The One Hundred Year Test, or Let's Dust Off the Old Thoat [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

Can you name one sports record from 1917? Football, baseball, hockey, anything? And to make it harder, a record that stands to this day? I rather doubt it. One hundred years is a long time when it comes to the ephemeral nature of pop culture.

And it’s the same for books. Looking at the top sellers of 1917, I see winners of the One Hundred Year Test (I'm a genre guy, so I'll stick to what I know): Oz books, John Buchan, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, Anna Katherine Green, Sax Rohmer, Arthur Machen, Jack London, Edgar Wallace, James Branch Cabell. So what happened to the rest? Perly Poore Sheehan, Garrett P Serviss, Burt L Standish, H Hesketh Pritchard, Edgar White, Raymond S Spears, Sapper, Oscar Micheaux, and the list goes on... Any of these sound familiar? Of course not. Despite being popular magazine and book writers in 1917, they are all footnotes or known only to pulp specialists. The One Hundred Year Test (or OHYT as I will refer to it from now on) has eliminated them from the larger consciousness.

And it will happen again in 2117. Most of the writers now will be forgotten figures, too. It's a fact. Which ones will be remembered? I would not hazard a guess. I'm sure to be wrong. The top selling genre writer of 1917 was HG Wells with Mr. Britley Sees It Through (not a genre book, but a mainstream novel), followed by Zane Grey with Wildfire. Both authors have survived the OHYT, though Wells better than Grey. Most of the mainstream writers fared worse.

Genres in 1917 were largely still forming. The mystery is probably the most consolidated, recognizable back to 1841 with Edgar Allan Poe. Equally old is horror, but this would be either a Gothic tale (1765) or a ghost story (after 1820), approaching a more modern look by Dracula (1897). Adventure yarns began in earnest after Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1881) and HR Haggard's King Solomon's Mines (1885); the Western in 1902 with Owen Wister's The Virginian and the Northern with Jack London as early as 1897. And science fiction, still unnamed in 1917, usually called "off-trail fiction" or just "fantasy" would have to wait until 1926 and Hugo Gernsback to give it a name, though Jules Verne was popular from 1864 and HG Wells from 1895. In the actual genre “fantasy,” the books of Lord Dunsany were big.

All of these genres were evolving quickly in the magazines and early pulps. Edgar Rice Burroughs had just invented his brand of jungle lord adventure three years before in 1914 (though Kipling had his Mowgli twenty years earlier), as well as the interplanetary romance in 1912 with "Under the Moons of Mars." Hugo Gernsback was still nine or more years in the future as were the hard-boiled detective, the space opera, and the gangster crime drama.

The OHYT removes politics, commercial hype, and in some cases, unavailability. A reader in 1917 would not have found Tarzan or Oz books on the shelves of their public library. Librarians for decades campaigned against them in favor of "better" books. Readers today don't have to worry about beginning with Volume 3 in a series of 6. Nor do they have to wait for the installments that the original serial readers did. They have the complete run at their digital fingertips. They don't have to suffer banners reading "In the tradition of Robert E Howard" for a book that inspired that very writer twenty years earlier. (I speak of Harold Lamb, whose historical adventures inspired much of sword-and-sorcery. When Lamb was re-released in the 1970s in paperback he bore that very banner on the top of his books.)

The OHYT is a kind of guarantee. Not that the book will be easy to read - for there are changes in style in a hundred years, along with prejudices on race, gender, politics, and creed. No, it's a guarantee that the story is a good story, that people a hundred years ago were intrigued, excited, or felt something valuable by reading it. Because if these works were shallow, trendy, poorly executed, unimaginative, or dull, they would not pass the OHYT. The also-rans fall by the wayside and you are left with books that appealed to many people. (And it might not be “you” today - or “you” yet. I waited until my forties to enjoy Dickens, Twain, Haggard, Rohmer, and Stevenson. There is a future “me” who might one day be able to wade through Henry James or James Joyce.)

Let's look at a test case: Edgar Rice Burroughs versus Harold Bell Wright. ERB wrote sixty-nine novels from 1912 to 1950, creating iconic characters such as Tarzan and John Carter of Mars. Harold Bell wrote melodramas with a religious theme like The Shepherd of the Hills in 1907, which sold a million copies. The two men share the following similarities: they both made huge fortunes from their writing, their books were both adapted into films, the critics hated or ignored them, both moved to California, both divorced and remarried, and both affected geography. Edgar Rice Burroughs developed and named the city of Tarzana, California. Wright has a subdivision in Tucson named after him, plus his novel also popularized Branson, Missouri, making it into a tourist destination.

Where the two men differ is that Edgar Rice Burroughs survived the OHYT and Wright did not. This is why we had a John Carter of Mars film. This is why Alexander Skarsgård is the next Tarzan. One hundred years is the copyright line in most cases (varying country to country). The public domain and online technology are making hard-to-find works available again. There is no guessing how many books will be rediscovered because of this line in the sands of time. But as they say in infomercials: Wait, there’s more!

With the advent of the public domain claiming legacy works, new "unauthorized" creations are springing up. This can be a big budget film like Tarzan (1999), John Carter of Mars (2012), or The Great and Powerful Oz (2013); all cases of Disney waiting until copyright has lapsed to avoid paying royalties. Or it can be less obvious fare. With the popularity of zombie rewrites like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009) by Seth Grahame-Smith, writers are coming up with some unusual ways to enjoy old classics again. The steampunk writers have taken a shine to Baum's post-Victorian fantasy and turned out some new tales from the stuff of Oz. And this is great, for let's be honest, both Burroughs and Baum are great storytellers (largely unappreciated by critics until recently), but their works are a century old and a little dated. A new spin on old novels gives modern readers a way to enjoy the innocent favorites of childhood or teen years. It also gives you a way to go back and enjoy new stories in familiar places, if you've read all twenty-six Tarzan novels, all forty-one Oz books, or the eleven Barsoom sagas.

Now you may be tempted to write your own Tarzan novel. I know I've thought about it a few times. (While Burroughs’ first novels are out of copyright, the name “Tarzan” is still protected – for now.) Look at all the Sherlocks that have been written since 1987. There could be a mad rush on new jungle adventures appearing on Amazon already. Tarzan of the Apes with Zombies. John Carter of Mars versus the Sparkling Vampires. I'm waiting. I won't read them, but it wouldn't surprise me. What I hope to see is something more like the works of Guy Adams who writes post-Wellsian novels like The Army of Doctor Moreau (2012) or JW Schnarr's Shadows of the Emerald City (2009).

There is a movement under way right now in which writers are playing in other people's backyards, for example the comics of Alan Moore or the Anno Dracula stories of Kim Newman. It's exciting, but it is also... a little dangerous. It's great if it drives new readers to old classics. This will cement the fame of these OHYT winners with new generations and continue their fame into the 21st Century. It's dangerous if it floods the Kindle shelves with very poor hackjobs and juvenile fan fiction. (Though I have to wonder what the difference is between "fan fiction" and an "unauthorized" reworking. Not much outside of court, perhaps.) The result could be a muddying of the waters that results in a lack of interest. But I don't worry about this too much. Four million bad Lovecraftian pastiches and an equal number of bad Howardian Conan copies haven't blunted their swords. The Cthulhu Mythos and sword-and-sorcery are as healthy as ever. (Cthulhu and Conan are in a kind of grey area copyright-wise and we'll see them join the OHYT crowd soon enough.)

