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F


or the better part of my life I had lived only an hour’s journey from one of fantasy-fiction’s most famous figures, whose


stories of interplanetary adventure have thrilled millions; yet I had never met him. Having gone out of my way to shake hands with Wells Merritt, Hugo Gernsback, Frank R. Paul, Austin Hall and many other science fiction celebrities, I decided it was high time I paid my respects to the creator of Tarzan of the Apes, John Carter of Mars and Carson of Venus, who had long since introduced me to the strange lands of Barsoom, Opar and Pellucidar. Perhaps it was because he lived so near me, in the same State


of California, that I had contented myself with the thought that I could visit him at any time. But although their characters may be immortal, famous authors—even fantasy authors—do not live for ever. And Burroughs is getting on in years —73 to be exact, though he looks much younger. For I finally set eyes on him, and spent three hours talking to him about his work, hearing him confirm much of what I had read about him and deny what was mere legend. He lives, as every Burroughs fan knows, in the San Fernando


Valley, in the little community once known as Reseda, until his fame over-shadowed the town and gave it the name of Tarzana. Though we (three other admirers of his went with me) actually had trouble finding him. The gas station attendant couldn’t direct us, and the drugstore owner was no help; he didn’t even have a Burroughs book in his circulating library. None of the natives waiting at the Tarzana bus stop knew just where the great writer lived. I began to wonder: how famous is famous? Then we found we’d got the name of the street wrong


and had overshot our mark by about a mile, so we turned round and back. Finally we came to a large rural-type mail box bearing the Burroughs name; but the palatial residence I expected to find didn’t materialize. The great, sprawling estate of my imagination was a modest six-room house surrounded by a garden and a lush green lawn, with an orchard in the rear. The house has a built-in porch, where the owner now spends much of his time reading. Burroughs himself opened the door to us. We all liked him


at first sight. He has aged, of course, since he posed for the familiar photo on the dust jackets of his books, but none of us would have taken him for his true age. Of medium height and stocky build, he has only a tinge of grey in his sparse hair. With two sons and a daughter, he has four grandchildren, the eldest a Burroughs fan of 16. And he has lived to see


science catch up with and outdistance some of the wild imaginings of his earliest writings. “In some of my early Mars stories,” he recalled for us, “I made the mistake of describing ‘amazing airships’ which travelled at the ‘incredible’ speed of 200 miles an hour.” He led us through the


living room, on the floor of which was a handsome black-and-white zebra skin, out on the porch. He took an easy chair beside which lay the scattered pages of the Sunday paper; nearby on a table was a pile of cartoon books. On one wall hung the ornate robe of an American Indian chief and a Japanese silk painting of a slinking tiger. A pair of Oriental equestrian statuettes stood on twin tables on either side, and by the door leading to the backyard orchard


34


FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND • MAR/APR 2012


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