Forefathers of Sword and Sorcery: Edgar Rice Burroughs
ERB in 1934. Quite similar to the famous “hat” photo of Robert E. Hoard, which was taken right around the same time.
Note: This is another installment in a series of articles looking at the literary figures who influenced the creators of sword and sorcery. The focus will be upon the writers who influenced the "First Dynasty" of Sword and Sorcery authors--authors such as Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, C.L. Moore, Henry Kuttner and Fritz Leiber.
One hundred and forty-five years ago, one of the most momentous events in the history of American literature occurred: the birth of Edgar Rice Burroughs. I explored his overall legacy and influence upon SFF in a previous post. This blog entry is devoted to his specific influence upon the sword and sorcery genre.
The two defining works of ERB's career, A Princess of Mars (1912) followed shortly after by Tarzan of the Apes, hit the pulp readership of All-Story Magazine like a bombshell. Nobody had ever read anything quite like those novels. Movies and hardcovers soon followed. For the mass market impact, the movies were more important. However, the hardcovers allowed young, aspiring writers who never had a chance to read the original pulp appearances--authors like Robert E. Howard, C.L. Moore and Fritz Leiber--to devour the early Burroughs classics.
There was plenty to chew on for any aspiring S&S author.
Right out of the gate, Burroughs' patented pedal-to-the-metal storytelling would've lit up any new reader. It was noted when he first debuted that ERB brought "breakneck pace" to a new level. He also upped the level of violence and nudity compared to his contemporaries in the pulps. Those story elements were deplored at the time, but the men and boys making ol' Ed a millionaire didn't care.
Another major element of the Burroughs appeal was the almost preternatural scope of his imagination. We have yet to see another science fiction author, from a standing start and at the venerable age of thirty-six, write a first novel which--in relative terms--displayed such an explosion of unfettered imagination and wonder as can be found in A Princess of Mars. Filmmakers and authors are still using tropes from that novel.
For the next three decades, ERB would populate his tales with strange lifeforms and bizarre societies. Such wonders would most often be found--whether on Barsoom or somewhere in Africa--in lost cities. Robert E. Howard's Xuthal and Xuchotl are direct descendants of various Burroughsian lost cities.
A corollary to Burroughs' "bizarre societies in lost cities" is his socio-political commentary. Such can be found in virtually every tale by ERB. However, when Ed does so, he doesn't beat the reader over the head with it. After all, he's the one who said that "Entertainment is fiction's purpose". When one reads REH commenting that, “Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing,” that might as well have been typed by ERB.
The savagery of Burroughs' tales is also a key element that entered the bloodstream of S&S early on. John Carter is a killing machine who loves combat for its own sake. Tarzan, as noted in every tale from Tarzan of the Apes on, has only a "thin veneer of civilization" holding back the man who became Lord of the Mangani while still a teenager. Blood flows in the tales of ERB in a manner unprecedented in popular literature up to that time.
So what do we know, specifically, about the influence of ERB on the First Dynasty authors? Click here and gaze upon Robert E. Howard's impressive ERBian library. All of them hardcovers, when, as now, hardcovers were something of an investment. Despite the fact that Jack London, H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle all had oeuvres consisting of just as many volumes and all were just as available in central Texas, Robert E. Howard somehow ended up with way more ERB in his personal library than books from any other author.
That said, there is almost dead silence from Two-Gun Bob concerning Burroughs in any of REH’s letters. In an early yarn from Howard, he calls ERB "highly imaginative". That’s about all we have. That, and a lot of Burroughs books in Bob’s personal library. This dearth of commentary or praise from Howard requires far more analysis than can be gone into in this post. I hope to address it at a later date. All I'll say right now is: money talks.
Whatever the reason for Howard's lack of epistolary mentions regarding Burroughs, the influence of ERB on REH is unquestionable. Feel free to check out my comparison of Tarzan the Untamed with various elements found in Howard's yarns. However, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Go read the beginning of the second chapter of A Princess of Mars. Then, go read the end of the first chapter of REH's "The Black Stranger". I could do this all day.
