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The Fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Part I: Sword and Planet

The Fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Part I: Sword and Planet

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Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom novels: A Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars and The Warlord of Mars, and Thuvia, Maid of Mars and The Chessmen of Mars (Science Fiction Books Club, July 1970, January 1971, and January 1973). Covers by Frank Frazetta

For sheer fun and adventure there’s nothing better in my opinion than Sword & Planet fiction (also called Interplanetary Adventure, Interplanetary Romance, or Planetary Romance). But exactly what is Sword & Planet fiction? Well, Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) created the prototype in 1911 with A Princess of Mars, which featured an Earthman named John Carter who is mysteriously transported to Mars, called Barsoom by its inhabitants.

The basic Sword & Planet story involves an earthman (rarely an earthwoman up to this point in time; 2025) on a strange world where he must use his wits, his muscles, and his sword against a host of human and nonhuman foes. The hero is generally chivalrous and the setting is an exotic alien world, often with multiple suns or multiple moons, populated by a variety of strange plants, animals, and intelligent beings. Magic is virtually non-existent, but there may be elements of “super-science,” such as open-decked flying ships or even ray-guns, although the latter take second billing to the blade. The emphasis is on swashbuckling sword fights, wild escapes, and desperate rescues.

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An Important Life – Howard Andrew Jones (1968 – 2025)

An Important Life – Howard Andrew Jones (1968 – 2025)

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A LIFE IS NOT IMPORTANT EXCEPT IN THE IMPACT IT HAS ON OTHER LIVES – Jackie Robinson’s epitaph

Mark Rigney, Howard Andrew Jones, Bob Byrne

I did an interview last week with Jason Waltz for his ’24 in 42′ podcast (Yeah, I know: You just can’t wait to hear that one…).

One of the questions was about my favorite quote/lyric/poem/motivational thought. Some of you who know me probably figure it’s a Bible verse. And there are a couple that are right up there.

But it’s the epitaph on Jackie Robinson’s gravestone, which leads off this post.

My buddy Howard Andrew Jones has passed away from brain cancer. You’re going to see a LOT of people singing his praises in the coming weeks. All of it deserved. If I can stop crying long enough, my Monday morning post will be on Howard.

But you’re gonna see a common thread in the talk about Howard. The impact he had on other people’s lives. Especially in encouraging and helping writers – mostly in the sword and sorcery field.

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A Locked Tomb Mystery in Space: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

A Locked Tomb Mystery in Space: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

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Gideon the Ninth (Tor Books, September 10, 2019). Cover by Tommy Arnold

The back cover of the hardcover edition of Gideon the Ninth features this assessment from writer Warren Ellis: “The author is clearly insane.”

Three things made me shunt Gideon the Ninth to the front of my TBR stack. First, both my older son and his girlfriend read it, and, once finished, they promptly named their cat Harrow after one of the two main characters. Second, the cover art jumped out like an All Hallows spotlight. Third, that Ellis quote grabbed me by the frontal lobes. A novel featuring skeletons and sword-wielding necromancers written by a writer five cans short of a six-pack? Sign me up, buttercup.

Finally, in the interests of truth-telling or perhaps over-sharing, I must add that a fourth element convinced me to delve into Gideon the Ninth, and that was when I spotted a copy on the shelves at Chaucer’s Books in California, and cracked the cover to explore the opening paragraph. It reads as follows:

In the myriadic year of our Lord –– the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death! –– Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth.

I was hooked. There’s nothing like a practical protagonist. Sword and shoes, check. Dirty magazines? Clearly a must. Next stop, adventure!

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Action, Intrigue, and Glorious Battles: William R. Forstchen’s The Lost Regiment

Action, Intrigue, and Glorious Battles: William R. Forstchen’s The Lost Regiment

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The Lost Regiment, by William R. Forstchen (Roc Books, 1990-99). Covers by Sanjulian

William R. Forstchen was born on October 11th, 1950, eight years and three days before my birthday. He earned a Ph.D. in history, specializing in the American Civil War, and teaches at Montreat College in North Carolina. He’s one of my favorite authors. He isn’t quite Sword & Planet but has a series that is adjacent with lots of S&P elements. It’s called The Lost Regiment and ran to 8 books. He later wrote a 9th book that took place 20 years after the end of the original series, but has not written any more.

