Articles Reviewed:       

(1)     “The Undisciplined Imagination: Edgar Rice Burroughs and Lowellian Mars” by Richard D. Mullen, from SF: The Other Side of Realism: Essays on Modern Fantasy and Science Fiction, Ed. by Thomas D. Clareson, Bowling Green University Popular Press (1971), pp. 229-247.

(2)     “The Prudish Prurience of H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs (Part II)” by Richard D. Mullen, from Riverside Quarterly 6 (1974), pp. 134-146.

Class Presentation: John Granahan

Notes: Craig Sprowl

The first of these two reviews by Richard D. Mullen focuses on the discrepancies between the vision of Mars espoused by prominent astronomer, Percival Lowell, and that described by Edgar Rice Burroughs in his Martian tales.  Percival Lowell was a prominent astronomer of the turn of the (20^th) century, who discovered “canals” on the surface of Mars and who theorized a Martian civilization based on his observations and what was scientifically known about Mars at the time.  Although his views have been discredited in the light of more recent findings, his views were considered credible at the time.  The second, and in my opinion, more serious review, addresses how both Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard, deal with sexuality (and race) in their writings.  Both writers exhibit rampant sexism and racism.  More importantly, however, it becomes clear that both writers are reflecting the values of their times, and so their writings provide a window into the attitudes towards sexuality and race prevalent during the post-Victorian era.

 

The Undisciplined Imagination: Edgar Rice Burroughs and Lowellian Mars

In this review, Mullen exhaustively documents the discrepancies between Lowellian Mars and Burroughs’ Mars (Barsoom).  Mullen’s apparent intent is not to show that Burroughs was wrong about Mars.  Lowell was wrong, too.  It is rather to show that Burroughs, whose writings were clearly inspired by Lowell’s vision of Mars, was extremely sloppy in his research for his writings.  He did not take the time or make the effort to understand the implications of what was known with verity about Mars or to understand the accepted scientific opinion of the day regarding Mars.  He demonstrates that Burroughs made things up as he went along and that he later contradicts himself. 

There is insufficient time to discuss in class all of the discrepancies that Mullen identifies in this summary.   These are listed, briefly, in the Table, below.  Some of the more glaring discrepancies are interesting to discuss, however.

·         Burroughs clearly misunderstands the apparent motion of Mars’ moons (i.e., the motion of the moons as they would appear from the surface of Mars) and contradicts himself several times on this point.  The nearer moon, Phobos (Thuria), would appear to be moving from west to east.  The farther moon, Deimos (Cluros), would appear to move from east to west.  Both would appear to move imperceptively slow.  Burroughs, in Princess of Mars indicates the nearer moon would be seen “hurtling through the sky 2 or 3 times each night.”  In later works, he describes both moons as “hurtling” through the sky.  In 1921, he learned that both moons differ in the speed of their apparent motion, but still did not comprehend that their apparent motion was in different directions.  In Swords of Mars (1936), he finally got it right, but apparently forgot this again in Llanha of Gathol (1948) where he describes Thuria as overtaking and passing Cluria in the heavens.

·        Burroughs reveals more inconsistencies or examples of sloppy thinking in his description of Martian eggs.  A green Martian female lays an egg the size of a goose egg.  When deposited in the shade, it doesn’t grow, but if left in the sunlight, it yields a four-foot tall, fully developed hatchling at the end of five years.  Where does it get the material to cause this gain in body mass?  Mullen speculates on why Burroughs bothers with describing Martian agriculture, when so much food is available from the sun.

·        Mars’ condition as a dying planet forces stern population control on green and red populations of Barsoom. 

-         Green people place about 500 eggs in incubator only once every 5 years and take out an equal number of new hatchlings at the same time.  Burroughs’ numbers indicate twice as many warriors as females, and that each high-ranking warrior has several females.  Most warriors, therefore, must lead celibate lives.  Not a contradiction, but it is hard to believe such a ferocious warrior society would stand for this.

-         Burroughs says less about how Red people control their population.  With Burroughs’ emphasis on the chivalrous aspects of Red Martian society and on the value of chastity among women, Mullen suggests a ceremony, every 28 days [Here Mullen errs – it should be every 51 days since Martian women produce 13 eggs in a year 669 Mars days long], wherein unmarried women bring their unfertilized eggs to a “stern paterfamilias” for candling. 

·         Interestingly, Red Martian women have navels and breasts, even though they are egg-laying and produce no milk. 

 

The Prudish Prurience of H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs

In this review, Mullen contrasts the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard.  The irony apparent in their writings is that, although both writers appeal to prurient male interests, both reveal an excessively modest, or prudish approach, to writing about sex.  In brief summary, they (especially Burroughs) avoid explicit discussion of sexual matters.  It also becomes apparent that their writings reflect the dominant attitudes of their times toward women and toward non-white peoples.  They regard women as weak (physically, emotionally and morally) and always needing the protection of a strong male.  They regard other races as inferior and seeking to become white and the women of other races as unattractive.  Although Mullen is primarily comparing how Burroughs and Haggard deal with sexual matters there are so many examples of values demeaning to women and non-white people in the writings of Burroughs and Haggard that it becomes disturbing.  Mullen’s critique says as much about the values of post-Victorian American and English society as it does about the writers themselves.  Some of the major points Mullen touches upon are summarized below.

·         Hero and Temptress: Love vs. Honor - Burroughs’ heroes always resist temptation.  Haggard’s usually do, with some exceptions.

-         Burroughs’ Tarzan, unconscious, is bound to a table by La, the High Priestess of Opar.  He awakes to hear her tell him she will torture him if he refuses to be her mate.  He refuses.  She collapses on him.  (from Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar).

