JOHN CARTER and Edgar Rice Burroughs

Walt Disney Pictures‘ film John Carter, due out March 9, marks the 100th anniversary of the first appearance of the character in a story by famed author Edgar Rice Burroughs.

The film is based on Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars (1917) and stars Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Willem Dafoe and Thomas Haden Church, and directed by Andrew Stanton.

Burroughs, especially known for his character Tarzan, wrote 11 novels of the Barsoom series, the name for Mars in the novels.  His vision of Mars was based on incorrect scientific notions of the time, mostly that of Percival Lowell.  Lowell and Rice’s Mars is a dying planet, formerly like Earth but in a rapid state of decline.  The scarce water is distributed by canals, the existence of which is based on astronomical visions of canals running across the red planet’s surface.

Burroughs’ technology, especially for a traditionally non-science fiction writer, is fairly extraordinary.  He described technology similar to televisions, radios, fax machines, radiation-based weapons, genetic manipulation, and terraforming.  He also described aerial battles between fleets of aircraft not 30 years after the Wright brothers‘ famous flight, as well as a plant which manufactures new atmosphere to replace that which is being lost on the planet.

It is only the best science fiction which can be read throughout time and even when many of it’s ideas are outdated.  It takes even better science fiction to make movies out of, even one hundred years later.  I’ll be looking forward to seeing the new film of one of the classics of science fiction.

Related articles

• ‘John Carter’ Featurette: An Introduction to the Classic Sci-Fi Franchise (screenrant.com)
• ‘John Carter’ Clip: Taylor Kitsch Evades Barbarians, Jumps Off A Clip (VIDEO) (news.moviefone.com)
• 7 New Images from JOHN CARTER (collider.com)

Heinlein’s TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE

Finished Time Enough For Love (1973) a while ago, so I’ve owed you my review.  Warning: I have not held back much as far as spoilers go, so if you haven’t read the book and don’t want to hear the ending, don’t read past the marked point.

Time Enough For Love is Heinlein‘s longest work, and probably his most epic.  It is essentially written as part of the biography of Lazarus Long, a recurring character throughout Heinlein’s Future History novels (Methuselah’s Children and To Sail Beyond the Sunset, as well as a series of short stories).  Long is the oldest living human being at over two thousand years old, the product of both genetic engineering in the 20th century and rejuvenation technology thereafter.  The story is based around Long’s lying on his deathbed and one of his important descendants wishes that his entire life story be recorded (or at least the important parts).  They wish to record it because he is “the Senior” and as the oldest living human being is considered the wisest.  So Long begins, telling of his life, in no particular chronological order.

SPOILERS!!!

Image via Wikipedia

Now when we get into the themes and details is where it gets interesting.  Free love, nudism, etc, are common themes for Heinlein, but in Time Enough For Love he takes it to another level, making today’s nudists look like Republicans and Oedipus Rex look like the average suburban husband.  The summary on the back of my copy states that “it is the story of a man so in love with Life that he refused to stop living it; and so in love with Time that he became his own ancestor.”  However, this statement is not backed up by anything in the book, sadly.  The final part of the novel involves his going back in time to his childhood to meet his family, and in the process falls in love with his mother, but at this period he is already a child and meets himself, making it impossible that he should have become his own ancestor as the summary says.

Not that Heinlein should have needed to make the book more strange and slightly awkward by today’s moral standards.  At one point he explains scientifically how twin brother and sister born of the same father and mother could be genetically unrelated, and then proceeds to have them marry, have children, and live long happy lives as if nothing were the matter with that.  To Heinlein, of course, there isn’t.  As well, the last section of the book, which is set around the time-travel sequence, features Lazarus helping to start a colony and joining a family of all the primary characters, three each of men and women and an unknown number of children, practicing free love.  Also included in this family are a pair of female twins who just happen to be female clones of Lazarus himself, who eventually he makes love to as well, writing it off as a form of masturbation.

This may have come off much harsher than it is meant to be.  Heinlein is one of the best, and most of his ideas are awesome.  But this, even to a much larger extent than The Moon is a Harsh Mistress or Stranger in a Strange Land, some of his social themes are strange and not particularly acceptable even by today’s loose standards, much less that of the Seventies.

Related articles

• What I’m Reading: Robert Heinlein’s TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE (expandingconsciousness.wordpress.com)
• The Wisdom Of Lazarus Long (fountainabbey.wordpress.com)
• How Heinlein plotted (boingboing.net)

Author Bio: Olaf Stapledon

Olaf Stapledon (1886-1950), one of the least well-known early authors of science fiction, was a British philosopher and occasional science-fiction author.  His greatest works are considered to be his novels Last and First Men and Star Maker, two classics of the genre.

Stapledon earned a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Liverpool in 1925, but lectured there and abroad on a variety of subjects such as psychology, English literature, and industrial history, and was very influential in British politics.

His novel Last and First Men and it’s sequel Star Maker have been extremely influential in the genre of hard science fiction since their publication in 1930 and 1937 respectively.  Most notable about the two novels are their scale: Last and First Men outlines 18 successive future evolutionary species of humanity, obviously spanning millenia into the distant future, and Star Maker outlines a history of the life of the universe, making the scale of it’s prequel seem minuscule.

Like all great hard science fiction authors, Stapledon has been credited with first describing various scientific ideas, including the Dyson Spheres (which Dyson himself said should be called Stapledon Spheres), genetic engineering, terraforming, and the “supermind.”

Authors who have professed to have been influenced by Stapledon include Arthur C. Clarke, Stanislaw Lem, C.S. Lewis, and John Maynard Smith.