Thank you so much to Scott Tracy Griffin for joining us in spreading the love for Edgar Rice Burroughs on last night’s Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. As a Burroughs fan since my teens, I had so been looking forward to this episode!
Enjoy the conversation, check out Griffin’s writings – he’s got two lavishly illustrated, carefully researched, and compellingly-written coffee table books, Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration and Tarzan on Film, with another project in the pipeline – and then consider giving Burroughs a whirl. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if you only know Tarzan from the movies, you don’t know Tarzan!
But there’s also the Mars (John Carter) books, the Pellucidar (hollow earth) novels, the Caspak trilogy (including “The Land That Time Forgot”), some highly-regarded westerns, and so much more. For imaginative world-building and flamboyant adventure, accept no substitutes!
As a product of the pulps, Burroughs had the luxury to revisit his creations again and again, lending fresh perspectives in his sequels to characters and settings indelibly established in the popular originals. As an artist, he may not have been Hemingway, Faulkner, or Fitzgerald (whose combined works he easily outsold), but at his best, his stories have a primal appeal, an adolescent exuberance, and an ennobling sense of romance that make them timelessly entertaining.
Watch the show here, and give it a thumbs-up, if you’re so inclined:
Roy and I will reconvene on Friday for a nostalgic trip back to 1977 and a reminiscence of the television series “The Incredible Hulk,” starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno (in tattered pants and a yak-haired wig). Sadly, at the moment, it is difficult to find the episodes available for streaming, but I’ve managed to locate the pilot on Dailymotion.
Part I
Part II
Mr. McGee, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry! We’ll be burning through our wardrobe, as you flood the comments section with your gamma rays, when we livestream on Facebook, this Sunday evening at 7:00 EDT! (PLEASE NOTE: there will be no show this Friday!)