-         Haggard’s Allan Quatermain resists the advances of Mameena, the Child of Storm.  Quatermain describes her as “the most beautiful creature I had ever seen—that is if it can be admitted that a person who is black, or rather copper colored can be beautiful---” (Mechumazahn, Watcher by Night).

-          Another Haggard hero, Thomas Wingfield, does not react so virtuously.  He is selected “god of the year” by the Aztecs, at the end of which he is entitled to a month-long orgy with 4 Aztec princesses before being sacrificed at the altar. He indulges himself.   Then he’s rescued before he’s sacrificed and returns to England to marry the English girl who has kept herself pure for 18 years for his return.  (Montezuma’s Daughter).

-          In a particularly disturbing episode, Burroughs’ Stanley Wood is captured by a tribe of beautiful warrior women in Africa.  The warrior women, “determined to breed themselves white,” kill their male children and use captured white men as studs.  Wood, of course, does not indulge, although some of the villainous members of his party do.  (Tarzan the Magnificent).

·         The Bridal Bed - Both Haggard and Burroughs avoid discussion of the marital bed. 

-          Haggard may brush over the subject lightly with words, or with a “—” or with a blank space.  (“For the rest of the day, why should I write of it?  -- there are things too happy and too sacred to be written of.”  (Eric Brighteyes)

-          Burroughs does not accompany his heroes and heroines to the bed.  He stops at the altar, if even he allows himself to go that far.  For John Carter and Dejah Thoris, after the wedding Burroughs resumes with John Carter’s narration, “For nine years, I served in the councils and fought in the armies of Helium.”  (Princess of Mars)

·        Love Spiritual and Physical and the Recurring Triangle - On the tension between spiritual and physical love, and the “Eternal  Triangle.”

-          Victorian and post-Victorian era did not see tension between spiritual and physical love as a contrast between good and evil.  Rather they saw spiritual love as incomplete, and indeed as agony, unless fulfilled by physical union. 

-          Haggard’s Ayeshan Trilogy is the saga of one woman’s (Ayesha’s) 2000-year quest, through several incarnations to achieve union with Kallikrates.  Ayesha, who has bathed in the “Fire of Life” and has superhuman qualities, inadvertently kills Kallikrates by speaking harshly to him.  (He had not had the benefit of the Fire of Life).  The gods condemn her to live in the physical world until she achieves union with Kallikrates, who will be reincarnated as often as necessary.  Although she tries through several incarnations, she always fails.

-          On the concept that there is a single counterpart of the opposite sex made for us alone:

§                                 Haggard wrote 7 books in which the hero and his soul mate meet after the hero is married.  In five of these they keep it spiritual.  In two, they yield.  In both of these, the hero’s wife is interested in him only for social advancement.

o                                            In Beatrice, the heroine (lover) commits suicide to prevent a scandal, which would have ruined the hero.  If only she had waited.  The hero’s wife dies a week later in a fire.

o                                            In Mary of Marion Isle, the hero is marooned on a desert isle.  He finds a lover there.  They have a child.  A rescue party led by the hero’s wife arrives.  The heroine attempts to drown herself, but is rescued.  Soon thereafter, the wicked wife drowns in a storm.

§         Burroughs only attempts to deal with the Love Eternal theme in one book, The Eternal Lover.  A Nebraska girl, vacationing in Africa, swoons at the rumbling of an earthquake and dreams that she has been rescued by Nu of the Neocene, who has also been awakened by the same quake, from a 100,000-year sleep.  He carries her to his cave, where he rescues her repeatedly from rape and other indignities.  Another earthquake returns her to the 20^th century, where she vows not to marry her Nebraska fiancé or any other civilized man.

·                     Post-Coitum Triste and the Time Travel Paradox - Haggard, collaborating with Andrew Lang, combined the recurring triangle theme with that of the lost first love in The World’s Desire.  The goddess Aphrodite promises Odysseus that if he remains true to his vision of Helen, “he will sleep in the arms of this fairest of women.”  In Tanis, he finds Helen.  She is for every man “his own first love – either the girl he wooed and lost or the girl he wooed and won as she was before he possessed her.”  Queen Meriamun tells us that these three (Odysseus, Helen and Meriamun) were once two.  When Odysseus achieves what he thinks is Helen’s bed, the woman he wakes with is not Helen, but Meriamun, who has, through witchcraft, assumed Helen’s appearance.  When Odysseus eventually does reach Helen, he is rebuffed with the explanation that he has not been true to his vision and therefore cannot enjoy Helen in this lifetime. 

Mullen refers to this as Post-Coitum Triste (sadness) and relates it to the Time Travel Paradox.  If Odysseus ever achieves Helen’s bed, the three will become four, one Odysseus, one Helen and two Meriamuns.  I’m not sure.  I think what Haggard is playing on here is much simpler - that our fantasies of love are always better than the reality.  Even if we achieve the love of our fantasies (Helen), we will eventually end up with the real person (Meriamun).

·         The Wickedness of Wicked People

-          Burroughs is quite prudish about adultery, even when practiced by wicked people.  His heroes are not only always chaste, themselves, but are properly disgusted by the unchaste behavior of others, even the villains.  In fact, Burroughs seems to limit his definition of morality to chastity.  An interesting, and very revealing quote from, I Am a Barbarian illustrates this.  Describing the murderous Aggripina, he says, “She was haughty, arrogant, cruel, bitter, half insane and wholly dominated by a fanatical desire for power, but morally she was above reproach.”