Reader sophistication is really what we're talking about. You can read the original Tarzan of the Apes, appreciate how it broke new pulp ground, how it's more than a little racist by modern standards, scientifically impossible, and not quite science fiction, but appeals to SF fans anyway, etc, etc. How you enjoy it is up to you. You can also then read the last two authorized pastiches: Tarzan and the Valley of Gold by Fritz Leiber (1967) or Joe R Lansdale's Tarzan: The Lost Adventure (1991), a book that is 25% Burroughs and 75% Lansdale. Or Philip Jose Farmer's The Adventure of the Peerless Peer (1977), an unauthorized one! And you can decide if they hold up against ERB's wonderful storytelling. And now you can plunk down $4.99 and buy that latest novel, Tarzan and the Pyramid of Blood by Wryter B Anonymous or I Wright Kindles or whoever, and see if Tarzan pastiche is worth the time. Personally I would grab it if it was written by Joel Jenkins, the only writer I know who has captured Burroughsian excitement without slavish imitation. His Dire Planet series is as much fun as Barsoom. Your sophistication allows you to enjoy the Burroughsian or Ozian novel from a standpoint of connoisseur, as co-conspirator in a literary game that promises some new fun in old places.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

The Radio Man: Questions and Answers [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

Edgar Rice Burroughs was a master of the jungle and interplanetary adventure. It is only natural he should have imitators. The most famous (or perhaps obvious) was Otis Adelbert Kline. But before Kline wrote of his imaginary Venus, another writer staked that territory with a long-running saga called The Radio Series. That writer was Ralph Milne Farley, pseudonym of Roger Sherman Hoar (1887-1963). Hoar has sparked many questions for me ever since I first encountered him in the old Ace paperbacks, The Radio Beasts and The Radio Planet (1964). The first novel begins with a recap of what was obviously a preceding story not included in those books. The questions begin... where was the first story?

The second question was why the pseudonym? Why was "Ralph Milne Farley" better than "Roger Sherman Hoar". Both have the same ring of the Victorian novelist to it. Hoar was a member of a family of well-respected lawyers and politicians. He was a state senator in Massachusetts as well as Assistant Attorney General, and the inventor of a guided missile system used in WWII. His relative, Roger Sherman, was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. I can only conclude that he might have been trying to protect that well-respected name from being tarnished by such an activity as writing for the "soft magazines," as pulps were known then.

Delving deeper, I came up with many more points. First off, why is it the "Radio Series"? The stories originally appeared in Argosy/All-Story, June 28-July 19, 1924. 1924 was an important year for radio as a public medium. The invention goes back into the 1890s, but the first public broadcasts began in 1924 (January 5: the BBC broadcasts a church sermon; January 15: the BBC does the world's first radio drama, Danger; February 12: the first commercially-sponsored program, the Eveready Hour airs). Farley, seeing the writing on the wall, decides he will use radio technology to send his hero into the universe. (William Gibson would do a similar job for the Internet with Neuromancer in 1984.)

The next question I had revolved around an event in my own life. Back in the early 2000s I had a successful book-selling operation through eBay. One of my customers was the granddaughter of Roger Sherman Hoar, trying to find copies of his work. I must suppose that the old lawyers of the family had not thought Ralph's work worthy of notice, and allowed the copyrights to lapse. (An odd thing for lawyers to do, but not those that find old science fiction stories silly.) Why had the family lost track of this part of their history?

Another question I had was: what did Edgar Rice Burroughs think of this series? It turns out that Farley became a friend of Burroughs. (Irwin Porges makes no mention of him in Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan (1975), but according to Den Valdron's excellent overview of the series, Farley was "actually a close friend of Edgar Rice Burroughs." Through the Milwaukee Fictioneers he also knew Ray Palmer, Robert Bloch and Stanley G Weinbaum (with whom he collaborated). Unlike many pulp slaves, Hoar wrote out of interest and did not need the money. This explains some of the diversity of his work, appearing in Weird Tales as often as Argosy.

Lastly, I came across a comic book adaptation of the first tale, done by Wally Wood for Avon Fantasy (1951). Actually, I found the reprinted version in Strange Planets #11 (1963). (Ralph's only other comic book appearance is a three-page text reprint, "Abductor Minimi Digit," reprinted in Witches Tales Volume 3 Number 4 (August 1971), originally in Weird Tales, January 1932.) How did the story come to be adapted? Farley was still alive in 1951 and his reaction to the piece may have been interesting. Wood's work is not his best, but even poorly executed Wally Wood is better than most.

But lets go to the beginning and look at the Radio saga. The series features Myles Cabot (did John Norman's Tarl Cabot come from Farley?), a radio inventor and operator who has an accident with his radio equipment that transports him John Carter of Mars-style to the distant planet of Venus. Venus is inhabited by giant insects who war with each other. Cabot falls in with the ants, only to find the humans of Venus are their slaves. Joining the Cupians (humans), Cabot shows them how to use gun powder and frees them. He of course wins the princess, too.

The first segment, "The Radio Man" appeared in Argosy/All-Story in 1924. (This novel and some of the sequels were reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries and Famous Novels.) For some reason this story was never used by ACE Books in the 1960s, despite being the perfect size for inclusion. This feeling of incompleteness made me (and perhaps other readers) reluctant to start the series for many years. The truth may be the story was not available as it had appeared in hard cover in 1948 and at rival paperback publishing Avon in 1950.

The next two volumes comprise what most people consider the bulk of the series in paperback. The Radio Beasts ( March 21-April 11, 1925) and The Radio Planet (June 26-July 31, 1926) continue the Burroughsian-style story with all the fannish love that we would not see again until Lin Carter wrote his Jandar of Callisto books and the Green Star series, both in 1972.

More adventures came later, not in novel length, but as short stories and novellas with The Radio Flyers (May 11-June 8, 1928), The Radio Gun-Runners (February 22 - March 29, 1930), and The Radio Menace (June 7- July 12, 1930). The stories also moved away from giant insects and moved onto earthly invasion by the Whoomangs, animals controlled by intelligent slugs. None of these stories were reprinted by ACE, though they would have made great doubles. Perhaps the sales of Beasts and Planet had been poor (not surprisingly).

Farley wrote more full-length novels including The Radio War (July 2- July 30, 1932). Its missing first chapter was printed in Fantasy Magazine (February 1934). The Golden City (May 13-June 17, 1933) was oddly not named "Radio City," while Farley's name had become so associated with the word "Radio" it was attached to stories that weren't part of the series, such as The Radio Pirates in Argosy All-Story, August 1-August 22, 1931.

Getting long-in-the-tooth, the Burroughs clone was resurrected for Ray Palmer with The Radio Man Returns (1939) in Amazing Stories, June 1939. Farley was instrumental in Palmer's becoming editor of the magazine, so Palmer would have been pleased to return the favor. But this wasn't the last attempt for the denizens of Mars come to Venus. The Radio-Minds of Mars (1955) would appear in Spaceway (June 1955), then be reprinted in three issues of a new Spaceway magazine in January -September/October 1969, six years after Hoar's death.

Though not the longest running series in SF (that title probably goes to Neil R Jones' Zoromes), the Radio Series is an interesting specimen of Argosy's desire to replicate Edgar Rice Burroughs' success (both interplanetary as well as jungle). They would do this slowly over time, first with Farley, then Kline, (they actually rejected Kline's first novel, The Planet of Peril, until 1929, because they had already purchased The Radio Man), JU Guisy, Charles B Stilson, and others. As Sam Moskowitz points out in his Under the Moons of Mars (1970), this stems from the rough handling that ERB received by Thomas Metcalf over The Outlaw of Torn and The Return of Tarzan:

Now it was Metcalf's turn to worry. The success of The All-Story Magazine depended upon Burroughs, and the maintenance of his own job depended on the continuance of The All-Story Magazine. It was evident that he was already out of his depth. He was handling a once-in-a-lifetime circulation booster like Burroughs with far less finesse than he exercised upon the scores of run-of-the-mill hacks that were grinding out an endless series of eminently forgettable stories for the new breed of pulps that were digesting millions upon millions of words per year.

