacking his tormentors right in the nose. That's one of the main problems right there: these books aren't really for boys.

When it comes right down to it, Harry comes across as Rowling's conception of a boy rather than what boys really are. Unfortunately, he acts more like a girl than a boy. Let's just say he's more than slightly...effeminate.

I wonder what the novels would have been like if a man had written them? Not just E.R. Burroughs, but say, Mickey Spillane? I guarantee you this, though: Harry would not look like that picture above, not with that Dorothy Hamil haircut.

Posted by Bob Wallace, who'll take Burroughs over Rowling any day.

"Thou Art God"-- Well, Okay, Maybe Not

I read Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land when I was about 14, and even then wondered what all the hubbub was about. I suppose, written in '61, it anticipated the free love and anti-authoritarianism of the '60s. I've had people claim Heinlein was a fascist because of novels like Starship Troopers. I don't think so. Stranger, along with some of his other books, proves otherwise. The oddest thing about this book is that it is politically quite leftist; it reads as if it was written by a hippie, and Heinlein was right about 60 when he wrote it. For some unknown reason, the majority of Heinlein's writings never really appealed to me (I found he got worse as he got older), and that includes this novel. Certainly it's interesting, and I never got bored with it. But RAH had this tendency to write with complete assurance, even when he was wrong. Perhaps that assurance is one of the reasons he appealed to so many people. I recently reread Stranger, and although I found it better the second time around, I still don't see it as one of the greatest SF novels ever. If it was published today, how would it be received? I really don't know, but I don't think it would be as popular as it was in the '60's. Unforunately, some of RAH's eccentricities (such as incest, nudity and cannibalism) show through in this novel, as they have in his others, especially the appallingly bad Farnham's Freehold. For all its flaws, Stranger is thought-provoking, has accurate observations of humanity, and is one of those novels that everyone should read, whether or not you end up agreeing with (or even liking) it.

Posted by Bob Wallace, who never says "grok."

RGK ~ Space Artist Roy Krenkel

ERB Artist Roy Krenkel, Jr.

Roy Krenkel did a lot of the covers for the early  '60's ACE editions of ERB's Barsoom and Tarzan books.  Born around 1918,  he studied for a year with George Bridgman at the Art Students' League circa 1938, but other than that, his misspent youth consisted of "drawing a lot, reading and collecting art books, going to art museums, and associating with a few other young art students," according to Sanford Zane Meschkow in his preface to the excellent 1974 Cities and Scenes From the Ancient World.

Later, he studied with Burne Hogarth at the Cartoonists' and Illustrators' School. There he met Al Williamson, who was to become a lifelong friend and collaborator. For a while in the late 1940's and early 1950's, Roy worked with other Hogarth alumni doing comic book stories.

He once commented  he "did the minimal amount of commercial work that would give me just enough to live on so I could spend his time drawing my own ideas -- with no one to please but myself."

Roy's knowledge of art led ACE Books to hire him to produce covers for their early '60's revival of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. His three dozen books started a revival of fantasy fiction in that decade. The earliest At The Earth's Core. Halfway through the project, he enlisted Frank Frazetta's help. The thought of the self-effacing Krenkel trying to convince the self-assured Frazetta that Frank would actually be a success at painting goes contrary to everything we know about the two men. Still, after a couple of collaborative efforts, Roy sent Frank out on his own and the rest is history.

Krenkel died in 1983, and six years later Eclipse books released Swordsmen and Saurians, a wonderful coffee table book devoted to the subjects Roy loved most to draw. There was even a limited edition which featured, in lieu of a signature, an original drawing in every copy.

In 1963, Krenkel won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist.

Posted by Bob Wallace, who can't sing, dance or draw, either.

Space Artist J. Allen St. John