The writing game can be a perverse lottery. Yes, craft and imagination are important, but we are not entirely convinced that talent always wins through. So much is down to chance – being noticed at the right moment by the right critic or agent, catching a marketing trend, accidentally get a media mention because of something else, and so on. Writers can work long hours for months and earn absolutely nothing. Nada. We ruminate thusly because over the years we have run many author interviews based not on material success, but on whether or not their work was unusual or interesting. Today, Duane Pesice interviews author Brandon Barrows, a craftsman who should probably be better known…

We first encountered Brandon Barrows through his short collection The Castle-Town Tragedy (Dunhams Manor, 2015), which contains an excellent set of three stories concerning Carnacki the Ghost Finder, the occult detective created by William Hope Hodgson. These are indeed Carnacki tales, but they are slipped a little more towards modern sensibilities, avoiding too many archaic twists of style, and this works well. We thoroughly enjoyed them – and a further Carnacki story appeared in Occult Detective Quarterly #2.

Going backwards, we read his collection of weird fiction The Altar in the Hills (Raven Warren Studios, 2014), which also satisfied – a range of much shorter pieces which draw strongly on themes from H P Lovecraft. Brandon subsequently scripted a comics series – Mythos: Lovecraft’s Worlds (Calibre Comics) – and worked with artist Hugo Petrus, adapting such HPL stories as ‘Pickman’s Model’, ‘The Strange High House in the Mist’ and ‘The Curse of Yig’. All four issues are now available as a graphic novel.

After these, the author’s deep love for crime fiction and noir brought him to his novel This Rough Old World (Ulthar Press, 2018):

“Los Angeles, 1968, a time of radical change – for everyone but part-time private-eye Tom Ahearn, who’s stuck in a rut of routine and self-pity. When Charlie, a hippy of the lowest order, offers a quick buck for what seems like an easy job, Tom dives head-first into a world of casual sex, drugs, music and the occult. He’ll find himself rubbing shoulders with drugged-up hippies, young Republicans itching for war and slumming socialites bent on nothing less than completely reshaping the cosmos – all while unknowingly witnessing the nascence of one of the twentieth century’s most notorious evils.”

This is both a classic gritty private-eye novel and a piece of weird fiction, with an unexpected twist at the end.

Recent short works have also seen Brandon Barrows draw on one of his other interests, manga and the folklore of the Far East, a world of shadowy spirits and possessions, of oni and yokai, featuring Azuma Kuromori, a Japanese spiritual investigator. Here’s an extract from ‘Shadow’s Angle’ (ODQ#5):

Two in the afternoon and Sasai hadn’t tried to kill anyone yet. At least there was that. I didn’t know for a fact that he would try, but it was something to be prepared for. I had no idea what he was capable of. I doubted Sasai did himself, the way things had been the last couple of days. But even in the sparse mid-afternoon crowd of an average weekday in relatively sleepy Hatagaya, he wouldn’t try anything in the middle of the street. I hoped, anyway. That was the kind of trouble nobody needed.

There was already plenty of it, simmering, waiting—for what I didn’t know. I needed to keep it from boiling over.

I’d followed Yuta Sasai, at a discreet distance, for the better part of two days, and in that time I’d seen him devour with his eyes every inch of every woman and girl his path crossed, age no issue to his roaming gaze. Sexual harassment wasn’t his only sin, though. Yesterday, I’d seen him do some fast-talking and sleight of hand to grift a street vendor out of both wares and cash, only to toss his gains in a trash-bin on the next block. And, earlier that morning, he’d used some trick at a Suica machine to load his card with more than the system thought was possible, then leave the station without even glancing at the trains. No idea how he managed that or what the point of it might have been, other than general mischief. What was his vice, I wondered. Lust? Greed? Spite? General malevolence? I hadn’t an inkling, but it mattered. Before this was over, it would matter a hell of a lot. “Know thy enemy”—an exorcist’s mantra.

Sasai’s wanderings had taken him around three wards, and seemed aimless, apparently unfocused and without any overall goal. Was he looking for something? If so, he was going about it in the most half-assed way imaginable. I wanted to get this over with—it was anything but fun watching this thing ramble around the city wearing someone else’s skin, on pins and needles wondering what it’d do next—but patience can’t be overemphasized…

‘Shadow’s Angle’ copyright ODQ/Brandon Barrows 2019

Let’s hear from the man himself…

BRANDON BARROWS

Interviewed by Duane Pesice

Duane: Where should a reader that is new to your work start?

Brandon: My novel This Rough Old World is a fusion of most of everything I love: noir, private eyes, and cosmic abominations. A writer I respect called it Raymond Chandler meets Lovecraft, which is about the highest praise as I can imagine for this book.

Duane: Is there a piece that you are particularly proud of?

Brandon: I am extraordinarily fond of a weird story called ‘Beyond the Faded Shrine Gates,’ about a childhood incident from the life of my occult quasi-detective character Azuma Kuromori, that will appear later this year in Occult Detective Quarterly #7.

I’m also very proud of the Marshal Ernie Farrar western mysteries I’ve written, published in Crimson Streets Magazine. Those can be found online here:

“A Hanging Matter” – http://www.crimsonstreets.com/2018/05/27/a-hanging-matter/

“Noose Hungry” – http://www.crimsonstreets.com/2019/02/17/noose-hungry/

Duane: Whose work do you read, yourself?

Brandon: I read a tremendous amount of noir, mostly from the golden age of paperback originals, the 1950s, and the great mystery writers of the 1930s, as well as writers who are influenced by them. My absolute favorite writers, in no particular order, are Gil Brewer, Charles Williams, Donald Westlake, Erle Stanley, Louis L’Amour, and Max Allan Collins.

