Original cover of
A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the first of the popular "Barsoom romances" series. A favorite of Union dictator William Dudley Pelley (and widely believed to have inadvertently inspired Coming Race Theory), the series depicts Mars as a slowly-dying world, where the hardy and noble race of Black Martians and a faction of the ivory-skinned White Martians called the Menthars were forced to interbreed by worsening planetary conditions, creating a new, hardy race of Red Martians that soon took over the planet, despite efforts by the evil, decadent, and corrupt White Martian faction, the Therns, to deny the Reds their rightful power.
First Civil War veteran John Carter, a noble Appalachian farmer from OTL West Virginia who gladly joined the Union cause against the foul treason of Jefferson Davis and lost his family to Confederate desperadoes in the war, is searching for a fabled city of gold in the depths of the Rocky Mountains when he encounters a mysterious cave; falling asleep, Carter awakens on the mysterious world of Barsoom, a desert planet with light gravity, which makes Carter a veritable superman. Encountering the bizarre Green Martians, a species of insectoid multi-armed aliens, Carter soon earns their respect through his honorable conduct, fighting prowess, and respect for their "racial traditions". After some time with the Greens and their leader, Tars Tarkas, Carter witnesses a battle between Red Martian airships, and saves a Red soldier, revealed to be the beautiful Princess Dejah Thoris, from falling to her death. Drawn by Thoris's plea for aid into a messy and pointless honor-war between the Martian cities of Helium and Zodanga, Carter faces off against Zodangan leader Sab Than, the "flower of Zodangan chivalry" and a peerless warrior, as well as the secret manipulations of the cannibal Therns, who seek to weaken and destroy both cities so they can enslave the inhabitants for menial labor and food. Discovering the Therns' plan after being captured by the Therns' leader, Holy Hekkador Matai Shang, Carter escapes with the aid of Tars Tarkas and his loyal
calot (a Martian dog-analogue), Woola.
But Dejah Thoris is about to wed Sab Than as part of a desperate plan to end the war peacefully; something that the Therns will not allow, attempting to kill both bride and groom at their wedding. Carter arrives, however, with a Green Martian army, and unveils Matai Shang, causing the Thern leader and his minions to flee in terror. Finally, to end the war, Carter demands an honor duel with Sab Than, and after a tense battle, defeats the Zodangan leader, who surrenders and agrees that the honor of Helium and Zodanga has been satisfied, considering the circumstances. Carter and Thoris marry, and Carter realizes that Mars--or Barsoom, as its inhabitants call it--is now his home, not Earth. Unfortunately, Matai Shang returns in disguise, and tricks Carter into letting Shang send him back to the strange cave on Earth. Despondent, Carter leaves the Rockies for a new, more powerful United States, though his heart remains on Mars, setting up a sequel...
Widely considered a classic,
A Princess of Mars was wildly popular during the early Pelley era, in part due to the dictator's well-known love for the book. Pelley commissioned several propaganda movies based on Burroughs's works, all of which (as one might expect) pushed Coming Race-supremacist themes rather extensively. A reboot series by the venerable SLK Entertainment conglomerate is entering production on the fifth film.
Burroughs's series would be continued even after his death, with new titles such as
The Coming Race of Mars!,
Carter at the World's End,
Tarzan vs. John Carter!, and several somewhat condensed comic-book/graphic-novel versions of the series being published by Burroughs's principal publisher, Amazing Fantasy Comics And Stories (later SLK Entertainment following a post-Pelley rebranding), with post-Burroughs original novels ghostwritten by other authors. Though the series has waned in popularity since the Pelley days, it still has a following among those sympathetic to Coming Race Theory, as well as science-fiction fans in general, who consider it the first really successful American sci-fi franchise.
Cover of
Amazing Stories, December 1945. Published by Amazing Fantasy Comics And Stories/SLK Entertainment, this magazine was the exclusive source for Edgar Rice Burroughs's wildly popular Tarzan adventure novels in the late 1930s through early 1940s, gaining exclusive rights to the character after Burroughs's death. Tarzan stories would traditionally be accompanied by pictures drawn by Amazing artistic mainstay Jacob Kurtzburg, a legendarily creative and prolific artist, though the cover art was usually done by a different house artist each month--explaining this particular cover's inaccurate depiction of Tarzan as a white man.
The Tarzan series follows John Clayton, son of a runaway slave and a Quaker minister, who loses his parents as a baby when their ship is sunk and they wash up in an unexplored bit of African coastline (later revealed in controversial post-Burroughs material to be a sort of alternate dimension laying "on top" of a real part of Africa, a revelation that many fans felt spoiled the pulp aesthetic), only to be killed by a leopard. Raised by apes, Tarzan's mother's heritage gives him great physical condition, a keen mind, and a strong sense of morality and justice, while his father's blood gives him a strong creative drive, a boundless curiosity, and...well, a strong sense of morality and justice, no sense not doubling down on that one. Becoming the "king" of the jungle thanks to his combination of brains, brawn, and noble outlook, Tarzan's life is shaken when he meets a group of explorers including the lovely Jane Porter, daughter of an American explorer. Smitten, Tarzan abandons his normal routine to follow the strangers through the jungle, saving Jane from a leopard when she's separated from the group, and helps the ape leader Kerchak defend the ape tribe from villainous German hunter von Vilinus (later revealed to be a Frenchman in disguise with an evil plot to get Jane killed as part of a complex plot to break the US-German alliance). However, Tarzan is wounded and Kerchak killed fighting von Vilinus, and Jane nurses the ape-man back to health. The castaways are found by an American ship, and take Tarzan with them back to civilization, where he has trouble fitting in, and after Jane (herself confused by her feelings) rashly accepts a marriage proposal, the depressed ape-man returns to the jungle, where once more he takes his rightful place as King of the Jungle.
Later Tarzan novels would introduce fan-favorite characters like the Waziri, a noble race of proud tribal Africans who bravely struggle against villainous Franco-Belgian encroachment (
Definitely no careful avoidance of criticizing the US's allies in Berlin here, not at all, no siree!); La, deuteragonist and beautiful ebon-skinned Queen of the lost Atlantean city of Opar, who wants Tarzan's genetically superior seed so she can have his babies and reverse the slow decline of her people (male Oparians are bestial ape-like savages, while the women are universally ethereally beautiful "ideals of Negro womanhood"); Sir Humphrey Featherstonehaugh, Baronet of Nottinghamshire Fork, an evil Briton who wants to enslave the Waziri and exploit them for money and power; and Burroughs's other main protagonist, John Carter, temporarily and due to a misunderstanding Tarzan's enemy before they settle their differences and become friends. Like the Barsoom series, Tarzan's adventures would continue after Burroughs's death, as Amazing owners Stanley Lieber, Jacob Kurtzburg, and Hymie Simon decided to embrace Lieber's plan to keep the money mill spinning by hiring new authors to continue the company's breakout franchises.
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It should be pretty clear here that Pelley's crazy ideas didn't come out of a vacuum; there was already a Yankee propaganda effort gone mainstream that had most of the population believing that black people are inherently noble and strong, and Northern whites inherently creative and curious (Southern whites of course being decadent, corrupt, and inherently evil according to this reasoning). Pelley is crazy, but he is but the culmination of a larger social trend that was pretty ordinary in terms of early-20th-century weird racism until Pelley actually showed up and it took a hard right turn into Crazy Town.