I wonder what Edgar Rice Burroughs would have made of the news that Mars is now violating our personal space.
Burroughs, who died in 1950, is best known as the creator of “Tarzan,” and, indeed, even his official domain name is tarzan.com. But this prolific author first captured my attention as a mere yout’ with his sci-fi series set on the moon and on Mars, which its inhabitants called “Barsoom.”
In fact, ERB achieved his first commercial success as a writer with a story published in 1911 entitled Under the Moons of Mars, (later retitled to A Princess of Mars) which he sold to a magazine for the huge sum of $400.
I still can’t watch Noah Wylie’s character on E.R. without thinking about the swashbuckling hero of ERB’s Martian adventures, the original John Carter.
And I can’t help lamenting a bit how our advances in science and technology come at a price to our imagination and daydreams. After all, the excitement of finding an ice crystal or two on a dead planet pales next to the idea of racing across the desert landscape on an 8-legged thoat. I think ERB would agree.
Anytime I start to feel a little like modern science/life/technology has destroyed my ability to imagine and daydream wonderful things (because they’ve already been invented or reasoned out of existance), I do one simple thing and it takes care of the problem for a long time.
I read a Ray Bradbury book.
Right now, I have the carousels and time whirling through my head, thanks to “Something Wicked This Way Comes.”
And sometimes I read a Tom Swift book of my Dad’s from when he was a child. Great, silly, wonderful, completely ridiculous stories with atomic cars and journies to mars and a flying skylab…
You have to read something like this, or else you become cynical and dull. At least, that’s my theory.
Tom Swift!!
Man, I LOVED the Tom Swift Jr. series! That REALLY takes me back. There was a period of years shortly after I first learned how to read, that all I wanted for my birthday or Christmas presents was a new Tom Swift book. Happily, I had parents and a set of grandparents who were only too happy to oblige.
I can’t remember now if I ever had the full set of books, but I do know I had several of them, and I really enjoyed reading them.
Julie, I have to admit that I was never a huge Bradbury fan. Oh, I read all his stuff, but I guess I tended to gravitate to the harder sci-fi writers like Heinlein and Asimov, or to the weirder ones like Ellison or Bloch. But I commend you for keeping a good perspective on the importance of those links to a simpler time.
And I confess to both you and Roscoe that I don’t think I ever read a Tom Swift book. I don’t know why that is; I was a ravenous reader in the younger days, but I guess I just never crossed paths with Mr. Swift. Our pickins were kinda slim in Fort Stockton back then.