Ardor on Aros Read Free Page B

aspersions. “You recognize it? Mahvelous! You know Burroughs?”
    Sure, I knew Burroughs, and since it’s rather integral to my own weird story, let’s explore the writing of Edgar Rice Burroughs for a moment. (I will give you Evenlyn’s and my discussion later.)
    His first novel, A PRINCESS OF MARS, was published as a magazine serial in 1912. Pursued by a band of Indians, Captain John Cater of Virginia takes refuge in a cave, where he falls asleep thinking of the Red Planet. He awakes on Mars! Then beings a series of adventures, mainly concerned with very bad men, monsters both good and bad, sexless damsels in distress, and some fascinating customs. Mars is dying; its people have forgotten most of the great science they possessed before the cataclysmic days when their seas dried up. Their only land conveyance is a colorful eight-legged thoat. They also have “fliers,” open aircraft rather like great rafts that move very swiftly through the thin Martian air. They possess deadly radium pistols and, like the men of the American old West, they never go out without ’em. But they also carry dagger and sword (two). These are their main fighting weapons—they fight a lot, but using the radium guns isn’t cricket. Generally speaking, only villains use them in dire exigency; the good guys always fence. Like John Carter.
    Cater is more agile than anyone else on Mars (there are thousands of people, red, yellow, green and, and true white, not your Earthly pink-tan), since he is lighter (lower gravity, remember?). He is also, as he constantly reminds his reader, the finest swordsman on two planets. He does a great deal of killing, a great deal of getting captured, and a great deal of rescuing—mostly women. Chastely. Mostly one woman: his Dejah Thoris (by his own constant admission the most beautiful woman on two planets). She is the daughter of the ruler of Mars’s greatest city, and so John Carter gets to be crown prince: “warlord.” John Carter apparently possesses no genitalia, nor does Dejah.
    In another of Burroughs’ Mars books, Ulysses Paxton is killed—sort of. He wakes up on Mars, whole, where he has a lot of adventures and marries a princess. Chastely. So does Carson Napier, another Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) hero, who crash-lands on Venus. It’s just as barbaric and weird as ERB’s Mars: monsters, triple-dyed villains, flying men, strange races, rayguns and swords, lots of capturing and rescuing and escaping. Carson marries a princess, and they live adventurously but chastely ever after.
    Many of the further adventures of the ERB heroes were set into motion by their various womenfolk—Dejah Thoris of Mars, Duare of Venus, Dian the Beautiful of Pellueidar, Jane of Greystoke Manor, etc. Constantly borne off by a succession of black-hearted, double-dyed villains. Despite fantastic periods of separation, each Burroughs hero remained ever constant to his one true love. Nor were the kinapped beauties raped.
    The people of ERB-places are utter barbarians. Life is cheap; extremely cheap. Blood flows like words from a politico’s mouth. But, while the rules are pretty much Jenghiz han, there is great honour , and all the good guys live strictly by the code—unless you count Carter’s constant goading of others into fighting him. But usually: swords, no guns. No back-stabbing. And most incredible of all: these barbarians treat women by Arthurian Table-Round rules. Very chivalrous. Courtly manners. Lots of capturing and kidnaping (with intent either to punish the husband or marry the girl). But nary a rape. Just the sort of thing for Evelyn to write.
    Well, I’m a Burroughs fan, whatever his shortcomings, but—. The status of women in a barbaric culture is almost invariably lower than a snake’s rectum. They’re tolerated, as chattel. They are gifts: servants, cooks, bedmates, and child-rearers, to bring up more sons to murder and rape and die gloriously. Rape’s as common as peanuts at a ballgame. You either