Essay - "It's Always the Story that Counts"
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"John Carter defending Dejah Thoris in the Zodangan throne room" - Robert Abbett - January
1963, the front cover for the Ballantine Books paperback release of A Princess of Mars. I
found this wonderful novel on a spin rack at a drug store where I stopped in to buy a fountain
coke after school. I not only was willing to suspend belief, I almost raced home to do it.
Luckily it was a Friday night and I could stay up late, because putting it down would have been
impossible. I finished that night. My brother Dan read it the next day. While he was reading it
I went back to the drug store and asked if they could get me The Gods of Mars. The druggist
took the time to explain what a magazine/paperback distribution house was, and that yes, if
they had it in stock, he could get it for me. It took about a week. My druggist and the
distributor came through. I'll always be grateful to both of them.
1963, the front cover for the Ballantine Books paperback release of A Princess of Mars. I
found this wonderful novel on a spin rack at a drug store where I stopped in to buy a fountain
coke after school. I not only was willing to suspend belief, I almost raced home to do it.
Luckily it was a Friday night and I could stay up late, because putting it down would have been
impossible. I finished that night. My brother Dan read it the next day. While he was reading it
I went back to the drug store and asked if they could get me The Gods of Mars. The druggist
took the time to explain what a magazine/paperback distribution house was, and that yes, if
they had it in stock, he could get it for me. It took about a week. My druggist and the
distributor came through. I'll always be grateful to both of them.
It’s Always the Story that Counts
An essay by Charlie Madison
An earlier version of this essay first appeared in erbzine.com,
Volume 3640
No one of the modern age seriously believes, as most people,
including Edgar Rice Burroughs, once did, that Venus is a swampy sauna,
defined by its rain forests and vast wetlands. Today, we know that if
there is a real analog to biblical Hell, Venus is probably it—800°F, air
pressures 92 times Earth normal, and a runaway greenhouse effect.
However, when you read a Burroughs Venus-series adventure, none
of that matters, because Burroughs knew what all good authors know—
the story is everything. If the story is well done the reader will enter a
state of belief-suspension that for a while allows him or her to put aside
known fact to accept the fictional “reality” described.
This phenomenon was first described by Samuel Taylor Coleridge who
wrote of a “willing suspension of disbelief” in his 1817 book of essays,
Biographia iteraria or biographical sketches of my literary life and opinions.
Coleridge was writing about the romantic and supernatural elements in
his work Lyrical Ballads. Essentially, he wrote that the poet/writer
depends on a reader’s internal desire to escape from an everyday world
that lacked freshness and originality. According to Coleridge this desire
pushes the reader to drop his critical faculties for a short period,
allowing the reader to transfer from his skeptical “inward nature a human
interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows
of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment.”
This willing suspension of disbelief isn’t free to the writer. If the
fiction isn’t well designed to be consistent, from beginning to end, within
a set of clearly defined rules established by the writer for the “universe”
described, then every author of fiction knows that any reader will
disagree with Coleridge. The setting or genre of the fiction doesn’t
matter if an author breaks the consistency rule, then the reader’s
willingness to disbelieve checks out. For example, if Gatsby had been a
hillbilly con man clad in denim overalls, then Fitzgerald’s The Great
Gatsby would never have become the Jazz-Age classic that it is. Hillbilly-
Gatsby simply would not have been consistent with a novel set among
the idol rich of Long Island in 1922.
In another example, When "John Carter and the Giant of Mars" was
published by Amazing stories in January 1941, few readers suspended
disbelief for this new Burroughs Mars story, because so much in Giant
was inconsistent with the previous stories in the Barsoomian universe
devised by Burroughs in 1912 and consistently built upon in all eight of
the preceding novels. Parachute Corps of air-assault soldiers; atom
guns instead of radium pistols and rifles; three-legged rats where before
all the Barsoomian rats had had six, giant rats suddenly more intelligent
and ruled by a king-rat, rat dancing rituals; white apes mounted on flying
reptiles and dropping bombs . . . all this and more where casually
dropped into Burroughs’ Martian mythos that heretofore had included
none of these elements. Any one of which would have broken the
willing suspension of disbelief in any reader familiar with Burroughs’
earlier Martian stories. And it did. According to Henry Hardy Heins,
Richard Lupoff and many others, the Amazing reader‘s letter columns lit
up with complaints about the latest Martian yarn, and anyone reading the
story today knows, it’s just wrong and for good reason—the Barsoom
presented in Giant isn‘t consistent with that of any preceding novel in
the Martian series. (NOTE: Readers in 1941 could not have known what
the problem was. However, ERB fans and scholars have known since
1963 that Giant was actually written by Burroughs’ son John Coleman
Burroughs for a childrens’ story published as a Better Little Book in 1940.)
