I just finished reading Out of Time's Abyss, which is the last book of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Caspak Trilogy. Unless you're a moderately serious Burroughs fan, you probably haven't heard of this...though the first book in the series, The Land That Time Forgot, has gone to the movies twice (in 1974 and in 2009), and the second book, The People That Time Forgot, took that trip in 1977. It's also made it to the comic book page at least a few times...from Marvel in 1975, from Dark Horse in 1996, from Campfire in 2010, and from American Mythology in 2016. And there's a comic strip you can check out @edgarriceburroughs.com. So it's out there.
This was the 55th Edgar Rice Burroughs book that I read out loud to Joe. (I've read all 84 ERB books myself, some of them twice...all three books of the Caspak Trilogy amongst them.) And while it doesn't rank up there with the best of Mr. Burroughs, it was a fun read. And it made me wonder (once again) why ERB seems to be a forgotten man these days. According to yourdictionary.com, "His novels sold more than 100 million copies in 56 languages, making him one of the most widely read authors of the twentieth century." And IMDb lists 79 movies based on ERB's works...most of them Tarzan-related, but still...that says something about his power as a writer, doesn't it?
And there was a time when he was either the best-selling writer of his day or second-best (to Zane Grey) from what I've read (having three of his biographies under my belt). But now...other than remaking Tarzan every couple of years, Hollywood and the world at large seem to have forgotten Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Which I think is sad. He's not one of the great authors, for sure. His work doesn't hold up against Charles Dickens or Fyodor Dostoyevsky or anyone of that ilk. But he's always a fun read. And he's often funny. And he had a great vocabulary. You could do a lot worse.
As for this Out of Time's Abyss...check out this publication history: It first appeared in The Blue Book Magazine in December of 1918.
After that, it was reprinted in book form--either by itself or as part of an omnibus--at least 40 times...and that's only counting the English versions. Keep in mind that this is one of Burroughs' lesser efforts, and you really get a sense of the power of the man's words.
The story itself is a little hinky at times. The basic premise of it is that there is a remote and virtually inaccessible island which has two unique features: (1) prehistoric creatures still live there and (2) all life on this island evolves from the most primitive to the most complex forms. A human being, for instance, begins as a tadpole-like creature, then gradually goes through all of the phases of evolution until it becomes a modern man. (More or less. Even the most modern men on the island seem a little cave-is.) Well...I could swallow the first one, I suppose. As have lots of other writers, since this idea has been pilfered quite a few times, hasn't it? Ka-Zar's Savage Land and Dinotopia both spring to mind immediately. But that second one...well, that's just stupid.
Despite that, though, I did enjoy reading the book. It has some exiting action, some humor, and some insights which are worth your time. It also dredges up several of Burroughs' favorite tropes, including (1) the modern man falling in love with the primitive woman (no less than three Modern Men in the course of the whole trilogy, and each of these love affairs ends in marriage), (2) nearly naked people, and (3) wicked foreigners...in this case, Germans. (Burroughs' lack of love for the Germans got him into a little trouble at times, but I suppose it's understandable in that he lived through both World Wars, when the Germans were hard to love.) But even when he is hitting familiar ground, Burroughs manages to come up with some innovations. In this book, for instance, there is a race of winged man-like creatures, and they and their society are described in ways that make it and them both interesting and disgusting. Burroughs was an excellent world-builder, and I can't help but think that if some movie maker would be willing to put in the time to Get It Right, any of his series would make for grand box office fare. Of course, the two Caspak films that were made way back when were not very successful...and the solo one made more recently was an absolute shit storm...but none of them had a budget worth talking about. (In fact, the 2009 film had a $600,000 budget. I'm sure you can imagine how well the special effects turned out on that one. For the sake of comparison, the Star Trek film which came out in the same year had a budget of $150 million.)
All in all, though, you could do a lot worse than Out of Time's Abyss and the whole Caspak Trilogy. It took me about a month to read it out loud to Joe, but that was at a rate of only 5 pages per day, and usually only 4 days per week, so even at a mild pace you could knock this out pretty quickly.
And you could actually start with Out of Time's Abyss and be okay. One of the most interesting aspects of this series is the way that Burroughs interweaves the stories. Instead of doing straight up sequels, he has the stories overlap and loop-do-loop in very interesting ways. And believe it or not, it's not confusing.
As for me, I'm on to my next ERB series with Joe. Tonight we start on The Mucker...which will be followed by The Return of the Mucker, and then The Oakdale Affair. Hot diggity.
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