-          The only mention of homosexuality by Burroughs or Haggard is in Burroughs’ I Am a Barbarian.  The hero, in prison at age eleven, finds two older men fighting over him.  The guards take them away.  The other prisoners are too delicate to explain the situation to the boy.

-           Despite the Victorian repression of sexual behavior, incest is treated with only a casual disapproval.  For example in I Am a Barbarian, the hero matter-of-factly relates that Caligula is to marry his sister, Drusilia, with whom he had sexual relations since boyhood.

 

Questions:

1.      In The Undisciplined Imagination, Mullen goes to great lengths to criticize Burroughs for lacking understanding of Lowellian Mars, and undisciplined and self-contradictory in his descriptions of Mars (Barsoom).  Given that Burroughs’ Martian Tales are works of fantasy, does this matter?

2.      I do not understand Mullen’s relating of what he calls Post-Coitum Triste (described above) to the Time Travel Paradox.  Can anyone explain this? 

Lowellian Mars	Burroughs’ Mars (Barsoom)
687 Earth days, 669 Martian days per Martian year.*	Temple of Sun – 687 chambers (one, ostensibly for each Barsoomian revolution around Sun).  If so, this should be 669 chambers.  Or Burroughs is implying that Barsoom year is 705 Earth days.
No permanent glaciation.  Poles grow and recede.	Area of eternal ice isolates S. Pole.  N. Pole walled off by “mighty ice barrier” contained by granite hills, which prevent its expansion.
Mars’ axis tilted like Earth’s.  Polar regions have extended light and dark periods.	Barsoom apparently has no axial tilt.  Night and day same as at equator.
In depths of winter, polar caps expand to come down to 60 or 50 degrees of N or S Lattitude.	In 11 volumes, Burroughs never describes winter weather.  Always hot during the day; always cold at night.  No seasons.
Vast dust clouds occasionally cover landscape.	There is no dust on Mars except in cultivated regions and then absence of wind renders it almost unnoticeable.
Great irregularities of surface do not exist.	Cliffs of the Valley Dor tower 5000 feet.  Valley of the First Born perhaps two miles deep.  Sola finds herself on “the highest peak of a lofty range.”
437 canals on Mars.  “A lace-tracery of an elaborate and elegant pattern, woven as a whole over the disk, veiling the planets face….”    (from “Mars as the Abode of Life” by Percival Lowell, New York, 1908).	Canals rarely mentioned, and are few, far-between and relatively unimportant.  Tharkian caravan crosses only 2 canals in 20-day journey.  John Carter crosses only 2 in his 5000 mile flight from Helium to Horz.
Oases are next most important feature (after canals) of Lowellian Mars.	Oases do not appear in Burroughs’ Mars.  Cities not described as oases.
40% of Mars covered by areas of vegetation, which change from blue-green to brown and resemble old sea bottoms.  60% covered by “ochre tracts” (barren desert plateaus).	Yellow moss covers practically entire planet, except for the poles and scattered cultivated districts.  Only 2 small areas depicted as deserts.  Sea bottoms depicted as ochre.  No reason why green men should restrict themselves to the sea bottoms, then, since whole planet is overgrown with vegetation, unless sea bottoms cover the whole planet.
2 moons:  Phobos, nearer, irregular in shape (17 mi x 12 mi) with a period of revolution around Mars of 8 hours.  Deimos, farther, 9 miles in diameter, and 30 hour period of revolution.  Since Mars’ rotates on its axis once every 24.5 hours, Phobos would appear to move from west to east with an apparent (from the surface of Mars) period of revolution of 11 hours.  Deimos, like our moon, would appear to move from east to west, but with a much slower apparent (from the surface of Mars) period of revolution, 133 hours.	Burroughs inconsistent and erroneous in his depictions of Barsoomian moons motions: §                       In earlier works he describes the moons as hurtling or speeding across the sky o                                     The nearer moon may be seen hurtling through the sky [M1]. o                                     “Beneath the hurtling moons of Mars, speeding their meteoric way …”[M2]. §                       By 1921, he learned that the 2 moons differ greatly in apparent motion, although he did still not realize the west to east apparent motion of Phobos. o                                     “Thuria (Phobos), swift racer of the night.” o                                     “Cluros (Deimos), stately, majestic, almost stationary.” §                       By 1933, he learned that Phobos’ apparent motion was west to east and mentions this in [8]. §                       However, he forgets this in 1940, when he returns to describing Thuria catching and passing Cluros in her swift flight across the heavens.
Social effects of Mars as a dying planet all beneficial on Lowellian Mars: §                     The fact that Mars is a dying world has forced Martians to achieve peace and cooperate in the building of canals to rescue their planet. §                     Lowell and others countered objections that globe-girding canal network was an impossible task with arguments that “minified the task and magnified the worker.” o                                      Lowell: beings bigger, gravity less, o                                      Garrett Serviss: same argument. o                                      H. G. Wells: Martians might have mass 2 2/3 that of humans with height 1 ½ times as great. §                     Serviss erred in interpreting Wells’ estimate of mass and height and speculated on “dark olive giants” 15 feet tall.  (ostensibly applying the 2 2/3 factor to height instead of mass).	Social effects of Mars as a dying planet negative on Barsoom: §                  Race of red people formed by amalgamation of reddish, yellow and black peoples who had to unite to defend diminishing fertile areas against “wild hordes of green men.” §                  Over time, even the red peoples began to fight wars among themselves.  Peoples of Barsoom constantly at war over diminishing resources. §                  Burroughs appears to have used Serviss’ interpretation of height in creating green men of Barsoom.  He further errs in assuming that if they are 2 2/3 times as tall, they much weigh 2 2/3 as much.  Hence, 400 lbs.

