Although Edgar Rice Burrough's style can get predictable at times, he can come up with some literary gems such as the first few Tarzan novels and (if he had just foregone the "sequals") "the Land that Time Forgot". "Tanar of Pellucidar", along with "Escape on Venus" stand out for their simple, straightforward observations (often humerous) of human nature as expressed through the practices of various societies. Even if you aren't a Burroughs fan, these two titles I recommend for any lover of good fiction.

If you're looking for good 1930's era pulp fiction, you've come to the right place. Fans of ERB's Mars, Venus, Pellucidar, or Tarzan books will enjoy this novel. True, the plot is somewhat predicatable, and the chapters read like monthly installments (like they were), but its great fun to read. You also have to ignore some of the prejudices of the era, particularly the roles of women and men, but as long as you know that going in, you'll enjoy a good story.

The Martian Tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs have been an insperation to countless of highly imaginitive people. This guide gives you a more detailed view into the complex world and society E.R.B. created. It gives you understanding of Barsoomian words, customs, history, landscape, fauna and flora, transportation, army and civil ranks and thoughts. If you are an E.R.B. fan this is the guide to his Martian Tales.

Although best known for his Tarzan adventures, the Martian books were perhaps Edgar Rice Burroughs best series. And this was the best of the series. The first book, A Princess of Mars, introduced the hero, John Carter. This book far surpassed it in pacing and plot. Although most suitable for boys ages 12-15, it can be enjoyed by all.

Minidoka? What kind of a word is that, you say? Then you stop and think, "Oh, Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan and John Carter. It's a made up word!" WRONG. Minidoka is a small town (or was, I don't know if it is still there) in Idaho where Mr. Burroughs worked in one of his many failed careers as a gold miner (1901 to 1904) with his brother at the Yale Dredging Company. It didn't pan out, pardon the pun, and the world is much more richer for the failed attempt.

Burroughs has never been accused of being a literary genius, although his stories have reached every corner of the world, his books are published in over sixty different languages (not counting dialects), his tales have been the basis for dozens of films, TV series, animations and comics. What Mr. Burroughs was gifted with was the art of storytelling and that trait has made him a legend.

Mindoka, 937th Earl of One Mile Series M is a story that sprung from that ability. No one knows for certain when this wonderful tale was created, perhaps it was one of the series of bedtime stories Burroughs told his children each night. All of them created on the spot as he paced the hall of their small home and spoke in a loud voice so that all in the house could hear. What ever occurred, Burroughs liked this particular story so much that he committed it to paper. Of a sorts, at least. He used the backs of old letterheads from the mining company, photo bills from Pocatello and letterheads of the American Genealogical Society to compose this story. None of the hand written manuscript is dated, nor was it discovered until 1955, five years after his death, in his personal belongings. The paper the story was written on gives proof that this is Burroughs first ever written work, never before seen by another beside himself until after he had died and never published until today. This makes that story almost a century old!

The tale is very strange, not at all like his works that were published in his lifetime. This is a children's story, it is written with the intention of being read aloud to children and has all the classic elements of fairy tales. Horrible monsters, magic spells, beautiful damsels to rescue and battles to be fought, all of these are in there along with a never before seen look at the man's sense of humor.

The story itself is quite captivating, even if it is a bit difficult to read for an adult. I dare say that I will be hard pressed to pronounce some of the words that Burroughs has created for this story, but many of the characters and creatures are quite endearing. I really liked the hoobody and hookidooki. The hoobody reminded me of one of the mythical creatures of my people, the Apache, (perhaps that's where he got the idea) and the hookidooki was just plain fun to read about even if it was a villain.

The setting for the story is Idaho of a million or more years in the past, but with European type kingdoms all based as the origin of Irish names. Very interesting concept and for the life of me I can't determine why he took that tact in the story. But it matters not, as the tale is fantastic.

Many aspects of his published works can be seen in this story. The way his heroes act and react is based on this tale. Many animals and places for completely unrelated stories are mentioned here as something else. It is almost as if he created an entire universe from the seeds that he planted for himself in this story to his children.

There is something else that is very special about this book. The cover art is a painting by J. Allen St. John that has never been published before. Who is St. John, you ask? This is the man that made every single cover painting for Burroughs books starting in 1915 with The Son of Tarzan and ending in 1942 with The Tiger Girl (I have copies of all of these). The painting was made over 50 years ago when an art director told St. John that it was impossible for an artist to do an illustration using all known mediums that were known at the time. St. John went to his loft and created a drawing he titled Minidoka by those exact means just to prove the man wrong. This cover is the first printing of that painting.

The book is a mere 63 pages long with about 15 of those pages being lavishly drawn full page illustrations. Each page also has drawings around the edges that have to do with what the story is talking about at the time.

The book is published by Dark Horse Comics and is available now at all book stores. You will more than likely have to special order it, because it is a limited edition print. The price is ... well worth it. I can hardly wait until it is mass produced so that I can get a reading copy to give my children when they are old enough. Get one of these first prints while they are still out there. You will never regret it.

Very entertaining storyline. Gives the reader another chance to imagine an adventure on one of our sister planets. After reading the horrible end to the Martian series, anything would be good. But this storyline is good enough to stand alone.

This is the fictional autobiography of Britannicus Caligulae Servus, a rare treasure pulled out of the Burroughs vault. Britannicus, the slave of the mad Roman emperor Caligula, goes through many exiting adventures as he grows more and more weary of his overlords. It is an example one of Burroughs' only bittersweet endings, but it is a remarkable tradegy by the Master of Adventure which no ERB reader should miss. It's too bad it's currently out of print.

I'm anxious to see this new animated '90s Tarzan on the big screen. You gotta have this book if you own the soundtrack. I'm immediately buying it when it comes out.

