ERB's sequel to his Martian series;
(Otis Adelbert Kline as influencing ERB but I have not read OAK);
CS Lewis' oceanic Venus/Perelandra;
Poul Anderson's desert Venus in one short story and oceanic Venus in another short story;
Anderson's off-stage colonized Venus in the Technic History and in the Time Patrol series;
SM Stirling's terraformed Venus.
We have also compared fictional immortals, notably Anderson's Hanno and Hugh Valland, Neil Gaiman's Hob Gadling and the Wandering Jew. Here is another that we might have missed: Lewis' Elwin Ransom, having spent time in the unFallen Venerian environment, has become immortal and returns to Venus to join Enoch, Moses, Elias, Melchizedek and Arthur. What Lewis lacks in scientific knowledge, he makes up in moral insight, mythological knowledge and imagination.
HG Wells' Martians also invaded Venus although Wells does not show us Venus. Wells and Lewis are thesis and antithesis with Anderson as a partial synthesis -
Wells: extrapolation;
Lewis: theology;
Anderson: extrapolation and some theological concerns.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I remember very well how STRONGLY Anderson's "Sister Planet" affected me. So strongly that I could not bring myself to reread it for years.
And I regret how Venus, far being oceanic and temperate, has such a HOT carbon dioxide atmosphere. But see Jerry Pournelle's speculations on how Venus might be terraformed in "The Big Rain" (in A STEP FARTHER OUT).
Sean
Paul:
John Carter is also apparently an immortal: "I am a very old man; how old I do not know." When one comic-book firm did its own adaptation of ERB's Mars stories decades ago, that quote was matched with a picture of medieval warriors battling.
There's some speculation that Burroughs based Carter's personality and agelessness on the title character of The Wonderful Adventures of Phra the Phoenician by Edwin Lester Arnold. Wikipedia described this as "the adventures of a warrior who goes in and out of an unexplained state of suspended animation in order to be a witness to invasions or attempted invasions of England."
Arnold also wrote a book in 1905 about an American, Gullivar Jones, magically transferred to Mars, beating ERB to the Red Planet by about six years. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic, volume 2, has a scene of Gullivar Jones and John Carter talking about the Wellsian Martians' invasion of Earth. (League indicates that the invaders were NOT actually Martian, but had invaded Mars first, and went on to Earth after the humanoid Martians defeated them.)
David,
You are right about Carter being immortal. This is the most mysterious aspect of ERBdom.
Paul.
David,
As you know, Alan Moore's Carter and Jones wonder whether (Michael Moorcock's) Michael Kane is "one of them" but think that he was so long ago that the Terrestrial-sounding name must be a coincidence. (Moorcock's rationale for his ERBian pastiche was that Kane time traveled to Mars while it was still habitable and before the human race had migrated to Earth.)
Paul.
Kaor, DAVID!
Darn! I always seem to miss the most interesting points in these discussions. I never even thought of ERB's immortal John Carter. And "Phra the Phoenician" reminded of that other Phoenician, Hanno, seen in Anderson's THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS.
I also recall John Carter sometimes saying in the Barsoom books of how he had no memory of his own CHILDHOOD. Which makes me wonder if he suffered, for a time, from kind of dementia due to memory overload. Did he manage to somehow "delete" some of his memories?
Sean
Sean:
Yes, Carter says in the very first paragraph of his manuscript in A Princess of Mars (right after the sentence I quoted above) that, "Possibly I am a hundred, possibly more; but I cannot tell because I have never aged as other men, nor do I remember any childhood. So far as I can recollect I have always been a man, a man of about thirty. I appear today as I did forty years and more ago..."
David and Sean,
In a later book, Carter once speculates that he is the "materialization" of a long dead warrior and never elaborates on this.
The impression is that he has lived so long that he has forgotten earlier events and yet he is supposed to be related somehow to ERB.
ERB never made a lot of sense.
Paul.
Kaor, DAVID and Paul!
David: Some kind of memory editing would explain why John Carter was unsure of his true age and why he could not recall his own childhood.
Paul: I think Carter's speculating about being the "materialization" of some long dead warrior should not be taken too seriously. He might well have been oly guessing. But I do accept that he was some kind of kinsman of Burroughs.
ERB's "scientifantasies" doesn't make sense when rigorously examined, but they were fun to read! Being able to tell gripping, fascinating, fast paced, intriguing tales would make me be able to forgive a lot of impossibilities in Burroughs' stories.
Sean
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