Notes from Post-Presentation Class Discussion (Notes taken by Craig Sprowl):

Class discussion of presentation Part I, first article

John’s question to the class: The first question that I had for discussion deals with this first article by Mullen. I went through this, and my reaction was, so Burroughs was wrong but Mullen was too. In the Undisciplined Imagination, Mullen goes to great lengths to criticize Burroughs for his lack of understanding of Lowellian Mars, and the undisciplined and self-contradictory ways in which he envisions Mars; but given that these are works of fantasy, is this a significant problem that is worth spending a lot of time on?

Kelly: I don’t know that it matters.  In looking ahead at briefly about what your next article is about, you can criticize people for racist pieces, you can criticize them for sexist pieces, but when they were written they weren’t racist and they weren’t sexist.  So it’s taking a 21^st century spin on something that was written in the early 1912’s, and I think it is fantasy, after all he dies twice.  How did he get there?  It just doesn’t matter.  I get frustrated with that in the different teachings that I do.  I teach Huck Finn, and I have to get past the “n” word, in Huck Finn and when you teach in a school that’s 40 percent African American, it takes a lot to get past it.  But it wasn’t like Mark Twain was doing it on purpose, just to be mean and use this word, he didn’t have an ulterior motive, and Lowell was wrong anyway.  I don’t think it matters; it is fun to read.

James: I don’t think Burroughs had any real intent whatsoever to try to be factual.  If you read Tarzan or any of his other books, there are so many similarities, like his idea of chivalry, honor, and those kinds of things, those go through all of his books, and have nothing to do with Mars or anything else, those are the core things in all his books.  When I first read this in the 60’s and of course, in the 60s we knew more about Mars than in the early 1900’s, I never ever gave any thought whatsoever to Burroughs trying to portray this as anything realistic.  I certainly never gave it any thought as something being portrayed as real because it’s obviously so ridiculous it could never be seen as real.

Aaron: What do you think motivated Mullen to take that approach, is he trying to discredit Burroughs in some way?  Is he technically looking for details?

John: The impression that I get, is that he didn’t care for Burroughs, didn’t respect him as a writer, and I think he was trying to discredit him.  I think that is why he went to great lengths

Dr. White:  He starts the essay with a quote from John Campbell, from an essay in 1970 in which the guy says these stories might properly have been written by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Percival Lowell.  So you have a previous writer saying these are based on what Lowell did.  And in effect he’s disproving that, one thing he says, at one point in the article, is he knows about as much about Lowell’s views as he would have got from reading the newspaper.  I think that is relevant because it shows a popular understanding of Lowell’s stuff, the kind of stuff that people would have been interested in whether they were scientists or not.  Let’s review for a minute, what did Lowell think? The main thing is that idea of Mars as a dying planet.  In other words, Mars is inhabited, but that whatever it is that’s up there is in decline.  So it’s a double story in a way, not just that it’s inhabited but that there’s a history to it as well, and I guess one of the main things that comes out of it is the idea of canals; that mars has canals.  It’s another odd story of misperception, and where something is almost a fact and then it gets turned into a story.  That’s the background of what Lowell gave people.

John: Lowell was a respected astronomer, the head of astronomy at MIT. 

Dr. White: In terms of Lowell; Pluto is named for him.  They were going to name a new planet; the last of the planets, they said lets name it for the most distinguished astronomer of the time, and so they take PL and find a mythological figure, Pluto, that they can put that with.  So he is an important guy. 

John: He did a lot of respected work, and did understand a lot about Mars.  He allowed his imagination…as a scientist he should have stayed more within the bounds of science as opposed to speculation.  He got off on a bunch of speculation that was not warranted by science.  I guess the public is wiser than given credit for, and most people probably knew what real science was and what wasn’t.  Still, he went a lot farther than a scientist should have, without saying, this is my speculation.

Kelly: He was correct at the time though, the time period.

John: I think you may be on to something, I think he speculated and didn’t say this is speculation.

James: I think he had about as much knowledge as what would appear in the newspapers.  I think that it’s about dead on.  He had a smattering of knowledge from reading a few newspaper articles, and I think that’s about as much as he was interested in.

Dr. White: Yes, stuff that appealed to the popular imagination was what he was running with.  One more background on this is the idea of the canals.  Canals really have a foundation in this speculation, and it comes about as a mistranslation; that the first astronomer to theorize about the canals was an Italian, and he was observing what he thought were some lines on the surface of Mars, and he was really trying to describe natural features, and he used the word canali, that could mean either channels, which would be like a natural phenomena, or it could be translated as canals.  When you hear the word canals you think of something that is built, so it’s dependent on how the word got translated, if the word had got translated as channels, then it might not have launched as many speculations as it did.

Archana: Not realistic, like Lord of the Rings – fantasy, but Lord of the Rings is internally consistent.

Dr. White: That’s a fair criticism of it as fantasy; does the fantasy world operate according to its own rules?  But the one comment that’s made against that by Mullen; he makes it up as he goes along, and he does sometimes contradict himself even on his own terms.  I’m not sure of how much he contradicts himself within one book; within one book he is usually very consistent.  One thing he points out that is quite interesting, is that chapters 3 through 13 are focused on being the main chapters where he takes you into Mars and introduces you to the customs and manners of Mars.  But its not representative of the other books, and in general when you get into the other books, like The Gods of Mars, actually The Gods of Mars is almost a better book in many ways because he doesn’t go into those kinds of details, he just gives you the very minimum of detail and just starts the fighting from the first page of The Gods of Mars.  Not to defend the world view necessarily, but in terms of what Burroughs does well, one thing he does well is action and fighting.  Almost all the ten books after the Princess of Mars don’t have this kind of, I found this out about the Martians, I walked through the countryside, and I found their cars, like a tour, or an exploration. 

