In this bi-weekly series reviewing classic science fiction and fantasy books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of the field; books about soldiers and spacers, scientists and engineers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement.
Edgar Rice Burroughs was a master of adventure. While he was more widely known for his tales of Tarzan and John Carter of Mars, one of his greatest creations was not a character, it was the hidden world Pellucidar, existing within a hollow planet Earth. The setting allowed him to fill this imaginary world with creatures and threats from throughout history, quite a few imaginary beasts, and all sorts of eccentric tribes to take his protagonists prisoner. And all that action and excitement was almost enough to cover up not only the thinness of his characters, but also the awkwardness of what passed for romance in this primitive world.
Last year I purchased paperback copies of Burroughs’ Venus series and read them one after another (the review is here). But there was a lot of repetition, and while I enjoyed them, reading the books so close together didn’t put them in the best light. So recently, when I decided to revisit the Pellucidar series, I made sure not to read them back-to-back. I found an omnibus edition from an outfit called Book Valley Publishing House. The book turned out to be a bit heavy to hold, and the print small—both hazards of packing seven novels into a single volume. And the editing was a little uneven in places, with missing punctuation a common flaw. But the omnibus also contained illustrations from just about every edition of the stories, from the magazine appearances to the latest reprints, which was a nice touch. Over a few weeks, taking time out to read other books as well, I read through the whole series. While it shares some of the same weaknesses as the Venus stories, it does have a wider diversity of characters and settings. And the interesting monsters and foes keep things moving. Burroughs stories are always fun…
About the Author
Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) was one of the most popular authors of the early 20th century, making an indelible mark on both science fiction and adventure fiction. I’ve looked at his work in this column before, including A Princess of Mars, the book Pirates of Venus and the rest of the Venus series, and also Tarzan at the Earth’s Core. All those columns contain more biographical information on the author. You can find much of Burroughs’ work available to read for free at Project Gutenberg, including a number of Pellucidar books.
The World of Pellucidar
The idea of a hollow Earth has been around for a very long time, appearing in legends and folklore for centuries. The theory was advocated by noted astronomer Edmund Halley (after whom the famous comet is named) in the late 1600s, and although countless scientists have found reason to discount the theory, it continues to inspire people’s imaginations. This Wikipedia article gives more information on the topic.
Burroughs brought the hollow Earth idea to popular attention in the first volume of a new series, written in the early and most fertile period of his career. He had created both John Carter of Mars and Tarzan in 1912, and produced the first Pellucidar stories in 1914. The Pellucidar books relied on myths and theories that had been circulating for decades, and Burroughs brought them vividly to life. The idea of another world within our own may be preposterous, but it remains compelling from a storytelling perspective, offering a new world to explore with no need for space travel.
Buy the Book
Witch King
In Burroughs’ setting, Pellucidar has a sun suspended in its center, and there is no cycle of days and nights. Its contours of land and sea appear to be a mirror image of the Earth’s surface above. There are tunnels allowing access to the interior world at each pole. Pellucidar is inhabited by all sorts of creatures and tribes who migrated to the interior world over millennia, giving the author plenty of potential threats and various beasts to throw at the protagonists, including land and sea dinosaurs, pterodactyls, wooly mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, protohumans of all shapes and sizes, cavemen, and even pirates.
Because there are no days and nights, the inhabitants of Pellucidar have little sense of the passage of time, and sleep and eat as their bodies desire. There are hints that time passes differently for different people, based on their subjective experiences. People from the surface seem to live a lot longer. And, perhaps to compensate for the lack of astronomical clues, the inhabitants of Pellucidar have a highly refined directional sense allowing them to return to the place of their birth (which peculiarly only works while they are on land).
Burroughs’ protagonists unfortunately don’t have much personality. They are strong, brave, competent, and principled, but have very little in the way of distinctive personalities to set them apart. Whether young industrialists from Connecticut, scions of German royalty, or tribesmen from Pellucidar, they tend to be fairly interchangeable. The books do contain racist attitudes, although for the most part, the races involved are fictional.
While romantic attachments provide a major motivation for the adventures of Burroughs’ protagonists, it is a strange type of romance, and the stories have a misogynistic streak. The only women who get any real attention are love interests. The heroes fall in love very easily, mostly based on physical appearance (although the women are also competent and plucky). The women often misunderstand the men’s intentions, and are very fickle, often running off to be kidnapped, giving the heroes a chance to rescue them. There is no mention of physical affection beyond a hug or a kiss, and the relationships feel stilted to a modern reader.
