THE CALL – A novel that never was…

While on a school cruise ship MS Dunera around about 1963, I thought of a story idea: a young student hearing a call… and diving overboard to rescue the caller. He was considered lost at sea… but in fact survived and had many adventures…

From that evolved a series of drawings featuring the young man and a young woman he met – and continued having to rescue! Well, I was only fifteen! And I was clearly influenced by the books of Edgar Rice Burroughs. (See below for the drawings)

The Dunera was built in 1937 on the Clyde by Barclay Curle. Originally it was a troop ship then later was converted to a floating school by The British India Steam Navigation Co Ltd.

Dunera anchored off St Hellier, Jersey

The ship had dormitory accommodation for the pupils together with classrooms, lecture theatre/cinema, library and deck space for sports. There was also accommodation for teachers and independent travellers. As a floating school it first set sail from Greenock, Scotland on April, 12 1961 and completed fourteen more trips in that year.

While onboard we visited St Helier in Jersey (Channel Islands), Vigo in Spain, and Lisbon in Portugal.

The ship was scrapped in Spain in 1967.

Here are some drawings of adventures that were never written about.

 

 Deck sport on Dunera-1963

The Meeting-1964

This picture was put on the art class wall by the teacher for several weeks; 

he pointed out that all the wristwatches had the same time!

Split-second timing - April 1963

Is this a dagger I see before me? - April 1963

Desperate rescue attempt - May 1963

Precipitous rescue - April 1963

and finally...

Wings of Death - August 1964

Writing tip – It’s too long!

This is a companion piece to my blog ‘Writing tip – It’s too short! here

As we writers know, some publishers set an upper limit for fiction submissions. There are several valid reasons for this. The limit can vary from 50,000 to 100,000. Rarely do they want in excess of 100,000. Yes, there are exceptions, though I haven’t found any when searching on my wife’s behalf for her 150,000 romantic suspense novel.

So how do you clip off those extra words, expunge all that precious prose?

Here are ten suggestions:

1. Break the novel into two books. This will only work if the plot and flow of the story permits. The ideal point to break would be where the protagonist encounters a serious obstacle that seems insurmountable. Not the final black moment, but similar. So end on a cliff-hanger. That will inevitably require some rewriting. If you’ve captured the reader for the first ‘half’, then ending in this way is likely to entice the reader to seek out the follow-up.

Some books previously published were chopped up into smaller units because of their size – notably The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant – that ended up as a trilogy (to be followed by others!) Edgar Rice Burroughs ended on a cliff-hanger at the close of The Warlord of Mars, the second in what amounted to a trilogy. Dickens did it all the time with the magazine versions of his novels: leave the reader wanting more. But not all books lend themselves to this kind of surgery.

Be ruthless. Yes, a good author should ruthlessly edit anyway. But many just tend to tinker rather than excise. Follow these suggestions and cut, cut and cut; put the manuscript away for a while, come back to it with fresh eyes and then cut, cut and cut again.  

2. Is every scene doing something to add to the plot or increase our understanding of the characters, or move the story forward? If the scene does none of those things, why is it there?

3. Is all that research that you’ve infodumped really necessary? Can it be condensed without losing the salient points in order to aid the story?

4. Repetition. Time and again I read where the same sentence or two is repeated, though using different words; the sense is the same, twice. Combine, or excise. Same goes for whole paragraphs.

5. Too many characters. This is a tough one. It depends on the type of story, naturally. A saga, or the first in a series, might contain a good number of characters. But do they all do enough to justify being there? Some need to be sounding boards, perhaps, for the main characters; others need to be there so they can meet a grisly demise that will signpost the threat to the protagonist. Fine.

Compare the screenplay of a novel; you’ll notice that some characters have been dropped, while in other cases two or more have been fused into one. (Yes, this is to save on actors’ pay, but it’s also to make the story less complicated). All your characters have to work or they don’t belong; in which case, send them to another work in progress.

 
6. Description. I believe description is necessary to put the reader into the scene. Admittedly, there are authors – and readers – who are happy with minimalist description; or none at all, relying on neat character-filled dialogue. That works, when done well. Though my argument is, it’s a novel that rattles in the reader’s head, not a radio play. Still, there can be too much description. Is all the description through a character’s eyes? Or is it imposed by the author? If you’re writing omniscient POV, then the description may tend to be too rich. If it’s character POV description, keep it tight and relevant, to create mood, foreshadowing or a sense of place and character.

7. Dialogue. Some characters can become irksome, running off at the mouth without let up. These folk need reining in. Does what they say have relevance to the story, to the forward movement of the plot? Occasionally, you can get away with ‘one sugar or two, Vicar?’ when the mood’s appropriate, but be ruthless where possible. Dialogue also falls into the repetition trap – beware, and if found, cut!

 
8. Scene shifts. Scriptwriting gets round much of the tedious bits by scene shifting. Do the same – unless it’s necessary, do you have to relate how your characters get to the next scene? Start the scene with them there.
 
