Pronounced like the “wilder” in wilderness.
…
I spent way way way too long in GIMP photoshoping (photogimping?) this thing for just a throw away “Alt-#PulpRevolution FanFic” Gab.
So I’ll just enshrine it here for posterity.
Enjoy….or not
Opened a Box
This is heart wenching.
Looked for a book tonight “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins.
Reason being Cernovich has a video about memes which refers to a chapter of the book. Ironically it is Chapter 11.
And man I just knew I didn’t sell that book.
I guess I looked harder this time then the other times.
So I opened a box and found everything but one I had been searching for since entering the Appendix N pulp revolution discussion.
Check it:
Yeah none are pulp or appendix N I know. But at least in my mind, all had a part to play in the discussion I wanted to put out.
Sure it may have been crap. Yet it would have been something and at least even if only marginally better then the “I don’t like Rawles character arcs and therefor it ain’t superversive” or “Is Steven King’s ‘The IT’ pulp?” discussions. Seriously WTF?!
Ask if Action Comics #1 or if Hodgson are Pulp. Now that would be interesting.
Anyway more or less I have written, been written and not-written myself out of pulp revolution.
So discovering these way after past discussions in which they might have relevant is like ash in my mouth. Can hardly remember honestly. What was that point about the Left Hand of Darkness I had in regards to Pulp Revolution? No idea. Can’t go back. That PK Dick book probably had nothing of value I was looking for. I can’t even remember reading it!
Funny enough I have an index card book mark in it on which I wrote:
“Know that all gods, with lordship of all that transpires in the world, are gods of death”
Is that a quote? Did I write that? No idea. Further no idea what i was thinking about in either case. Back of the card I had written Lord of the Rings quotes. Like “a corpse-light, a light that illuminated nothing”, “The sword broke sparkling into many shards” and “fled wailing back to hide in holes and dark lightness places far from hope”
Maybe it is a Tolkien quote. Or I wrote it thinking about Tolkien’s reprieve that his book is about death. Hey people do read this blog and I suspect many if not most are middle earth nerds. What the heck was Tolkien talking about that his book is about death?
The big book at the bottom has friggen everything in it. Beowolf, Chaucer, Shakespeare you name it. I wanted it for Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. There was some discussion of about the origins of SFF awhile back. Side note here. Swear to god the lady who played the oracle in the matrix looked the spitting image of the professor of the class I got that book for.
That Bayley book “Knights of the Limits” would be classified as New Wave I think. I just remembered how weird those stories were….but don’t actually remember any of the stories!!! I think one is about bees. LULZ.
This was before Appendix N became Pulp revolution. I guess I wanted a reread and see if it was N stuff. N stuff has a Pulp quality. Namely the stories are not finalities like epics or Campbellian stuff are and in their wake after the story is told leave behind whole universes to explore. You know. Places were you set an RPG in.
Hemingway cuz SJWs. Poe and “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” for obvious reasons. Dostoevsky cuz Underground Man which leads to both anti-heroes and pink slime. “I am a sick man…I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased.” romanticized every crap SF short story writer of the past 20 years about himself.
Harlen is just there. Tempting me to rip and burn.
That is it…
Oh yeah the three Greek tragedies. I don’t know. I guess I wanted to spit in Nietzsche’s eye and his analysis about how erect he gets from tragedy.
Not even kidding by the way:
“In this state one enriches everything out of one’s own fullness: whatever one sees, whatever wills is seen swelled, taut, strong, overloaded with strength. A man in this state transforms things until they mirror his power—until they are reflections of his perfection. This having to transform into perfection is—art.”
There is one book missing. That would be “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay”
Michael Chabon really does a job on heroes in that one. Hell I want to say he takes it right out of Nietzsche’s boner inducing “tragedy is art” spiel. I wanted to rip and burn that as well. But yeah i am more then positive I did sell that one.
And that That is it.
Black Pigeon Speaks is Wrong.
Not a whole lot but there is one thing.
In his video he repeats the claim made by a psychologist made during a politically charged speech about sex.
