Talk:Edgar Rice Burroughs

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John Carter Series

I believe the correct name for this series is "Barsoom", not "John Carter of Mars Series", just as the other series are titled after Pellucidar and Caspak.

Dates

The books need dates of publication. I started, but didn't have time to finish. It'd also be nice to have a more extensive biography and a photo, but I guess I should do the work on this instead of just asking for it. :-S —Frecklefoot 14:07, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC)

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Reason for link removal

Why was the link: A brief biography and works of Burroughs removed? I thought it was pretty good. —Frecklefoot 16:58, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

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Tarzana

I reverted the edit of anon user 207.225.233.198 who stated that Tarzana was named after Burroughs character and not the other way around. I did research on it and even included a link to the debunking of the theory; Tarzana was around longer than "Tarzan" was. If there's credible evidence that Tarzana was named after Tarzan or Burroughs ranch, I'd back down. But for now, it only looks like an urban legend (which Snopes.com refutes). Granted not all the debunkings on Snopes are accurate, but if there is any evidence rather than rumor that Tarzana is named after Tarzan, I'd like to see it.

I'd be more inclined to believe the change had it been made by a logged-in user rather than an anon. :-S — Frecklefoot | Talk 15:34, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)

You need to read a bit more carefully, I think: Snopes' "debunking" of the claim that Tarzana was named after Tarzan is in the hoax section, which also "debunks" such wild claims as that Mister Ed was a horse and that mobile homes are so called because they can be moved around. The hoax section's explanation page confirms that Tarzana was indeed named after Tarzan.
You could also have tried reading Wikipedia's own entry on Tarzana, California, which was written entirely by a logged-in user.
--Paul A 06:14, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You are 100% correct. I was duped by a false entry. I promise to read Snopes stuff more carefully next time. :-S — Frecklefoot | Talk 15:11, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

According to the Tarzana Chamber of Commerce, the city was named after Tarzan. www.tarzanachamber.com/

Dates on the Books.

In the article, there are a couple of books with dates occurring after Burroughs died (1950). Were these published from his original manuscripts, or were they partially complete works that were then completed by a ghost writer and subsequently published? Anyone know? -Tony

A fair number of Burroughs' books were first issued posthumously, beginning with the revival of interest in his works in the early 1960s. I believe the only one of these that was collaborative was Tarzan: the Lost Adventure, which was completed by Joe R. Lansdale. -BPK2, 12/16/05.

Warlord of Mars is listed as being written in 1914 on this page, but on the Barsoom page it says 1919. Anyone know the correct date? megaversal

Like many of Burroughs' works, this title was published as a magazine serial before being issued in book form. The 1914 date is that for the original serial; the 1919 date is that of book publication. -BPK2, 12/16/05.

Books

Did a minor edit on the Caspak series. There are only 3 books (actually, 3 parts of one long novel). Somehow Project Guttenberg has mis-labeled the 2nd work. --Emb021 15:44, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Do we really need a link for every Venus book? Or for every Tarzan book, for that matter. I would think only a few of the most important books need a separate article. Rick Norwood 15:43, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Good suggestion. I changed the Carson of Venus stub to a Venus series stub and created redirects from the other titles in the series. --Rewster 05:59, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Geography and History of Barsoom?

Burroughs' fictional geography and history is fairly detailed, much like Middle-earth in its complexity, though never set in maps as we find in Tolkien; I believe the same is true of Pellucidar and Venus. Would this make a worthy section/article? Martian chess, Martian marital law, all that stuff, too.Skookum1 06:23, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Most if not all of Burroughs' worlds and lost lands were in fact mapped, both by him and others, and a good portion of these maps are available on the web. There are Wikipedia articles on Barsoom, Jetan (Martian chess), and Pellucidar (which includes Burrough's earliest map of a portion of that venue). -BPK2, 12/16/05.

pagebypagebooks.com

I removed this from the external links because it is just one of dozens of sites which reproduce books online. In particular the link doesn't go to books by ERB, but is a general list of all the books at the site. It looks like site promotion (spam), click on it expecting info but ERB but instead get "100s of free e-books!" with banner adds. If you can say why this site is different and not redundant with more complete, specific and neutral collections, such as Gutenberg, and can find a way to link to just the books by ERB, it may be more acceptable. -- Stbalbach 14:14, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

help

does anyone know how tall edgar rice burroughs was?

proposed new external link

I'd like to add a link like:

• Free to read on a cell phone - ERB works.

to the External Links section. This links to a list of ERB works that you can download to read on a cell phone. I have read quite a few from this site and got a lot of value out being able to read the PD texts away from the PC.