9. Conflict. Without conflict, there’s no story. The conflict doesn’t have to be physical. It can be verbal, psychological, or even caused by the environment. Some scriptwriters arrive at the conflict slowly, letting us get to know the individuals first. That’s fine. But you’ll grab your reader faster and more firmly if you begin with the conflict and then get to know the characters through their actions. Cut the lead up to the conflict – go for the jugular straight away.

10. Tangent. If you don’t watch them, characters can go off at a tangent and take the plot with them. It’s interesting as you go, but is it necessary to the story’s main flow? Yes, you need sub-plots, but you can have too many of them. Be ruthless with the sub-plots and leave them only if they serve a purpose.

 
Finally, don’t discard. That might sound contrary, considering the purpose outlined. If you’re going to excise vast chunks of prose, that’s good. But cut and paste these chunks and save them elsewhere in another document. You never know, some or all of them may prove useful at a later date in another work in progress. If nothing else, it doesn’t seem as if you’ve entirely wasted your time on all that prose! [Whenever I decide to edit, I always start with a new copy, so I’ve always got the earlier version, in case I have an aberration and go too far!] Remember too that the time spent on those words wasn’t wasted; the simple action of writing improves your style every time, every day.
 
Of course, if you have a plot-plan and stick to it and monitor your word-count as you work, you’re less likely to exceed by too much that upper limit. I would estimate that 5,000 words over isn’t going to be frowned upon.
 
Truth is, you can always add more; the obverse is also true, you can always cut more.
 
Nowadays, of course, if you feel you cannot cut your prose to meet the upper limit of a publisher, you can always resort to self-publishing at reasonable cost – though bear in mind that usually every extra page of your masterwork will cost more in production and postage.

***

Advert time.

In my book Write a Western in 30 Days I discuss infodumping, plot-plans, conflict, description and character building.

 

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This book is a very useful guide for anyone wanting to write genre fiction – that is, any genre, not only westerns. Those aren’t my words, but the opinion of reviewers on Amazon.

 

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Make a date - 1st, 14th, 23rd and 30th April

War, Wolf and Who

 

Some time ago a series of my articles were published in a regular monthly column linking a set selection of dates in history. The series was popular. I'm busy coordinating the articles into book form. As today is 14 April, here are a number of linked events for that date plus three other April dates. To avoid repetition, I've simply indicated the relevant date in brackets.

The three dates for this article are:

1, 14, 23 and 30 April

 
April has a close connection with warfare, as an unusually large number of wars have started or ended in April and many military leaders have been born in April. Just a few wars that started/ended in April - American Revolution started (Paul Revere’s Ride: April 18-19, 1775) American Civil War (started April 1861, Ended April 1865) and the Second World War (Germany Surrendered in April, 1945).

The latter had a lot to do with the massed forces of the Allies but it was also highly relevant that Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide the day after they were married in their Berlin bunker (30).

As a precursor to the Normandy landings, the Allies needed to penetrate the ‘soft underbelly of Europe’ and the success of the Allied landings in Sicily depended on a British Intelligence ploy to get the German High Command to shift its forces to Greece. Operation Mincemeat was devised in which the submarine HMS Seraph surfaced off the Mediterranean coast of Spain in 1943 and released a dead man into the sea (30). ‘Major Martin’ was carrying papers showing false invasion plans for Greece. This event was immortalised by the film The Man Who Never Was and was one of the greatest wartime hoaxes ever. It fooled the Nazis, which was the point. [An excellent book, by the way...]

 

Which was appropriate in the month of April Fool’s Day. Sadly, not all things that happened on this day (1) were foolish or funny.

In 1924 Hitler was sentenced to jail for five years (1) for his participation in the Beer Hall Putsch (essentially, treason), though he only spent nine months there – long enough for his world-shaking ideas to gestate in the form of his book, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). And on the same day seven years later, the newly elected Nazis organised a one-day boycott of all Jewish-owned businesses in Germany, ushering in a series of anti-Semitic laws which eventually culminated in the Holocaust.

A disaster on a vastly smaller scale than the Second World War was the sinking of the British steamer SS Atlantic (1) off Nova Scotia, killing 547 in 1873. Thirty-nine years later RMS Titanic struck an iceberg (14) and sank the next morning.

The same day that the iceberg was struck so was Abraham Lincoln (14) - by a bullet fired by John Wilkes Booth in 1865.

Two years later the president’s namesake William Lincoln patented (23) the Zoetrope, a machine which shows animated pictures by mounting a strip of drawings in a wheel and rotating it. And in 1894 the ubiquitous Thomas Edison demonstrated the kinetoscope (14), a device for peep-show viewing utilising photographs that flip in sequence, a precursor of movies.

 

And seventy-five years later to the day (14) at the Academy Awards there was a tie for best actress between Katherine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand. Another Oscar winner was Rod Steiger (for In the Heat of the Night in 1967) – he was born on the same day (14) in 1925, sharing the same birthday with Julie Christie (1941), who appeared with him in Dr Zhivago, and Sir John Gielgud, though twenty-one years younger than the illustrious thespian.
 
