Is this Anderson's only reference to Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB)?
In a Known Space story by Larry Niven, a murderer on Mars is called John Carter, although Niven's text understates the name.
In his Acknowledgements for The Sky People, SM Stirling includes the pulpsters who created:
John Carter
"Wrong Way" Carson of Venus
I am sufficiently familiar with ERB to recognize Carter and Carson but not "Nobs" who is mentioned on p. 62.
5 comments:
Yeah, vivid immersive 'reality' programs will be a standing menace. All the attractions of books, but less imagination necessary.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: I've tried, but aside from the example you've found I can't think of any allusions to the works of ERB to those of Anderson. I skimmed thru some of the chapters set on Mars in THE FLEET OF STARS and found none.
Mr. Stirling: If I can go by Peter Jackson's abominable movies I hope I will not find those "those vivid immersive 'reality' programs" tempting. Give me good, interesting books any day of the week!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: you're an exception.
I resemble Sean on that point, despite other differences.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Ha, thanks! I would put that down largely to how bad hearing (which I was told I started losing at age five) must have encouraged me to focus on reading.
This is as good a place as any to comment on something I read on pages 320-21 of THE WINDS OF FATE: "Parts of their trip through the Tarim to get here had been had been like an excursion through a very dry preindustrial Sweden where everyone dressed like an elf in that American TV series based on Tolkien's books." After Black Jade reflected that those "elves" were mostly much more ragged and dirty than the movie characters: "Smuggled copies of that series had circulated at Beijing University."
If I can go by this, whatever its many, many flaws, Jackson's HOBBIT and LOTR were/are popular in mainland China, even if they have to circulate underground as "samizdat," to use a term from the USSR for banned books. I can see why, because however clumsily and hamhandedly, Jackson's movies managed to express some of the subversive ideas in Tolkien's books that tyrants like the Maoist find so threatening.
I did some checking up on how the Peking regime regards the works of Tolkien. The attitude seems to be one of hostility, and while technically not banned, I got the impression bookstores in China were basically ordered not to offer THE LORD OF THE RINGS for sale. I assume as part of Xi's program of reverting back to Marxist orthodoxy.
Ad astra! Sean
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