According to genetic research, 80% of women reproduce, but only 40% of men reproduce.
In the past…
Cuz girls like harems….
The article as well as the speech as well as BPS claim this comes from recent genetic research.
What research? Neither the speech the article on the speech not BPS tells us.
Well if you are researching sex and rates of reproduction and using genetics the only way to do that is to look at the sex determining X and Y chromosomes.
Anyway I am pretty sure the actual genetic research does not make this 80% 40% claim and makes something more along the lines of: the diversity of the X chromosome is greater then the Y chromosome and over time (generations) the diversity of the X chromosome persists better then the Y chromosome.
Non-geneticists then took that info and manipulated it to assign those sex genes to human beings and their sex and their numbers then derive at what ratio reproduced and what ratio didn’t.
Two problems with that.
The first and lesser problem is that the X chromosome is a bigger chromosome then the Y chromosome. 153 million base pairs vs 58 million base pairs. As such the X chromosome is more susceptible to mutation then the Y chromosome. 153 million chances for mutation over a time period vs only 58 million chances for mutation over that same time period. More mutations equals more diversity. Over time there will be more kinds of X chromosomes then there are kinds of Y chromosomes in a given population.
The second and greater problem is that in any given population made up of 50% women and 50% men there are three times as many X chromosomes then there are Y chromosomes. Women have two X chromosomes while men have one Y and one X. This also amplifies the problem stated in the the first problem if there are more X chromosomes to be mutated there will be more mutated X chromosomes. If X chromosomes have more mutations then the genome of a population’s X chromosomes will be more diverse then the genome of a population’s Y chromosomes.
Anyway because of the way sex is determined in sexual reproduction the Y chromosome with always be under greater pressure to survive then the X chromosome and therefor more likely to be extinguished.
The easiest example would be a father who sires only daughters. Although his genes are reproduced his Y chromosome is domed and extinct. The only way for his Y chromosome to be passed on is to have sons. This distortion is compounded by the fact that in any genetic study that is looking at the success of sex genes to be passed on will count any X chromosome contributed by a man to his off spring as a success for the X chromosome despite it being contributed by a man. All that genetic diversity that he injected into his daughters when they are eggs would be counted as diversity in the X chromosome column despite it being a man who successfully reproduced.
A third problem that I just thought of.
Genes often cross and recombine. This is like a mutation but isn’t. When you have two pairs of chromosomes unwinding and doing bat shit crazy stuff in a newly fertilized cell next to each other they sometimes cross streams as it were and genes of those two chromosomes are traded. But the sex genes have trouble if this happens. The X chromosome and the Y chromosome are different sizes have different genes and they do different stuff. In a female fertilized egg this isn’t an issue. The man’s contributed X chromosome exchange genes with the woman’s contributed X chromosome and 9 months later a healthy baby girl is born. For boys not so much. Genes cannot be exchanged like for like and if it occurs will kill the fertilized egg or screw up the Y chromosome so bad it won’t be expressed (You get a sterile genetic male with a woman’s phenotypical characteristics) or screw up the Y chromosome so that only the X chromosome is ever viable for sexual reproduction of that baby boy when he reaches adulthood.
Fundamentally the only way to determine if a man reproduced is to check for a Y chromosome. Because of the nature of the chromosomes that determine sex there will always be a bias against the diversity of the Y chromosome. Harem or no harem.
Note: Don’t cry for the Y chromosome too much. Yeah it is the chromosome that makes a person a man. I like it sure but for the most part it is just a switch puller. It tells the rest of a person’s genes to either shut off or turn on. It is the other genes you have which determine what kind of man you will be. The Y tells the fair coloring, fidgety vanity, and ripe boob genes to turn off and also tells the dark beard, sperg aggression and itchy balls genes to turn on. Both sexes have the itchy balls and ripe boob genes. The presence or absence of the Y chromosome determines which ones are turned off or on.
Derpy Derp…lulz….wait….wut?
Hey look at that; Robert E Howard gave his Black Pirates of Barsoom wings.