On the same day (14) in 1986, that actor who never won an Oscar but became president – Ronald Reagan - ordered bombing raids against Tripoli and Benghazi in Libya, killing sixty people, in retaliation for the bombing of a West Berlin nightclub where a US serviceman was killed.

Yet nature still manages to kill more people than man ever could: on the same day and year as Reagan’s raid (14), 2.2lb hailstones fell on a district in Bangladesh, killing 92. Apparently, these are the heaviest hailstones ever recorded. Bangladesh suffers regularly from natural disasters and April in 1991 was no exception (30) when a tropical cyclone killed about 125,000 people.

 
Meteorologists can actually save lives these days though this science was in its infancy in 1865 when Robert Fitzroy died (30). He was the captain of HMS Beagle and took Darwin on his trip to the Galapagos where he developed his theory of evolution. Fitzroy became an admiral and was the first to issue ‘weather forecasts’ – and the sea area Finisterre was renamed after him in 2002 for the shipping forecasts. [See my blog on the novel about Fitzroy here]
 
Definitely less devastating than the Asian tsunami, a modern instance when forecasting didn’t save lives, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in 1946 near the Aleutian Islands caused a tidal wave that struck the Hawaiian islands (1) and killed 159. Many commentators lay the blame for natural disasters such as these on modern industrialisation. That famous ecologist, Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring and founder of the modern environmental movement, died (14) in 1964.

The ecological movement has become legitimate these days and has followers worldwide. The same can be said for Esperanto, the constructed language invented by Ludovich Lazarus Zamenhof (14) who died in 1917. He introduced it under the pseudonym Dr Esperanto, hence the name. His intention was to create an easy-to-learn neutral language to supplement other languages, not replace them. It currently has two million speakers.

Certainly Esperanto might have been useful for Columbus if it had been invented in 1492 when he was given his commission of exploration (30). Little did he realise what he’d set in motion. Some 311 years later, the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for fifteen million dollars (30).

 
That’s not a lot of money for such a massive amount of land. The French have probably regretted it ever since. Talking of money, the first UK decimal coins were introduced this month (23) in 1968 in anticipation of the big event three years later.

Decimalisation certainly made calculations easier – especially on the computer which was in its infancy in those days. In fact, the Apple Computer company was formed in 1976 by Jobs and Wozniak (1). Things moved apace after that, of course, yet it was twenty-five years (23) before Intel introduced the Pentium IV processor.

It’s doubtful if modern synthesised music would have been invented without computers. And one of the most famous composers in this field is Morton Subotnick, who was born (14) in 1933 [and it’s pure coincidence that my name is submerged in his!] A composer of the more traditional sort was Georg Friedrich Handel, who died (14) on Subotnick’s birthday in 1759. Two composers with the name Sergei were born in April: Rachmaninoff (1) in 1873 and Prokofiev (23) in 1891.

Prokofiev is famous for many compositions, notably though Peter and the Wolf which has echoes of old vampire stories. Buffy the Vampire Slayer actress Sarah Michelle Gellar was born (14) in 1977 and none of the vampire characters would have been possible without the discovery of blood circulation by William Harvey who was born (1) in 1578.

Another William is the first Dr Who, William Hartnell, who died (23) in 1975 though he’s now destined to be remembered for all Time.

 

Science fiction author Anne McCaffrey, creator of the series of books about the Dragons of Pern, was born (1) in 1926, the same day as the silent movie star of the Phantom of the Opera, Lon Chaney, in 1883. Another actor who featured in science fiction films – Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers – was Buster Crabbe, who won Olympic gold medals for swimming in 1928 and 1932. He died this month (23) in 1983.

 
It would be remiss not to mention that England’s patron saint, St. George, was murdered in 303 AD because of his strong faith (23) and that both William Shakespeare and Miguel Cervantes died on this day in 1616. One wonders what Darwin would have thought about prolific author Edgar Wallace who was born (1) in 1875, the same year as another prolific author Edgar Rice Burroughs. Among many other books, Wallace wrote To Have and To Hold (which starred William Hartnell), The Four Just Men and King Kong, which has been remade into a state-of-the-art feature film by antipodean Peter Jackson. Fellow New Zealander Dame Ngaio Marsh was born (23) in 1899 and wrote about Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn.

  

The two Edgars - Wallace and Rice Burroughs

A Martian Odyssey

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water...Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. – The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells (1898)

Out here in Spain we’re usually blessed with clear night skies so we can view the stars and planets without too much light pollution. There’s something about stargazing that tugs the imagination, a sense of wonder, perhaps. 

 

Nasa just released a video revealing what Mars may have looked like as a young planet billions of years ago. http://news.sky.com/story/1168023/nasa-video-mars-evolution-from-watery-world

It appears to have had a thick atmosphere that was warm enough to support oceans of liquid water - a crucial ingredient for life.

