Introduction
Welcome to the worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs—and we do mean worlds.
Everyone knows about his most popular creation, of course. Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, starred in twenty-two books during ERB’s lifetime, and two more that were published after his death. He’s been starring in movies since the silent era beginning back in 1918, he’s had his own TV show, he was even the star of a Broadway musical and he had his own long-running comic strip and comic book.
But ERB’s reputation doesn’t rest solely with Tarzan. He also created the almost-as-influential Mars series, in which John Carter, an Earthman who becomes the Warlord of Mars, and his friends starred in ten books while Burroughs was alive, and part of an eleventh that was published, along with a John Carter novella written by his sons, after Burroughs died—and these books influenced such writers as Leigh Brackett, Otis Adelbert Kline, Lin Carter, and many, many others.
Not bad for one literary lifetime.
But there’s more. Lots more.
Not content with setting adventures on Mars, Burroughs created another hero, Carson Napier, a kind of Wrong-Way Corrigan of space, who set out for Mars, somehow wound up on Venus, and stayed there for four books while ERB was alive, and part of a fifth that was published posthumously.
And for those who didn’t want to fare that far afield for their fantastic adventures, Burroughs created Pellucidar, the strange world that exists at the Earth’s Core. It was discovered by David Innes and Abner Perry, but eventually even Tarzan made it down there, and seven books were devoted to it.
Forty-five books about his four worlds. That would be a half a dozen careers for most writers, but Burroughs was just getting started.
He served in the cavalry in Arizona, and it turned up in his two novels about Shoz-Dijiji, the War Chief of the Apaches. (And he gave equal time to the other side, with The Deputy Sheriff of Comanche County and The Outlaw of Hell’s Bend.)
He was back in space—deep space—for his tale of Poloda, a planet that exists Beyond the Farthest Star.
And he came a little closer to home with his novel, The Moon Maid.
For those who like their heroes to wear more than a loin cloth and to look and act like you and me, he wrote The Mucker.
There was more, of course, but these constitute his major worlds and his major achievements, and we’re proud to present at least one story about each of them.
Edgar Rice Burroughs was, and is, a national treasure. Tarzan became an instant icon with his first appearance in the October, 1912 issue of All-Story Magazine. By the 1920s, the best-selling American author in the world was not Hemingway or Fitzgerald, but Edgar Rice Burroughs. He became a success at something that had eluded Mark Twain and others: publishing and distributing his own books. Two cities—Tarzana, California and Tarzan, Texas—are named for his most famous character. More than a decade after his death in 1950, when most of his titles had fallen out of print, there was a massive paperback revival, and he was a bestseller all over again. Fanzines arose that were devoted exclusively to his work, and the Burroughs Bibliophiles have been convening regularly since the early 1960s.
When we finally decided to create an anthology of original stories, using his characters, we approached some of the top science fiction and fantasy writers in the field, and we were overwhelmed by their enthusiastic response. Most had been waiting their whole lives to write a Burroughs story, and now that we’d received permission from Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., nothing was going to stop them.
And nothing did.
So read, enjoy, and marvel at some new takes on the many worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
—Mike Resnick & Bob Garcia