“But they spoke of strange unhuman beings or survivals. They told me of the Yagas, a terrible race of winged black men. dwelling far to the south, within sight of the Girdle, in the grim city of Yugga, on the rock Yuthla, by the river Yogh, in the land of Yagg, where living man had never set foot. The Yagas, the Guras said, were not true men, but devils in a human form”
Hmm that looks like a Lovecraft thing. Howard put a Cthulhu heavy in his Barsoom Pastiche! I know I will look up some Lovecraft lingo to drop in an ever so clever gab post.
“The thing that had emerged from the dome was bigger then an elephant, and in shape something like a giantic slug, except that it had a fringe of tentacles all about its body. And from these writhing tentacles crackled sparks and flashes of blue flame.”
Howard’s Yagas are Lovecraft’s Nightgaunts. Lulz.
“Nightgaunts have a vaguely human shape, but are thin, black, and faceless. Their skin is slick and rubbery. They sport a pair of inward-facing horns on their heads, a long barbed tail, and prehensile paws which are used to “tickle” their victims into submission. They can fly using a set of membranous wings. They make no sound.”
wut?
“The Statement of Randolph Carter”
“Randolph Carter”
“Carter“
What?
“I remember how I shuddered at his facial expression on the night before the awful happening, when he talked so incessantly of his theory, why certain corpses never decay, but rest firm and fat in their tombs for a thousand years.”
WHAT?!?
“The story begins by describing how the modern world has been stripped of imagination and belief in magic. The protagonist is an unnamed man who lives in a dull and ugly city. Every night for many years the man gazes from his window upon the stars, until he comes over time to observe secret vistas unsuspected by normal humanity. One night the gulf between his world and the stars is bridged, and his mind ascends from his body out unto the boundless cosmos.”
WHAT THE F?!?!
“While the influence of the fantasies of Lord Dunsany on Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle is often mentioned, Robert M. Price argues that a more direct model for The Dream-Quest is provided by the six Mars (“Barsoom”) novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs that had been published by 1927.”
……
Note: Both “Almuric” and “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” were published after their respective authors were dead….
Howard and Lovecraft were Barsoom fan-fic penpals.
The False Consciousness Block
“Royal Marine” Jonathan McCalmont of Interzone fame has blocked me from commenting on his blog Ruthless Culture.
I still have not lost my charm with post new wave fandom.
You can see the two comments I got in here. They are fairly tame IMHO.
My third and final comment dealt I think with a characteristic of the dear red Scot that others have not mentioned. So I post it here for posterity.
My comment is in reply to this.
“The single greatest fear of the American Republican party is that the white working class will someday realise that they have more in common with working class black people than with white millionaires. The greatest fear of the puppies is that white dude SF readers will one day realise that female black and minority ethnic writers have a greater understanding of what they’re going through than a tax exile with a trust fund.”
This is Marxist False Consciousness.
You even have the ol’ skool class basis of it mixed in with the new feminism and race variants.
You hit em all fam!
Good job….I guess.
“A lot of what passes for drives towards inclusivity and diversity in genre spaces is really nothing more than the market correcting itself.”
So your whole market analysis here is based on a mini-awakening from the false consciousness of the working classes (strangely only minority and women working classes) that supposedly occurred back in the 80s and 90s will somehow grow large into full on revolt by the entire white working class in their reading habits of SFF……
Holy fuck dude!
Why on earth would an awakening of the proletariat that was supposed to happen back in (((The Great War))) suddenly manifest today in white working class SFF reading habits!?!?!
Note: White Millennials are the most conservative generation the US has seen in modern history and white Gen Z polls even more conservative then them. Why they will SOON be consuming stories about POC trannys discussing the artisinal crafted food condiment singularity with their uplifted cats at the coffee shop rather than reading stories about Cyborg Kull with chaste NEET Jane in nanoweave bronze underwear over his shoulder lasering down hordes of uplifted tranny cats while they escape a Spengler’s Winter Apocalypse on 10,000 AD Venus is a question you left unanswered.