All were published by Roc Science Fiction. Sanjulian is credited with the covers for books 6, 7, and 8, and if he did those I’m pretty sure he did all the previous ones as well, which clearly have the same style. However, book 9’s cover is credited to Edwin Herder. The Sanjulian covers are great but are quite small on the books and should have been larger.

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Half a Century of Reading Tolkien: Part One

Half a Century of Reading Tolkien: Part One

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I’ve been trying to remember when I first read The Lord of the Rings and it must’ve been when I was ten or so, meaning in 1976 or early 1977. I say this because my dad bought me The Silmarillion for Christmas and it was published in September 1977. That means I read The Hobbit when I was nine or so. Coming up on 59 next year, it means I’ve been reading Prof. Tolkien’s work for nearly fifty years.

Rankin & Bass Bilbo and Gollum

I assume I came across The Hobbit on my dad’s shelf next to his living room chair. It’s where he kept the various books he was reading at any given time. His habit was to stay downstairs till midnight or one, reading and listening to WQXR, the New York Times’ old classical station. I’d definitely read it before November 1977 when the Rankin & Bass The Hobbit premiered. As a side note, my dad tried to get our first color TV before it aired, but he wasn’t able to.

I didn’t read LotR right away, but when I did, I found myself in competition with my dad to finish them. With only the single set of books in the house, we read them in tandem. I remember rushing home from church to see if I could grab The Fellowship of the Ring before my dad had finished reading The New York Times that morning. Even though some days I got the book before him, he read faster and more often and finished several days before me. Hey, I was only ten.

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The Sword & Planet Fiction of Robert Moore Williams: Zanthar

The Sword & Planet Fiction of Robert Moore Williams: Zanthar

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Jongor Fights Back (Popular Library, 1970). Cover by Frank Frazetta

Robert Moore Williams (1907 – 1977) wrote a lot of books, over 100. I’ve read two of them and that means there’s a 100 or so more books out there I won’t need to read before I die, including the ones he wrote under pseudonyms such as John Browning, H. H. Harmon, E. K. Jarvis, and Russell Storm. He also wrote an autobiography called Love is Forever – We Are for Tonight.

As a writer myself, I hesitate to be too critical of other writers. I know how difficult it is to finish a novel. But I don’t know how else to say it other than that — in my opinion — Moore was not a good one. The first book I found by him was Jongor Fights Back, a Tarzanesque effort featuring Jongor in a lost land. It was readable, but just barely. The cover, by Frank Frazetta, was a million times better.

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The Best of Bob: 2024

The Best of Bob: 2024

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Happy 2025! Let’s kick butt for another year. Or at least, limp to the finish 52 weeks. from now. I take what I can get. I started a Best of Bob feature last year. And while it may seem I’m constantly finding folks to write my column for me (hey – it’s a gift!), some of you Black Gaters may be surprised that I occasionally actually write my own essays for the Monday morning slot. John O’Neill is too savvy an editor for me to completely fool him for over decade.

So here are what I thought were ten of my better efforts in 2024. Hopefully you saw them back when I first posted them. But if not, maybe you’ll check out a few now. Ranking them seemed a bit egotistical, so they’re in chronological order. Let’s go!

1) Roaming the Old West, with Holmes on the Range (February 5, 2024)

It might look like I just throw something together every week (and looks aren’t always deceptive). But when I can find the time, I love putting together something special. And after reading/re-reading the entire series, I really nailed a three-part series on Steve Hockensmith’s Sherlock Holmes influenced, Old West mysteries about cowboy brothers Old Red and Big Red.

I followed up a pretty solid series overview, with the first-ever comprehensive chronology! And then, we rounded it out with a great Q&A from Steve himself. This is a terrific series: a great read, and solid on audiobook. Late in the year, the first two novels in a spin-off series that’s more Old West adventure than Holmes-flavored, came out. I’m looking forward to more of all aspects of the Double-A Western Detective Agency.

