Larry Ketchersid: An excellent primer on John Carter
Larry Ketchersid has written a great “John Carter Primer” on SF signal. Here’s an excerpt — this is good stuff for anyone looking to get a basic but complete overview of the charter, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and the series.
Who is John Carter? (A John Carter Primer)
With Disney’s trailers and announced March release of the movie John Carter, readers of the books that inspired the movie are at once hopeful and fearful: hopeful that the movie will actually capture the imagination as well as the initial reading of Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom series did; fearful that the movie will be an unfaithful adaptation, or, at worst a lemon in the tradition of pulp movie adaptations like the Doc Savage movie.
Though never a large Tarzan fan, I, like many readers my age, tore through the other worlds created by ERB. But Barsoom was always the cornerstone. Here, then, is a Primer on John Carter and the Barsoom series of novels.
SPOILER ALERTS – for those readers who have not read the books and would like to be surprised at the movie plot (which hopefully doesn’t stray to far from the book plot line), this primer is written with the potential spoiler pieces at the end. Feel free to read the Author section. The John Carter section contains a bit of preview, but stay away from the sections below that if you want to go into the movie fresh.
THE AUTHOR
Born September 1, 1875, Edgar Rice Burroughs held numerous non-writing jobs before breaking into the world of print in 1912 (at the tender age of 37). He is better know as the creator of Tarzan, but he also created many other worlds and characters. And the very first one he created was called “Under the Moons of Mars,” the original name of the story that would be known as A Princess of Mars, the first novel in the Barsoom/John Carter series.
One thought on “Larry Ketchersid: An excellent primer on John Carter”
Thanks for the link, Mike! Great site. Hope the movie does well enough for many many sequels!