The texts are Public Domain in the US, just like Project Gutenberg, they are packaged with the reader and available under a creative commons licence (share if (attribution, non-commercial, no derivative) ). The site is non-commercial without registration, subscription, or advertising. The texts as packaged together with the reader as a java program that runs on cell phones, this is a way for people to access the authors work that adds to the range in the existing external links (hopefully translating to more reading going on).

I checked WP:EL and the link seems appropriate:

• What should be linked: '...should link to a site hosting a copy of the work if none of the "Links normally to be avoided" criteria apply.'
• Links normally to be avoided: it seems only #8 might apply; 'Direct links to documents that require external applications (such as Flash or Java) to view the relevant content...'. The site lets you download java programs that only run on a J2ME environment, this means most/all current cell phones. So although they are limited to being read on a phone they do add an access method to all the others in the existing External Links, in the same way that LibriVox adds a format but requires an mp3 player.

Filomath 04:28, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Moon men.JPG

Image:Moon men.JPG is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 23:27, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I dont think the Mucker series as in The Mucker,The Return of The Mucker ect. Should be called a series b/c in guttenburg the mucker has in it also the return of the mucker and the oakdale affair does not even mention it the only character common to both books is bridge ben (talk) 14:12, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Issues with "Influence and Literary Merit" section

This section seems a little problematic to me since it part of it expresses opinion rather than fact. Also, a pretty big portion of it seems to have been copied and pasted from somewhere else without any citation.

"Likewise, Blacks (again, especially in the Tarzan novels, but also in the Mars series) ... are depicted sometimes as stereotypes and just as frequently as wise or valorous." The First Born of Barsoom are described by John Carter (a Virginian) as having noble, classic features and truly black skins. I don't think there's anything African or negroid about them, and they really don't belong, for better or worse, in a discussion of racial issues. WHPratt (talk) 19:15, 16 February 2009 (UTC)WHPratt

User:CommanderCool1654 (User talk:CommanderCool1654) 19:33, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

I've been doing a fair amount of research on Burroughs for the various Barsoom articles and so have come across useful sources for this section. Some of the stuff in this section can be referenced, but probably not all. I did a similar exercise on another page recently and it got too frustrating to try and reference material when you did not know where it came from, or whether it was a synthesis of sources ... original research if you like. The exercise in sourcing ended up being a complete rewrite and I suspect that is what would happen here too.

There is, btw, quite of lot of published commentary about racial issues in the Martian books, Tarzan and others, Burroughs own racial attitudes and his use of stereotypes. Mesmacat (talk) 01:21, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

This section reminds me of Lupoff's writing. Among other things, it seems to be written for someone who is familiar with Burroughs' work. The disparaging reference to Synthetic Men of Mars, for example, seems to assume that the reader knows that this is a bad book. (As a huge Barsoom fan, I actually like Synthetic Men a lot, even though I like it less than books 1-8 or 10. I could rewrite this passage and say that Synthetic Men is "a great book, but not quite as great as the other Barsoom books." Thathat would be just as POV as what's in there now.)

Of course, if the article were to state that fans and critics -- e.g., Lupoff -- hold that some of his later works, including Synthetic Men, were "pot-boilers" of inferior quality, that would be excellent and NPOV.

An even more interesting analysis would compare the different feel of his different series. I suspect that the average person who has read one or two ERB books assume that they are all the same, as seems to be suggested in this article. But if they are only familiar with John Carter and Tarzan, they would be astounded to discover in the Venus series that the hero avoids confrontation, and flees from trouble whenever possible.... John Carter singlehandedly restructured Martian politics, whereas Carson Napier explores Venus without leaving much of a footprint. Might be worth mentioning.