The animation, created by Nasa's Conceptual Image Lab, shows how the surface of Mars might have developed over four billion years. The artist's concept is based on evidence that Mars was once very different. It shows vast Martian lakes surrounded by mountain ranges, beneath Earth-like blue skies and rapidly moving clouds.

The shift from a warm and wet climate to a cold and dry one is shown as the animation progresses. The lakes dry up and transform into a rocky landscape with canyons, volcanoes and craters. The atmosphere gradually turns to the dusty pink and tan hues seen on Mars today.

Nasa scientist Dr Pan Conrad told Sky News: "We think that the when Mars was created it was a lot wetter and warmer than it is today. It probably lost much of its atmosphere over time and that's how it came to be such a desert and cold place."

Red dust - from the iron in its soil - now covers almost all the surface of the Red Planet, which has an average temperature of -27C (-80F).

Nasa's Curiosity rover has been exploring the surface of the planet since August 2011 and has made several discoveries to support the theory that Mars was once able to support life. These include pebbles providing evidence that a stream once flowed on the planet, and more recently, Martian dust, dirt and soil suggesting a "substantial" amount of water on Mars.

The planet’s atmosphere is over ninety-five percent carbon dioxide and its rocks, soil and sky have a red or pink hue. The distinct red colour was observed by stargazers throughout history and the planet was named by the Romans in honour of their god of war. Other civilizations had similar names, for instance the ancient Egyptians called the planet the red one. 

It has two orbiting moons, Phobos and Deimos.

 

The Red Planet, fourth from the sun, diameter 4,200 miles, with a day forty minutes longer than ours and a gravity only thirty-eight percent that of Earth’s, Mars is more than an astronomical sphere.  As a symbol Mars is imbedded in our culture, even in our psyche.

Galileo was the first to observe Mars through a telescope and eighteenth century Frenchman Giovanni Cassini first noted the planet’s poles. 

However, in 1892 it was Schiaparelli who was responsible for many of the popular illusions about the planet.  When he saw grooves or channels on the surface of Mars, his report in Italian used the word canali to describe the phenomenon. Translations interpreted canali as canals rather than channels and the description evoked an image of an old and sophisticated but slowly dying civilisation on our sister planet. 

 
Three years later American astronomer Percival Lowell published a non-fiction book, Mars, in which he speculated about the terrain and the presence of life on the planet.

These works were read by Wells and fired his imagination in the writing of his classic The War of the Worlds which was given the Spielberg blockbuster treatment, inevitably transposing the story to the United States.  A British version came out at the same time (2005), H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds.

Lowell published two more books, Mars and its Canals (1906) and Mars As the Abode of Life (1908).  Fourteen years after Lowell’s death, Pluto was discovered – its presence beyond Neptune had been predicted by Lowell. He’s probably turning in his grave now that Pluto has been demoted from planet to dwarf planet (plutoid).

Then in 1911 the serial ‘Under the moons of Mars’ was published in the monthly All Story magazine.  Written by the creator of Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs, the story was a great hit and was later published in book form as A Princess of Mars.  This was the first of eleven swashbuckling imaginative books Burroughs set on Mars – or, as the inhabitants called it, Barsoom. The first three volumes in the series actually constitute a single super epic. A film version, John Carter was released in 2012 to a mixed reception; the fans loved it, most of the critics panned it, and the marketing was abysmal.

 

Burroughs’s tales showed great innovation for their time, and the exciting stories caught the interest of millions of readers, helping to inspire serious interest in Mars and in space exploration. 

Many later science fiction works, from the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers films of the 1930s, to Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, to the Star Wars films, to Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy, about terra-forming the red planet, also offer nods in Burroughs’s direction. Robert A Heinlein’s novel The Number of the Beast and Alan Moore’s graphic novels of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen directly reference Barsoom.

This article’s title is taken from the classic short story by StanleyWeinbaum published in 1934.

 

Mars and Martians naturally figured in science fiction books and movies over the years but never seemed to capture the popular imagination until 1978 when interest in Mars was revived by Jeff Wayne who put together a memorable and quite eerie musical version of Wells’s The War of the Worlds, narrated by Richard Burton.

In June 2003 – when the positions of Mars and Earth provided for the shortest possible route, a condition that prevails every twenty-six months - the Mars Express rocket was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan by the European Space Agency. Comprising an orbiter and its lander, Beagle 2, its journey took six months at a velocity of 10,800km an hour.  The spacecraft arrived in orbit around Mars on Christmas Day, 2003. Pictures and information are still being collected by the orbiter. The lander failed to respond to Earth-based instructions so was deemed a failure. It’s unlikely that it was tampered with by any Martians, however...  Indeed, Mars Express, so called because of the rapid and streamlined development time, represents the European Space Agency’s first visit to another planet in the Solar System. The spacecraft borrows technology from the failed Mars 96 mission and from ESA’s Rosetta mission that is currently en route to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The mission helps to answer fundamental questions about the geology, atmosphere, surface environment, history of water and potential for life on Mars. For the past decade, ESA’s Mars Express orbiter has been observing atmospheric structure on the Red Planet. Among its discoveries is the presence of three separate ozone layers, each with its own characteristics. A new comparison of spacecraft data with computer models explains how global atmospheric circulation creates a layer of ozone above the planet's southern winter pole. The full article can be found at http://sci.esa.int/mars-express/52881-a-seasonal-ozone-layer-over-the-martian-south-pole/

Probes sent from Earth beginning in the late 20th century have yielded a dramatic increase in knowledge about the Martian system, focused primarily on understanding its geology and possible habitability potential.