Munsey had a Burroughs exclusive and lost it by not realizing what they had in old Ed Burroughs. If they couldn't guarantee his work, they would try and duplicate it. But is Ralph Milne Farley a fair duplicate of ERB? This of course is a matter of opinion, but are any of the imitators close to Burroughs? I would say Farley was better than Kline, but certainly no better than most ERB wannabes. Even the Fritz Leiber and Joe R Lansdales fall short, perhaps not because they aren't good writers, but because they simply aren't ERB. Ralph Milne Farley may have been the first to try out of fannish love for Burroughs work, but in the end he is one of many reliable also-rans.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Dreamer's World: A Tribute to Normal Bean [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

Edmond Hamilton wrote seventy-nine stories for Weird Tales and amongst them are several classics including "Thundering Worlds," "Day of Judgment," and "He That Hath Wings" (all included in The Best of Edmond Hamilton). Farnsworth Wright and Dorothy McIlwraith, the editors of Weird Tales, never rejected a Hamilton story, nor did they push or prod him in any particular direction. Hamilton had free rein to work within the science fiction to fantasy to horror range. This freedom resulted in some of 1940s fantasy's best experiments.

Ed worked in what is now known as "portal fantasy" a decade before CS Lewis took us to Narnia. A portal fantasy is one in which a person from our world goes to another realm of the fantastic. Perhaps the most famous in Weird Tales were Nictzin Dyalhis's "The Sapphire Siren" and CL Moore's "Joirel Meets Magic" and "The Dark Land." Hamilton's portal fantasies included Brian Cullen going to the land of Celtic myth in "The Shining Land" (May 1945) and "Lost Elysium" (November 1945), also "The Shadow Folk" (September 1944), "The Inn Outside the World" (July 1945), and "Twilight of the Gods" (July 1948). Like the Harold Shea series by L Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt (1940-1954), Hamilton liked placing everyday people into mythic situations. Unlike those Shea stories that appeared in Unknown, Hamilton's agenda is not ridicule-oriented humor, but adventure.

Amongst his Portal tales, there was one that stands alone. This was "Dreamer's World" (Weird Tales, November 1941). This story uses a similar device, a man of our world perceiving another realm, but in this case Hamilton changes the game by having the main character, Henry Stevens, a dull and ordinary man living his office-working life, only seeing this world. Henry has a plump wife named Emma and a boss named Carson who abuses him. He does nothing unusual except that when he sleeps every night he lives another life: that of Khal Kan, prince of Jotan, a sword-swinging adventurer who is everything Stevens is not.

Khal Kan, with his buddies Brusul and Zoor, go on mad adventures, like sneaking into the camp of nomads to see if their princess, Golden Wings, is truly the most beautiful of all women. Of course, she is. And when she captures Khal Kan, she has him flogged to see if he is truly husband material. So different from Henry, who thinks he must be mad, watching this exciting life take place every night. He seeks out Doctor Thorn, a psychiatrist, to figure out if he is real or Khal Kan. As the story progresses, even Khal Kan, who dreams Henry's boring life every night, wonders the same. Which of them is real?

Henry explores this at great length, but ultimately is too powerless to find out. It is up to Khal Kan to put it to the test when the Bunts, the savage villains of the piece, attack Jotan. Khal Kan and his friends (now with his new wife, Golden Wings) face the green hordes and win. Only Kan dies from a poisoned blade and we find out at last. Which was real? Khal Kan dies on the plains of Thar... and back in our mundane world, Henry Stevens dies at the same time.

Dr. Thorn tries to explain it:

"Suppose," Thorn went on, "that Henry Stevens was a unique case of that. Suppose that his mind happened to be in rapport, from the time of his birth, with the mind of another man—another man, who was not of Earth but of some world far across the universe from ours? Suppose that each man's subconscious was able to experience the other man's thoughts and feelings, when his own consciousness was relaxed and sleeping? So that each man, all his life, seemed each night to dream the other man's life?"

What Hamilton has done is use portal fantasy to pay homage to an author he admired and read as a young man: Edgar Rice Burroughs. Not to imitate him, as he does in "Kaldar-World of Antares" (Magic Carpet, April 1933), "The Snake-Men of Kaldar" (Magic Carpet, October 1933), and "The Great-Brain of Kaldar" (Weird Tales, December 1935); this series of scientific romances is clearly a pastiche of Burroughs. "Dreamer's World" is something more. It is not an homage to ERB so much as it is one to Normal Bean, the guy who wrote that first story "Under the Moons of Mars" in 1912. Burroughs had chosen the pseudonym to imply he wasn't crazy, that he had a "normal head." An editor corrected the "error" and "Norman Bean" became the author. Burroughs, disgusted at the change, used his own name after the original publication. Hamilton latches onto this early rendition of Edgar Rice Burroughs: the quiet, normal-seeming fellow, who failed job after job, dreaming away about Barsoom, and sword fights, and green, six-limbed monsters called tharks. Hamilton takes that man and calls him Henry Stevens and tells us of an alternative Burroughs who may have lived his own stories.

If you doubt me, Hamilton leaves us bread crumbs to follow. The names in the story are particularly interesting. Stevens' wife's name is Emma. Burroughs' first wife's name was also Emma (and yes, she was plump). His boss is Carson, possibly a reference to Carson of Venus. Khal Khan's name is like most of those found on Barsoom amongst the human characters: Ban-Tor, Kantos Khan, Ghan Had, Pho Lar, etc. The city to which Khal is prince is Jotan, the name of the Martian chess that Burroughs created, rules and all, for The Chessmen of Mars (1921). And if you need even more proof, the baddies, the Bunts, are referred to as green-skinned: "The Bunts are in Galoon! Hell take the green devils..." repeatedly though there seems no reason for them to be any color at all. Like Burroughs' tharks, they are the wild tribesmen of the dreamer's world. (The name Galoon is most likely a friendly joke for Hamilton's friend, Raymond Z. Gallun (pronounced Galoon), who wrote part of the story jam "The Great Illusion" in 1936 with Hamilton and others.)

Hamilton's desire to commemorate Edgar Rice Burroughs and his Barsoom series is easily understood these days. In 1941, ERB was still alive, writing short stories for Ray Palmer at Fantastic Adventures and Amazing Stories. The man who had created Tarzan had fallen from the earlier days of the weeklies, but he was still "a name" in science fiction circles. He had been active in pulp publishing since Hugo Gernsback hired him to write The Mastermind of Mars especially for Amazing Stories Annual 1927. The attack on Pearl Harbor was only weeks away from the release of "Dreamer's World." Burroughs would give up writing to become a war correspondent, effectively ending the active part of his SF career. He would die in 1950. Not until the Burroughs boom of the 1960s would his name be big news again. Hamilton's homage would be forgotten even quicker, but we can enjoy it again today. For all the young men and women who thrilled to thark armies clashing over waterless plains, the sound of the radium rifles firing. and the growls of white apes in the ruins of Mars, the reason for this story is obvious.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

The Feud That Never Was [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

I was enjoying Bob Powell's Complete Cave Girl (Dark Horse) and something in the editorials got me thinking. Why didn't Edgar Rice Burroughs sue when Sheena, Queen of the Jungle appeared for the first time in the US in 1938? For that matter, why didn't he sue any of the many jungle king and queens over the years.

Edgar Rice Burroughs created Tarzan in 1912. ERB had the jungle king business all to himself until 1926 when "Roy Rockwood" wrote the juvenile novel, Bomba the Jungle Boy. Did Burroughs sue? Nope. 1927, Otis Adelbert Kline writes the first Pulp Tarzan clone, Call of the Savage (aka Jan of the Jungle) and Tam, Son of the Tiger in 1931. That year we also got CT Stoneman's Kaspa the Lion Man. 1932: Kwa. The flood gates are creaking opening. 1934: Sorak. 1935: Hawk of the Wilderness. 1936: Ka-Zar... and finally Sheena. And then things really explode. Everybody had to have a jungle king or queen.