Also worth mentioning is the fact that since the mid-1920s, ERB has been lumped in with other science fiction writers (for better or worse), but in fact it's equally useful in literary terms to put him in the same category as Rider Haggard and other swashbuckling adventure-story writers of that era. — Lawrence King ^(talk) 05:57, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

E. R. Burroughs and C. S. Lewis, lost twins

They were born 23 years apart, but they sure look like twins. Das Baz, aka Erudil 18:04, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Popular culture

Almost all of the reference to Burroughs influenced media in this section relate to the Mars books. Most of these and considerably more are covered in the influences section in the Barsoom article. There are a great number of Tarzan influences which are not here and you could probably find more influences upon other texts as well. Any thoughts on whether the stuff in this section is too specific to be here? Mesmacat (talk) 04:09, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Influence and literary merit

Is this section worthwhile or should it be deleted? Can it be improved? Modernist (talk) 22:12, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't see any merit in it, other than in maybe 5% of the total. It totally lacks sources. And many of its statements are highly dubious.

For example, it seems to state that Burroughs influenced Brackett, Bradbury, and Moorcock, as proven by the fact that each of these three wrote a Burroughs pastiche at some point. I think that shows a lack of understanding of what literary influence is. Suppose you found out that Stephen King, in 1980, wrote a humorous ten-page pastiche of Jane Austen's novels. Would you therefore say that "Jane Austen was an influence on Stephen King"? Of course not. That would show that King had read Austen, and probably liked her work. I have no doubt that most science fiction and fantasy writers from the pre-Golden Age till the 1980s had read ERB and liked some of his stuff. But that's not what literary influence means.

Other statements are literary criticism, drowned in adverbs and adjectives. For example, the following sentence: "Certainly the most evident feature of Burroughs's novels is their frequently formulaic nature." What do the italicized words do? Even if ERB's works are formulaic, is that really evident? Is it the most evident feature? Is that certain?

I also have a problem with people today looking back in hindsight and calling ERB formulaic. Has the author of that piece read other novels written by American writers of ERB's era? Before the 1960s, a majority of feature films were Westerns. All of these look formulaic to us today, because they involved cowboys and damsels and scary Indians. Does that make them formulaic? Or does that just make them a genre?? If someday the genre of "mystery novel" becomes defunct, people who discover old mystery novels will claim they are formulaic because they always involve a detective, and at the end the criminal is unmasked. Formula? Or genre? In ERB's time, the hero was always male, he was brave and bold, and at the end he beat the bad guy. Formula? Or genre?

But the biggest problem is absolutely no sources. The writer cites The Moon Maid (which I've never loved, but I know many others do), Tarzan of the Apes, and a few other books "as evidence that Burroughs could indeed compose works of considerable quality when he took the time to do so." Even if we concede that the Wikipedia author is being NPOV to call these ERB's highest quality works, where is the evidence that these works "took more time" to write? For all I know, ERB's best stuff was written most quickly. (Heinlein's quality is higher on the books he wrote more quickly, to use one example.) — Lawrence King ^(talk) 02:58, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Worst of all is his "Criticism" subsection. It is a long paragraph arguing that Burroughs' books are not racist, or sexist, or anything else bad. Why is this section called "criticism"? I presume it's because the writer is responding to criticisms that he has heard -- but he hasn't bothered to summarize the criticisms before refuting them. — Lawrence King ^(talk)

So should the section be junked altogether or can it be referenced and reworked? Modernist (talk) 03:25, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

If you want to rework it, please do. If anyone else wants to rework it, they should do so. I don't have time to do so, as it requires a lot of source work. If the only choices are Keep and Delete, I vote to delete. — Lawrence King ^(talk) 03:38, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I have no interest...I'm gonna delete the section...Modernist (talk) 03:41, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Rather than just baldly stating 'racism', I think it would be more informative to mention the profound effect Burrough's 'Tarzan' series had on the popular Western view/stereotyping of Africa in the twentieth century, keeping in mind the fact that he never actually visited Africa (citation needed), and the inaccuracies he perpetrated (e.g. tigers in Africa). 93.96.142.159 (talk) 22:11, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Audio books

There were links to Audiobooksforfree.com, but it has only Abridged audiobooks, while Librivox.org has them unabridged.--RicHard-59 (talk) 20:25, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Ebooks

No need to emhasize on every book that material of ebook is in Project Gutenberg. --RicHard (talk) 20:38, 27 May 2009 (UTC)