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[FenrisUlf]

Hi all,

 

Noticing that the SFBC is going to reprint most of Burrough's John Carter/Barsoom novles got me to wondering.

 

Now, swords and planet is listed in Star Hero as an SF genre, but how many people see it that way? I've usually heard it described as (and thought of it as) a sub-genre of fantasy, except that you have ray-guns and aliens.

 

And how many people here would ever do a sword & planet setting?

[Hermit]

I would, though there would need to be explainations for me on why the swords were still in vogue.

 

Ideas that come to mind:

1) It's heritage, a symbol of social status.

2) Laws make using more advanced weaponry difficult or impossible, but more primitive weapons are permitted, and thus everyone carries one.

3) The planet's magnosphere creates interference that makes certain energy and chemical reactions uncertain, making such things as swords the only things you could really count on.

[McCoy]

Originally posted by Hermit

I would, though there would need to be explainations for me on why the swords were still in vogue.

On Barsoom, it was a Code of Honor. Weapons were ranked (IIRC)

• Bare Hands
  
• Short Sword
  
• Long Sword
  
• Radium Pistol
  
• Radium Rifle
  

When attacked, one could honorably respond with an equal or lesser weapon.

[Steve Long]

I think a Planetary Romance setting could be scads o' fun.

 

For an excellent example, check out Iron Lords Of Jupiter in some recent issues of Polyhedron Magazine. It's d20, but don't let that stop you; it's brilliant.

[Space Cadet]

Marvel ran a "Barsoom"-type storyline back in the early 80s with

their Star Wars comic, IIRC. The story had Leia being

stranded on a world inhabited by two different humanoid races,

with all of the "Barsoomian" trappings -- swords, rayguns and

flying sleds.

 

Space Cadet

[NuSoardGraphite]

I would consider Planetary Romance adventures to be a cross-genre story incoporating elements of both Science Fiction and Fantasy.

 

I would very much love to re-read the books again, but haven't seen them in ages.

 

I'm also looking for Lensman but with little luck. I'd even heard they had re-released them a few years back after being off the market for quite a while (supposedly due to the release of the unauthorized anime version of Lensman)

[keithcurtis]

Originally posted by NuSoardGraphite

I would very much love to re-read the books again, but haven't seen them in ages.

 

I recently re-read the first three novels. I loved them and still find them great fun. However, I have noticed something as an adult that escaped me as a child. John Carter has superhuman stats in all characteristics save intelligence. He was dumb as a brick. Totally clueless. Either he had negative Int, or a Physical Limitation: Cannot see the completely obvious (All the time, Totally)

 

Sigh... I'd love to play a Barsoom game.

 

Keith "A mass of conflicting impulses" Curtis

[Lord Liaden]

IIRC John Carter was completely clueless as far as women's feelings were concerned - in most other areas he seemed to be quite bright. Probably worth a Psych Lim: "Gentleman from Virginia."

[keithcurtis]

Nope, sorry.

He leaves an unhatched son on Barsoom. Comes back years later and is imprisoned with a youth of the appropriate age, who has light copper skin, can jump, has grey eyes and looks a lot like him and his wife. No idea who this kid is. Clueless.

I can't remember any more specifics, but do recall that he had a blind spot for more than women.

Of course, most of ERB's characters have no clue about women either.

 

Keith "Kaor!" Curtis

[McCoy]

Originally posted by keithcurtis

I can't remember any more specifics, but do recall that he had a blind spot for more than women.

Didn't remember that a year on Barsoom is twice as long as an Earth year.

[Fuzzy Gnome]

When a villain escaped through a hidden door, he just stood there with a dumbfounded look. Even the Three Stooges know to search for secret doors.

I think Carter eventually gave up and left...

[Lord Liaden]

I think you're all being a little unfair to John Carter. How often have you realized that something is blindingly obvious after someone else pointed it out to you? Besides, Carter doesn't realize that he's in a novel and should be on the lookout for logical but highly improbable events.

 

Anyway, I don't think we should judge JC's intelligence by his creator's predilection for hackneyed plot devices.

[AnotherSkip]

There are parts in the first 4 Tarzan books that i was SCREAMING at the blindness of the characters in looking at the obvious.

