I was a senior in high school in late 1963 when I was introduced to a former Burroughs fan by the name of Joseph W. Miller.  Joe founded one of the earliest of the Burroughs fanzines in 1952, called “Operation Burroughs.”  A month later he changed the name to “The Barsoomian.”  He went on to publish a total of six issues over the next year and then gave it up.  A seventh issue was published in early 1954 by James V. Taurasi.  As Joe put it later in his guest editorial in #7, he “lost the spark.”  He did tell me at one point that publishing a fanzine would either make or break me as a fan.  But perhaps the real reason was simply growing up and going off to college.  If I recall correctly, Joe was 29 when I re-started The Barsoomian with #8 in 1964, which means he probably would have graduated from high school in 1953.

As for me, I had read my first Burroughs book in the summer of 1960.  I started becoming active in fandom in early 1961, courtesy of Tom McGeehan at “The House of Info.”  I joined the Bibliophiles, subscribed to all the Burroughs fanmags available at the time, and corresponded with other fans.  By the time I met Joe Miller I was itching to become more active.  Joe was a university professor by then and I got to meet him a couple of times when he was home visiting for the holidays.  I asked him if I could continue The Barsoomian with issue #8 and he thought that would be fine.  He was somewhat less enthusiastic about my reprinting his old issues, more out of modesty than anything else.

As it turned out, I never got around to reprinting those first seven issues until I published my last new issue in 1969.  Joe’s original six issues were digest size and mimeographed.  I only had Xerox copies of them to  work from so I decided to reprint them in the 8½” by 11” format.  I retyped the text, attempting to keep the same look and feel as the original, while using all of the illustrations and hand-lettered headings from the originals.  Straight reprints of the mimeographed originals would have looked pretty spotty.  The format I chose was limited to 4, 8 or 12 pages, so I decided to use new artwork for covers and interior pages, as needed, to fill out the issues.  I had lots of nice artwork that I had not been able to use in my new issues of The Barsoomian, so I was happy to be able to use it in the reprints.