In 1912, when Burroughs wrote A Princess of Mars, the
Schiaparelli/Lowell theories of Martian life ruled scientific and popular
ideas about the red planet. Therefore, setting an adventure story there
wasn't all that far-fetched. The background of Mars presented in this
novel, as a desert planet crisscrossed by giant canals built by an ancient
civilization to bring water from the polar ice caps, is a common scenario
in science fiction novels of the early 20th century, and was actually put
forward as a plausible theory by some astronomers around the turn of
the century. These theories stem from early telescope observations of
Mars by 19th century astronomers who, beginning with Italian Giovanni
Schiaparelli in 1877, believed they saw straight lines on the planet.
Schiaparelli called them canali (Italian for natural grooves or channels); a
term popularly mistranslated into English as "canals," which if the
translation had been correct would indicate that they were of intelligent
origin. The problem, of course, is that many did take it that way.
American astronomer Percival Lowell was particularly obsessed with this
mistaken idea of Martian intelligence, publishing his extrapolations in
three books: Mars (1895), Mars and Its Canals (1906), and Mars As the
Abode of Life (1908). With these writings, Lowell more than anyone else
popularized the long-held belief that these markings showed that Mars
sustained intelligent life forms.
In 1912, setting an adventure novel on Lowell’s Mars must have
seemed very scientific. However, by the time Burroughs wrote later
Martian novels, theoretical science had discarded any notions of ancient
Martian civilizations. Burroughs may have been aware that Lowell’s
theories were no longer accepted, but he probably didn't care, because
his writing showed no sign of it. To our benefit, he went right on writing
novels set in the universe established in A Princess of Mars. And readers
to this day will be happy to affirm that they wouldn’t have it any other way,
because in the Martian series every storytelling element of character,
setting, and plot work in harness in some of the best loved works in
science fiction publishing.
When setting, plot, and character work together in a great story, to
the reader, “fact” just doesn’t matter. No less a writer than Robert
Heinlein depended on the reader‘s “willing suspension of disbelief.”
When writing his classic Red Planet, Heinlein knew full well that Mars was
not the place described by astronomers Schiaparelli and Lowell with their
defunct notions of Martian Canals. By 1915, most astronomers had
rejected Lowell's theories. When Heinlein wrote Red Planet in 1949,
fewer still, if any, took these ideas seriously. However, Heinlein set his
novel in an environment that he knew to be fantasy, because it was
appropriate to his themes. The incredibly erudite Heinlein knew the
science of his day, but knew also that reality wouldn’t serve his tale of
survival and interspecies cooperation nearly as well as the
Schiaparelli/Lowell fantasy in which this very popular novel is set. Since
Scribner’s first published Red Planet in 1949, millions of readers know he
was right.
Coleridge, Burroughs and Heinlein knew, as did and do so many other
countless readers and writers, that it’s the story that has always mattered
most. Burroughs' stories are most often set in impossible worlds—lost
cities scattered around the globe, the Mars of princesses and canals, a
swampy Venus. Readers know these things are impossible, Yet
worldwide they have made Burroughs one of the best-selling and most
beloved authors in history. They don’t care that Venus isn’t steamy
jungles, or the real Africa isn’t the place about which they read in the
Tarzan stories, or that Barsoom could never have existed. To them,
Carson Napier and Duare are still seeking a home on a wet, lush Amtor;
Tarzan is alive and living on his estate somewhere on the dark continent;
and John Carter is still fighting for honor, friendship, and the love of an
incomparable woman in a Mars real only because we as readers are
willing to put to put aside our logical faculties and, for the duration of the
story, “suspend disbelief.”
Charles A. Madison
June, 2012
Revised, October, 2012
An essay by Charlie Madison
An earlier version of this essay first appeared in erbzine.com,
Volume 3640
No one of the modern age seriously believes, as most people,
including Edgar Rice Burroughs, once did, that Venus is a swampy sauna,
defined by its rain forests and vast wetlands. Today, we know that if
there is a real analog to biblical Hell, Venus is probably it—800°F, air
pressures 92 times Earth normal, and a runaway greenhouse effect.