Archive of “royal marine” tweet: http://archive.is/4lHhE
Tarzan in Strange Beds
Warning I’m going to cuss….
A lot.
God damn it, I fucking knew it!
That son of bitch Heinlein took the claim of Edgar Rice Burroughs in Tarzan that love romance fidelity monogamy and marriage are innate virtues and deconstructed it then shat it out in a Cultural Marxist porn filled stream of diarrhea.
Fuck you Heinlein. May your corpse spin you piece of shit.
Oh yeah and you are liar as well:
Kipling my ass. Your Martian Tarzan was aimed at Burroughs and now I know it for a fact you dead old sterile impotent fuck!
Stranger in a Strange Bed
Hesitated for a bit. Then I thought about the impossibility of Heinlein not thinking about “A Princess of Mars” more then a few times when he wrote it.
Plus a few minutes ago I just read this:
“Isaac Asimov believed that Heinlein made a swing to the right politically at the same time he married Ginny.”
But hey the guy did invent the water bed. A device guaranteed to ruin sex, loving or unloving, for anyone. His frustration would be expected even at his age and health.
So Long and Thanks for all the Scalps
I guess that is that then:
Between calling Clinton’s campaign team Pedos, accusing Fox (former Mexican president not the news channel) of aiding rape coyotes, or calling some poor Misery with Cats woman a slut, I can’t tell you exactly which tweet did it. Though I suspect it was the slut one as the actual original tweet with the word slut in it is now gone.
I can’t say the ride wasn’t fun cuz it was.
Anyway I have a gab account and maybe just maybe little Jeffroed me should pull a Jeffro and pound out a couple thousand words a week here. I can’t say those words will be worth reading but one only improves by doing.
Better then watching TV let me tell ya.
Nine Princes In Amber And X2 Castle of Amber
I found something.
Over at Puppy of the Month Club they are reviewing Roger Zelazny’s Nine Princes In Amber. Jon M and The Frisky Pagan have been writing about how the novel and other Amber Chronicles relate to Appendix N and its inspiration to D&D and other RPGs. Specifically The Frisky Pagan points out similarities with D&D’s Planescape Campaign and the Amber Chronicles and Jon M discusses the Amber RPG. (Good stuff click on their links)
In the comments of The Frisky Pagan’s article Cirsova points out “Amber was hugely influential on the illusionist class.“. Another older observation made by Alex in a seemingly unrelated article at Jeffro’s Space Gaming Blog points out a Zelazny creation that found its way into the monster manual “It wasn’t like he was going on about Monster Manual Rakshasa in a review of Zelazny’s Lord of Light.”
….
OK real quick because I am sick of looking at this and just want the info out! out! out!
Tom Moldvay took a whole bunch of inspiration from Nine Princes In Amber for his 1981 adventure X1 Castle of Amber.
First I am not the first to “discover” this but I did discover it independently for what it’s worth.
Second it is really weird that so much is taken from Nine Princes In Amber but there is no credit given even though there is credit given for Clark Ashton Smith.
And
Now on with what was taken. As mentioned in the InfoGalactic page there is the Grey Mist which surrounds Castle Amber and is used to force the players into the castle. Also there is the Amber family which very much resemble the nine princes and their sisters.
There is the Wild Hunt encounter with Andrew David Amber with accompanying beasts that looks like Julian’s Hunt Corwin and Random encounter while driving through the Forest of Arden. The discussion page for Castle Amber on Wikipedia mentioned this one. You will excuse me for not linking to it.
There is an altered deck of Tarot Cards some with colorfully dressed figures on them. In the adventure players are bid by Camilla Amber to draw from them effects ranging from some magic item to death. Sadly they don’t teleport players like the Trumps do. Though one of the cards give a ring of spell storing and Dimension Door is one of the spells recommended for it to hold.
There is new monster, wolf headed lupins which resemble the “wier” werewolf patrol guards that Random Corwin and Deirdre encounter in the Forest of Arden.