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Chess in Sword & Planet Fiction, Part IV: Lin Carter’s Callisto

Chess in Sword & Planet Fiction, Part IV: Lin Carter’s Callisto

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The 8-volume Callisto series by Lin Carter (Dell, 1972-1978). Covers by Vincent DiFate and Ken Kelly

After Burroughs worked chess — in its Martian version of Jetan — into his John Carter series with Chessmen of Mars, it practically became a rule that all later writers of Sword & Planet fiction had to do the same. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, John Norman did it in the Gor series and Ken Bulmer (writing as Alan Burt Akers) did it in the long running Dray Prescot series. I did it too in my 5 book Talera series.

It would be surprising then if Lin Carter didn’t do it. Carter made almost his entire fiction career off following the leads of ERB and REH (Robert E. Howard). And indeed, Carter did invent his own version of chess.

In the last of his 8-book Callisto series, called Renegade of Callisto, Carter pens his own version of ERB’s Chessman of Mars. Although Carter’s main hero in this series is an earthman named Jonathan Dark (Jandar), Dark has — like John Carter before him — recruited and befriended various allies on the moon of Callisto (called Thanator by its natives).

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Two New Black Company Novels (Lies Weeping, and They Cry) on the Way!

Two New Black Company Novels (Lies Weeping, and They Cry) on the Way!

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Back in April, as part of an exclusive Q&A with sword and sorcery legend Glen Cook, Black Gate revealed that the author had already completed the next three novels in his seminal The Black Company series. He was working on a fourth, all part of an arc titled A Pitiless Rain – or, The Orphan’s Tale.

For several years now I have been working on A Pitiless Rain – or, The Orphan’s Tale. It’s a family Saga thing mainly revolving around the next generation kids from Glittering Stone, especially Soldiers Live. I have completed the first three volumes: Lies Weeping, They Cry, & Summer Grass. (I am) Halfway through Darkness Knows.

Tor has announced that Lies Weeping is finally coming. No release date yet, though Barnes and Noble is taking pre-orders, with a listed date of November 4, 2025. There is some info on the story (it’s like a cover spoiler – skip if you aren’t current on The Company):

The Black Company has retreated across the plain of glittering stone, toward a shadow gate that would let them trade the dangers of the plain for the questionable safety of the Company’s one-time haven on Hsien, a region in the world known as the Land of Unknown Shadows.

In Hsien, the company returns to their former base, An Abode of Ravens, where the Lady ages backwards in a return to force, shaking off the thrall, one breath at a time. Meanwhile, Croaker, ascended to godlike status as the Steadfast Guardian, has been left behind in the Nameless Fortress.

In their adopted father’s stead, Arkana and Shukrat have taken up the role of annalist for the Black Company. At first, life in Hsien appears quiet, even boring, but it is quickly apparent that strange goings on are more than what they seem, and it’s up to them to discover the truth hidden in the shadows of this strange land.

Glen also told me in an email today, that book two, They Cry, will be out in February of 2026!

No release date for book three, and he is still working on book four.

It’s a new era for The Black Company, and a joyful Christmas season for its fans!
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G.W. Thomas on Fred Saberhagen’s Berserkers

G.W. Thomas on Fred Saberhagen’s Berserkers

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Three collections in Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker Saga: Berserker, Brother Assassin, and The Ultimate Enemy
(Ace Books, September 1978, December 1978, and September 1979). Covers: Boris Vallejo and Michael Whelan

Ace SF blogger G.W. Thomas, working atop a demon-haunted tower in Alberta, has been digging deep into a lot of my favorite old SF paperbacks, including C. L. Moore & Henry Kuttner’s Earth’s Last Citadel, Murray Leinster’s Get Off My World!, and Space Operas You May Have Missed.

But I think my favorite recent piece was his two-part series on a writer who’s largely forgotten today: Fred Saberhagen, author of The Book of Swords, Empire of the East, and The Dracula Tape, and his most enduring creation: the galaxy-roving Berserkers. which appeared in some seventeen volumes.

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