A plot synopsis does not do the books justice, as the overall arcs are repeated cycles of captivity, escapes, wilderness survival, battles with wild beasts, searches and skirmishes. The individual scenes and set pieces are where the strengths of the stories lie, in the struggles of the characters to survive in a harsh and unforgiving world.
Wikipedia has an article on Pellucidar containing information on the setting, the creatures, and the races and tribes living within the world. It also contains a list of the books, with links to articles summarizing each.
At the Earth’s Core
The series opens with the author (Burroughs) discovering an adventurer in the Sahara who claims to have arrived from beneath the Earth in a strange craft. He is David Innes, heir to a Connecticut mining enterprise, who set out a decade before with the elderly Abner Perry, inventor of what they called their “mole.” They started boring through the Earth only to find the device lacked an adequate means of steering, and resigned themselves to death as they tunneled toward the Earth’s molten core. Fortunately, the Earth turns out to be hollow, and five hundred miles down, they emerged into Pellucidar.
The two travelers fall into the hands of the ape-like Sagoth, minions of the frightening Mahar, a race of intelligent flying reptiles. The Mahar are among Burroughs’ most chilling creations, with hypnotic powers so powerful that someone under their thrall can remain calm while being ripped to pieces. David is imprisoned with a woman named Dian the Beautiful, and is immediately smitten, but cultural misunderstandings cause him to insult her. They escape, she realizes she loves him, and they are wed. Reuniting with Abner, David gathers a coalition to break the rule of the Mahar, and steals the secret of their non-sexual reproduction, dooming them to extinction. And then David sets out for the surface in the mole with the sleeping Dian, only to find a rival has replaced her with a Mahar wrapped in a blanket. And without a means to steer, his only course is toward the surface. This cliffhanger leads directly to the next book.
Pellucidar
The next book, which appeared in 1915, is recounted to Burroughs when an explorer discovers a telegraph key at the end of a (very long) underground cable left by Innes when he returned to the interior world. David, emerging in a strange location, seeks out his friends, including his wife Dian, and old friend Abner. He improbably and immediately finds Abner, and it turns out the war against the Mahar is not going well. David learns that Dian is in the clutches of an old enemy, Hooja the Sly One, and sets out to rescue her. They gather allies to continue the battle with the Mahar, and Abner builds a sailing warship, which sinks upon launching (Abner’s inability to build inventions that work in their first iteration becomes a running joke).
David is captured by the Sagoth, sent by the Mahar who want the key to their reproduction returned. After all sorts of exciting adventures, David is reunited with Dian and Abner (who has a new and improved navy). In a rush of exposition, Burroughs wraps up the loose narrative threads. The new alliance defeats the Mahar, and David finds himself leading the “Empire of Pellucidar.” Because of that neat ending, it appeared Burroughs was done with Pellucidar.
Tanar of Pellucidar
In 1929, however, Burroughs returned to Pellucidar. The framing device this time is a young neighbor named Jason Gridley, who develops a new type of radio. The story they hear from Abner Perry focuses on a new character, Tanar, son of Innes’ right-hand man, Ghak. Tanar is kidnapped by the Korsars, descendants of Moorish pirates who wandered through a polar entrance to Pellucidar centuries ago and now dominate the coastal regions with primitive gunpowder weapons. David Innes decides that a small party might succeed in rescuing Tanar, and sails off in a small boat with his admiral Ja and a local guide. Meanwhile, Tanar falls in love with Stellara, the adopted daughter of the chief Korsar, the Cid. She is intended for marriage to the charming Bohar the Bloody, and as is usual in Pellucidar, initially snubs Tanar. Tanar and Stellara are shipwrecked, and after many adventures, join up with David Innes and Ja. As they travel, they discover evidence there is an opening to the surface world at the north end of Pellucidar. Tanar, Stellara and Ja find their way to her home, but David Innes is again captured, and languishes in a Korsar dungeon.
Tarzan at the Earth’s Core
On the heels of Tanar of Pellucidar, in 1929, Burroughs wrote a literary cross-over, bringing his most popular character, Tarzan, to Pellucidar to rescue David Innes, arriving via an airship traveling through the polar opening. This is the first Pellucidar book I ever read, and you can read a review here.