Kelly: Even though if you go into the newest fantasy like the Harry Potter novels, she repeats just enough so that you get the basic story line for the next book.  But you don’t get as much detail as you got in the first one.  Maybe it’s a pattern. 

Dr. White: Like with the movies that revived comic book heroes over the last few decades, like Superman and Batman, frequently the first ones are kind of clunky because they have to do so much origins, they have to do so much explaining of how they got here. In general, for fans that’s not really essential for them by and large, what’s really essential is action and vivid story telling.  And so like the second Superman was much better than the first Superman, and I think it was the third Batman that really got it right, the one with Val Kilmer, where again it doesn’t go into all of that mythological building.

Marion: That was Batman Forever; I have to argue that I really like the first Michael Keaton one.  I think that they wove the origin into the story well enough that they gave you the origin and still kept the actual….what they recently did with X-Men because they really don’t give you any background in that, in fact they completely changed the origins and started fresh.  This is not the X-Men I’m reading!

Dr. White: Does it matter to most people?  And just by chance, I read The Gods of Mars first, which is number 2, and it really didn’t matter (Class laughs).  And, I thought about assigning this one instead because in a lot of ways this is a better book just in terms of what Burroughs does well, this is a better book.  But on the other hand, I went with Princess of Mars because he does try to give you a little more sense of the exploration, of what’s going on, and it’s more comparable to the other books we’ve read.  James, these first three are a kind of trilogy?  He wrote these three in just a couple years.

James: Yes, there is a lot of similarity to Pym in that he was writing them for a magazine, so it was very similar to Poe.  Because he was in dire financial straits; he was trying to find a way to come up with some money.  He sold the first one to a magazine and that’s a pattern followed with virtually all of his books, magazine first, and then get them published as books.

Dr. White: He was one of the first writers ever to incorporate himself.  He became the Edgar Rice Burroughs Corporation.  Obviously there’s a lot of ego in play in these books.  I just love the parts where Dejah speaks to John and says, “Never has such a man…”  I just sort of bask in the reflected glory (class laughs).  Where were we?

James: The idea of being a trilogy, and that they were serialized.

Dr. White: Burroughs is surprisingly un-conflicted about his identity as a popular writer.  Several critics I read commented on this, that almost all popular writers feel this kind of conflict, that they aren’t respected by critics and so on, or in the long run they wish that their stuff would be accepted by critics.  There are a lot of popular writers who write up to the critics in some way or another, and frequently don’t disappoint their fans in the process.  Burroughs evidently never felt the need, he never went for critical acclaim, and he never really got it for the most part.  There really aren’t that many articles out there discussing him.  To go over comparing him to Poe, he is trying to write books that sell.  In terms of his attitude towards Mars, one other article I read talked about, maybe its just a fancy way of saying, he makes it up as he goes along, but he’s really just doing what is expedient.  One of the things that’s said, evidently he sent a much bigger manuscript of this to All Story Magazine at first, and they said cut it back, don’t do all that describing, you’re good at action, get to the action a lot faster.  In fact, in terms of how to sell books, he was actually encouraged to cut back on, in a way we don’t know.  What in that original manuscript would he have had for Lowell?

Samantha: You can tell some places, he starts details and then drops them, talks about the ancient races, and then they never show up again, and the mammal.

Dr. White: Just like Poe loses track of Tiger, he loses track of Woola for a while, but then he brings it back.  Again he loses track of it, so sometimes you can kind of see he is making it up on the fly.

Barbara: What you said about Woola appearing, I think it says in there, I don’t know how he found me.

Dr. White: Yes that’s right.  Where did he come from?  How did he get to Mars?  And at one point when he’s talking to Dejah, she said how did you get here?  And I told her about falling asleep in the cave and coming to Mars, and I didn’t really know how it worked, but here I am, and at that point it’s just dropped.  One of the things that gets brought up in the article that John just went over with us is one other epigraph from another source, Sam Muskovitz, who did some kind of collection or appreciation of Burroughs.  One of the things he writes about Burroughs, I think is quite accurate, he says, “Those who have gained a stereotyped concept of Burroughs as a writer who conveys his plot line on a non stop jet stream of action moving his characters along so swiftly that readers cannot react to his flaws, are in great error.”  Now I don’t agree they are in great error, but that is what he’s good at, he moves it so fast that even though he makes mistakes you really don’t get time to catch your breath.  But I agree with you, that in several places he drops the ball here or there, but he never dwells on it, he never spends any time in the mistake.  You can even see this in some classic works of literature.  One of my favorite examples is Jane Eyre, where she marries Rochester despite the screams in the house.  Every couple of nights there will be a shriek in the room above hers, but she really loves the guy, she is so good at showing that passion, her need to marry Rochester that you are right with her.  It’s settled, she’s got to marry the guy right now.  I’m not meaning to compare levels of quality.  It’s like the plot versus details thing; if the plot is strong enough then the details sort of drop off, you are willing to ignore, does he get all that stuff right.  To some degree you are even willing to forgive, does he get the internal things right, like Archana is saying, and if it keeps going maybe it doesn’t matter very much.

James: The thing where he vacillates back and forth about the motions of the moons, many of his writings, many of them were done out of sequence, the way his books were published.  He could have easily written the one that was published afterwards, before he wrote the one where he got the motion right.  I don’t know for certain that’s what happened, but knowing how his books got published in terms of the way they were written that could have easily been the situation there.  His books certainly don’t come out in a chronological sequence, some were rejected. 