Engineering interplanetary journeys is very complicated, so the exploration of Mars has experienced a high failure rate, especially in earlier attempts. Roughly two-thirds of all spacecraft destined for Mars failed before completing their missions, and there are some that failed before their observations could begin. However, missions have also met with unexpected levels of success, such as the twin Mars Exploration Rovers operating for years beyond their original mission specifications.

Since 6 August 2012, there have been two scientific rovers on the surface of Mars beaming signals back to Earth (Opportunity, and Curiosity of the Mars Science Laboratory mission), and three orbiters currently surveying the planet: Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

To date, no sample return missions have been attempted for Mars, and one attempted return mission for Mars' moon Phobos (Fobos-Grunt) has failed. (previous 4 paragraphs, from Wikipedia).

On 18 November (Monday!), the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN), is set to launch. It will explore the planet’s upper atmosphere, ionosphere and interactions with the sun and solar wind. Scientists will use MAVEN data to determine the role that loss of volatile compounds, such as CO₂, N₂, and H₂O, from the Mars atmosphere to space has played over time, giving insight into the history of Mars atmosphere and climate, liquid water, and planetary habitability. On 8 November Maven was placed on top of the Atlas V rocket; checks so far look good for launch. See http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/

The magic of Mars still exerts its influence and pulls us there…

Maxwell cleverly weaves her tale

JANE – The woman who loved Tarzan

by Robin Maxwell

This book’s release, authorised by the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan, coincided with the centenary of the publication of Tarzan of the Apes. It’s a fitting re-invention.

            Many years ago, I read and re-read all two dozen of the Tarzan books and also the John Carter series. Like fans worldwide, I’ve always felt that the films never did Lord Greystoke justice. So, it was with a little trepidation that I tackled this book.
            What many film-makers neglected but this novel recognizes, ‘There is no Tarzan without Jane’, to quote John R Burroughs. As I became immersed in the tale, all fears for the treatment of the lord of the jungle evaporated. It was obvious that this was a work of love and respect for the original, a worthy homage.
            The book begins in 1912 Chicago where Jane Porter is giving a talk about the missing link she found in Africa. Her claims cause heated controversy among several academic and scientific attendees and, ultimately, a Mr E.R. Burroughs, a young author, takes her aside and expresses an interest in her tale about an ape man. Sequestered together, Jane tells all to Burroughs. This is Jane’s first person narrative we’re about to read, beginning in 1905.
            Maxwell cleverly weaves her tale, using the basic elements of the original but grafting on much that is new and intriguing. Seeing this tale from Jane’s perspective works exceedingly well for me. The period and character are beautifully captured – perhaps I should have expected nothing less from an accredited author of historical fiction.
            There is much that is familiar – the story of Tarzan’s origin, though shifted by date for purposes of realism, the Waziri, d’Arnot, Jane’s father, and the Mangani. The vain and dashing explorer Ral Conrath makes a suitable bad guy, but the real villain is Kerchak, the killer ape. Yet they’re given slight twists to fit this retelling; to stick to the original in every respect would have been a creative straitjacket and unworthy, and fortunately both Jim Sullos, custodian of the legend, and grandson John R Burroughs agreed. In his works, Burroughs did a lot of research for his books, and Maxwell has emulated him with a sure touch, delving into the paleo-anthropological details, the descriptions of the Dark Continent and even the history of Cambridge University, yet at no times imposing swathes of mind-numbing information on the reader.
            There are several poignant moments – not least the reading of Alice’s diary, the vaguely recalled past of young Tarzan and the erotic yet tasteful relationship between the ape man and his mate, Jane.
            You don’t have to have read any Tarzan book to appreciate this wonderful novel. If you have read some of the ape man’s adventures, then you’ll find much to please you in this retelling, bringing the lord of the jungle back to an adult readership, Burroughs’ intended audience.

