Hail one and all! Yours truly just made it back alive from the heart of Darkest Texas: the serpent-haunted citadel of Cross Plains. The preparations and travel involved in that trip negated any chance of me posting a blog entry celebrating Mars Day on its correct date—June 10. Thus, this make-up post. 2022 marks several landmark anniversaries in the history of the Sword and Planet genre, so skipping this year was out of the question.

The first anniversary, of course, is the publication of 'Under the Moons of Mars' —later retitled A Princess of Mars—in the pulp pages of All-Story Magazine. One hundred and ten years ago, Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote the defining document that launched the Sword and Planet genre, creating a style of adventure fiction that would dominate and influence SF for decades, inspiring writers as diverse as Robert E. Howard, C.L. Moore, Robert Heinlein, H.P. Lovecraft, Leigh Brackett and Ray Bradbury.

A 'double anniversary', of sorts, can be found in this text from Burroughs:

"I met [Julian the 3rd] in the Blue Room of the Transoceanic Liner Harding the night of Mars Day—June 10, 1967. (...) I had thought that Victory Day, which we had celebrated two months before, could never be eclipsed in point of mad national enthusiasm, but the announcement that had been made this day appeared to have had even a greater effect upon the minds and imaginations of the people. (...) Today, this tenth of June, 1967, there was broadcast to the world the first message from Mars. It was dated Helium, Barsoom, and merely extended greetings to a sister world and wished us well. But it was the beginning." -- from the Prologue to The Moon Maid by Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1923

That quote is the source of the entire 'Mars Day' concept. Notice the date for the first Mars Day? 1967 (in ERB's fictional timeline). Thus, 2022 marks the 'official' fifty-fifth anniversary of this glorious holiday.

However, there is a deeper anniversary behind that. Once ERB took the plunge and became a professional science fiction author, he began keeping fairly meticulous records of when he started and finished manuscripts. Burroughs started writing The Moon Maid on June 7. 1922. I don't think that it is taking speculation too far to posit that the text quoted above was actually written on June 10, 1922. Why not? Therefore, it can be said that June 10, 2022 is also the centennial anniversary of Mars Day.

If that wasn't enough and more reason to celebrate Mars Day this year, 2022 also marks the ninetieth anniversary of Pirates of Venus being published in the hallowed pages of Argosy. As I've stated before, I consider Mars Day to be the 'umbrella holiday' for the entire S&P genre until something better comes along. In addition, Carson Napier was shooting for Mars/Barsoom when he launched his rocket.

There ya go. Significant anniversaries for all three of Burroughs’ major S&P series.

Readers of the DMR Books Blog can expect more Moon Maid and Venus-related posts in the next year or so. Meanwhile, get out there and read some S&P. Sword and Planet remains one of the coolest genres of adventure fiction ever created. Plenty of DMR posts have discussed it. You can check out all of them here.

*”Kaor”, in the universal Barsoomian tongue, means “welcome’, more or less.