Dr. White: I didn’t realize that. 

James: With Tarzan, he got rejected, I don’t know how many times.

Dr. White: He didn’t have the name right or some name like He Jack.  And it took him a while, you see him playing with names a lot and sometimes the names are pretty cool, you think that has a real flair to that.  Just to back up James on this, Gods of Mars there’s speculation to it having been written first, and Princess of Mars was written to set it up.  For instance, when he gets to Mars he’s in a hidden valley in Mars so it might as well be a hidden valley in Africa, it really doesn’t matter that much that it’s in Mars, so he’s really in his element at the point when he is free of those considerations.  Some of the things we could go into are how are some of the ways that it does identify itself as fiction as opposed to non-fiction?  This is the same way that we were talking about Poe before.  Fiction and non-fiction are the ones we are most familiar with.  We notice stylistic tendencies that you can see distinguish one from the other.  Another way to think about this is the difference between fantasy and science fiction, and the idea would be that while non-fiction has a real referent, supposedly something really happened.  When you are in science fiction, depending on the level of it, there is supposed to be some objective referent out there that you can connect to, and say this is like reality as measured by science.  Now the other categories are shakier, and they might cross up a little bit so I want to be more careful with those.  One distinction runs somewhat along the same lines are popular fiction as opposed to classic literature.  This is where it really gets stretchy, but let’s try, pseudo science or superstition as opposed to science.  Many times pseudo science and superstition work on some of the same levels of appeal as popular fiction does.  It tries to connect to people in some of the same ways, and frequently science and classic literature do line up in some interesting ways in terms of challenging the ways people think.  The left column tends to be the comfortable realms; the world the way I want it to be.  Frequently, if you read science, one of the patterns of science is whatever you’re comfortable with is going to overturn it at some point.  Whatever you got used to thinking was the truth scientifically, just wait a little, and you will have to reframe it pretty completely.  In classic literature, if you go into the really tough literature like James Joyce or William Faulkner and so on, you are having your frames of reference disturbed quite a lot, you have to rethink things.  And frequently, the way you want the story to go will be frustrated.  Writers like Herman Melville, you don’t read them for escapist pleasure, you read them for the pleasure of learning something. 

Kelly: It sounds like I’m contradicting what I said before, but I want it to be accurate.  If I’m reading something current, Red Mars is more current than Burroughs, and I want it to be right.  I don’t know if that’s a fair thing to say.  I’ve not read that much science fiction, but if I do read science fiction I want to be able to believe some of it.  So when I started Stranger in a Strange Land, and he’s making up words I got frustrated with that.  That man who is brought back from Mars is having trouble “grokking.”  What they are saying?  I thought what are you talking about, just say understand, it was very frustrating; I want Red Mars to be right.

Samantha: Do you want to believe it, or do you want it to be right?  To me those are two different things.  Does it matter if it’s right if you don’t know its not?  I need a consistent world or I get messed up. 

Kelly:  But believable for you is a totally different believable for me. 

Samantha: Right, so that’s why I am curious, because just say the sky on Mars is purple.  As long as it’s purple through the whole book I’m not going to care if it’s actually not, it doesn’t matter.  But if I found out through science it is really a red haze, so they have the color wrong. 

James: If every part was totally accurate it wouldn’t be science fiction, it would be science fact. 

Samantha: As long as it’s believable I’m ok. 

Kelly: I think I want it to be right, I don’t know why.

Dr White: The point being, I had vested in it to some degree, I had read all the books giving me a condensing picture of the way Mars might be like, but again if its science, written in 92 or 93 its already out of date. 

Samantha: I don’t know.  It just so happens that a very good friend of mine works on Mars Pathfinder, and just from him, there are slowly a lot of new details that things they believed for a long long time; they’re not right.  I haven’t read Red Mars, but I have read Blue Mars and Green Mars a long time ago. 

Dr. White: When you read it, he’s a little unclear about when the action is taking place.  I think John Boone gets to Mars around 2020.  It’s around then when the first exploration party gets to Mars.  They walk around and then come back.  This is a colonization group of around 100 people going to Mars, and John Boone is still with them and he’s a middle aged guy at that point.  Its around 2040 maybe, it’s a little unclear of when it is. 

Sonia:  I was thinking Princess of Mars is not a science fiction book.  Mars could be Africa. 

Dr. White: Now why do you say so?  Now I agree with you.  In other words I’m putting Princess of Mars all the way over there on the left. 

Sonia: One of the things about science fiction generally is that technology is a big part of it.  Whether its right or wrong, technology is going to be a big part, and projection of where that technology is going to take you based on the current knowledge, the current knowledge should be accurate, but the projection might be wrong.  Burroughs doesn’t have that; he doesn’t even have technology to begin with.  He’s sort of like Edgar Allan Poe; there is no science at all. 

Dr. White: First let’s talk on Sonia’s terms for a few minutes.  Science fiction is supposed to be true to science or a projection, sometimes the word to use is extrapolation, in others words, you take something that’s known and you extrapolate it, project out from it. 

Sonia: You have hard science fiction stories and soft science fiction stories.  You either have a science fiction story about gadgets or about people, but I don’t think this qualifies as a science fiction story, in any way shape or form. 

Aaron: One gadget that really interests me is how the ships flew by the 8^th ray or the 9^th ray.  From a fantasy point of view it was really neat, but from a science and technology perspective it held no merit for me, it was an interesting idea, but there are no physics behind it, but it was fun to read.

