John Carter of Mars and ERB

ERB, of course, being Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan.

Many years ago, when I was a teenager starting high school in McLean, Virginia, my cousin Buck introduced me to ERB's science fiction. I started with the John Carter of Mars series and devoured them. Ace paperbacks was reprinting all of ERB's fiction back then and their artists for the covers were Roy Krenkle and Frank Frazetta, both of whom I idolized.

Back then.

But now Walt Disney is making an epic movie of John Carter! It even looks like it might be good, at least from looking at the trailer. Stranger things have happened.

I think it was either Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke who once wrote that Burroughs was one of the very few authors who could successfully evoke the feeling of an alien world.

unfortunately he continued that you had to be younger than 18 to find them readable!