Edgar Rice Burroughs and I share the same day of birth. My little claim to immortality.
I know him - as the rest of the world - from his "Tarzan" novels but this came a little bit later. Initially, Burroughs became famous because "A Princess of Mars" was serialised chapter by chapter in The All-Story magazine way back in 1911. and even than was printed under the title "Under the Moons of Mars". This was a young, 30-something unknown author who is just finding his footing in a publishing world and he still needs to find his style - afraid that his potential business customers might find this moonlighting trivial, he sings the novel as "Normal Bean" and of course during the printing he was misspelled as "Norman". In any case, the unusual Martian story served its purpose and Burroughs eventually became very famous - just a few years later he will be celebrated world wide because of "Tarzan" and than his Martian adventure (originally a pulp fiction) will be published as a "real" novel.
I needed a break from exhausting and demanding "Sapiens" and intuitively knew that if I really want a good escapism, where my mind will go to completely different world and adventures, Burroughs is my man. My first contact with "Tarzan" was decades ago and not so long ago I re-visited first few novels again with greatest pleasure. It is what it is - no deep philosophy here, just a perfect - a dare to say brilliant - adventure story designed to keep a reader going on. Many current celebrated authors don't have this talent and their hefty volumes are just pretentious and pointless. I truly admire someone like Burroughs (or Willa Cather) who know how to tailor the novel in order to keep our interest and trim it down to essentials. They might be in a completely different genres but they both impressed me very much and their novels were small and slim little volumes rich with imagination and genius inside. I have been a passionate reader my whole life and never shied away from big volumes, but slowly came to appreciate economy with words and talent to entertain without becoming a nuisance. In fact, at this late stage in the game, I started selecting books by their weight. The heavy bricks simply don't appeal to me anymore and they seem as a difficult task. I am reading for a pleasure and joy of it, not because I need a door stopper.
Back to Burroughs - apparently this was one of the very first inter-planetary stories and if things appear as a cliché today, well its because they all started here. Everything from Flash Gordon to Carl Sagan was inspired by this novel and I just wonder how come that Hollywood did not milk it better than they did. The story is based on assumption that life on Mars is like some giant desert planet (and imagine, Frank Herbert is still 50 years in the future) where various warrior tribes are fighting tooth and nail amongst themselves. Our main hero is John Carter (from the description basically a twin to later Tarzan) who is strong, handsome, clever and knows how to fight - he is also somehow catapulted from planet Earth to a Mars (without too much explanation or details, he just wakes up there and you take it or leave it) and now has to find his way in a strange, new and brutal world where everything is topsy-turvy and nobody cares for such things as compassion, affections or gentleness. In fact, the tribe of Green Martians that initially caught him is much more into fights and physical strength - they couldn't care less for some soft human and accept him only after he kills a few warriors, than he is fine. From there the story really gets very interesting - in a old fashioned way, of course - there is a Mam'selle in a distress (hence the title of the novel), Carter fights and jumps and protects her across the planet. Honestly, the story meanders all over the place but Burroughs keeps it interesting - its a little bit like memoirs of Marco Polo, than little bit like some concentration camp story (because Carter is basically a prisoner most of the time), than it gets very twisted into court intrigues (Green Martian woman Sarkoja is a character straight from Byzantine Empire) - you can tell that his imagination was running wild and he was throwing everything and the kitchen sink in the story, but funny thing is - it actually worked - almost the whole idea of "Star Wars" worlds with different races and creatures is based on this novel.
It was very, very easy read and I actually read it for the sheer joy or escapism, finished it in a few days.
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