The solution to his problems are usually readily available. Burroughs resorts to certain devices - like convenient eavesdropping - multiple times. He is an instant master of the new tech, a perfect navigator, etc. John Carter is able to instantly read into alien situations and ferret out the meaning - even when he can’t understand the language. The book’s biggest weakness is the utter lack of subtlety. And all in an era when the biplane was the height of aeronautical tech. There are flying craft, exploding bullets, terraforming machines, and all sorts of goodies. There aren’t too many outer space adventure novels before this, so he must have invented a lot of the tropes. Farmer adventures like Dark is the Sun, World of Tiers, or The Cache feel like direct descendants of A Princess of Mars.įor 1917, the world building is fairly extensive. Ron Hubbard (I’m ignoring the religion and talking about the writer). I can see how significant an effect Burroughs had on mid century pulp Science Fiction masters like Phillip Jose Farmer or L. Things rarely go badly for him, and there is little subtly of choice. Our protagonist, who is pretty much great at everything, hurls himself from one predicament to the next, all the while extracting maximum drama and showmanship. This is compact and functional but feels dated. Even the action is given to narrative summary rather than blow by blow description. He doesn’t illustrate the points by action, but calls it as he sees it. Like “fetich” which my Kindle dictionary informed me is a dated spelling of “fetish.” The style suffers a little - by modern standards - from an overabundance of “tell.” The book moves rapidly and the narrator tells you in a straightforward first-person past what happened. The writing itself is fast and clean, even if the sentences include copious subordinate clauses, high falutin vocabulary, and the occasional archaic turn of phrase.
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