Speaking of lupins there is Claude Amber found in the library of Castle Amber who like Flora in her library has a dog whistle which doesn’t call Irish wolfhounds from another room to attack the players but calls lupins instead. Also for completeness there is kennel which has four pony sized hell hounds who will not attack players dressed like Amber family members.
There is a trap which I think resembles the pattern.
Though crossing it players do not teleport to Amber the way across does eventually lead to the gate which transports them to Clark Ashton Smith’s Averoigne. Crossing the trap requires players to say aloud the letters they step on or they will be afflicted with lunacy. Also spelling out one of the words as the player crosses will grant benefits much like Corwin’s memory gain when he successfully crossed the pattern in Rebma….Rebma which is Amber spelled backwards. See the letter pattern in the map above?
Castle Amber does have prison dungeons. Though you will not find a Prince with his eyes burned out, there is mad Gaston Amber with a paint brush painting a highly realistic depiction of the moon on the far wall of his cell. His cell which is unlocked. Pretty sure he is Dworkin.
Lastly there is Stephen Amber who is the dad of all the Amber’s and like Oberon is dead but not really dead.
There is more which could be from other books in the Chronicles of Amber series. For example there is a unicorn which in Nine Princes in Amber only appeared as symbol for Oberon and might show up in later books.
Beyond the Nine Princes of Amber X2 Castle Amber is a hot mess of pulp references. As mentioned there is the Clark Ashton Smith stuff as well as an Poe encounter with an Amber sister who is buried alive by her brother and calls out to him. There are Rakasta, cat like humanoids, which Alex pointed out come from Zelazny’s Lord of Light and there is the Brain Collector or Neh-Thalggu which looks to me comes from Lovecraft.
There could be tons more which I missed. X2 Castle Amber is perhaps the most Appendix N of supplements I have ever seen and perhaps is the best TSR published example of what Jeffro calls Kitchen Sink. For X2 Castle Amber Tom Moldvay really went all out in drawing from literary roots to flesh it out.
You might even say he grabbed Appendix N by the Rakasta for this one.
Tarzan the Cimmerian And Conan of the Apes
A few days weeks ago I made the huge mistake of promising myself to pull the threads and write about what I was seeing while reading the first two Tarzan books. Namely words phrases descriptions and scenarios which I had seen a year prior while reading some Robert C Howard’s Conan stories. Stuff I could not unsee and the more I looked the more it would pile up in my head.
Before I start I need to edit my claim “that Howard got Conan from Tarzan” I can’t prove Conan is modeled after Tarzan. I think there is convincing evidence but not a preponderance of it to say this with absolution. I can say that Howard read at least the Return of Tarzan and it did influence his Conan stories and likely his Kull stories as well.
To begin with the easy Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan and Robert E. Howard’s Conan are physically similar. Both have black hair Conan has blue eyes (which are more often then not smoldering) and Tarzan has grey. Both are tall, often described as monstrously so when looming over their poor doomed foes, broad shouldered with sun bronzed skin.
One thing about the black hair and blue/grey eyes is such a combo is relatively common among the British Celts, the eponymous black Irish, in contrast with the lighter haired Anglo-Saxons.
Conan, having an Irish name and worships the Celt god Crom, is a Cimmarian who among other things are known for their black hair and Grey/Blue eyes and in Howard’s Hyborian Age the Cimmarians are the ancestors of the Gaelic Britons.
Tarzan is the Earl of Greystoke, a real place, which is located in north east England near Scotland’s boarder right where one would expect a tall black haired grey eyed British Earl of Gaelic decent would be found. This is thin gruel for so many words. Simply know there is some evidence that Tarzan and Conan come from the same genetic stock.
Continuing on both are clean shaven. Might be just the grooming habits of the 1910s and 1930s seeping in but it does stick out considering Tarzan was raised by apes without human contact until adulthood and Conan is a savage barbarian who in many descriptions of his younger days has a wild tangled mop for hair.
