In the end, the baddies are all fodder and John Carter lives to fight another day, and another, and another. ![]() But hey, nobody said this was high literature. Expect any number of coincidences that aid the “good guys” on their way. It is the product of an era, and it’s only fair that it be treated as such. Sparks flew as steel smote steel, and then there was the dull and sickening sound of a shoulder bone parting beneath the keen edge of my Martian sword.Īs campy and old school as this is, I struggle to find it in myself to entirely dislike it. The feelings of Phaidor toward John Carter, and the circumstances under which they occur, also mirror the relationship between La (of Opar) and Tarzan. Typical example: door slams shut behind protagonist, plunging him in darkness… followed by maniacal laughter. There are things happening here that I could have sworn I’d also read in one of the many Tarzan novels. I put the thought of death out of my mind, and fell upon my antagonists with fury that those who escaped will remember to their dying day.īurroughs did seem to rehash some plot events every now and again. This kind of thing is commonplace in Science Fiction today, but it doesn’t strike me as ERB’s style. The religious theme (or theme of deception through the abuse of religious belief) present here is interesting. What was that! A faint shuffling sounded behind me, and as I cast a hasty glance over my shoulder my blood froze in my veins for the thing I saw there. Howard and the other pulp writers no doubt drew a lot of inspiration from here. Gods of Mars is fairly violent, even for this kind of thing, and there is a lot of “cleaving” and “crushing” filling the pages. Over the top Sword and Planet fare… this is the stuff that pre-teen dreams are made of. Then silence as the huge, repulsive shapes covered the bodies of their victims and scores of sucking mouths fastened themselves to the flesh of their prey. There was a brief and futile effort of defence. No, these books are not politically correct. No, these books aren’t literary masterpieces. If anything, Edgar Rice Burroughs is the founding father of the guilty pleasure. Rolling ochre sea bottom of long dead seas, low surrounding hills, with here and there the grim and silent cities of the dead past great piles of mighty architecture tenanted only by age-old memories of a once powerful race, and by the great white apes of Barsoom.
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