One hundred and fifty years since his birth, Edgar Rice Burroughs has a lasting literary legacy that lives beyond his own work.
One hundred and fifty years since his birth, Edgar Rice Burroughs has a lasting literary legacy that lives beyond his own work.
Raleigh, N.C. — What year is it, again? The top-grossing film in American theaters this summer, Superman, centers on a character who debuted in 1938. The next-highest in domestic gross — and the top summer film internationally — is Jurassic World: Rebirth, the latest in a franchise begun more than three decades ago. And one of the most eagerly awaited pictures of the Christmas season, Avatar: Fire and Ash, continues yet another established sci-fi series.
Others may whine about Hollywood’s lack of originality, but I prefer to congratulate all involved for doing their job, which is to sell enough tickets to ensure a healthy return on shareholder investment. Filmmakers are free to play with ideas or pursue their passions, of course. But when you’re spending other people’s money, you’re obligated to try to earn it back — and then some.
That tales of daring heroes, fantastic creatures, and high adventure continue to draw big audiences would come as no surprise to the master of adventure himself, Edgar Rice Burroughs, born 150 years ago today in Chicago. “Entertainment is fiction’s purpose,” he once wrote, explaining that audiences might wish to be “frightened or thrilled or soothed” but never “to be instructed.”
Although his Tarzan remains one of the best-known characters in the world, Burroughs wrote many other popular stories of adventure set in every corner of the globe, far beneath its surface, and on the moon, Mars, Venus, and other planets. Many of his books remain in print today — and their influence extends even further.
Take the three media franchises I mentioned earlier. Superman is famously “faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound” because he evolved on Krypton, a huge planet with a correspondingly high gravity. Where did Superman’s creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, get that idea? From Burroughs’s first published novel, A Princess of Mars, which featured a former Confederate cavalryman named John Carter teleported to the red planet. Siegel freely admitted the influence, explaining that “Carter was able to leap great distances because the planet Mars was smaller than the planet Earth.”
As for the world of Jurassic Park, its creator Michael Crichton was a passionate fan who in his youth read The Land That Time Forgot and other Burroughs tales pitting modern humans against fierce dinosaurs. Crichton even embedded an homage within his long-running TV series ER. One of its principal characters was Dr. John Carter.
After the phenomenal success with his 1997 film Titanic, James Cameron decided to go in an entirely different direction. He’d “forget all these chick flicks and do a classic guys’ adventure movie,” Cameron later explained to the New Yorker, “something in the Edgar Rice Burroughs mold, like John Carter of Mars — a soldier goes to Mars.” The result, Avatar, remains one of the highest-grossing movies of all time.
Other authors who freely admitted the influence of Burroughs on their work included Frank Herbert (Dune) and Ray Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles).
Edgar Rice Burroughs didn’t just inspire. He innovated. One of the first authors to incorporate and take an active role in his own publishing and licensing ventures, Burroughs also pioneered the plot device of heroic crossovers within a shared universe. One of his inner-world novels, Tanar of Pellucidar, begins with an inventor named Jason Gridley showing his latest radio set to Burroughs himself. Gridley tries to contact John Carter on Mars but picks up a distress call from Pellucidar, an underground realm whose hero, David Innes, has been captured. The next novel in the series has Gridley leading an African safari to recruit Tarzan for a rescue party into the inner world.
Although the author died in 1950, Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. continues to publish authorized adventures of Tarzan, John Carter, and other heroes, and to license them for shows, games, and toys. A new audio drama of A Princess of Mars is currently in production — featuring famous actors from Star Trek, Star Wars, and Doctor Who — along with comic strips and a new animated series centered on spinoff character Victory Harben, created by the company’s vice president for publishing, Christopher Paul Carey. Also coming soon is Trailblazer: The Autobiography of Tarzan’s Creator, which includes not only Burroughs’s own narrative of his early life but also a collection of personal reflections, anecdotes, and biographical notes.
In truth, Burroughs didn’t just peddle escapism. He held strong opinions, including a visceral dislike of totalitarianism, and expressed them in his works. John Carter challenges theocrats and proto-communists on Mars, Tarzan battles assassins sent by Joseph Stalin, and another hero infiltrates and overthrows a Venusian police state run by the “Zani Party.” Still, Burroughs and the many authors, artists, and filmmakers who’ve successfully followed in his footsteps got their priorities right. If you don’t draw an audience, your message is irrelevant. It is the public, he observed, “that either makes or breaks you.”
Edgar Rice Burroughs got made — and keeps getting made, to the delight of millions.