Back to the Stone Age
In 1937, almost a decade later, Burroughs picked up the loose threads of Tarzan’s journey to Pellucidar. This book follows the adventures of Lieutenant Wilhelm von Horst, separated from Tarzan’s expedition and left behind in Pellucidar. He is carried off by a giant pterodactyl to feed her young, but escapes the nest, only to be captured by a nearby tribe. In captivity, he meets the beautiful La-Ja, and they begin one of those infuriating romances of which Burroughs is so fond. Von Horst kills a baby tyrannosaurus, and is captured by a tribe of creepy cannibals who seem to be reincarnated souls of people from the surface world, hinting there might be substance to legends about Hell. In a fun sequence, Von Horst rescues an ancient woolly mammoth and gains a friend that rescues him from some tight situations. Von Horst eventually is reunited with La-Ja, who realizes she loves him after all. They meet up with David Innes, who offers to help him return to the surface, but Von Horst decides to remain with La-Ja as ruler of her tribe.
Land of Terror
This book—its component stories having been rejected by magazines that usually published Burroughs—was not published until 1944. It follows the adventures of David Innes after his appearance in Back to the Stone Age as he tries to make his way home to his empire. He is captured by a tribe ruled by women, and Burroughs makes some snide comments about female equality. David escapes, but is then captured by the Jukans, a tribe of fools, which allows for more crude satire from Burroughs.
David hears of a captive from Sari, whose directional sense can lead him back to his empire. Improbably anywhere except a Burroughs story, that captive turns out to be his beloved Dian. David hides Dian in a cave, and goes back to rescue a fellow captive, only to return and find Dian gone, the victim of a kidnapping. He has many adventures while searching for Dian, but is eventually rescued by his imperial fleet, led by his friend Ja, and is delighted to reunite with Dian, who had escaped her captor. This is one of the weakest Pellucidar books, being rather rambling and episodic, and shows that satire is not one of Burroughs’ strengths.
Savage Pellucidar
This book, published in 1963, consists of three magazine stories from 1942 and a fourth story discovered after Burroughs’ death, and continues the adventures of David Innes. It starts with a humorous passage where Abner Perry fails to create a working airplane. David marches out to aid an allied tribe, only to be betrayed and captured. Helped by brave soldier Hodon, David escapes. Abner creates a balloon, which Dian uses to look for David, but the tether is not secure, and she drifts off to parts unknown. Meanwhile, David and Hodon meet the beautiful maiden O-aa, who has a habit of telling tall tales of strong brothers and a powerful family to intimidate those who would harm her (tales that grow more colorful as the book progresses). O-aa falls in love with Hodon, and they are rescued by Ghak and the imperial fleet.
But O-aa thinks Hodon was killed by one of her unwanted suitors, and heads back toward her old village, only to be captured. A pterodactyl brings Dian’s balloon down near a Bronze Age city whose inhabitants think she is a goddess. Her kindness enrages greedy priests, and she flees the city. Upon returning home, David sets off in another balloon, hoping the winds will carry him to Dian. He lands in another Bronze Age city just as O-aa arrives. The tall-tale-telling O-aa convinces the inhabitants David is a god, but their stories unravel, and they are separated as they flee. David is rescued by his fleet and continues the search for Dian, while Hodon searches for O-aa.
All sorts of adventures ensue, but to make a long story short, everyone is eventually reunited in a happy ending, and Burroughs’ Pellucidar tales come to a close. This ended up being one of my favorite books in the series, largely because I enjoyed every appearance of O-aa.
Final Thoughts
For all their flaws, the Pellucidar books represent the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs at his best. The stories are more like a piece of cake than a meal; while they may not be nutritious, they are a tasty treat. But there was no one who wrote action sequences more gripping than his, and no one with as vivid an imagination in creating creatures and deadly situations for his characters to escape.
And now, I am eager to hear your thoughts, whether they be on the Pellucidar series, on Burroughs’ writing, or adventure fiction of that era in general. And if you can think of any literary heirs to Burroughs who write stories in the same vein, I would love to hear of them as well.
Alan Brown has been a science fiction fan for over five decades, especially fiction that deals with science, military matters, exploration and adventure.