However, when you read a Burroughs Venus-series adventure, none
of that matters, because Burroughs knew what all good authors know—
the story is everything. If the story is well done the reader will enter a
state of belief-suspension that for a while allows him or her to put aside
known fact to accept the fictional “reality” described.
This phenomenon was first described by Samuel Taylor Coleridge who
wrote of a “willing suspension of disbelief” in his 1817 book of essays,
Biographia iteraria or biographical sketches of my literary life and opinions.
Coleridge was writing about the romantic and supernatural elements in
his work Lyrical Ballads. Essentially, he wrote that the poet/writer
depends on a reader’s internal desire to escape from an everyday world
that lacked freshness and originality. According to Coleridge this desire
pushes the reader to drop his critical faculties for a short period,
allowing the reader to transfer from his skeptical “inward nature a human
interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows
of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment.”
This willing suspension of disbelief isn’t free to the writer. If the
fiction isn’t well designed to be consistent, from beginning to end, within
a set of clearly defined rules established by the writer for the “universe”
described, then every author of fiction knows that any reader will
disagree with Coleridge. The setting or genre of the fiction doesn’t
matter if an author breaks the consistency rule, then the reader’s
willingness to disbelieve checks out. For example, if Gatsby had been a
hillbilly con man clad in denim overalls, then Fitzgerald’s The Great
Gatsby would never have become the Jazz-Age classic that it is. Hillbilly-
Gatsby simply would not have been consistent with a novel set among
the idol rich of Long Island in 1922.
In another example, When "John Carter and the Giant of Mars" was
published by Amazing stories in January 1941, few readers suspended
disbelief for this new Burroughs Mars story, because so much in Giant
was inconsistent with the previous stories in the Barsoomian universe
devised by Burroughs in 1912 and consistently built upon in all eight of
the preceding novels. Parachute Corps of air-assault soldiers; atom
guns instead of radium pistols and rifles; three-legged rats where before
all the Barsoomian rats had had six, giant rats suddenly more intelligent
and ruled by a king-rat, rat dancing rituals; white apes mounted on flying
reptiles and dropping bombs . . . all this and more where casually
dropped into Burroughs’ Martian mythos that heretofore had included
none of these elements. Any one of which would have broken the
willing suspension of disbelief in any reader familiar with Burroughs’
earlier Martian stories. And it did. According to Henry Hardy Heins,
Richard Lupoff and many others, the Amazing reader‘s letter columns lit
up with complaints about the latest Martian yarn, and anyone reading the
story today knows, it’s just wrong and for good reason—the Barsoom
presented in Giant isn‘t consistent with that of any preceding novel in
the Martian series. (NOTE: Readers in 1941 could not have known what
the problem was. However, ERB fans and scholars have known since
1963 that Giant was actually written by Burroughs’ son John Coleman
Burroughs for a childrens’ story published as a Better Little Book in 1940.)
In 1912, when Burroughs wrote A Princess of Mars, the
Schiaparelli/Lowell theories of Martian life ruled scientific and popular
ideas about the red planet. Therefore, setting an adventure story there
wasn't all that far-fetched. The background of Mars presented in this
novel, as a desert planet crisscrossed by giant canals built by an ancient
civilization to bring water from the polar ice caps, is a common scenario
in science fiction novels of the early 20th century, and was actually put
forward as a plausible theory by some astronomers around the turn of
the century. These theories stem from early telescope observations of
Mars by 19th century astronomers who, beginning with Italian Giovanni
Schiaparelli in 1877, believed they saw straight lines on the planet.
Schiaparelli called them canali (Italian for natural grooves or channels); a
term popularly mistranslated into English as "canals," which if the
translation had been correct would indicate that they were of intelligent
origin. The problem, of course, is that many did take it that way.
American astronomer Percival Lowell was particularly obsessed with this
mistaken idea of Martian intelligence, publishing his extrapolations in
three books: Mars (1895), Mars and Its Canals (1906), and Mars As the
Abode of Life (1908). With these writings, Lowell more than anyone else
popularized the long-held belief that these markings showed that Mars
sustained intelligent life forms.
In 1912, setting an adventure novel on Lowell’s Mars must have
seemed very scientific. However, by the time Burroughs wrote later
Martian novels, theoretical science had discarded any notions of ancient
Martian civilizations. Burroughs may have been aware that Lowell’s
theories were no longer accepted, but he probably didn't care, because
his writing showed no sign of it. To our benefit, he went right on writing
novels set in the universe established in A Princess of Mars. And readers
to this day will be happy to affirm that they wouldn’t have it any other way,
because in the Martian series every storytelling element of character,
setting, and plot work in harness in some of the best loved works in
science fiction publishing.
