The Great Edgar Rice Burroughs Revival of the 1960’s, including the origins of the Dum Dum
I’ve been doing some “drilling down” for John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood into the epic period around 1962 when Edgar Rice Burroughs went from being out of print and out of mind, to suddenly being everywhere in what is now thought of as the great ERB Revival of the 1960’s. I hope to talking to some of the participants and movers and shakers of that revival soon, so I’m not going to try and do too much with it right now other than pass along this article which I found in ERBmania by Mike Reznick entitled The Great ERB Revival. It gives a colorful overview of what it was like in the late 1950’s when Burroughs’ books were not very available — and then the explosion of availability in the 1960’s first with Canaveral Press, then Ace and Ballantine causing ERB to be everywhere.
The article tells the story of how the various Burroughs fan groups were either established or re-established on the crest of the wave of popularity in the early 1960’s, and even explained something I didn’t know about the Dum-Dum — how it was the decision by Burroughs fan groups to skip the Worldcon convention in London in 1965 and stage their own convention in Chicago, called the Dum Dum, that got the Dum Dum off an running.
Anyway — it’s a nice read and I hope you enjoy it.
Also, here are some ERBzine links that will give you some more info on this period:
The Canaveral Press ERB Editions
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Ooops. I corrected it. Here it is also — correct link: http://www.erblist.com/erbmania/resnickrevival.html
The “Great ERB revival” links to the Amazon page of ERB: Master of Adventure book.
I can relate to that article, only in the late eighties! That’s when some ERB Barsoom books were reprinted in France, the last time before that was apparently… the year I was born (1971)! That’s the last time the first 4 books were available as paperbacks (1988-1989).
After that there were omnibus collections (averaging 1000 pages each) for Barsoom (2 volumes), Pellucidar (3 volumes including Caspak), Venus (1 volume) and the Moon (1 volume, includes other works), around 1995.
Then nothing until february 2012, where the first Barsoom omnibus was reprinted. And this september the 20th will be issued a Tarzan omnibus (the first 5 novels). They’re the two only available Burroughs books in France currently.