 

The best of an explanation I can come up with is

1. Language was a significant barrier

2. this was Waaaaaay before gaming ever existed

[FenrisUlf]

Originally posted by NuSoardGraphite I'm also looking for Lensman but with little luck. I'd even heard they had re-released them a few years back after being off the market for quite a while (supposedly due to the release of the unauthorized anime version of Lensman) [/b]

 

Well, the SFBC has reprinted both the Lensman and the Skylark series in big collected editions. About time, too. They're still available if you're interested.

 

And with John Carter -- I always got the idea that he wasn't dumb so much as intensely honorable; there were some things a gentleman simply did not notice, even if they were happening right under his nose.

 

On the other hand, in our modern day, attitudes like that do carry the stigma of low intelligence.

[McCoy]

Originally posted by FenrisUlf

Well, the SFBC has reprinted both the Lensman and the Skylark series in big collected editions. About time, too. They're still available if you're interested.

 

And with John Carter -- I always got the idea that he wasn't dumb so much as intensely honorable; there were some things a gentleman simply did not notice, even if they were happening right under his nose.

 

On the other hand, in our modern day, attitudes like that do carry the stigma of low intelligence.

But to get the length of the year wrong?

 

Remember, he had lived on Barsoom several years, had a child in the incubator long enough that it was ready to hatch, then returned to Earth for an approximently equal time. Circumstance was that his wife was to be executed in a year. Carter put together a massive raid to break the power of the White Martians (Therns?). Politics and logistics caused delays. When 365 days had passed, Carter started to privately morn Dejah Thoris, thinking the one year deadline had passed. Suffered for weeks before someone mentioned that a Barsoomian year was over 700 days long. Might be understandable if this was in the first book, when he was new on the planet. But this was the second book, after he had lived on Barsoom for more than 10 Earth years.

[chaos_engineer]

Originally posted by NuSoardGraphite

I would very much love to re-read the books again, but haven't seen them in ages.

 

many of them are public domian and on the web. check The Online Books Page

[Aroooo]

Another online resource is Project Gutenberg: http://www.promo.net/pg/

 

Aroooo

[Vondy]

I've alwasys termed the John Carter stories as "space fantasy." Its essentially a highly romanticized version of space opera.

 

John Carter's scientific knowledge is circa 1860's - I don't expect that much from him in terms of general scientific education (compared to the average modern reader for instance).

 

And we can laugh about ERB's "hackneyed" plots and cliches till the cows come home - in 1912 they were as new and fresh as the virgin snow.

 

ERB didn't have much success in life until he published his first pulp story at age 35, and he didn't take himself seriously as a writer. He was aghast that someone would consider his works literature and got started in the pulps because, and I quote:

 

"I was positive I could write as badly as those people in the pulps."

 

I enjoy ERB because he's imaginitive, has fairly tight plots, and isn't trying too hard. I hate it when I read a book and I can detect the author's overabundance of earnestness seeping into an otherwise enjoyable story.

[Lord Liaden]

It was a little unfair of me when I referred to ERB's plots as "hackneyed" earlier. I guess it's more appropriate to say that for the most part he uses one meta-plot of "the hero and his romantic interest hate each other at first, but he has to keep saving her, eventually she falls for him only he's too thick to see it and keeps inadventently offending her" over and over again in his books.

 

Burroughs' pseudo-science is also closer to magic in how it works from a modern perspective: "eighth and ninth rays of the spectrum," radium engines, airships that look like galleons, and so on. Throw in the swashbuckling, swordfights, various races and monstrous animals, and Barsoom (and Tarzan's Africa for that matter) has more in common with the conventions of fantasy than sci-fi.

 

OTOH ERB's imagination in creating exotic races, societies, creatures and concepts is truly extraordinary, and what makes exploring Barsoom through his books so darn much fun.

[chaos_engineer]

Originally posted by Lord Liaden

Burroughs' pseudo-science is also closer to magic in how it works from a modern perspective: "eighth and ninth rays of the spectrum," radium engines, airships that look like galleons, and so on. Throw in the swashbuckling, swordfights, various races and monstrous animals, and Barsoom (and Tarzan's Africa for that matter) has more in common with the conventions of fantasy than sci-fi.

