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How Many John Carter Fans?


Subdeacon Joe

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I know, I know, thinking is dangerous.

 

When I was about 10 or 11 I bought my first John Carter book at a church rummage sale. What a wonderful find that was. From the start I was hooked.

 

To the Reader of this Work:

 

In submitting Captain Carter's strange manuscript to you in book form, I believe that a few words relative to this remarkable personality will be of interest.

 

My first recollection of Captain Carter is of the few months he spent at my father's home in Virginia, just prior to the opening of the civil war. I was then a child of but five years, yet I well remember the tall, dark, smooth-faced, athletic man whom I called Uncle Jack.

 

He seemed always to be laughing; and he entered into the sports of the children with the same hearty good fellowship he displayed toward those pastimes in which the men and women of his own age indulged; or he would sit for an hour at a time entertaining my old grandmother with stories of his strange, wild life in all parts of the world. We all loved him, and our slaves fairly worshipped the ground he trod.

 

He was a splendid specimen of manhood, standing a good two inches over six feet, broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, with the carriage of the trained fighting man. His features were regular and clear cut, his hair black and closely cropped, while his eyes were of a steel gray, reflecting a strong and loyal character, filled with fire and initiative. His manners were perfect, and his courtliness was that of a typical southern gentleman of the highest type.

 

His horsemanship, especially after hounds, was a marvel and delight even in that country of magnificent horsemen. I have often heard my father caution him against his wild recklessness, but he would only laugh, and say that the tumble that killed him would be from the back of a horse yet unfoaled.

 

When the war broke out he left us, nor did I see him again for some fifteen or sixteen years. When he returned it was without warning, and I was much surprised to note that he had not aged apparently a moment, nor had he changed in any other outward way. He was, when others were with him, the same genial, happy fellow we had known of old, but when he thought himself alone I have seen him sit for hours gazing off into space, his face set in a look of wistful longing and hopeless misery; and at night he would sit thus looking up into the heavens, at what I did not know until I read his manuscript years afterward.

 

That from : The Project Gutenberg, A Princess of Mars

 

You can read it online.

 

 

Wouldn't that series make a great movie trilogy? If they could keep close to the text. Maybe get Peter Jackson to do it.

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Loved those books when I was a kid. Rousing good yarns!

 

Warning: Do not watch the 2009 "Princess of Mars" movie with Tarci Lords and Antonio Zapato. It's hideous.

 

Perhaps this new one will be viewable. It has some real actors. John Carter

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John Carter film is coming out next year. I've always liked and enjoyed all of Edgar Rice Burroughs books. All are written in a serial style, introducing characters and delving into them. Then he introduces more characters, sometimes continents aparts, usually he leaves each chapter with a character in peril, then slowly he comes back to them, and has them each introduced together in coming chapters.

Once you get into his style of writing, or book, its hard to put down. MT

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401729/

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Warning: Do not watch the 2009 "Princess of Mars" movie with Tarci Lords and Antonio Zapato. It's hideous.

 

 

I have to disagree with you, Bob. It isn't even good enough to be hideous.

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I have to disagree with you, Bob. It isn't even good enough to be hideous.

 

Yeah. There should be a new word for that. :lol:

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BTW: The Kindle edition of A Princess Of Mars is available for $0,000.00 (That's FREE!) from Amazon. Pretty dang cool. I just ordered it.

 

Thanx SubD!

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John Carter film is coming out next year. I've always liked and enjoyed all of Edgar Rice Burroughs books. All are written in a serial style, introducing characters and delving into them. Then he introduces more characters, sometimes continents aparts, usually he leaves each chapter with a character in peril, then slowly he comes back to them, and has them each introduced together in coming chapters.

Once you get into his style of writing, or book, its hard to put down. MT

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401729/

 

I agree Marshall, it's an unusual style of writing. As a kid, it's hard to get into, but the contents are engrossing. I had one of ERB's books that had two stories in it. I wish I could remember the title of the book.

 

Slackwater

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Yeah, but who didn't?

 

Bingo. Hard stories to put down. :D

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I used up a lot of flashlight batteries reading the John Carter of Mars series under the sheets after lights out. They were great fantasy works for a poor country boy. I agree the movie with Traci Lords was terrible but I would stand in line to see one that was done right.

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Been a few years (ok, a couple decades maybe) since I read them but that is a great series. ERB had quite an imagination and could really grab your interest. Tarzan was a good series as well. Just recently read "Bandit fom Hell's Bend", one of his westerns and also available as a free download from the Gutenburg Project. All good stuff.