And Burroughs, who was a shrewd business man, does nothing. Why? Could it have something to do with the fact that British reviewers had accused him of ripping off Rudyard Kipling (along with HR Haggard and HG Wells) in 1914? Kipling himself wrote later in Something of Myself (1937):

"And, if it be in your power, bear serenely with imitators. My Jungle Books begat Zoos of them. But the genius of all the genii was one who wrote a series called Tarzan of the Apes. I read it, but regret I never saw it on the films, where it rages most successfully. He had 'jazzed' the motif of the Jungle Books and, I imagine, had thoroughly enjoyed himself. He was reported to have said that he wanted to find out how bad a book he could write and 'get away with,' which is a legitimate ambition."

A mixed review at best. But Kipling never sued. He chose to "bear serenely with imitators" (if such a poke in the eye can be called serene). Burroughs own reply to the reviewers' accusations noted that these authors had been part of his youth and he thanked them, but he also noted that the "noble savage" idea is older than Mowgli, dating back to Romulus and Remus. Kipling said nothing for twenty-three years and ERB got on with writing more Tarzan novels. When his turn came to be imitated, he seems to have taken a page from Kipling's book.

There was a rumor circulating in later years that Edgar Rice Burroughs had not taken it all lying down. In fans circles, there was talk of the Burroughs-Kline feud. Otis Adelbert Kline certainly was one of the first and most Burroughs-like of the imitators. He published in the same Pulps as did ERB. If anyone would have been a likely target for a lawsuit it was this former associate editor of Weird Tales.

The story goes something like this. Kline was always careful to set his pseudo-Burroughs in different places than old ERB. So Jan of the Jungle lives in India, not Africa. The Planet of Peril was Venus, not Mars, as Ed had staked that territory out in his Barsoom novels. But in 1932 Burroughs started a new series, this one about a flyer named Carson Napier, for Argosy. The planet was Amtor or Venus, encroaching on Kline's franchise. In January 1933, Kline retaliates in the same magazine with The Swordsmen of Mars and later The Outlaws of Mars. What would ERB do next?

Nothing. Irwin Porges, who had the enormous task of reading decades of correspondence to write Burroughs' biography, Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan (1975), never found any trace of a feud. Burroughs had not written so much as a note about Kline. Kline had not flooded him with hot missives. The battle of the Jungle writers was a mere fancy of the fans. Burroughs, in his best Kipling manner, had simply ignored his imitator.

The fact that Burroughs had not pursued litigation left, right, and center may be one of the reasons why we had the Jungle Craze of the 1940s. One successful court case, let's say against Wil Eisner and his Sheena creation and the slough of jungle print-wearing beauty queens and muscle men would have stopped dead in their tracks.

But that is alternative history. It never happened that way. Johnny Weissmuller was movie magic. Sheena was a big hit in the comics and the Jungle Lord and Lady moved into the public domain of tropes. The elements of the Tarzan adventure had solidified over those twenty-five years, to the point where Mickey Mouse and Daffy Duck were doing jungle yells in the cartoons. And Ed just laughed along and wrote another book.

Whether he "serenely bore" it, or his lawyers told him it wasn't worth the bother, doesn't matter. Being such an entrepreneur, he might have even thought it was good (and free) advertising. He had given the world a new icon, a new way of seeing something old. In our world of today, when companies actually own the very language we speak, this generosity is surprising. And both Ed and Rudyard have survived the One Hundred Year Test, and we will go on enjoying their gifts for decades to come.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Careful What You Wish For... [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

I was recently ruminating with my cousin about how our kids, now all in their twenties, don't want the legacies we have gathered. Legacies? Millions of dollars? No, but millions of words. I'm talking about "The Collection," a mass of speculative fiction and comics going back to the 1970s. Sure, you can eBay it, but what we always thought we'd do with it was pass it along to our kids.

Only thing is... they don't want it.

It's hard to believe. They don't want boxes and boxes of treasures: gems like copies of Crypt of Cthulhu, complete runs of Dragon magazine, Erbdom, Doctor Who videos (the early stuff before Christopher Eccleston), Gold Key Star Trek comics, paperbacks by Silverberg, Goulart, Chalker, and on and on.

First, this raises the question: why are these treasures? Well, despite the '70s being pretty good for Science Fiction and Fantasy (think Space 1999, Kolchak the Night Stalker, Joe Kubert's Tarzan, Barry Smith's Conan the Barbarian, and those wonderful Hildebrandt LotR calendars!), most of the time it was still a desert, with small oases of delight. The rest: dull. Watergate, Viet Nam, the Energy Crisis. Well, if not dull, at least terrestrial. We had the Moon Landing, but we wanted the stars...

And so we hoarded with a possessiveness that only Gollum could match. Dragon-like, we kept all our Uncanny X-Men comics in a pile and slept on them (including that precious #94). Despite the addiction to the Fantastic, we were willing to share, because there just weren't enough of us out there. Folks who could discuss why Star Trek was better than Star Wars while a third muscled in that Doctor Who was better than either.

But if you were born in 1990, you entered an entirely different world. My kids grew up in a world where Sword and Sorcery was a click away on a game console. They didn't have to watch The Man from Atlantis religiously or write letters to networks to rerun Hawk the Slayer. Their dinosaurs were CGI, not the rubber ones of At the Earth's Core. So when you guide them through the labyrinth of boxes to the center of that great SF/F/H trove, they look at it and say, "Meh."

Tears well up. You want to disown them. And this raises the question: where did we go wrong? We thought we were raising them right. Magic the Gathering cards instead of hockey cards. Hobbits, not hobby horses. Velociraptor instead of bunnies. Damn it, we did our duty as fan-parents (I think I just coined a new word!) and yet...

Meh. An expression so bland and disengaged you want to punch it in the face. Meh. Did I not give you Edgar Rice Burroughs? I would have died without old ERB. He was the gateway drug that lead to Leiber, Lovecraft, Tolkien, Frank Herbert, Stephen King, all of it. Eddie Burroughs made me a reader first, and a writer second. Without that first Neal Adams-adorned copy of The Jungle Tales of Tarzan in the black Ballantine wrapper I'd be... much more ordinary. And my treasure trove would be... I can't imagine it as I shudder with George Bailey-like terror down the street this way and that. "Mother, don't you know me?" "My son died when he was eight years old, crushed by a stack of Weird Tales." (Slam!)

So be careful what you wish for. Because I can remember in 1973, that second issue of Thongor in Creatures on the Loose #23 clutched in my sweaty ten-year-old hands and thinking, "Why can't this stuff be everywhere?" I can remember dreaming back in 1979 about a world in which Star Wars could be available to you at the push of a button (that was when an 8-minute super 8 highlight reel sold for a whopping $100.)

And I think we got the dream. Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror are everywhere, from The Walking Dead to Spider-Man movies to the Lord of the Rings franchises to video games that let you run whole armies to (orgasmic delight) a John Carter of Mars film. We are living in world that has embraced SF/F/H. It's all gone mainstream.

And I should be delighted, but instead I'm looking at this stack of Burroughs' Venus novels (with their superb Frank Frazetta covers) and thinking my kids don't care. Amtor, with its winged klangaan warriors, its bug-eyed monsters, its maze of seven deaths. What's that compared to FallOut 3 or World of Warcraft or Skyrim?

