![]() ![]() But he possessed a peculiar flair for story-telling that still attracts readers. Burroughs was a hack writer and admitted openly that he had started writing yarns to earn money for his poor family. For any lover of science fiction and action adventures, these two characters serves as the gate-keepers of a new “20th-century” literary phase. Posted in Books, English, Reviews, Science fantasy | Tagged Edgar Rice Burroughs, Mars | 1 Reply The Tarzan CentennialĮdgar Rice Burroughs seems to have had an annus mirabilis in 1912 that year saw the appearance of both John Carter and Tarzan. There is a sequel, Swords of Waar, and I will be happy to read it in the near future. ![]() The sole shortcoming is that the plot never surprised me. It is exactly the adventure it claims to be. I give Jane Carver of Waar four red planets out of five. Their chief adversary, fortunately, lives up to the reader’s expectations: a blackguard straight out of the pulps. Carver is a competent low-level superhero, whereas the two Waarian men that accompany her are foppish and notably less effectual. Her speech, peppered with 21st-century popcultural references, is on the other hand equally frequently incomprehensible to her two aristocratic comrades-in-arms. #List of barsoom airships codeAnd there is a neat reference to the “War God”, a John-Carter-style terrestrial character who had spent some time on Waar 150 years ago, causing much havoc and turmoil before he vanished.Īn amusing twist is that Carver, being solidly plebeian, frequently gets annoyed with the nobility’s code of honor and pretensions. “Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes” appears to be Carver’s motto. She arrives in the middle of a kidnapping scene (in which strange-colored humans fight with swords), rescues a survivor, gets captured and enslaved by a steppe tribe of “tiger centaurs”, escapes, gains other allies, gets embroiled in some aristocratic power-struggles, serves as a gladiator, and performs many acrobatic deeds to rescue a hapless damsel in distress, over whose hand in marriage several high-ranking men fight. How and why is never explained (and in this kind of story it is of little importance). While being chased by Californian cops for man-slaughter, Carver stumbles over a small device that teleports her to the distant world of Waar. Sexism and the associated shoddy treatment of woman are handled in ways that would have been impossible in earlier works of the genre the author does not mince words when he describes a pre-industrial society in which commoners are treated like dirt by nobles and becoming an outlaw appears to be the best escape from oppression. She is uneducated, streetwise and crude, which is reflected in the language of the story, told in a rough first-person prose. The protagonist Jane Carver is a tall and muscular working-class biker, a petty criminal with a few jail stints and a former private in Airborne Rangers. However, several Carterian tropes get subverted. Unexplained interplanetary journey - checkĪ hero with extraordinary strength and leaping ability - check a successful parody of the classical John Carter of Mars genre with plenty of well-established tropes: A few subway journeys later (I read when commuting between home and office) I had reached its end and arrived at a clear conclusion: its author Nathan Long delivers the goods, i.e. The title Jane Carver of Waar was irresistible when I spotted this book in a friend’s bookshelf. Ergo, this is a flexible concept that suits plenty of SF sub-genres. And the picture below shows us a dieselpunk rendition. #List of barsoom airships movieThe 2012 movie John Carter introduced the “walking” city of Zodanga, a more spectacular-looking science-fantasy version for Barsoom (the “Mars” of Edgar Rice Burroughs). So such a construct would fit into the worldscapes of SF-games like Traveller (the ship-borne towns in Nomads of the World-Ocean are a maritime equivalent), Star Wars D6 (consider the Jawas’ village-on-tracks in Episode IV), and 2300AD, where human corporations exploit alien worlds for their natural resources. #List of barsoom airships how toHere is a article on how to construct nomadic towns with technology that is only slightly more advanced that what Earth possesses today - link > However, technology occasionally provides the right tools to overcome constraints posed by nature. Ibn Khaldoun, an Arab philosopher of the 14th century, was the first to formalize that observation in social science terms in his book Muqaddimah, in which he analyzed the rise and fall of medieval Arab realms. Traditionally on Earth, the pastoral nomadic lifestyle stands in opposition to the sedentary city lifestyle. ![]()
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