Each of the stories could stand on its own, and then they could be strung together into a book for hardcover publication.īurroughs planned four novellas each for the three settings, and wrote them in rotation for variety. Readers wanted their stories complete in each issue, and the publishers couldn’t afford to argue.īurroughs was a savvy businessman, one the first great author-businessmen, and he chose to write a series of connected novellas in the three settings. Serials work well for a weekly magazine for a monthly, not so much. The magazine companies started cutting back their titles and publishing schedules this led to reducing the number of serials they ran. Comic books exploded at the end of the 1930s and competed for the same young male audience that read the pulps. It wasn’t just that Burroughs’s writing was in a slump - although it was - that was causing problems, but also the economic realities that were starting to kill the pulp magazines. Something wasn’t going right, and the failure to sell Land of Terror must have worried ERB. Carson of Venus has some positives, but the Venus novels are already much lower on the quality scale of Burroughs’s work. The Pellucidar novels went into a decline with 1937’s Back to the Stone Age and hit bottom with Land of Terror, which Burroughs failed to sell to any magazine when he wrote it in 1938 and waited to publish it on his own in 1944. The previous Barsoom novel, Synthetic Men of Mars (1939), is one of the few stains on that otherwise superlative series. Today’s Installment: Escape on Venus (1942) The BackstoryĪt the start of the 1940s, Edgar Rice Burroughs decided to try an experiment with three of his properties, all of which had sailed into creative doldrums: Mars/Barsoom, Pellucidar, and Venus/Amtor. Previous Installments: Pirates of Venus (1932), Lost on Venus (1933), Carson of Venus (1938). Carson’s story covers three novels, a volume of connected novellas, and an orphaned novella. Carson finds time during his adventuring to fall for Duare, forbidden daughter of a Vepajan king. The planet is caught in a battle between the country of Vepaja and the tyrannical Thorists. There he discovers a lush jungle planet of bizarre creatures and humanoids who have uncovered the secret of longevity. Carson Napier, former stuntman and amateur rocketeer, who tries to get to Mars and ends up on Venus, a.k.a. Oh, let’s just leap into this and get it over with. But, I must admit, sometimes he wrote … this kind of thing….

His novels have had an enormous influence on me as a writer and as a pulp fan.

Escape on venus edgar rice burroughs