This is a great way for a novice Tarzan fan to actually read the original story written by Burroughs. Even though the collection is not a complete set (i.e., does not include all of the Tarzan books), it definitely gives the reader the complete view of Tarzan's world as Burroughs created it (which is nothing like the Disney version of it). I truly enjoyed these books as much as any of the others that Burroughs produced.

There are books that everyone 'knows' but hardly anybody reads any more. Reading these classics can be quite illuminating; they are not what you think. For example, do you really know how Dracula was killed? Or why The Virginian said "Smile when you call me that"? Read the originals; you'll be surprised.

"Tarzan of the Apes", the first of 23 Tarzan adventures by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is full of surprises. The Tarzan of this book is not the Johnny Weissmuller or Ron Ely that you might know. He is not raised by gorillas (as I had thought) but by mythical 'anthropoids', a sort of missing link between man and gorilla, with rudimentary speech and a social structure that includes ritual and dance. This is a science fiction tale, a sort of "Lost World" meets "Jungle Book". Tarzan befriends and converses with (and kills and eats) a variety of beasts.

There are aspects of the story that modern readers will find as hard to swallow as some of Tarzan's raw meat dinners. For example, this jungle is populated with lions, hyenas and elephants, creatures that in reality never go near rain forests. We are also asked to believe that Tarzan teaches himself to read and write from books that he finds.

Many modern readers will also find the racialism difficult to take. He boasts of being "Tarzan, killer of beasts and many black men". Coming on a village deep in the jungle, he immediately readies his bow and poisoned arrows. When his European companion admonishes him that it is wrong to kill humans, the hero protests "But these are black men". (Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't believe that scene was included in the Disney version). This is a 1914 American novel, with all the prejudices intact.

It's quite well written; Burroughs is very readable. The plotting is a strange mixture of ingenuity and clumsiness. There is a very clever device that involves Jane thinking there are two ape-men, one an admirer, the other her rescuer. But the plot also requires three separate mutinies, two of which just happen to involve cousins, to take place off the same remote African beach. This is beyond coincidence.

So is this genre classic still worth reading? I think so, for the same reason "Dracula" and "The Virginian" are still worth reading; this is the book that started it all.

Listed in Cawthorn's and Moorcock's "Fantasy: The 100 Best Books".

The Weissmuller movies didn't get him right. The TV series haven't got him right. And the Disney movie CERTAINLY won't get him right. Burrough's original narration of the story of Tarzan is a mix of bloodthirsty savagery and unrestrained suspension of disbelief that few would attempt to capture these days.

The Tarzan series is unique among his author's body of work. Where the Barsoom, Pellucidar and Caspak series concern modern men travelling to exotic lands and falling in love with native women, this time around it is a modern woman who comes to the wilderness and steals the heart of the savage protagonist, who must now step up to her civilized ways.

The tale is laced with bloody scenes of man-against-man and man-against-beast rampage. The great apes among which Tarzan grows are a cannibal species, who eat the prisioners of raids against other simian clans. The king ape kills Tarzan's father in a moment where he is caught off guard, mourning the recent death of his wife. When Tarzan first encounters men (an African tribe), he hunts and kills one of them to steal his arrows (killing being the way of the jungle, since Tarzan knows nothing of human behavior). Also, these men turn out to be cannibals too. And when the white men finally arrive, they raid their village and kill almost every one in an attempt to rescue a captured comrade.

After growing wild among beasts, Tarzan (whose name menas White Skin) realizes that he is different from his ape family. And through a series of inventions of his own (like making a rope) and fortunate coincides (like the use of a found hunting knife), he steps up the evolutionary ladder by himself. The moment he learns to read and write from illustrated primers and a dictionary is among the most improbable in the whole book. But if we have kept up with it until now, allowing ourselves to accept that a human child can be raised by apes, then his ascension to superiority isn't that hard to embrace.

Tarzan turns out to be the primeveal lovesick nerd. After the first time he sees Jane Porter (the first white woman he ever casts his eyes on), his heart is all for her. He writes her a love letter, which smacks of the most pityful puppy love ("I want you. I am yours. You are mine... When you see this you will know that it is for you and that Tarzan of the Apes loves you"). Yet our hero is true and noble, and he holds the upper hand in his homeland. The girl can't do anything but be carried away by her primeveal pretender.

I recommend you get this edition I'm reviewing, the one by Penguin. Besides the introduction which gives a valuable background to the place of Tarzan among popular literature and some details on the life of Edgar Rice Burroughs, it contains a series of notes that signal where he took some liberties with his story's setting (like placing American plants in the African jungle).

The English is a little bit archaic, the characterization tends to cartoon and stereotype, but the story is powerful and nothing captures the beauty of the original like the original itself. Read Tarzan of the Apes, and meet again for the first time an archetypical hero of timeless charm.

Edgar Rice Burroughs will never be nominated for world's great writer. But to quote Stephen King, "it's all about story dammit, story. Edgar Rice Burroughs knew this better than anyone." In Tarzan of the Apes you will discover the true meaning of "suspension of disbelief." You will not care about the geographical liberties Burroughs takes with Africa. The fact that Tarzan's jungle has lions and elephants which live in the more arid regions of Africa. All you will care about is "travelling along the middle terrace" of Tarzan's world and racing along to his next adventure. You will cheer for the heroes and utterly loathe the villains. Also do not expect the grunting, snorting, and nearly mute Tarzan of film. In all 24 Tarzan books he never said, "me Tarzan, you Jane." you will find in Burroughs' Tarzan a symbol of every ones desire to go primitive. If you are not a fan of highly imaginative fiction avoid this book at all costs. But if you do love a good STORY by all means pick up this book.