But I take what I can get. A little 1st edition D&D with the boys when I can. Arkham Horror is a nice middle ground between the old Call of Cthulhu box set and the latest multi-million selling X-box game. One kid likes Eragon, the other Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I didn't fail completely. Or perhaps at all. It's not like they call me up and say "Hey, what did you think of that Oilers game, eh?" Maybe, just maybe, we all need to gather our own treasure trove, only to cast it away when we die. Or better yet, to have it piled around us and set on fire, Viking-style. Yes, that's what I want. To go up in smoke along with my Turoks, and my Lancer paperbacks, my old D&D character sheets, my Doc Savage, Man of Bronze books and a complete set of Arak, Son of Thunder. Up I'll go. And my boys can look on. Who's "Meh" now?

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Happy ERBday!

Painting by Daryl Mandryk [via]

Today would have been Edgar Rice Burroughs' 139th birthday, so Happy ERBday, everyone!

The last couple of weeks have been crazy, so I didn't have a lot of time for reading or posting, but the Bondathon will resume as soon as I finish On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Back into the groove now, so hopefully not too much longer.

Happy 101st Anniversary, Tarzan!

My original plan for Tarzan 101 was to take the month of October off so I could focus on the Halloween Countdown, but once we finally got here, it seemed silly not to talk about Tarzan in the very month of his anniversary. That's why I've been ramping up the 101 posts lately and here we are.

If anyone knows for sure which date the October 1912 All-Story hit the stands, they haven't shared it with me, but that was the issue that featured the first installment of Edgar Rice Burroughs' new novel about an English baby adopted by African apes.

I've had such a blast going through Scott Tracy Griffin's Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration and I hope you've enjoyed this series of posts. Thanks so much to Griffin for writing the awesome book and to Titan Books for sending me a copy. It was a perfect way to celebrate the centennial, even if I did it a year late. And thanks to you guys for reading and sharing your own Tarzan experiences with me. You can be sure it won't be the last time the ape man comes up on this blog.

[UPDATE: The awesome @ERBurroughsFan tells me that the Oct. 1912 issue of The All-Story was copyrighted and put on sale on Sept. 10, 1912. So I'm way late, but really grateful for the info.]

Tarzan 101 | Further Reading

Celebrating Tarzan's 101st anniversary by walking through Scott Tracy Griffin's Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration.

The final chapter in Griffin's book is a bibliography of other books that interested fans can go to for more information. The granddaddy of these is the 820-page Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan, written by Irwin Porges with the cooperation of Burroughs' family and access to their exhaustive archive of Burroughs' letters, photos, and other memorabilia. It was published in 1975, the year in which Burroughs would have celebrated his 100th birthday.

There are a ton of other books that get shout outs by Griffin - far too many to list here - so I'll send you to Griffin's book if you're interested in the entire list. Porges' biography is worth singling out though, so I wanted to make sure it got a post.

Taran 101 | Burroughs' Later Years

Celebrating Tarzan's 101st anniversary by walking through Scott Tracy Griffin's Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration.

Two months after he finished writing his final novel, Tarzan and the Foreign Legion, in 1944, Burroughs' first wife Emma passed away from a stroke. He was still a war correspondent at the time, but got leave from the army - as did his and Emma's son, Hulbert - to return to California to be with the rest of the family and settle Emma's affairs. It was Christmastime and the first time Burroughs had celebrated the holiday with his entire family in 11 years.

In February 1945, he returned to duty in Hawaii and embarked on a final army tour shortly after Germany surrendered in May. On one leg of that tour, he was piloted by swashbuckling film legend Tyrone Power who was serving in the Marine Corps at the time.

After the war with Japan ended in August, it took Burroughs another couple of months to prepare and move back to California. Sadly, his health was already failing and he suffered from various heart ailments as well as Parkinson's disease. He started a new Tarzan novel in California, but only got 15,000 words into it before giving it up.

Sol Lesser was making Tarzan movies at the time and Burroughs stayed in contact with the productions. He got to see Tarzan and the Leopard Woman and one of his last outings was to the set of Tarzan and the Slave Girl. Ultimately though, his health declined to the point that he was confined to a wheelchair and he spent his final days watching TV (a new invention in the late '40s and Burroughs loved watching sports on it) and receiving visits from family and friends.

He died of heart failure in bed on Sunday morning, 19 March 1950, reading the Sunday Tarzan strip in the paper. His ashes were buried under a large tree in front of the ERB, Inc. office.

Tarzan 101 | Edgar Rice Burroughs' Fantastic Worlds

Celebrating Tarzan's 101st anniversary by walking through Scott Tracy Griffin's Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration.

Griffin's chapter on Burroughs' non-Tarzan stories is probably also the longest and with good reason: There's a lot to cover. Griffin highlights the best of the many other series and standalone stories that Burroughs wrote, with short summaries of each. I'm going to condense it into an easy list, but as usual, Griffin's version has more details than mine.

Before I do that, though, I want to point out that Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. is adapting some of the most famous of them (plus Tarzan) as weekly webcomics on the ERB site. There's a subscription of $2 a month, but you get about 24 pages of comics/month for that and the first few pages are free.

I should also mention that Griffin includes a whole other chapter called "The Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs." It's simply a list, so I won't reproduce it, but it's complete and also includes all the movies, TV and radio shows, Broadway productions, and comics.

Martian novels

Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars, and Warlord of Mars: The original John Carter trilogy in which the hero goes to Mars, meets its various inhabitants, and fights against the cult of a horrific goddess.

Thuvia, Maid of Mars: John Carter's son, Carthoris, rescues and woos a Martian woman.

Chessmen of Mars: Carter's daughter, Tara, and her husband are forced to battle as living chess pieces in an arena.

The Mastermind of Mars: A new earthman, Ulysses Paxton, arrives on Mars and battles an evil scientist.

A Fighting Man of Mars: Another hero fights another mad scientist to rescue another princess.

Swords of Mars: John Carter returns to combat an assassins guild.

Synthetic Men of Mars: The villain from Mastermind creates more trouble and has to be defeated by yet another Martian hero.

Llana of Gathol: Combines four novelettes featuring Carter and his granddaughter, Llana as they try to stop a megalomaniac.

John Carter of Mars: Combines two novellas in which Carter meets a giant and travels to Jupiter.

Venusian novels

Pirates of Venus, Lost on Venus, Carson of Venus, and Escape on Venus: A more humorous approach than the Martian series as Carson Napier accidentally ends up on the wrong planet and chases a princess and fights monsters in an attempt to rescue her.

Lunarian novels

The Moon Maid, The Moon Men, and The Red Hawk: Set in the future, humans try to take Earth back from alien invaders.

The Time novels

The Land That Time Forgot, The People That Time Forgot, and Out of Time's Abyss: Burroughs' other lost land besides Pellucidar, which Griffin covered in an earlier chapter due to its crossover with Tarzan. But though Pellucidar and TLTTF are Burroughs' most famous lost worlds, they're not his only ones.

Miscellaneous fantasies

The Lost Continent: Burroughs' third lost land is set in a future in which the world has been devastated by a long war.

Jungle Girl: A doctor discovers a lost civilization, and a princess of course.

The Cave Girl: An ill-equipped smartie-pants is marooned on an island and learns to survive with the help of a primitive woman.

The Monster Men: A Tarzan/Frankenstein hybrid in which a mad scientist creates a heroic giant.

The Lad and the Lion: Another Tarzan-esque tale where a young man tries to survive in North Africa with a lion companion.

Beyond the Farthest Star: Burroughs' final space story wasn't as romanticized as the Martian or Venusian ones. A WWII pilot finds himself on an alien world beleaguered by its own war.

The Mucker trilogy

The Mucker and Return of the Mucker: An anti-hero from the slums of Chicago fights samurai warriors on an island.

The Oakdale Affair: Continues the story by following the Mucker's hobo companion in a murder mystery.

Real-life novels

The Efficiency Expert: A dude becomes an efficiency expert with no prior experience.

The Girl from Farris: A romance between a wealthy businessman and a poor woman.