Tarzan - centennial

It was just over a hundred years ago, October 1912, that Tarzan first appeared in print and since then he has become one of the most iconic fictional characters ever created. This large and quite weighty tome celebrates Tarzan in text, celluloid and comics, among other media, over that century.
            Perhaps it’s unnecessary, but I’ll briefly outline his story. John Clayton, Lord Greystoke and his young pregnant wife Alice were abandoned on the east coast of Africa in 1872 when the crew of the Fuwalda mutinied and set them ashore. They were left with two crates of belongings, a rifle and some ammunition. Bravely facing up to the terrors of a strange primitive land, Clayton built a small hut among the trees and there they retired to relative safety, frightened by the jungle noises. Alice gave birth to a boy, John. Nearby, huge apes congregated, issuing terrible grunts and growls: these creatures had their own language and called themselves mangani; they were more hominid than gorilla.
            Shortly after John’s birth, a great ape, Kerchak, attacked the couple and they barely escaped with their lives. However, a blow to the head permanently affected Alice: while she cared for her baby, she did not step outside the hut again. Some weeks later, she died while the infant slept. At about this time a female great ape, Kala, had lost her own infant, falling to its death from the emerald canopy of the rainforest. Hearing the wailing sound of John Clayton mourning the death of his wife, the apes approached the hut. Kerchak barged in and killed Clayton. But in that same instant Kala snatched up the baby from its makeshift crib, dropped her dead infant in John’s place, and rushed out with baby John clutched to her breast. Acting as John’s mother, Kala called him Whiteskin, ‘Tarzan’ in the mangani language.
            Little Tarzan survived by chance rather than his prowess, though his young mind quickly outstripped the mental capacity of his fellow apes. A child of nature, Tarzan discovered the world was not an Eden. It was harsh, filled with threat and danger from many sources. When he was about nineteen, he met Jane Porter and they eventually married and had many dangerous and bloody adventures.
            This book is lavishly illustrated throughout with colourful artwork and stills from the films. It’s a mine of information about the creation of all the books, with a brief storyline of the twenty-four novels. Hollywood never really did the ape-man justice – he wasn’t a monosyllabic tree-swinging hero; in fact, Tarzan became fluent in many languages, among them French, German and Russian.
Ron Ely, one of the many screen Tarzans, provides a Foreword in which he rightly states that he believes most of the films and TV productions misplaced the ape-man by putting him into contemporary society when the basic allure is the period he was created, the 1920s, an age when communication and travel were protracted and challenging; though the film Greystoke came close. It’s about time this great character was restored to his former glory, not as an adventurer in children’s fiction but as an exciting pulse-pounding adult hero, which was the original creation.

            Indeed, the books were considered inappropriate by the Soviet and Nazi regimes as Tarzan represented bold individualism, so the books were banned or burned. Burning didn’t have much effect, of course: over 100 million books by the author, Edgar Rice Burroughs, have been sold, in 37 languages, including Braille and Esperanto.
            Scott Tracy Griffin, a foremost expert on Edgar Rice Burroughs, has amassed a wealth of information about the ape man and his creator and provides insight into the creation of the novels.
            This is a book to enjoy and treasure, a slice of cultural history.

JOHN CARTER - WORTH THE 50 YEAR WAIT

A bit late, perhaps, but I’ve finally watched John Carter and, surprise, surprise, I find that the film I saw wasn’t the same as that viewed by several critics! At least, that’s how it seems.

The film suffered a severe savaging from many critics on both sides of the pond. Almost without exception, the majority of them hadn’t read the source material and bemoaned the fact that there wasn’t much original in the film. Some had the good grace to accede that the Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian tales were often the inspiration for the many sci-fi flicks over the last hundred years (that is, his ideas were pinched). Some blamed the poor marketing of the film. Others targeted the main actors, and the dialogue. A few didn’t quite grasp information that was offered in the script – maybe they were tucking into their gourmet cinema meal at the time – such as Carter’s ability to leap great distance, attributed to the lower gravity of Mars. One reviewer in UK commented that A Princess of Mars was ‘hailed as a geek classic’ – that must therefore include those well known geeks, astrophysicist Carl Sagan and literary luminary Ray Bradbury, both of whom went on record more than once that Burroughs’ Barsoom novels inspired them to follow their respective careers.

Well, all those naysayers are mightily wrong. Maybe they were all suckered into ‘adulation of The Artist mode’? Just take a look at the reviews on Amazon. When I ordered the DVD there were already many very favourable comments, deriding the critics. Now, as I write this, the combined 4 and 5 star reviews total 602 out of 698 – that’s 86%. The rotten tomato reviews clock it at 52% ‘suffers from uneven pacing, incomprehensible plotting and characterisation.’ Forget all that. The plot and characterisation are not incomprehensible, though in common with most modern action movie scripts you do have to pay attention to what is being said… If ever a film was badly served by the media, then this was it.

Cinema has many purposes – but primarily it’s intended to entertain. John Carter did that with gusto. This was a fantasy film designed for the big screen, with spectacular scenery, epic scenes, gorgeous colour, fabulous costumes, characters true to the books, and a sense of wonder tinged with modern sensibilities. Utah served well as Barsoom. The tharks were superb, in creation and depiction, seeming totally natural. The flying machines were definitely otherworldly. The city of Helium was impressive, as was the thunderous mobile city of Zodanga. There was pathos, humour, irony, romance, bravery and betrayal within the 127 minutes of film; the time flew by – and I for one wanted more!