Aaron: He used radium for everything (class laughs). 

Dr. White: To me the most enchanting scientific angle was the stuff about 7 colors, when he’s at the atmosphere factory, and he sees those other two colors coming out of the guy’s medallion.  One other way, sometimes you deal with science fiction is thought experiments.  Sometimes science fiction is a thought experiment.  One of the thought experiments that was put to me in younger stages was in terms of the limits of the human imagination, can you think of a new color? 

Aaron: You can, but you can’t describe it.

Dr White: It’s almost like “grokking.”  He gets to the point where language fails him.  If you saw something that was truly new would you have words to describe it? 

Aaron: Do they use “grokking,” is that like a dialect, an evolution of the language on that planet because they are isolated, that it means something to those people?

Kelly: I think so, that one word “grokk” the conversation.  The heart rate goes down, he gets so far away from everything that he can’t “grokk,” understand the situation, just say understand. 

Dr. White: But there is a lot of talk in the book about how it’s just not understanding.  They wrestle with the word a lot and eventually they have to “grokk” what “grokk” is.  That it’s a concept that you begin to comprehend by saying understanding, but it involves intuition, some kind of larger mental framework.  If you do get something that’s off the planet in terms of strangeness, one of the ways you can test it in terms of did someone really see a UFO, or was somebody in contact with an alien?  One of the tests is does it surprise you?  Is it something really new or does the alien act just like ghosts used to act, or like angels used to act.  Now if they act like ghosts or angels, then you can just sort of say no, you are operating in an earthly framework, you are still operating in something you already know.  It works the same way for ghosts, every once in a while you will hear a ghost story, or an alien story where you say, wait a minute, something interesting happened there.  And why is it interesting?  Because it just didn’t fall into the pattern of, they had almond shaped eyes, they didn’t have a nose.  If you hear that you say OK, the person has absorbed the talk about aliens.  But every once in a while they say something that will be like, I haven’t heard that before, then you are on the verge, but that’s one of the ways you begin to test whether there’s an acceptance or even a credibility or credulity towards aliens.  Next, there is the reality effect.  Reality is surprising.  You see the example of the guy eating food with the spoon tied to his stump of his arm, you wouldn’t have made it up.  That’s the way it is with bumping into aliens or going to other planets there are going to be some things there just like science, that expand the limits of your world view, rather than reinforce it.  Now, in general, that is this line of thought, these attitudes shake expand, stir, and rearrange your world view.  This line works along supporting your world view of supporting where you are already.  The most common pseudo science we are faced with in daily American life would be creationism.  And with creationism there is no interest at all in learning something new.  It’s all about being reinforced in terms of ideas one has previously had.  Now in contrast, if doing research of what did happen in terms of the big bang or life on earth, we just assume we don’t know t the answer.  Some elements are beyond your present knowledge.  Popular literature tends to reinforce a lot of attitudes; it meets people where they are. 

Marion: Popular would by Star Wars, and classic would be Star Trek.

Dr. White: I would certainly go with Star Wars as being popular.

Marion: Star Trek bases everything that is does now, all of its story lines, on sociological studies, physics, science, and everything is based on the subject of fact, and in all increases knowledge, it heightens what you already know. 

Craig: It usually has a moral though, like don’t do violence, respect differences.

Dr. White: And is usually familiar too. 

Sonia: A little more complex though, the original one had some good debates, especially Star Trek the Next Generation, dealt with issues of homosexuality, abortion, and women’s rights. 

Dr. White: And heroism isn’t quite as pronounced.  In the first one, Kirk is basically John Carter. 

Sonia: I think it had to do with the times because when the first Star Trek came out we were in Vietnam. 

Dr. White: Again, the cowboy thing could be connected to Carter.  Carter is a cowboy in the early one. 

Marion: The first day of class I went into space fantasy, and what defines fantasy, and it’s an obvious line dividing good and evil.  There is always a level of mysticism that is unexplainable so effectively you get into the sublime.  Those first two are obviously amiss and they are obviously in Star Wars, but in Star Trek you can never tell who the good guy is.  You encounter a new race, and the new race is having trouble with another race, and you start to help the one race, and you find out they are really oppressing the race they are claiming…..you end up realizing we are helping the wrong people, what do we do?

Dr White: If you study Star Wars at all, Lucas is very self-conscious about myth.  He is a student of mythic studies. He is deliberately setting it up so that there is an overlay of what is happening in Star Wars to what happened in the westerns of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, or the romances of Europe of earlier times.

Sonia: Joseph Campbell met with Lucas. 

 

Class discussion of presentation, Part II, second article

(Comment by Dr. White during the presentation referring to Haggard)  In the 1960’s there was a spectacular movie called She, with Ursula Andress.  She is based on a novel by Haggard.  King Solomon’s Mines has been made a couple of times, once in the 50’s with Stewart Granger, and then there was a 70’s or 80’s version with Richard Chamberlain.  Generally they were exotic romances, where an English traveler goes out into another world and makes contact, which is usually in a vaguely sexual exotic realm. 

 

Dr. White: One way we could do it is to relate this to the idea of popular literature, literature that excites sexual tensions but doesn’t indulge them completely.  It seems like that’s what Hollywood always does, and what television does, in terms of popular entertainment for teenagers. It's all about sex, but they can’t have sex.  In the typical teenage movie everybody is thinking about sex all the time, everybody is sort of displaying sex all the time, but in terms of the people that have it, they are punished.  Isn’t that a standard thing like in the “slasher” movies, the couple that gets killed first it usually the couple that’s had sex. 