Sticking to facial features both Conan and Tarzan have facial scars. Tarzan with the distinct scar he received in a battle to the death with a Gorilla that nearly killed him which when Tarzan is enraged blazes red. Conan, though I have not read where he got them, is described with a scared face.
Tarzan and Conan are often described in comparison to iron and steel particularly in regards to their muscles, arms, and grip. For Tarzan he has a “grip of steel”, “iron bands” (arms breaking a lion’s neck), “steel forearms”, “iron fingers”, “steel muscles”, “iron muscle” and “iron grip”. For Conan he has an “iron hand”, “steel-trap muscles”, “iron clasp”, “like an iron statue”, “iron arms”, “iron neck”, “left arm as ridged as iron”, “iron-thewed barbarian”, “iron endurance”, “iron strength”, “steel thews”, and is “steel hard”. Not sure what a thew is but, like Tarzan’s grip, Conan’s is iron or steel depending.
Along with various iron and steel parts Conan shares a preternatural agility with Tarzan far exceeding that of normal men. Jane says Tarzan “not only surpasses the average white man in strength and agility, but as far transcends our trained athletes and ‘strong-men’ as they surpass a day old babe” (funny enough in this same exposition of Jane’s she eludes to Tarzan being a “superman” using that very word. Perhaps John Carter was not the only character of Burroughs to influence Siegel and Shuster’s black haired blue eyed alien). Also in a tussle with a Numa (lion) Tarzan is described in action thusly:
“No ordinary man could have escaped those frightful claws when Numa sprang from so short a distance, but Tarzan was no ordinary man. From earliest childhood his muscles had been trained by the fierce emergencies of his existence to act with the rapidity of thought.”
Similarly, and in the similar circumstances being pounced on by a lion, Conan in action is described “It was Conan’s savage instinct which made him wheel suddenly; for the death that was upon them made no sound. A fleeting glimpse showed the Cimmerian the giant tawny shape, rearing upright against the stars, towering over him for the death-stroke. No civilized man could have moved half as quickly as the barbarian moved.”
The two quotes show two things. Conan and Tarzan have agility far surpassing civilized ordinary man and they both obtained it from the savage existence that reared them.
Another similarity, though minor, in regards to fighting lions, Conan in the above scenario ends up on the ground with the dead lion killed by Conan’s blade laying atop him leaving him unharmed. Tarzan in a different bout with a saber (lionness) “went down beneath the great body of his enemy, but with gleaming knife drawn and striking home” and then “realized that the inert mass laying upon him was beyond power ever again to injure man or ape.” and like Conan unharmed.
To finish up on the physical descriptions comes the use of the odd “clean-limbed”. Burroughs uses it three times in Tarzan of the Apes twice to describe Kala, Tarzan’s adoptive ape mother and once to describe Tarzan when he rescued a French soldier from a tribe of cannibals “D’Arnot saw a clean-limbed young giant emerge from the shadows into the firelight and came quickly toward him.”
It stuck out to me firstly because it is uncommon and weird. I think it means something like “rangy” and secondly because I had seen it elsewhere. Any guesses?
Yup its Conan
“Over against the bizarre mob stood the tall Cimmerian in strong contrast his hard bronzed limbs and clean-cut vital features.”
and
“he laid aside his sword, and waded out shoulder-deep into the blue water, went about his ablutions. When he emerged, his clean-cut bronze limbs shone, his streaming black mane no longer matted. His blue eyes, though they smoldered with unquenchable fire, were no longer murky or bloodshot.”
Lastly
“He stood like a bronze image in the sand, apparently impervious to the murderous sun, though his only garment was a silk loin-cloth, girdled by a wide gold-buckled belt from which hung a saber and a broad-bladed poniard. On his clean-cut limbs were evidence of scarcely healed wounds.”
Not exactly the same but close enough and odd enough that, to me, makes a linkage.
Another odd word that one does not see everywhere is Stygian. Burroughs uses the term here “Here and there the Brilliant rays penetrated to earth, but for the most they only served to accentuate the Stygian blackness of the jungle’s depth.”
