Sunday Spotlight - Edgar Rice Burroughs

   The real champion who bridged the gap between H.G. Wells and the pulp fiction era was a man named Edgar Rice Burroughs. Known today primarily as the author of Tarzan of the Apes (1914) as well as the other Tarzan adventures, Burroughs also wrote a series of novels set on the planet Mars, to which his main character, John Carter, gentleman and adventurer from Virginia, would sometimes travel. Among every collection of science fiction should be the novels, A Princess of Mars (1912), The Gods of Mars (1914), and The Warlord of Mars (1918). These adventure novels excited generations of future scientists and sci-fi authors, and continues to do so even today, thanks in large part to the ultra-sexy cover artistry of Roy Krenkel, Frank Frazetta, and Michael Whelan.

  An excellent modernization of Burroughs’ first Mars novel was done by an independent studio called The Asylum in 2009. Princess of Mars stars Antonio Sabato, Jr. as John Carter, and Dejah Thoris is fittingly portrayed by Traci Lords. The original novel had John Carter depicted as a Civil War veteran, transported to our solar system’s fourth planet by unknown means. In this modernization, however, John Carter is a special forces soldier serving in Afghanistan, and is sent to Mars 216, one of the planets of the Alpha Centauri system, and is transported there via a kind of transportation-reconstruction technology, supposedly like the transporters of Star Trek. It is good, in spite of low-budget special effects.

  Yet another modernization, called John Carter, was released by Walt Disney Studios in 2012. Unlike the independent version, Disney didn’t even bother to explain why Mars wasn’t lifeless in the late 1800’s, and the screenwriting was, at times, clumsy. Still, the special effects were excellent and the artistry was very true to the depictions painted by many cover artists, although the characters seemed far too cartoonish at times. Sadly, the movie was an undeserved flop, both due to an unfortunate lack of interest, and an even more unfortunate release date which forced it to compete against the film version of Suzanne Collins’ smash-hit, The Hunger Games.