he intended it to be a serious novel and did a lot of research for it. The effort wasn’t wasted, however, as he drew on the material later for “Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle” (McClurg, ’28). Of his 50-odd books published to date, nearly half of them concern his most famous character; there are ten in the Mars series,* and four whose locale is the primeval planet of Amtor, or Venus.✔ The handwritten manuscripts of the
first stories of Tarzan and John Carter are carefully preserved, he told us. The original “Tarzan” is still his favourite. “I re-read it a few months back. My memory was never much good, so every once in a while I get out one of my own stories and re-read it.” He also autographed for me one of
the rarest of all his works, the novella, “Beyond Thirty,” romance of a barbarian “Grabitten” (Great Britain) of the 22nd Century, full of wild men and beasts. It appeared in the Feb., ’16, issue of Street and Smith’s All-Around (formerly New Story) Magazine, and has never seen book publication. One of my fellow- fans handed him a copy of “Princino de Parso,” produced in England in ’38, and got him to sign his name in Esperanto— Edgaro Rajs Ruroz. He chuckled over it, asked how many Esperantists there were. I gave him the pre-war estimate of 12 million, and he seemed impressed. Then we got to talking of space-travel. “What do you really think of a trip to
Burroughs with Maureen O’Sullivan and Johnny Weissmuller, the best-known Tarzan and Jane pairing in cinema history.
Mars or Venus?” I asked. He considered. “Well, I don’t think it
will come in our lifetime, though some of the scientists seem to think so. I’d be interested in knowing what they found there, but I don’t think I’d care to go with them myself.” One of us, fresh from reading “The
Moon Maid,” pointed out that in ’26 he had practically predicted radar as coming in ’40, in the shape of “an instrument which accurately indicated
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FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND • MAR/APR 2012
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