The word itself comes from the river Styx in Greek mythology. Howard uses the word differently. Stygia is a land within Howard’s world of the Hyborian Age. A Stygian being a person from Stygia. This by itself is not much but “Stygian” is not the only word Burroughs uses to describe dark blackness.
“Tarzan was spellbound. Then she extinguished the lamp and all within the cabin was wrapped in Cimmerian darkness.”
“Tarzan slept until midnight, then he arose and crept into the Cimmerian blackness of the forest.”
Recognize it?
The next oddly distinct phrase from Burroughs come from different books he wrote and was found by master Appendix N afficiaonato and (two time?) Hugo Award Nominee Jeffro Johnson:
“I don’t think that’s too outlandish an idea given that the original D&D term “fighting man” is without question a reference and/or an homage to John Carter.”
The word is also found in Tarzan “From there on the homeward journey was slow, as these proud fighting men were unaccustomed to the duties of porters.”
And of course I would not be bringing it up unless it was also found in Howard’s Conan.
“His slightest movement spoke of steel-spring muscles knit to a keen brain with the co-ordination of a born fighting-man”
Three things. First, how did I miss “steel-spring muscles” in my iron/steel quotes? Second, the answer is yes, I bring up “fighting man” mostly to link to Jeffro’s Appendix N stuff. It really is great and got me reading these books. Lastly this hints that Howard not only read Tarzan but Burroughs’s John Carter Mars books as well.
Imagine being 13 year old Bobby scribbling down stories of brawls and exotic adventure while rifling through pages of the Jungle Book and White Fang when BOOM! Brand new just published copies of Tarzan of the Apes and A Princess of Mars materialize into the world and into your hands.
Holy cow do I envy that kid. Eons better then reading Dragon’s of Autum Twilight or The Time of the Dark or even The Sleeping Dragon or….well…ok I can’t bad talk The Indian in the Cupboard. Still you get the idea.
Oh wait. Yeah I still haven’t proven that happened yet. Moving on.
Tarzan and Conan are Noble Savages. Tarzan being a savage by right of being raised by wild animals and Conan is a savage by way of being a Barbarian. Their “nobility” shines through in how they often end up doing the right thing. Tarzan for example after gaining chiefdom among the apes that raised him dispenses fair justice and enforces peace when previous ape chiefs would more often then not go into mindless rages and be the instigators of inner tribe strife. Tarzan does this in his natural primal state as a man. His innate human reason without education or civilization or even ever any real human contact leads him to rule this way. Conan similarly as king of Aquilonia describes the gaining of his crown “I climbed out of the abyss of naked barbarism to the throne and in that climb I spilt my blood as freely as I spilt that of others.” and later to himself “it had been with no thought of anyone’s gain but his own that he had seized the kingdom originally.” yet under his rule “no Aquilonian noble dares maltreat the humblest of my subjects, and the taxes of the people are lighter than anywhere else in the world.” and while contemplating his refusal to be bought off “He would not sell his subjects to the butcher.”. Howard adds this in describing Conan “Thus subtly does the instinct of sovereign responsibility enter even a red-handed plunderer sometimes.”
This is in contrast to his royal captors whom Conan chastises “What of you? Your brother, Amalrus, holds the eastern half of your kingdom, and defies you. And you, Strabonus, your soldiers are even now besieging castles of a dozen or more rebellious barons. The people of both your kingdoms are crushed into the earth by tyrannous taxes and levies.”
Conan as a barbaric plundering savage rules his kingdom and subjects selflessly by not selling his kingdom and subjects to a butcher and more “noble” then the nobility he chastises.
There is more, a lot more, but for brevity I will not doddle any longer with noble savages. It leads down a path in which I attempt to convince you dear reader to believe Tarzan’s chivalry towards women, rescuing them, respecting their honor and whatnot, comes from wild man Enkido of Epic of Gilgamesh fame. Nobody wants that.