Marcia of the Doorstep: Burroughs' attempt at the Great American Novel, but with island marooning, a Western ranch, and a Hollywood stunt pilot.

The Girl from Hollywood: A thinly disguised homage to life on Burroughs' ranch and how it was way better than Tinsel Town.

Baltic romances

The Rider: Inspired by books like A Prisoner of Zenda, Burroughs wrote this story of mistaken identity between a dashing highwayman and prince.

The Mad King: Another mix-up between an adventurer and a royal.

Historical romances

The Outlaw of Torn: Medieval English adventure.

I Am a Barbarian: Fun times in Caligula's Rome.

Westerns

The War Chief and Apache Devil: Highlight the perspective of the Apaches during their wars with the U.S. cavalry.

The Bandit of Hell's Bend: A more conventional Western.

The Deputy Sheriff of Comanche County: Adventure on a New Mexico dude ranch.

Tarzan 101 | Tarzan of the World Wide Web

Celebrating Tarzan's 101st anniversary by walking through Scott Tracy Griffin's Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration.

Griffin's chapter on Tarzan's Internet fandom includes information on the founders of important sites, especially Bill Hillman of the massive (and massively useful) ERBzine, but it's probably most useful for me to just give links and send you to Griffin's book if you're curious about background. There's plenty to explore.

Official Sites
Official Edgar Rice Burroughs site
Tarzan.com
Tarzan.org

Burroughs Family
John Coleman Burroughs
Danton Burroughs

Fandom
ERBzine
Burroughs Bibliophiles
Edgar Rice Burroughs Chain of Friendship Listserver
ERBmania!

Movies
Tarzan Movie Guide
Tarzan.cc
Johnny Weissmuller

Humor
The Barsoomian Blade: A Tabloid Paper of Mars

Tarzan 101 | Fan Conventions

Celebrating Tarzan's 101st anniversary by walking through Scott Tracy Griffin's Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration.

About half of Griffin's chapter on Tarzan conventions is a lengthy quote from Tarzan of the Apes in which Burroughs describes the Dum-Dum ceremony held by the apes to mark important events. The other half though is full of great information about the real-world legacy of that celebration.

The Burroughs Bibliophiles started their version of the Dum Dum to coincide with the annual World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon). It was at the 18th WorldCon in 1960 that the Bibliophiles held their first meeting and they continued meeting that way for the next 24 years, only meeting at other conventions when WorldCon was held outside the United States.

When Bibliophiles founder Vern Coriell's health became too poor to allow him to continue leading the club in 1984, the Bibliophiles and the Dum Dum went on hiatus, but Burroughs fans didn't give up meeting. British fan (and pen pal of Burroughs) Frank Shonfeld started the Edgar Rice Burroughs Chain of Friendship, originally a network of letter-writers, and ECOF held its first, formal meeting in Toronto in August 1984.

Though ECOF continues meeting to this day (this year's was in May in Morris, Illinois), when George McWhorter restarted the Burroughs Bibliophiles he also reinstituted the annual Dum Dum, though as a separate event from WorldCon. ERBzine has a wonderful timeline of meeting dates and locations that even includes some short anecdotes from various gatherings. This year's Dum Dum was held in Louisville, Kentucky on August 8-11.

One of the major activities at the Dum Dum each year is bestowing awards. The Golden Lion Award is commonly given to professional creators and actors who've contributed in some way to Burroughs' legacy. The Edgar Rice Burroughs Achievement Award is given to prominent fans for their efforts in keeping alive the author's memory. The Dum Dum has also honored significant contributors to Burroughsdom like Hal Foster, Frank Frazetta, Johnny Weissmuller, Buster Crabbe, Harlan Ellison, and Philip Jose Farmer.

Tarzan 101 | Fans and Fan Publishing

Celebrating Tarzan's 101st anniversary by walking through Scott Tracy Griffin's Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration.

We've talked before about some of the children's fan clubs that sprang up around Tarzan over the years, but grown-ups also appreciate the ape man and have organized groups and publications in celebration of that passion.

The earliest successful endeavor was started by Vernell Coriell, a childhood member of the Tarzan Clans youth club who didn't give up his fandom in adulthood. He corresponded with other fans like the legendary Forrest J. Ackerman and Ray Bradbury, and in 1948 launched the first Burroughs fanzine, The Burroughs Bulletin, with the writer's blessing.

It was through the Bulletin that readers organized the first all-ages fan club/literary society, The Burroughs Bibliophiles. The group held its first meeting at the 1960 Worldcon in Pittsburgh. The Bulletin remains in publication today and the Bibliophiles still exist, though they went dormant in the '80s when Coriell's health prevented his being as active as he had been.

Fortunately, a new leader emerged. Librarian George T. McWhorter had founded the Edgar Rice Burroughs Memorial Collection in 1976 and continued adding to it, including buying Coriell's large Burroughs collection when Coriell died in 1987. Then, three years after Coriell's death, McWhorter also assumed publication of the Bulletin and resurrected the Bibliophiles.

Though the quarterly Bulletin and its monthly spin-off publication, the Gridley Wave, are the grandparents of Burroughs fanzines, they're certainly not the only publications dedicated to Burroughs' work. ERBania has been around since 1956 and Hugo Award-winning ERBDom started publication in 1960. Griffin includes a list of dozens of other Burroughs-focused publications, including Edgar Rice Burroughs News Dateline, Tarzine, The Burroughs Newsbeat, and The Fantastic Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs. ERB, Inc.'s official Tarzan website also has an excellent list of clubs and publications with contact information for each.

Tarzan 101 | Tarzan the Global Phenomenon

Celebrating Tarzan's 101st anniversary by walking through Scott Tracy Griffin's Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration.

Burroughs' descriptive prose, fantasy setting, and focus on action made Tarzan easily translatable into other languages and the novels quickly became internationally popular during the author's lifetime. Griffin gives details about many of the translations, including Burroughs' rocky relationship with Germany following the anti-German Tarzan the Untamed. Tarzan also had some problems in Soviet Russia, but that was because the government was upset that the novels were more popular than Marx. As of Griffin's writing, Tarzan had been published in 32 languages, including Esperanto and Braille.

The Tarzan films also proved popular globally, but what's most interesting to me are the various spin-offs and adaptations created specifically for other countries. Italy, China, and India have all created their own movie versions of the character. France had its own Tarzan comics in WWII. Argentina and Australia both created radio versions of the character. We've also previously talked about Tarzan's influence on Japanese fitness and Australian glue. One of the most fascinating phenomena though has been the unauthorized Tarzan novels written by Israeli and Arab authors in which the ape man has served each group in fighting the other. As Griffin writes, "Tarzan's appeal crosses the most widely divergent political and ideological lines."

Hand-Held Thunder: The History of the Blaster [Guest Post]

It's always a pleasure when G.W. Thomas sends in a guest post, not only because I get to share it with you, but also because I always learn something new. Thanks again to G.W. for this history of ray guns and blasters in scifi literature and film. -- Michael

Martian Heat Ray

It made sense when Science Fiction went to the stars that the brave men and women who plumbed the depths of space would need weapons suited to their new environment. A firearm requiring oxygen or air pressure would not work in the vacuum of space, nor could an adventurer lost on a distant planet find ammunition for a conventional gun. As with so many of Science Fiction's standard props, it fell to H. G. Wells to arm the enemies of Man with such a weapon in The War of the Worlds (1898):

It is still a matter of wonder how the Martians are able to slay men so swiftly and so silently. Many think that in some way they are able to generate an intense heat in a chamber of practically absolute non-conductivity. This intense heat they project in a parallel beam against any object they choose, by means of a polished parabolic mirror of unknown composition, much as the parabolic mirror of a lighthouse projects a beam of light. But no one has absolutely proved these details. However it is done, it is certain that a beam of heat is the essence of the matter. Heat, and invisible, instead of visible, light. Whatever is combustible flashes into flame at its touch, lead runs like water, it softens iron, cracks and melts glass, and when it falls upon water, incontinently that explodes into steam.