Kelly: That’s what all the Scream movies are about, the only ones saved at the end is the virgin, so if you sleep with someone you are destined to be killed by the end of the movie. 

Dr. White: Even though the virgin is desirable.  This is the thing I found interesting about this article and Princess of Mars in general, it is constantly exiting desire, but then when it comes to theatrical fulfillment of desire, it just skips over it.  The moments where there are people who are going to do something about it, they are evil people, it seems to be like a popular literature phenomena in some way or another. 

Sonia: Like the movie, Romancing the Stone, with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, she’s a romance writer.  She’s always writing about sex; there is a lot of sexual tension between her and Michael Douglas, and I don’t think anything ever comes of it. 

Dr White: It is never consummated. 

Marion: Or we never see it. 

Kelly: You watch and you think, oh they would be cute together, and you just want them to get together and once they do it is ruined.  The Law and Order series has done so well and is still critically well received because no characters date each other on the show at all, and they will never let the characters get sexually involved. 

Samantha: The only time Law and Order does it is when someone leaves the show. 

Kelly: All the Law and Order, four different Law and Order series, and they are far and above critically received. 

Dr. White: One of the things kind of interesting right now in popular culture is that television is good, and movies are bad.  That is one of the strangest things, something I never saw coming.  But now movies are almost strictly reserved for adolescents, and they work within the boundaries of adolescents, in terms of what they’re delivering, so you can continue to watch through your 30’s or so and still be in touch, but in terms of somebody my age, there is never just any reason to go to a movie anymore.  On the other hand, television is for grownups now.  To a surprising degree it is where the good writing is happening, and the writers themselves are saying this, that if you want to do good writing you go work on television because if you go work on movies they are going to dumb it down, because if they cut out any part of the audience, they won’t make money. 

Kelly: That’s why Sports Night fell.  Sports Night was at an incredibly high intellectual level, and it just flopped.  It had allusion after allusion, literary, rhetorical, and mythological. 

Dr. White: Supposedly television is for grownups now.  There is more grown up content on television now than there was before. 

James: One of the article’s assertions that I would take exception to is that Burroughs’s definition of good and bad is based on chastity.  If you have ever read Tarzan, his thoughts for hero versus villain is based on courage, based on honor, and on being truthful.  There are a lot of aspects to the hero versus villain, to say that it’s based on chastity, that’s one part of it, but I would take exception to that being the only thing. 

Dr. White: If you want to look at page 84, there was a passage that you see this in action, “…and at one end was a great raised platform upon which squatted the most hideous beast I had ever put my eyes upon.  He had all the cold, hard, cruel, terrible features of the green warriors, but accentuated and debased by the animals passions to which he had given himself over for many years.  There was not a mark of dignity or pride upon his bestial countenance…”  Now there is more to his evil than sexuality, but it’s marked by the aspect that he is lusting for Dejah Thoris.  On the next page, 85, we see his “fiendish leer,” as he is looking at Dejah.  Then at the bottom he’s talking about torture, first we’re going to have torture, but before we go into the torture that’s going to kill you, “…you shall be mine for one short hour…”  They talk about how it demoralized Helium to find out what’s happened to her, and at this point, of course he gives him his right to the jaw as Carter slugs him one.  On page 86, at the bottom, “…for you have saved the last of our line from worse than death.”  And the fate that is worse than death is something that shows up over and over again in Burroughs’s writing.  At one point when they are escaping, he gives Dejah and Sola guns, and says remember to save the last bullets, in the same way our frontier women, saved by being attacked by Indians, were to save the last bullets for themselves.  Tal Hajus, the evil person here, is willing to indulge his lust, on the other hand, for John Carter it’s almost like the chivalrous thing, that he wants to serve Dejah Thoris.  She is beautiful and desirable, but its more along the lines of serving her as opposed to violating her or attacking her.  When the moment comes, the crucial thing is when they get married nothing happens, and I don’t remember much about the Tarzan books and what they did on this, it seems again they often come to the brink of describing something, but then don’t quite describe something; people will almost give in to their lusts but not quite. 

Sonia: Almost the same thing is picked up in Star Wars, with Java the Hut.

Dr. White: I’ve never seen it, but I think Java the Hut looks a little like Tal Hajus here. 

Sonia: And then Hans Solo is the one with all the sexual tension. 

Dr. White: You are right, but he’s very non-indulgent, it’s obvious that he’s looking at the princess, but on the other hand he’s kind of cool. 

Marion:  It’s like a comic book version, a chain around her neck. 

Dr. White: A potential correspondence is when Dejah’s getting married; she gets all those ornaments, so the pageantry of the marriage is emphasized a lot whereas when she’s with John Carter, they are living it simple at best.  To comment again, remember that they are naked in this story, and yet it doesn’t indulge the fact.  In other words, he will mention I was naked, and she was naked, she looked great, but there are no consequences to the fact that they’re naked, there is no leering. 

Sonia: They don’t seem to be curious. 

Marion: You wonder where he gets the energy to kill a man with one punch. 

Dr. White: Exactly, and I've got something for you on that, because in fact when they are about to die and she gives him a final kiss, there’s something kind of funny that happens there.  On page 142, “As I pressed her dear lips to mine the old feeling of unconquerable power and authority rose in me.  The fighting blood of Virginia sprang to life in my veins.”  In other words, what happens is, it gets translated into fighting.  The moment of lust or desire just sets him off fighting again.  The article you all read Fighting So as Not to Die, a parallel you might want to see, is just as death is forestalled, he is constantly risking death but never dies.  In the same way, sex is threatened, but sex never happens, they are simultaneously indulged and withdrawn from each other.