Direction, script, music score, film, actors, and special effects – none deserved the mauling the critics dished out. This was a splendid visualization of an imaginative adventure lovingly plucked from the pages of a 1912 best-selling story. There were clever touches in the script, notably including Burroughs in the bookend vignettes. This also rang true to the first person narrative of the original. The evil Therns were endowed with additional powers and knowledge, granted, but they were not far removed from the conniving beings of the books. (See my drawing of August 1963, ‘Attack on the holy Therns’ (The Gods of Mars).)

Maybe another fifteen minutes would have deepened the characterisation of some. But essentially this was a fast-paced exotic story and in-depth characterisation would only have slowed it down. Taylor Kitsch delivered a strong man tired of war and death, while Lynn Collins as Dejah Thoris embodied in every way the beauty and strength of the princess of Mars. Though heavily disguised by CGI effects, Samantha Morton (no relation) captured the essence of Sola, her fragility and compassion. William Dafoe’s Tas Tarkas was great, too. And Mark Strong as the inimical Matai Shang, chief Thern, proved he can play villains with consummate ease, but never hams it up. Woola was engaging, even with six legs and deadly incisors – and not dissimilar to my drawing of Woola and John Carter battling the deadly Sith (Warlord of Mars).

I agree that the marketing was poor. The DVD cover is lacklustre. And as for putting up the quote ‘Star Wars for a new generation’, they’d have been better employed stating: ‘Before Avatar, before Star Wars, before Star Trek, before Flash Gordon – there was John Carter of Mars!’ Initially, I sympathised with the critics of the choice of film title and felt that John Carter of Mars would have been better, as it would leave no filmgoer in doubt. But then I saw the end of the film and it seemed right – until the end, he’d been John Carter of Earth. But at the end, when he married Dejah Thoris, he became John Carter of Mars, and that’s the title that’s shown – heralding at least two sequels. Two sequels that are sadly now probably stillborn due to the misguided marketing and reception of this first epic adventure.

If you haven’t seen this film because you were put off by the critics, then ignore them and buy it. Buy it and prove them wrong. It’s escapist fantasy of the highest order.

A 50-Year Wait-02

In those far off days, I was drawing instead of studying for my GCEs...

This illustration is based on a scene from A Princess of Mars - John Carter's rescue of a Zodangan royalist. Drawn July 30, 1963. The original is 22"x10.5".

Even then I must have hankered after a split personality - ie using several pennames - as I signed it RWN-Morton and Ross Morton!

A 50-Year Wait-01

Way back in 1962, I happened upon Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel Warlord of Mars. I’d already devoured several Tarzan novels, published by Four-Square at 2/6d. I read this, the third in the original Martian trilogy and was hooked. Then I bought the first in the series, A Princess of Mars and like many boys of my age, fell in love with Dejah Thoris. I still have this book in my collection:

At the time I used to draw bookmarks for my favourite books. Here’s the bookmark for A Princess of Mars, drawn in 1962.

The story of John Carter’s first visit to Mars was serialised in the February to July 1912 issues of All-Story Magazine, then entitled Under the Moons of Mars, as written by Norman Bean. Bean was the early penname of Burroughs, though he’d used Normal, rather than Norman, but it got screwed somehow. The full novel was first published in book form in 1917, after Burroughs’ phenomenal success with Tarzan.

Burroughs’ Martian adventures – all eleven of them – inspired the scientists Carl Sagan and Arthur C Clarke and novelists Ray Bradbury, Robert A Heinlein among many others.

At last, in 2012, an epic film entitled John Carter is being released – 100 years after the publication of the original story, and 100 years after the publication of Tarzan of the Apes. Indeed, 2012 could be Burroughs’ year, and deservedly so. Burroughs was born in 1875 and died in 1950. A crater on Mars is named in his honour.

John Carter trailer
http://www.disney.co.uk/john-carter/?ex_cmp=sem_g_uk:movies:jcm:01211:1211#video

John Carter fan site
http://jcofmars.com/

Official ERB John Carter site
http://www.johncarterofmars.ca/

Countdown to Centenary-01: Noble Savage

To see him today, it is difficult to credit that John Clayton was born in 1872. His entire life, from its bizarre beginning until this present time, has been filled with mystery, adventure, wonder and remarkable coincidence. His father was John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, who had recently married the Honourable Alice Rutherford. It was a brilliant match. In 1872 Clayton took his wife with him on a secret investigation of conditions in a British west coast African territory. They took passage in the barkentine Fuwalda and were never seen again.

The facts came out many years later. The crew of the Fuwalda mutinied and set ashore on a sandy African beach both John Clayton and his young pregnant wife. They were left with two crates of belongings, a rifle and some ammunition. Bravely facing up to the terrors of a strange primitive land, Clayton built a small hut among the trees and there they retired to relative safety, frightened by the jungle noises. Nearby, huge apes congregated, issuing terrible grunts and growls: these creatures had their own language and called themselves mangani; they were more hominid than gorilla, it seemed. Clayton wrote in his diary all his feelings, his fears and hopes. Alice gave birth to a boy, John.

