![]() Clarke and Ray Bradbury, they influenced renowned scientist Carl Sagan in his quest for extraterrestrial life, and were instrumental in the making of James Cameron's Avatar, and George Lucas' Star Wars. The books in the Barsoom series were an early inspiration to many, including science fiction authors Robert A. ![]() Burroughs predicted the invention of homing devices, radar, sonar, autopilot, collision detection, television, teletype, genetic cloning, living organ transplants, antigravity propulsion, and many other concepts that were well ahead of his time. The most harrowing horror story in the annals of Barsoom Collected in Dejah Thoris & The White Apes of. ![]() In other adventures, the Prince of Helium encounters a race of telepathic warriors, the Princess of Helium confronts the headless men of Mars, Captain Ulysses Paxton learns the secret of human immortality, and Tan Hadron's idealized notion of love is tested as he fights off gigantic spiders and cannibals.Įdgar Rice Burroughs vision of Mars was loosely inspired by astronomical speculation of the time, especially that of Percival Lowell, who saw the red planet as a formerly Earth-like world now becoming less hospitable to life due to its advanced age. They take shelter in a dead, ancient city - infested with killer white apes. His adventures continue as he battles great white apes, fights plant men, defies the Goddess of Death, and braves the frozen wastes of Polar Mars. There he meets the fifteen foot tall, four armed, green men of mars, with horse-like dragons, and watch dogs like oversized frogs with ten legs. I think the ape moves well, and the arena scene - or what I saw of it - is well done, but John Carter remains possibly the biggest question mark of 2012 to me.When John Carter goes to sleep in a mysterious cave in the Arizona dessert, he wakes up on the planet Mars. Director Andrew Stanton has enhugened the beast, which really only serves to bring it closer into Attack of the Clones territory. When you go back to the source from which everything else sprang, it can be hard to convince audiences they're not just seeing the same old same old.Īs for the white ape itself - I've seen it in motion at the D23 Convention, and I like it well enough. Robertson is an American artist best known for his work as a comic book illustrator. Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Draculas attempt to relocate from. Which is sort of a problem, isn't it? While the imagery was born in Burrough's work, it was popularized elsewhere, and I wonder if it's possible to look at the picture above and NOT be reminded of Clones, or a dozen other similar scenes. Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. And while John Carter didn't first meet them in an arena (although he did fight in an arena in the first novel), you can draw a line straight from the pages of A Princess of Mars to the arena scene in Attack of the Clones. Standing ten to fifteen feet tall, with an extra pair of arms, and usually hairless except for a white shock of fur on the top of their heads, the white apes are very much an antecedent of many kinds of science fiction beasts. Of the local fauna on Barsoom (ie Mars) in Edgar Rice Burrough's John Carter of Mars series, the great white apes may have been my favorite.
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