We know C. L. Moore grew up reading Burroughs' Mars and Tarzan novels. Not much info beyond that, but she was certainly an ERB fan. I can find nothing regarding Henry Kuttner's opinion of Edgar Rice Burroughs, but I certainly wouldn’t rule out him being a fan. From what I can tell, Clark Ashton Smith was no particular admirer of ERB. This, despite the fact that Ed really was a pioneer in depicting truly "alien" aliens in SF, something that CAS strove for.
When it comes to the First Dynasty of S&S, Edgar Rice Burroughs can find no more stalwart and forthright defender of his honor than Fritz Leiber. It appears that Fritz began reading ERB early on and his admiration for the Master of Adventure never seems to have dimmed. His first article for the legendary Amra was devoted to ERB and Barsoom, not REH. Well-nigh two decades later, his introduction to Marchers of Valhalla, "Birthpangs of Hyboria", spent almost as much time referencing Burroughs as it did Howard.
Regarding Leiber’s fiction, his classic novel from 1964, The Wanderer, specifically references ERB and his creations numerous times. Fritz may have done the same in other tales, but I can't recall any at the moment. However, in what had to be a fanboy's dream come true, Fritz got to write the movie tie-in novel for 1966's Tarzan and the Valley of Gold. Leiber must've really impressed the people at ERB, Inc. with his bonafides to snag that deal. Ed's sons were still alive and in control of the estate. A new edition was recently published.
ERB's post-First Dynasty influence remained strong for decades. Jack Vance was a Burroughs fan from childhood. Manly Wade Wellman wrote numerous SF tales for the pulps which are redolent of ERBian themes. During the same period, Poul Anderson was writing sword-slinging planetary adventure tales for Planet Stories. Planet Stories wouldn't even have existed if Burroughs had never been born.
All that said, the most significant S&S author of the last six decades to be heavily influenced by Burroughs--an author still alive and kicking--is Michael Moorcock. Moorcock is on record as stating that the first "imaginative literature" he ever read was The Mastermind of Mars. At age seventeen, he became editor of Tarzan Adventures. He wrote a letter, "On Barsoom", to Amra in 1963. In 1964, Moorcock's very first novel, Barbarians of Mars, was published. It was the first of three novels, all homages to Barsoom. To my mind, the Hawkmoon novels are also very ERBian.
Getting published right in the wake of Moorcock was Linwood Vrooman Carter. Lin Carter was an unabashed fan of ERB his entire life. As I've pointed out elsewhere, Carter's novel, Thongor and the Wizards of Lemuria, was the first single--i.e., not published as an "Ace Double"--sword and sorcery novel ever published. As has often been noted, the tales of Thongor are hybrids of ERB and REH.
Other scribes of S&S/heroic fantasy who have acknowledged their debt to Burroughs would include Andre Norton, Philip Jose Farmer, Roger Zelazny, C.J. Cherryh, Adrian Cole, Jan Michael Friedman, Joe R. Lansdale, John E. Boyle, Ryan Harvey and Howie Bentley.
John C. Hocking had this to say back in 2012:
“Warlord of Mars may be laden with flaws, but I recall none of them. I was eleven years old when I read it, staying up past my bedtime in secret, reading late into the night during some timeless expanse of summer vacation. When I finished it I was literally stunned by how glorious it was. I got out of bed and wandered aimlessly through my dark and silent home, visions of Barsoom flickering and falling about me. I don’t remember going back to sleep. For me, that was maybe THE quintessential Youthful Reading Experience. A magical moment that insured both that I’d always find something in reading that I would find nowhere else, and that I was doomed, as an older and more experienced reader, to seek another such moment in vain.”
The late Charles R. Saunders grew up reading Burroughs and wrote several articles regarding Tarzan and ERB’s version of Africa. It's possible that I've missed a few more recent authors. Feel free to mention them in the comments--with quotes/sources--and I'll edit them in.
The dearth of more recent S&S authors with ERB backgrounds is somewhat disheartening. Burroughs is one of the key forefathers of the genre. The man knew how to sell books. He still sells books, seventy years gone, and does so better than some S&S authors out there now who never gave him the time of day. It's been over one hundred and eight years since A Princess of Mars hit the newsstands. It's a sure bet that it will still be read a century from now.
Happy birthday, ERB.
Kaor!
Other installments in the "Forefathers" series: