We Claim These Stars, CHAPTER XVII.
In combat, a Merseian leaps toward Flandry and strikes him with his tail. That might ring a bell for ERB fans:
a plant man leaps over his victim, breaking the victim's skull with a blow from his tail, then sucks the blood from the corpse;
white apes eat some of the flesh;
third and last, therns (white Martian priests) take the rest of the flesh and the victim's belongings, leaving only bones. See here.
ERB imagined a horribly oppressive religious hierarchy, apparently without any empathetic understanding of religion.
Decades after first reading ERB and Anderson, I reread the latter but not the former.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I liked ERB's Barsoom stories and I'm willing to again reread them, but I don't remember those bits about the Plant Men and the "Holy Therns."
I don't know what Edgar Rice Burroughs thought of religion in general and of Christianity in particular in the real world, but it's possible he had the truly horrible religion of the Aztecs in mind. One online friend suggested to me that the cannibalism of the Meso-Americans goes back to how there were no truly satisfactory meat animals in the Meso-American area. And that the religious parts were devised to justify cannibalism.
And of course Anderson used the theme of cannibalism in "Welcome" and "The Sharing of Flesh."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
In THE MOON MEN, ERB does present sympathetic treatment of a Jewish man who is persecuted by the Lunar invaders. The Jewish guy values a crucifix that was given to him by a Christian friend. His oppressors are contemptuous.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Dang! I never read THE MOON MEN. So it seems ERB was not necessarily hostile to Judaism and Christianity. Of course many oppressors would be contemptuous!
Ad astra! Sean
The Thern religion in the early Barsoom books is largely based on stuff from theosophy — the pant men, the hidden polar paradise, etc.
Plant men from Theosophy?
Kaor, Mr. Stiring!
Now that was intriguing! ERB taking stuff from Theosophy to create the religion of the Therns. But, PLANT men came from Theosophy?
Ad astra! Sean
Yes, from Theosophist stories about Atlantis and Lemuria.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I am--BEMUSED!
Ad astra! Sean
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