Arnfeld describes the Martian enlisted men:
"These were a quiet, almost stolid lot, the peasantry and hunters of the dry sea bottoms and the stony hills. We heard the wailing of their songs like sorrow in the air." (p. 62)
This reminds us of Elwin Ransom advising CS Lewis where to look on a map of Mars. See here. On Lewis' Mars, one intelligent species lives in the river canyons and another on the upper plains. It is impossible for us now to look at Mars and to imagine that any of this might be real. But we have to put ourselves mentally back in the time when these works were written. When Verne, Wells and Burroughs wrote, it was possible that our galaxy was the entire universe. Imagine retro-sf based on that premise. The literary convention of inhabited solar planets continued for a while after scientific knowledge had moved forward.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Those "...hunters of the dry sea bottoms and the stony hills" reminded me of the similar conditions seen in the Barsoom stories of ERB.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yes, there are Barsoomian echoes there!
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
As there are in your own book IN THE COURTS OF THE CRIMSON KINGS!
ERB's Barsoom stories were his best books, IMO.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: well, Burroughs didn't write as -many- of the Barsoom books as he did the Tarzan ones, but that was the market talking.
Africa got coated with lost cities and civilizations... 8-).
Burroughs literary reputation would probably be better if he'd only written the first 4 or 5 Tarzan books, the first 6 Mars books, and a few others.
(I think the MOON MAID series is excellent, myself.)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, the Tarzan craze was where to get the big money, so ERB focused on writing Tarzan stories. I should reread some of those first five books.
Dang! I don't think I ever read any of the MOON MAID series.
H. Rider Haggard also wrote stories featuring lost cities and civilizations--such as KING SOLOMON'S MINES and WHEN THE EARTH SHOOK.
Ad astra! Sean
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