 

Bucky

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Yeah. There should be a new word for that. :lol:

 

I like film not fit to be recycled into guitar pics!

 

as to the question posed at the start of this Thread.... Ah memories of the tails of Barsoom and its hurtling moons

 

There was a posting on the science news blog last year with a fine photo of I think Phobos taken by the ESA Mars survey orbiter

http://www.google.com/search?q=mars+moon+photo&hl=en&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&prmd=ivns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=hQIITsaLOYvrgQfe44nWDQ&ved=0CBoQsAQ&biw=1326&bih=730

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I just read the whole series again last summer. I've probably read the books 25 - 30 times each. Great memories. Man, I wanted to be John Carter when I was a kid!

 

Yeah, guns, aircraft, adventure, swords, and scantily clad women. What more could a teenaged boy want? ;)

 

 

I was a total ERB fan as a kid; I am looking forward big time to the upcoming John Carter of Mars movie. Thomas Haden Chuch and Willem Defoe as Tharks-- should be good; major special effects.

 

Still in love with Dejah Thoris....

 

Love? I was in lust with her myself.

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I`ve read pretty much everything ERB wrote. My grandparents library had most of his books, and I would hit used book stores to fill in what was missing. The "Carson of Venus" stories are similar to the Mars stories.

 

Ray Bradbury was a fan of ERB.

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I remember enjoying them, but can't remember much bout them. Guess it's time to reboot and read them all again.

 

Anyone a Doc Savage fan? I once had over 100 of the paperbacks that I stated gathering about 1963. I was in a SLC airport waiting for some friends who were hung up someplace by a snow storm and bought one of Doc's adventures to pass the time.

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John Carter first sees Dejah Thoris:

 

 

 

"As Sola and I entered the plaza a sight met my eyes which filled my whole being with a great surge of mingled hope, fear, exultation, and depression, and yet most dominant was a subtle sense of relief and happiness; for just as we neared the throng of Martians I caught a glimpse of the prisoner from the battle craft who was being roughly dragged into a nearby building by a couple of green Martian females.

 

And the sight which met my eyes was that of a slender, girlish figure, similar in every detail to the earthly women of my past life. She did not see me at first, but just as she was disappearing through the portal of the building which was to be her prison she turned, and her eyes met mine. Her face was oval and beautiful in the extreme, her every feature was finely chiseled and exquisite, her eyes large and lustrous and her head surmounted by a mass of coal black, waving hair, caught loosely into a strange yet becoming coiffure. Her skin was of a light reddish copper color, against which the crimson glow of her cheeks and the ruby of her beautifully molded lips shone with a strangely enhancing effect.

 

She was as destitute of clothes as the green Martians who accompanied her; indeed, save for her highly wrought ornaments she was entirely naked, nor could any apparel have enhanced the beauty of her perfect and symmetrical figure."

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Very very encouraging quote from the director (who also says the trailer is coming soon):

 

 

 

The "Friday Night Lights" actor's comments about the unique look of the film mirrored those of director Andrew Stanton, who told us that his take on the story, which is based on a series of Edgar Rice Burroughs novels about a Civil War veteran who becomes a great hero on Mars, will not look like anything we've seen before.

 

"I didn't try to make it look like anything else," the Oscar winner told us back in January. "I really tried to make it its own thing. I tried to make a very historically accurate Martian film, if that makes sense," he said. "So I'll let you decipher that."

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I first started reading Egger Rice Burrows as a freshman in high school. went through all the John CRTER AND tARZAN books I could lay my hands on. loved every minute of it. haven't seen one of the Cater of mars series in decades now, I wonder it they are still in print?

 

As a kid, took no notice of Burrows style and beliefs back then, but looking back, have come to seee he had several predudices on race and religion. Still they were good reads and full of action.

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I first started reading Egger Rice Burrows as a freshman in high school. went through all the John CRTER AND tARZAN books I could lay my hands on. loved every minute of it. haven't seen one of the Cater of mars series in decades now, I wonder it they are still in print?

 

As a kid, took no notice of Burrows style and beliefs back then, but looking back, have come to seee he had several predudices on race and religion. Still they were good reads and full of action.

 

Most all of Edgar Rice Burroughs' books are easy to find; they've been in print in paperback off and on since the mid-60s, when many of them fell out of copyright.

 

Remember that Burroughs wrote a long time ago-- indeed, A Princess of Mars is just about 100 years old now! Burroughs' racial attitudes are pretty much those of the time, and in several respects enlightened for the time.

 

As for his style; in my opinion, it is great. He has a very rich vocabulary, and beginning to read his books at a young age I am convinced gave me a leg up in writing and vocabulary.

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