It was shortly after John’s birth that a gorilla, Kerchak, attacked the couple and they barely escaped with their lives. However, a blow to the head permanently affected Alice’s view of her world: while she cared for her baby, she did not step outside the hut again, thinking herself in London. Some time later, she died while the infant slept. At about this time a female gorilla, Kala, had lost her own infant, falling to its death from the emerald canopy of the rainforest. Hearing the wailing sound of John Clayton mourning the death of his wife, the gorillas approached the hut. Kerchak barged in and killed the English Lord. But in that same instant Kala snatched up the baby from its makeshift crib, dropped her dead infant in John’s place, and rushed out with the infant John clutched to her breast.

Acting as baby John’s mother, Kala was very protective of him. The baby was called Whiteskin, Tarzan in the mangani language.





Little Tarzan survived by chance rather than his prowess, though his young mind quickly outstripped the mental capacity of his fellow apes. Being isolated from humankind, he was fortunate not to suffer any diseases. The Gabonese do not consider a man sick unless he has at least four diseases at once: malaria, filaria, intestinal worms and tuberculosis.

The next nineteen years of Tarzan’s life were to be spent largely in the interior of the closed-canopy rainforest. In his formative years he found the hut built by his father and puzzled over the children’s alphabet books, the mirrors and combs, the shoes. On seeing the depictions of men and women in the picture-books, he yearned to see others like him, for he knew that he did not resemble the rest of his tribe of apes. Eventually, he had his wish when Kulonga, a native, set out to hunt and slew Kala with an arrow. Tarzan learned all about grief then and later took the life of Kulonga with his father’s knife he borrowed from the hut: he learned about revenge, also. From that time on, he haunted Kulonga’s village, sometimes watching the tribesmen getting drunk, or fighting with other tribes, or maltreating their women or prisoners.

A child of nature, Tarzan discovered the world was not an Eden. It was harsh, filled with threat and danger from many sources. He quite understood the natural predators’ urge to seek food, but he could not fathom the sense of inflicting pain on an enemy simply because he was your enemy.

In 1891 a scientific expedition landed near to the Clayton hut. It comprised Professor Porter and his daughter Jane, her fiance William Clayton and a Frenchman, D’Arnot. Tarzan by now wore a breech-cloth to more resemble a MAN seen in his books. He rescued Jane from a gorilla and later saved D’Arnot from a savage tribe.

Having taught himself to write after a fashion in English, Tarzan learned to speak in French with D’Arnot’s aid. The party returned to America, with Tarzan. Here, D’Arnot sought help to identify Tarzan’s background and origins. When the news finally arrived that Tarzan was the inheritor of Greystoke, Tarzan kept the truth secret because he did not want to deprive Jane, William Clayton’s intended, of such wealth. His self-sacrifice for love of Jane meant he’d return to his beloved jungle.




Once back in the jungle, Tarzan became the chief of the warrior tribe of Waziri. With the Waziri he discovered the fabled lost city of Opar, whose vaults were filled with gold and jewels. In the meantime, Jane Porter’s fiancé William died before they could be married and she was reunited with Tarzan. They were married. Tarzan finally came into his true inheritance as Lord Greystoke.

Many adventures befell the couple. They had a boy, Jack, who adopted the name Korak – mangani for ‘killer’ – when he took to the jungle. The Waziri lands became a protected reservation. Tarzan befriended a young lion, Jad-bal-ja, who became a staunch ally. And Tarzan adopted Nkima, a mischievous monkey.

During the Second World War Lord Greystoke enlisted in the RAF and was a successful pilot. He also served in Asia. On their travels, Tarzan and Jane discovered a supply of immortality pills, and this goes some way to explain why John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, Tarzan of the Apes, together with his wife and family, is still alive today, some 138 years after his birth.

It was decided by Lord Greystoke that if he was to preserve privacy for himself and his people – the Waziri, his family and the animals of his reservation – then he must cultivate a fictional persona. Also, he had no wish to be hounded for the secrets of immortality, or indeed the vast riches of Opar. To this end, he obtained the services of an impecunious writer, Edgar Rice Burroughs, who fictionalised certain sections of the Tarzan epic and juggled the chronology of events to cause confusion. The hollywoodization of the tale moved the true events even further from reality.

The above is a ‘brief biography’ of an icon. It’s based on the first two books, Tarzan of the Apes (1912) and The Return of Tarzan (1913) by Edgar Rice Burroughs, plus Tarzan Alive by Philip Jose Farmer (1972). Recommended reading.



2012 is the centenary of the publication of Tarzan of the Apes. It’s about time this great character was restored to his former glory, not as an adventurer in children’s fiction but as an exciting pulse-pounding adult hero.

Tarzan is the Trademark of Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc.