Official Edgar Rice Burroughs Tribute and Weekly Webzine Site Since 1996 ~ Over 15,000 Webzines and Webpages In Archive 
Master of Imaginative Fantasy Adventure Creator of Tarzan® and "Grandfather of American Science Fiction" Volume 7970 |
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Official Edgar Rice Burroughs Tribute and Weekly Webzine Site Since 1996 ~ Over 15,000 Webzines and Webpages In Archive
Master of Imaginative Fantasy Adventure Creator of Tarzan® and "Grandfather of American Science Fiction" Volume 7970 |
Rob Dorsey is the author of five novels set on Barsoom, sequels to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Martian cycle. A retired airline pilot,Dorsey wrote professionally for several decades, primarily in the non-fiction field, before shifting his interest to fiction. After reading his first novel, A Prince of Mars, I was intrigued by his creative insight, which generated several private conversations about his inspirations and distinctive approach to the material. He generously agreed to share his thoughts on his writings with Burroughs fans and readers via the following interview.STG: Tell me about your background: where you grew up and what your youth was like?
RD: Well, I started off as a child. But seriously, I was born and raised in the small East Texas town of Athens, about seventy-five miles southeast of Dallas. From a very young age, I was in love with science and airplanes. I learned to read well at a young age, five or so, and never read comic books or the usual children's books, "Dick and Jane," and child-focused stuff. I read classics. I remember at seven reading "Moby Dick," Hemingway's "Old Man and the Sea," as well as Robert Ruark's "Old Man and the Boy," and his tales of Africa. Then there was the "Tom Swift" series of adventures. I was captivatedby the concept of a boy of vast wealth who spent his money creating vehicles and devices of high technology to allow his quests for adventure.My neighborhood had no other children, and I, therefore, spent the majority of my time by myself. This may sound terrible, but for an introvert like me, it was fine. I had constructed a small laboratory in my closet and spent many happy hours creating experiments there.
STG: How did you discover the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs?
At the age of ten or so, I was free to wander our little town on my bicycle, and I discovered the small public library. Browsing the science fiction shelf, I found some well-worn volumes of Burroughs' Martian stories and checked them out one at a time. I did not notice that they began in 1912, but read them thinking they were the work of a more contemporary author. I read them all, from "A Princess of Mars" to"John Carter of Mars."STG: What are your favorite memories of reading Burroughs? Were there other genre authors you read or collected?
I enjoyed them and was enthralled by Barsoom. Although, at that time, we knew Mars to be a desolate, lifeless planet that had been without atmosphere or water for millions of years, I allowed Burroughs the courtesy of going with his imagination. I had learned that to enjoy science fiction, a considerable suspension of disbelief was required. I also was reading Frank Herbert's "Dune" series with similar consideration.STG: You were writing professionally for several decades before you authored this series. How did you break into the field, and how did you manage to combine that endeavor with your primary career as a commercial airline pilot?
I had written for our high school newspaper (readership of about 200) and, in the late seventies, decided to try my hand at a wider audience. Aerobatics has been another lifelong obsession of mine, and I was a member of the International Aerobatic Club, a subsidiary of the Experimental Aviation Association. I began writing a monthly article for their magazine, and it became so popular that in 1998, I, without campaigning, was voted president of that club. Within aviation circles, my work there was well known, and I began to receive offers to write for a couple of other aviation magazines. Flattered, I took them up on it, and since the schedule of an international airline pilot provides sufficient time off plus regular three to four-day layovers in Europe, India or Hong Kong, I found the time and seclusion of my hotel room ideal for my work.STG: Let's talk about the Barsoom Pentalogy. Your approach is one that hasn't been explored before in the realm of Burroughs sequels. You have a very unique voice, and really make this material your own,giving readers an adventure tale that is character-driven, as you explore the protagonists’ inner thoughts and conflicts. How did you conceive these stories and this arc?Tell us about the setting (specific time and place) on Barsoom for your stories.
The story begins thirty-five years after what I refer to as "the great wedding battle," which effectively destroys Zodanga as a world power. Before his abrupt return to Earth, John Carter impregnated Dejah with a second son. Now, Carthoris, their first son, is residing in the Omean of the southern ocean with Thuvia of Ptarth, so this son, Darus, is the royal couple’s only resident child. As the story breaks, Darus is twenty-four and a handsome young warrior and consumate swordsman. As far as the setting, it is all of Barsoom.
STG: Can you give us a brief, spoiler-free rundown of each book's plot?
The first volume, "A Prince of Mars," introduces new characters, including Darus, the second son of John and Dejah, and Torz, their adopted ward and son of Tars Tarkas and Gozava. The young men are returning from an excursion to the eastern borderlands when they are set upon by a band of Warhoons. After dealing with that threat, they are confronted by a platoon of Zodangan rebels and, after dispatching their captain, convince the remaining troopers to surrender to Helium. Darus and Torz then proceed to John and Dejah's palace to debrief their parents regarding the fight with the Warhoons and their unlikely collection of the Zodangans. They plan a dinner to woo the Zodangans to pledge to Helium.At that meeting, Darus convinces his parents to allow him and Tidus Murz, the sergeant of the Zodangan platoon, to sneak into the Zodangan camp to foment a mutiny against Teyos Than, the son of Sab Than, and titular jeddak of Zodanga in exile, and possibly arrange his demise. During their mission, Darus meets Zurah, a female Zodangan platoon captain with whom he is immediately smitten.
Teyos discovers Darus' identity and has him and Tidus Murz arrested and jailed. Zurah rallies her followers in the camp and breaks the two insurgents out of their cell. Darus learns that Zurah is the crown princess of Zodanga and daughter of Sab Than, after which they and three hundred Zodangan mutineers hike to an ancient ruin in which are secreted two large airships. They load the Zodangan troopers onto a ship and take off for Helium. Enroute, they are attacked by the second ship from the ruin and fight for their lives.
Arriving in Helium, Zurah is introduced to John Carter and feted at a formal dinner. The gesture is well received by the Zodangans except for a spy, who is identified and arrested.
Zurah and Darus are engaged to be married.At the prenuptial celebration, Teyos kidnaps Zurah, and Darus give chase, leading to the novel’s climax.The second volume is "Prisoner of Mars," in which Dejah Thoris is kidnapped by Teyos Than, in concert with his minion, the spy Zido Pinkus, ostensibly to sell her into slavery to the highest bidder. Darus and Zurah give chase. Enroute, they stop at Torquas to confer with the Jeddak, Hortan Gur, and find that Teyos is also there. Zurah kills Teyos, but Pinkus escapes with Dejah, causing the chase to resume. Darus calls in his father with a battle fleet to assist. The Heliumites encounter a small armada of ships from the hidden city of Tanos and their mad king, Tal Maj, who seeks to capture the "great treasure" rumored to be carried in Teyos' ship. A battle ensues in which Darus and Zurah crash their flyer on the deck of the Tanosian flagship and are killed. They are revived in an arcane piece of machinery left to the Tanosians by an ancient people, and rejoin the battle to rescue Dejah. 
The third volume, entitled "Warrior Princess of Mars," involves the Princess Zurah being accused of slaughtering twenty-three little girls during a refugee rescue. This travesty occurred during an attack on the airship docks perpetrated by the Mata, a tribe of human female warriors who, because of their muscular builds, subjugate the males in their tribe and force them to become either service slaves or bed slaves. Rather than pretty little girls, Zurah sees a group of hideous man-sized insects called Tiths disembark from the Mata ship, which rush her and the royal family.Zurah engages these monsters and proceeds to kill them outright. When she completes her grizzly work, the bugs lay cleaved and dead. But rather than applauding her, the family shuns her. That evening, the family and associated clan members hold a tribunal at which Zurah swears that she was killing bug creatures. However, the group states that they saw her slay the little girls. Zurah flees in her flyer to the palace of Hortan Gur in Torquas. There, she hopes to find succor and sanctuary.
From there, Zurah sets out on a quest to locate the Tiths and prove her innocence. Darus, distraught, sets out to retrieve his love. They meet in Materra, the Mata stronghold, where Zurah is captured and forced to fight in the arena. Darus is arrested by a giant Mata and, when he resists, is knocked unconscious. When he awakes, he meets his captor, twelve-foot, six-inch Elona Dayr, and with her help, seeks to rescue Zurah.
Volume four is "Mad Kings of Mars" and begins as Zurah's evil brother, Teyos, returns, having been resurrected by Tal Maj's ancient reanimator. Teyos sets about assembling a vast army by combining all of the smaller city states' forces, falsely convincing them that he, too, has an army with which to attack and crush Helium. Teyos makes a tactical blunder by sending an automated Caravelle airship with a huge bomb aboard to detonate itself over the great plaza of Helium. This so enrages the Heliumite royal family that they declare war on Teyos Than and anyone who might help him. Most of the jeddaks of the northern cities are arrogant fools, but one, Val Tar, jeddak of Vastor, is not. He is a cruel and ruthless warrior king who fully intends to be jeddak of all southern Barsoom when the fighting is over.The air war is brutal and deadly, as is the ensuing fight on the ground, as the Helimites defend their empire from the enemy alliance.
Volume Five is "Tyrant Queen of Mars." Fifteen years have passed, and Darus and Zurah's son, Carthan,hasnow grown to a young warrior, handsome like his father Darus. Carthan and his friend, Elon go on their first operational outing with Darus and Zurah to fend off some rustlers at a batta mor ranch south of Helium. There they face their first real fight. Dejah Thoris, now jeddara of Helium, (John Carter was always just her royal consort and never was to be jeddak), is furious that Darus would take her grandson into such a dangerous situation.It seems that Dejah has been transformed from the loving mother and sovereign into a raging tyrant, and John Carter into a meek supplicant who does not challenge Dejah's wishes. Her vitriol is so intense that she no longer supports Zurah and tells Darus that he should get rid of her if he ever hopes to be jeddak. The situation becomes so fraught that Zurah and Darus take Carthan and flee to Torquas with the help of Kantos Kan. Dejah continues to descend into evil madness so that even the people openly talk of rebellion. Sensing Helium's weakness, Val Tar attacks the city in the air and on the ground. The battle is for the very survival of Helium. I will not divulge the ending so as not to spoil your suspense should you read it.
STG: That’s quite a body of work! Although Burroughs' characters all have supporting roles in your ensemble cast, you've created new characters that reflect your own vision. That can be challenging when some readers have an unswerving loyalty to the original characters and concepts. Taking this a step further, what did you want to achieve?
I offer no apology for usurping Burroughs' venue or prime characters. The works sit in the public domain and are there for the taking. But, in reading the series, I found that rather than offering the reader a satisfying conclusion, it appears that the great man either lost interest or was merely concentrating on other work, i.e., Tarzan, which offered a more lucrative and popular fan base. I set, therefore, out to make this series a gift to the Barsoomite community, never intending or imagining any financial success. If any reader is offended by my liberties with the original material, may I suggest that the volumes,each being about two pounds, make interesting and colorful doorstops.
What did I want to achieve? To take this wonderful and romantic world, Burroughs created and enrich the story with new and interesting characters. Also, to give the characters from the original book a bit more humanity. I wanted to show them to be believable and flawed individuals rather than cookie-cutter superpeople, humans with frailties of their own. With all due respect, Burroughs left far too much meat on the bones to be ignored.STG: Walt Disney Studios' 2012 feature film, John Carter, was an inspiration for your work. What did you like—and dislike—about the movie?
Well, it was rather a mess, don't you think? It followed the book's storyline only subtlety and introduced characters and elements far from Burroughs' original vision. However, it is one of the best films I have seen. I watch it regularly. I am pleased to offer [director Andrew] Stanton my willful suspension of disbelief for those two hours. With specifics, I loved Lynn Collins as Dejah and James Purefoy realized the perfect Kantos Kan.If you are unfamiliar with Collins’ acting chops, I suggest that you see "Merchant of Venice," where she plays off Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons in Shakespeare's immortal work. A brilliant bit of acting. She's no lightweight ingénue. I didn't feel that Taylor Kitsch was quite right for the part of John Carter. There are numerous Hollywood hunks who would have been better and more believable in the part of John Carter, and would not have required a year to get buff enough for the part.STG: Besides Edgar Rice Burroughs, who are your literary influences?
I must now prepare the reader that you will, henceforth, no doubt be unhappy with my blatant heresy regarding The Great Master, Burroughs' divine writing. This doesn't bother me, as I have been a heretic of one sort or another all my life.Even at a young age, while I admired Burroughs' genius for world-building and character creation, I was less than impressed by his prose. I, frankly, found it stiff and pedantic. Also, his tendency to repeat plot themes just changing the characters was disconcerting, to say the least. I was also reading works by Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Frank Herbert, and Arthur C. Clark, to name but a few. I have been governed in my own work by the admonishment from Isaac Asimov: "The reader will forgive the improbable but not the impossible." For this reason, I placed Barsoom in a parallel dimension, the projection of Carter caused by a rift in space-time separating them. From John Carter's astral projection to Mars to the brain-swapping Mastermind, I found Burroughs' repeated dependence on the supernatural to wear a bit thin. When I read such things in contemporary SciFi, I think, "This guy either doesn't have the knowledge or imagination to avoid just saying 'then magic happens.'" Sorry.
STG: Your experience as a pilot really enhances your description of the aerial battles in your books—
Of course. The sky was my home for thirty-five years, so it was relatively easy to transition that to the Barsoomian flyer.I flew commercially in a number of transport aircraft, from DC-3s to Boeing 747s, mostly in international flying, that took me all over the world. I also had been involved in competitive aerobatics and airshows, flying biplanes and high performance aerobatic aircraft. This offered me an in-depth feel for how a flying machine could be maneuvered, and it seemed a natural process to apply this experience to the Heliumite airship.STG: What is your creative process—do you dictate your stories, write longhand, or type on a computer? Do you plot your storylines out in advance, or work from an outline, or just see where the story takes you? Did you revise parts of the story as it advanced? Who was your editor/proofreader? How were they published—did you seek a publishing house?
I use a computer and Microsoft Word. I am a "stream of consciousness" writer and don't make outlines, notes or journal entries. I just write, and the muse dictates the story to me. Oft times, I get up from the dinner table and return to my study. My wife asks, "Where are you going?" and I tell her, "This is an exciting scene. I've got to see what happens." As far as editng goes, I have spent thousands with various editors and never have been even slightly satisfied with the outcome. One even started re-writing my stuff without understanding what I was trying to achieve. I now use a software program called Grammarly, and it corrects my work as I go. When I am done, a full word-by-word run-through with Grammarly results in a clean manuscript with no punctuation errors, spelling errors or poor sentence structure. It's more work for me, but it results in a clean product.STG: What do you hope readers take away from your books?
I hope that they will be entertained and satisfied with the conclusion.STG: Do you think you'll continue the series?
I'm now working on a sequel, "Carthan of Mars," that moves the focus onto the next generation.STG: Where can readers find your books?
Amazon.com is easiest. They are available in Kindle e-books, hardcover and paperback. I'm working on other venues, but not having a traditional publisher, wider distribution is difficult to achieve.STG: Thank you for your time, and for your contribution to Edgar Rice Burroughs' legacy.
Scott Tracy Griffin is the author of Tarzan on Film (Titan Books, 2016) and
Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration (Titan Books, 2012).REFERENCES
https://scotttracygriffin.com
www.edgarriceburroughs.com
www.amazon.com
www.ERBzine.com
www.ERBzine.com/mag