 

but that's true of the bulk of pulp sf. you could say the same about Flash Gordon, Planet Stories...and modern Hollywood.

 

IMO it's just splitting hairs to quibble about labels. it's all science fiction to me.

 

OTOH ERB's imagination in creating exotic races, societies, creatures and concepts is truly extraordinary, and what makes exploring Barsoom through his books so darn much fun.

 

agreed. he had an incomparable imagination.

 

BTW, fans of Barsoom might want to check out Kenneth Bulmer's Dray Prescot series. they're well imagined yarns in the same style.

[Lord Liaden]

Originally posted by chaos_engineer

but that's true of the bulk of pulp sf. you could say the same about Flash Gordon, Planet Stories...and modern Hollywood.

 

IMO it's just splitting hairs to quibble about labels. it's all science fiction to me.

 

No quibbling from me. I quite agree with you.

 

I was just highlighting that if you want to reproduce the spirit of these pulp adventures in a game setting, the style, imagery and tropes are much closer to those appropriate to fantasy than "hard" science-fiction, especially in the hand-waving of the science which functions almost like magic as an enabling device.

[FenrisUlf]

Other Sword & Planet authors?

 

Geez, but this thread did WAY better than I thought it would.

 

If I may ask, aside from ERB himself, would anyone here have any other recommendations as to sword and planet authors/books? I always did have a fondness for Leigh Brackett's stories, esp. Eric John Stark, and I thought Lin Carter's _Green Star_ series had some very good 'bits'.

 

On the other hand, there was a lot of crap written in S&P. Sometimes I wonder if the reasoning you had behind so much bad sword and planet (or space opera, or heroic fantasy, or whatever) was that 'Well, this isn't *real* SF, so I can make it as crappy as I like and the clueless fanboys will buy it anyway!'

[Lord Liaden]

Gardner F. Fox wrote a fairly decent pair of novels very obviously patterned after John Carter set on the planet Llarn, Warrior of Llarn and Thief of Llarn. The first two or three novels of John Norman's "Gor" series were also obviously influenced by ERB, although later books in the series veered in a mysogenistic direction which I personally found disturbing.

 

For a rather more serious version of this type of story, I'd recommend a four-volume series by Jack Vance which goes under the overall heading of "Tschai: Planet of Adventure." A spacer crewman is marooned on a planet where humans were brought from Earth many centuries ago as laborers. They now exist as subjects to four other alien species in uneasy co-existence, with wide variations in technology, and no knowledge that there ever was an Earth. The spacer finds himself upsetting that balance in his efforts to gain the means to return home.

[chaos_engineer]

Re: Other Sword & Planet authors?

 

Originally posted by FenrisUlf

If I may ask, aside from ERB himself, would anyone here have any other recommendations as to sword and planet authors/books? I always did have a fondness for Leigh Brackett's stories, esp. Eric John Stark, and I thought Lin Carter's _Green Star_ series had some very good 'bits'.

 

yeah, Brackett was great. her Mars books have a hard-boiled edge that appeals to me. Carter gets points for trying -- he also did a series set on Callisto -- but he wasn't a very good writer.

 

there are lots of novels in the "Barsoomian" vein. two good pre-ERB books are Edwin Arnold's Gulliver of Mars & Fenton Ash's A Trip to Mars .

 

Donald Wollheim edited a short anthology titled Swordsmen in the Sky. and even Mike Resnik wrote a couple, The Goddess of Ganymede , and Pursuit on Ganymede.

 

but IMO the best of the Barsoom imitators (not counting Brackett) is Bulmer. his Dray Prescot series has done the most to keep the tradition alive.

[chaos_engineer]

Barsoom gaming resources

 

here's a few Barsoom gaming resources i've found.

 

Kevin Scrivner's write-up of a Green Martian for Hero System 4th ed. -- but there don't seem to be any write-ups of John Carter. (are you listening, Surbrook? )

 

and we have the FUDGE-based Heroes of Mars, a GURPS Barsoom site, and the Palladium-based Barsoomian Wars. now we just need Barsoom Hero.

 

and there's even Barsoomian Army Lists for Hordes of the Things, a great mass combat minis game.

 

anybody have more?