Comparing ERB

This blog focuses on Poul Anderson and refers to other imaginative sf writers. It contends that:

Anderson succeeds but also surpasses HG Wells, Olaf Stapledon and Robert Heinlein;

Anderson's works should be filmed but only if it can be done very well;

James Blish should be read also;

SM Stirling is a worthy successor of Anderson, particularly in the sub-genre of alternative histories;

a series, such as several by Anderson, can become a single, sometimes more elaborate, story behind the stories (see here).

Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) is comparable in imagination although not in literary quality. He is a persistent presence in popular consciousness if only because of Tarzan and, to a lesser extent, John Carter, just as Lewis Carroll is persistently present because of Alice in Wonderland. (Narnia, if not as widely recognized, is certainly up there.)

We have found a single ERBian allusion in Anderson's works whereas Stirling's Lords Of Creation Trilogy is retro-sf explicitly inspired by ERB and other pulp writers.

There could be an anthology of stories set on Jupiter:

"Call Me Joe" by Poul Anderson

"Desertion" by Clifford Simak (from City)

"Bridge" by James Blish (from Cities In Flight)

"Skeleton Men of Jupiter" by ERB (from John Carter Of Mars)

James Blish could not understand why I would include the ERB story. For completeness, for nostalgia and for the absurdity of ERB's scientific explanation of human life on the Jovian surface.

ERB's Martian series is interestingly elaborate:

Volumes

I-III: narrated by Carter

IV: Carter's son

V: Carter's daughter

VI: the second Earthman on Mars, Ulysses Paxton

VII: a Martian warrior's story transmitted to Earth by Paxton on the Gridley Wave which is also used to communicate with Pelucidar at the Earth's Core

VIII: a second Martian warrior's story transmitted as above

IX-XI: narrated by Carter, featuring his granddaughter and trips to a Martian moon and Jupiter

Also:

a trilogy that is a future history sequel to the Martian series, about travel between Earth and Moon;

volumes about Venus and an extra-solar planet;

information, in a Martian book, that there are Mercurians.

But it all sounds better than it reads, I think.

(We are tired from a day-trip to York and you are lucky to receive this post which I mentally drafted on the return journey!)