When setting, plot, and character work together in a great story, to
the reader, “fact” just doesn’t matter. No less a writer than Robert
Heinlein depended on the reader‘s “willing suspension of disbelief.”
When writing his classic Red Planet, Heinlein knew full well that Mars was
not the place described by astronomers Schiaparelli and Lowell with their
defunct notions of Martian Canals. By 1915, most astronomers had
rejected Lowell's theories. When Heinlein wrote Red Planet in 1949,
fewer still, if any, took these ideas seriously. However, Heinlein set his
novel in an environment that he knew to be fantasy, because it was
appropriate to his themes. The incredibly erudite Heinlein knew the
science of his day, but knew also that reality wouldn’t serve his tale of
survival and interspecies cooperation nearly as well as the
Schiaparelli/Lowell fantasy in which this very popular novel is set. Since
Scribner’s first published Red Planet in 1949, millions of readers know he
was right.
Coleridge, Burroughs and Heinlein knew, as did and do so many other
countless readers and writers, that it’s the story that has always mattered
most. Burroughs' stories are most often set in impossible worlds—lost
cities scattered around the globe, the Mars of princesses and canals, a
swampy Venus. Readers know these things are impossible, Yet
worldwide they have made Burroughs one of the best-selling and most
beloved authors in history. They don’t care that Venus isn’t steamy
jungles, or the real Africa isn’t the place about which they read in the
Tarzan stories, or that Barsoom could never have existed. To them,
Carson Napier and Duare are still seeking a home on a wet, lush Amtor;
Tarzan is alive and living on his estate somewhere on the dark continent;
and John Carter is still fighting for honor, friendship, and the love of an
incomparable woman in a Mars real only because we as readers are
willing to put to put aside our logical faculties and, for the duration of the
story, “suspend disbelief.”
Charles A. Madison
June, 2012
Revised, October, 2012
The background of Mars presented in this novel,
as a desert planet crisscrossed by giant canals
built by an ancient civilization to bring water from
the polar ice caps, is a common scenario in
science fiction novels of the early 20th century,
and was actually put forward as a plausible
theory by some astronomers around the turn of
the century, notably Percival Lowell mentioned in
the novel. These theories stem from early
telescope observations of Mars by 19th century
astronomers who, beginning with Italian Giovanni
Schiaparelli in 1877, believed they saw straight
lines on the planet. Schiaparelli called them
canali (grooves), which was popularly
mistranslated into English as "canals".
American astonomer Percival Lowell published
his views in three books: Mars (1895), Mars and
Its Canals (1906), and Mars As the Abode of Life
(1908). With these writings, Lowell more than
anyone else popularized the long-held belief that
these markings showed that Mars sustained
intelligent life forms.
By 1915, most astronomers rejected Lowell's
theories. When Heinlein wrote Red Planet in
1949, few, if any, took these ideas seriously.
However, Heinlein set his novel in Lowell's
fantasy, because it served the novel's themes
better than the real Mars.
NOTE: some parts of the above text were adapted
from Wikipedia; others are conjectures of my
own.
as a desert planet crisscrossed by giant canals
built by an ancient civilization to bring water from
the polar ice caps, is a common scenario in
science fiction novels of the early 20th century,
and was actually put forward as a plausible
theory by some astronomers around the turn of
the century, notably Percival Lowell mentioned in
the novel. These theories stem from early
telescope observations of Mars by 19th century
astronomers who, beginning with Italian Giovanni
Schiaparelli in 1877, believed they saw straight
lines on the planet. Schiaparelli called them
canali (grooves), which was popularly
mistranslated into English as "canals".
American astonomer Percival Lowell published
his views in three books: Mars (1895), Mars and
Its Canals (1906), and Mars As the Abode of Life
(1908). With these writings, Lowell more than
anyone else popularized the long-held belief that
these markings showed that Mars sustained
intelligent life forms.
By 1915, most astronomers rejected Lowell's
theories. When Heinlein wrote Red Planet in
1949, few, if any, took these ideas seriously.
However, Heinlein set his novel in Lowell's
fantasy, because it served the novel's themes
better than the real Mars.
NOTE: some parts of the above text were adapted
from Wikipedia; others are conjectures of my
own.