Both Howard and Burroughs make reference to Plato’s Atlantis. For Burroughs he describes the lost city of Opar as an outpost of a sunken civilization. High priestess La explains “We are descendants of a people who came to this savage world more then ten thousand years ago in search of gold. Their cities stretched from a great sea under the rising sun to a great sea into which the sun descends at night to cool his flaming brow.”
and
“they sent out a great galley to learn why no one came from the mother country, but though they sailed about for many months, they were unable to find any trace of the mighty land that had for countless ages borne their ancient civilization –it had sunk into the sea”
For Howard he names Atlantis in the faux historical introduction of his first published Conan story “The Phoenix on the Sword”. It describes Atlantis’s sinking destruction and placing it in relation to the time Conan lived. Instead of quoting it I’ll let Mako Iwamatsu give an abbreviated account.
“Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Aryas there was an age undreamed of” (start at 0:35)
I don’t know if other Conan stories reference Atlantis but an essay written by Howard that was published just after his death describes Atlantis and Conan’s relationship to it.
“North of Aquilonia, the westernmost Hyborian kingdom, are the Cimmerians, ferocious savages, untamed by the invaders, but advancing rapidly because of contact with them; they are the descendants of the Atlanteans”
Conan being a Cimmerian is descended from Atlantis.
Conan and Tarzan are both clean-(cut)-limbed, black haired, blue/grey eyed, black Irish, super agile, big kitty killing, noble savages made of steal and Iron. Howard and Burroughs use some similar words phrases descriptions, scenarios and reference Plato’s Atlantis. Convincing evidence in my opinion but nothing distinct, original and identical to nail it home with absolute certainty.
This was all I had when starting this post….
But while writing it I remembered something La of Opar told Tarzan about her people.
“One by one the cities were deserted or overcome. The last remnant was finally forced to take shelter within this mighty fortress. Slowly we have dwindled in power, in civilization, in intellect, in numbers, until now we are no more then a small tribe of savage apes.”
and
“in time we will no longer banish those of our people who mate with apes, and so in time we shall descend to the very beasts from which ages ago our progenitors may have sprung.”
So La of Opar and her people, the last remnants of Atlantis, are descending into apes. That is original and weirdly specific.
I don’t think Plato mentioned that…..but Howard did.
From Howard’s above quoted essay “The Hyborian Age”
“A thousand years after the lesser cataclysm, the western world is seen to be a wild country of jungles and lakes and torrential rivers. Among the forest-covered hills of the northwest exist wandering band of ape-men, without human speech, or the knowledge of fire or the use of implements. They are the descendants of the Atlanteans, sunk back into the squalling chaos of jungle-bestiality from which ages ago their ancestors so laboriously crawled.”
Two more things, note that the decent into apehood in both happened in a jungle. Also note how the ending of both quotes echo each other.
“we shall descend to the very beasts from which ages ago our progenitors may have sprung.”
“sunk back into the squalling chaos of jungle-bestiality from which ages ago their ancestors so laboriously crawled.”
And there it is. My golden proof that Burroughs’s Tarzan books influenced Howard’s Conan stories.
Both works contain a description of people descended from the sunkin civilization of Atlantis descending into apes in the jungle. Distinct, original and identical so as to have come from nowhere else.
….
I really don’t know how to end this thing. So I just will.
Note: fun quincidance – The Sir name of the family who has resided at Greystoke for 14 generations is Howard
Note2: This is not a hit on Robert E. Howard just happy he read books I love and happy he took inspiration from them to write stories I love.
Note3: Shout out to Jeffro and Cirsova for doing what they do which got me interested in Howard and Burroughs and the soon to be read pile of books on my shelf. Everything good here blame them. Credit everything bad to me.
Note4: Update: Jeffro mentions this “I actually did not make this connection. But then… I read Conan before I read Tarzan.” I read Conan, at least some stories, before Tarzan also!! Anyway him saying this triggered a memory. Jeffro, somewhere on the Internets, makes mention of people back in the day viewing Tarzan as Sword and Sorcery. I am pretty sure him writing that preconditioned me to be looking for connections between Tarzan and Sword and Sorcery and therefor connections between Conan and Tarzan.
Hooc Ott 