Garrett P. Serviss can take credit for inventing "The Distintegrator" in his "Thomas Edison's Conquest of Mars" (1898), America's answer to H. G. Wells:

Another soft whirr in the instrument, a momentary flash of light close around it, and, behold, the crow had turned from black to white! 

"Its feathers are gone," said the inventor; "they have been dissipated into their constituent atoms. Now, we will finish the crow." 

Instantly there was another adjustment of the index, another outshooting of vibratory force, a rapid up and down motion of the index to include a certain range of vibrations, and the crow itself was gone—vanished in empty space! There was the bare twig on which a moment before it had stood. Behind, in the sky, was the white cloud against which its black form had been sharply outlined, but there was no more crow.

Barsoomian Radium Gun

While Serviss and Wells slugged it out in fiction, in the real world, Nikola Tesla was working on the idea of actual direct-energy weapons as early as 1900. In his The Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-dispersive Energy through the Natural Media he discourses on charged particle beams. Still, fiction was slow to follow.

The first big writer to consider what a personal sized space weapon might be was Edgar Rice Burroughs in his maiden flight as a writer, "Under the Moons of Mars" (All-Story, serialization beginning February 1912). ERB realized that Martians would not necessarily have the same weaponry as Earthmen and came up with the "Radium" rifle:

These rifles were of a white metal stocked with wood, which I learned later was a very light and intensely hard growth much prized on Mars, and entirely unknown to us denizens of Earth. The metal of the barrel is an alloy composed principally of aluminum and steel which they have learned to temper to a hardness far exceeding that of the steel with which we are familiar. The weight of these rifles is comparatively little, and with the small caliber, explosive, radium projectiles which they use, and the great length of the barrel, they are deadly in the extreme and at ranges which would be unthinkable on Earth. The theoretic effective radius of this rifle is three hundred miles, but the best they can do in actual service when equipped with their wireless finders and sighters is but a trifle over two hundred miles.

Despite the range, most of the fighting on Mars takes place with swords. So much for logic. Still, it paved the way for other writers to think outside the box.

Buck Rogers

The term "blaster" was coined in April 1925 in Weird Tales (Amazing Stories and Astounding did not yet exist!) in "When the Green Star Waned" by the obscure Nictzin Dyalhis:

"Well, it was for me that, in obedience to Hul Jok's imperative command, I was holding my Blastor pointing ahead of me..." 

Another Weird Tales alumnus was Edmond Hamilton who wrote most the SF in the magazine. He had the Blue Ray of Death in "Across Space" (Weird Tales, September 1926) and the Cold Ray in "The Atomic Conquerors" (Weird Tales, February 1927) and the De-Atomizing Ray in "Crashing Suns" (Weird Tales, August 1928).

Buck Rogers, who was still Anthony Rogers when he appeared in "Armageddon 2419" (Amazing Stories, August 1928) by Philip Francis Nowlan, found the future Americans at war with invading Asians and using rocket launchers called Rocket guns and the following:

I took the weapon from his grasp and examined it hurriedly. It was not unlike the automatic pistol to which I was accustomed, except that it apparently fired with a button instead of a trigger. I inserted several fresh rounds of ammunition into its magazine from my companion's belt, as rapidly as I could, for I soon heard, near us, the suppressed conversation of his pursuers.

In the same issue, in an equally monumental tale, The Skylark of Space by E. E. Doc Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby goes back to the Burroughs' method:

They found that the X-plosive came fully up to expectations. The smallest charge they had prepared, fired by Crane at a great stump a full hundred yards away from the bare, flat-topped knoll that had afforded them a landing-place, tore it bodily from the ground and reduced it to splinters, while the force of the explosion made the two men stagger...The pistol cracked, and when the bullet reached its destination the great stone was obliterated in a vast ball of flame.

"The Girl from Mars"

Hugo Gernsback published "The Girl From Mars" by Jack Williamson and Miles J. Breuer in a pamphlet in 1929. This was the one thing he published in between owning Amazing Stories and his new set of magazines which included Wonder Stories. This tale features three Martians raised on Earth, children sent in capsules like Superman would be in the comics four years later. The two males fight a super-hero proportioned battle for the female using an array of weird weaponry most the size of a coin:

The ultramundane man thrust a hand into his pocket and pulled out one of Worrell's little instruments. I did not see the shape of the thing, but as he clasped it in his hand, a vague green fire flowed out of it and flashed across to Fred. What that force was, I do not know - some form of electric energy, or of ions, perhaps. The green radiance condensed about my son. His brave advance was abruptly checked. An expression of agony came over his face. He tottered and began a scream that ended in a rattling sob. For a moment his body was outlined sharply in the curdling green incandescence. Mason relaxed his grip of the tiny device and calmly returned it to his pocket as my son, burned and distorted, fell heavily to the floor.

"The Crystal Ray" by Raymond Z. Gallun (Air Wonder Stories, November 1929) features another racist war between America and the Yellow Menace. America survives with a final desperate weapon, the Blue Ray:

From the bow of one of America's ships a faint beam of bluish light stabbed out and struck an enemy craft, sweeping it from stem to stern! It passed through the vessel as though she had been made of glass, instead of thousands of tons of metal. Immediately the dreadnaught began to blunder oddly as though completely out of control. What had happened to her occupants? A grim smile passed over Pelton's lips, for he knew!

Brigands of the Moon

In Amazing Stories, November 1930, it was John W. Campbell, still writer, not yet all-important editor, who really figured out how such a weapon would actually work in "Solarite":

“Imagine what would happen if we directed this against the side of a mountain—the entire mass of rock would at once fly off at unimaginable speed, crashing ahead with terrific power, as all the molecules suddenly moved in the same direction. Nothing in all the Universe could hold together against it! It's a disintegration ray of a sort—a ray that will tear, or crush, for we can either make one half move away from the other—or we can reverse the power, and make one half drive toward the other with all the terrific power of its molecules! It is omnipotent—hmmm—” Arcot paused, narrowing his eyes in thought. It has one limitation. Will it reach far in the air? In vacuum it should have an infinite range—in the atmosphere all the molecules of the air will be affected, and it will cause a terrific blast of icy wind, a gale at temperatures far below zero! This will be even more effective here on Venus!

1931 seems to be an important year for ray guns. At Teck's Amazing Stories, April 1931 Nat Schachner and Arthur Leo Zagat came up with the Disruptor in "The Emperor of the Stars". That same month in Hugo Gernsback's Wonder Stories, The Annihilation Beam appeared in Leslie F. Stone's in "The Conquest of Gola," and Clark Ashton Smith had his Zero Ray in "An Adventure in Futurity". Jack Williamson offers another form of weapon, the Matter Annihilation Ray in "Twelve Hours to Live" (Wonder Stories, August 1931).

In wasn't any different over at the Clayton Astounding. Ray Cummings must have had Wells in mind when he created the pencil heat ray in Brigands of the Moon (Astounding, March 1931) :

My pencil ray was in my hand and I pressed its switch. The tiny heat ray stabbed through the air, but I missed. The figure stumbled but did not fall. I saw a bare gray arm come from the cloak, flung up to maintain its balance. Or perhaps my pencil ray had seared his arm...

Flash. Ah-ahhh.

Of all the spacemen to appear in the Clayton Astounding, Hawk Carse was certainly the most famous. In "Hawk Carse" (Astounding, November 1931) he is described as "... Hawk Carse the adventurer, he of the spitting ray-gun and the phenomenal draw, of the reckless space ship maneuverings..." In the story there is little or no explanation of how a ray gun works for by this time none was necessary. The Hawk Carse stories were modeled on the Western and how the gun worked was no longer important, only that the hero was lightning fast. The ray gun had arrived.

C. L. Moore's Northwest Smith in his first appearance "Shambleau" (Weird Tales, November 1933) shows he knows his way around a weapon in the opening scene:

"Smith, lounging negligently against the wall, arms folded and gun-hand draped over his left forearm, looked incapable of swift motion, but at the leader’s first forward step the pistol swept in a practiced half-circle and the dazzle of blue-white heat leaping from its muzzle seared an arc in the slag pavement at his feet..."

By 1934 in Triplanetary (Amazing Stories, January-April 1934), E. E. Doc Smith replaced his X-Plosive with the "Standish", a beam weapon of immense power. Smith would later coined the word "Super-Weapon" in "What a Course!" (Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1939:

Going up to a blank wall, he manipulated an almost invisible dial set flush with it surface, swung a heavy door aside, and lifted out the Standish - a fearsome weapon. Squat, huge, and heavy, it resembled somewhat an overgrown machine rifle, but one possessing a thick, short telescope, with several opaque condensing lenses and parabolic reflectors...He set his peculiar weapon down, unfolded its three massive legs, crouched down behind it, and threw in a switch. Dull red beams of frightful intensity shot from the reflectors and sparks, almost of lightening proportions, leaped from the shielding screen under their impact.

Pew! Pew!

Disappointing as Buck Roger's initial weaponry in the Pulps, he didn't really get going until he became a comic strip character in January 1929, leaving Earth for outer space. Once out there, Buck's futuristic weapon inspired the generations that followed. The XZ-31 Rocket Pistol appeared at the February 1934 American Toy Fair and sold for 50 cents.

And of course, right on Buck's tracks came Flash Gordon in January 7, 1934. With Buster Crabbe playing him in the serials in 1936, everyone now knew what a space gun was supposed to look like.

The events of 1945 and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki mark the end of fun, futuristic weapons. The real thing had arrived and they weren't so fun. For a while Science Fiction focused on bombardments as everyone worried that the Russians would fill the skies with death. But TV gave us new men in silver underwear and the ray gun became the province of Children's entertainment or the stuff of jokes such as Chuck Jones's brilliant "Duck Dodgers in the 24 and 1/2 century" (Warner Bros., 1953). Daffy whips out his Disintegrator Pistol and pulls the trigger. The gun, of course, disintegrates. But eventually TV shows like Lost in Space, Star Trek, Space 1999, and of course Star Wars would bring these glittering hand-held weapons back into our consciousness. Call it a ray gun, call it a blaster, it doesn't matter. As Han Solo says, perhaps erroneously: "Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."

Additional resources:
Kurogawa's Virtual Ray Gun Exhibition
Technovelgy's Weapons in Science Fiction

 G. W. Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Tarzan 101 | Tarzan the Collectible

Celebrating Tarzan's 101st anniversary by walking through Scott Tracy Griffin's Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration.

One of the things that's struck me most in Griffin's book is learning what an impressive businessman Burroughs was. As Griffin points out, a lot of people think of the Davy Crockett coonskin cap fad in the '50s as the birth of heavy licensing and merchandising, but the phenomenon predates that by a couple or three decades. Superman was a notable example, but the strategies implemented for that craze were developed by Stephen Slesinger while under contract to Burroughs.

For a while, Burroughs didn't mind people making money off Tarzan without paying him. He was flattered and even produced Tarzan manuscripts on unlicensed Tarzan paper. As the trend continued though, he began to be concerned about the dilution of the brand.

One example of that was Hollywood cowboy star Ken Maynard, who requested permission to name his horse Tarzan. Burroughs granted it, but grew annoyed when MGM began using the horse's name in movie and serial titles.



The first official licensed Tarzan product was a 1922 stuffed monkey that was produced by Davis & Voetsch, a toy company in New York. Sadly, I couldn't find a photo of the doll, but the picture at the top of this post is from a 1932 promotion for the Tarzan of the Apes radio show. Three different sponsors distributed over 400,000 of the clay figurines manufactured by the Gem Clay Forming Company.

The photo of the clay figures came from a cool Tarzan Appreciation thread on the Universal Monster Army message board, and there are a lot more awesome toys and collectibles to be seen there. Another great gallery of Tarzan merchandise can be found on the Plaid Stallions site.

One of my favorite pieces (not that I own it) is this 1939 board game by Parker Brothers with art by Burroughs' son, John Coleman Burroughs. The pictures come from the Flickr photostream of someone named Morbius19.





I sucked at models as a kid, so I never owned this one either, but Aurora models were ubiquitous in the late '60s and early '70s and I certainly remember seeing this one around.



Someone on the Gear Page forum demonstrated how cool it could look completed (and added an awesome customization that you can see in the link).



Speaking of models, Tarzan was also licensed to sell models that weren't even related to him, as my pal Sleestak reminds us with this ad:



In fact, Tarzan's name has been licensed for all sorts of things that aren't directly about him. From this Japanese fitness magazine...



...to Australian glue.



Griffin's book of course has many, many more examples and photos. Curious if anyone reading this has favorite pieces of Tarzan merchandise, whether you actually own it or would just like to.

Tarzan 101 | Edgar Rice Burroughs' Bookplate and Doodad

Celebrating Tarzan's 101st anniversary by walking through Scott Tracy Griffin's Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration.

Beneath the dust jacket of Griffin's book is a red hardcover emblazoned with a blue sigil, sort of like a stylized "T" that's been turned into a sword or spear. I first assumed that it stood for Tarzan, but apparently not. No one seems to know exactly what the "doodad" (as Burroughs called it) represents, but the author created it while scribbling in the sand on a family fishing trip in 1924. He and his sons each had their own variations with the circle appearing in different places in relation to the central "spear." That way that they could leave signs to each other during outdoor expeditions to indicate which direction they'd travelled.

Eventually ERB's version ended up on the spines of his novels published by ERB, Inc. and he even put it on the tail of his private airplane, also named Doodad.

Less mysterious is the iconography behind this customized bookplate that artist Studley Burroughs created for his uncle:



Studley explained the design in a letter (which Griffin reprints): Tarzan's there, of course, holding up Mars (identified by its two moons). Behind him are representations of other Burroughs characters and at Tarzan's feet are a crossed pen and sword, representing Burroughs' love for writing and the military. The heraldic shield is divided into four sections, each representing a different part of Burroughs' life: his time in the Calvary, his life in the American West, his return to the civilized East, and finally his literary career.

Tarzan 101 | Edgar Rice Burroughs, Incorporated

Celebrating Tarzan's 101st anniversary by walking through Scott Tracy Griffin's Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration.

Burroughs was a savvy businessman as well as a talented author. In 1923 he incorporated himself, gave stock to his family members, and started drawing a salary from the new company. He set up shop on Ventura Boulevard and the Spanish-style bungalow is still the headquarters of the corporation today. I got the photo above from the Black Gate site, which includes a report on Ryan Harvey's visit to ERB, Inc. earlier this year. Harvey's post is full of great information and well worth reading.

It was through ERB, Inc. that Burroughs eventually made his film deals and even published his own books. The endeavor was successful enough to get Burroughs and his family through the Great Depression with his finances intact.

During Burroughs' lifetime, the company had two full-time secretaries. Burroughs hired Ralph Rothmund in 1927 and added Mildred Bernard Jensen in 1931. The company's been run by Burroughs' family since Rothmund retired in 1963.

Though Burroughs died in 1950 (his ashes are buried beneath the mulberry tree in the photo, though a walnut tree was there at the time of his death), his company still manages the licenses for films, books, comics, toys, and everything else based on his work.