Duane: What kind of beer goes with your pizza? And what’s on the pizza?

Brandon: There’s a local ale I love called Switchback, from a brewery of the same name. There’s also a quadruple-bock called Day of Doom by Mystic Brewery I enjoy a lot.

As for pizza, I love pineapple and ham. Usually, it’s just pepperoni, though, because it’s the one kind of pizza my wife and I can agree on.

Duane: Do you consider your work weird, or horror? Or do you leave that to the marketing department?

Brandon: I leave it up to the reader, or the marketing department. I consider my work to be dark, in general, but the actual genre I write in varies wildly. I’ve written everything from Lovecraftian weird fiction to traditional westerns. There’s very little I’ve written where I was consciously going for horror, though I suppose there are horrific elements in much of my work. I’m very much interested in the dynamics between people, especially the way each of us are broken but somehow still manage to function, and that comes out in a variety of ways. There’s really nothing scarier than human beings.

Duane: You’ve been convicted of crimes against the empire. What would be your last meal? Include something big to hide the explosives in.

Brandon: A big vat of spare ribs with a nice block of C4 hidden in the bottom sounds good. I can fill up before I break out.

Duane: Are you involved in any arts besides writing? Any odd hobbies we should know about?

Brandon: I was in various bands for a number of years, but nothing recently. I draw occasionally, but generally not for public consumption. My hobbies are all pretty much book-related. I am a collector of paperback originals, particularly Gold Medal, Lion, and Pyramid Books, and am willing to travel to find them. Nothing weird or odd about that, I hope.

Duane: Cats or dogs?

Brandon: I love both, but we only have cats right now.

Duane: Tell us about a work-in-progress.

Brandon: I’m currently working on a P.I. novel that may or may not have supernatural elements. I like to write with an outline, because I tend to get lost in the work without one, but this piece I’m feeling out. All I’ll say right now is there’s a woman who’s intrigued a lot of men who is very real to them, but may or may not actually exist…

Duane: Thanks for joining us today. Is there anything else you would like readers to know?

Brandon: I appreciate the chance to chat and I hope folks will reach out if they’ve read my work. Writers thrive on feedback and many of us don’t hear enough from readers. I can be found on Twitter @BrandonBarrows and my website is www.brandonbarrowscomics.com

This Rough Old World

and on Amazon US here

The Castle-Town Tragedy

on amazon us

What do we remember when people have gone? As I put together the next edition of our Occult Detective magazine, a mad concept which started as a joke between the late Sam Gafford and myself, I like to recall the idiocy of it all – and the pointless humour Sam and I shared, just for the pleasure of it. What follows is one of those – it’s not so much funny, as typical of how we were, and keeps him around in my mind…

Sam and I came together through William Hope Hodgson, and through my fondness for Thomas Merton Carnacki, WHH’s fictional ghost finder (who rarely encountered any actual ghosts, but did meet monsters). In 2015, when Sam was thinking of putting together a second Carnacki anthology, he went for a classic theme – cases mentioned in WHH’s original works, but never explained. Very Sherlock Holmes, Dr Watson and ‘The Giant Rat of Sumatra’.

Being what I am, I said, “Yeah, I could do some of those.” I don’t think Sam had read anything of mine at that point, but we’d made a connection. So I wrote two new stories, ‘The Dark Trade’ and ‘The Grey Dog’, for him. The first was genuine Carnacki pastiche, with tragic twists; the second was a unusual meditation on the truths of life, by Carnacki himself.  That second one was very personal to me.

Which is all very Yeah, so what? However, because it was Sam, I also wrote one much shorter story for him as a laugh, and that was never intended to go anywhere. I was to be the anonymous British dealer in WHH curios, and he was the Yank who sought them. In real life, Sam loved finding new WHH stuff, and we would get excited when things turned up.

That story was called ‘The Meeting’, and it’s dreadful, of course, because it’s a two line joke spun out for over 600 words. But maybe it tells you something about how Sam Gafford and I got on, because – to my genuine surprise – he actually used it as the first story in Carnacki: The Lost Cases…

THE MEETING

john Linwood Grant

The Star and Garter was a somewhat decrepit public house, tucked into an alleyway near the City. Two brokers stood by the open doors, arguing over a half-finished bottle of merlot, oblivious to the tourists on the street. Inside, a couple stared into their glasses, drained of conversation by their years together. At the bar a young woman poked angrily at her mobile phone. The barman polished the hand-pumps and stared down unashamedly at the girl’s bare legs.

I ordered a single malt, and slid into one of the alcoves to the rear. When Gafford arrived, barely ten minutes later, he was easy to spot. No-one looks more clandestine than a man trying to seem casual.

I watched the large American ease his way past the brokers, blinking as he adjusted after the sunlight outside. He glanced at the bar, then saw me in the gloom. I beckoned him over.

“Mr Gafford,” I said, not rising to greet him.

“Yes.” He eased himself into the alcove. “And you are…”

“The supplier.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” He cleared his throat. “You do have what I want?”

I didn’t bother to reply.

“Uh… of course you do. It was a long flight, you know. Cramped, lots of shrieking kids on the plane…”

I raised one hand to interrupt his nervous flow.

“This is a professional transaction, Mr Gafford. Is the transfer ready to go ahead?”

He reached into his coat, a quite inappropriate heavy gaberdine considering the late summer heat in London at the time. Drawing out his mobile, he squinted at it.

“As soon as I send the go ahead to my bankers.” His fingers slid across the screen. “It’s all in place.”

“Then we are in business.”

I pushed my whisky to one side.

“I tracked down the items in question to a private house on the Embankment. I obtained entry last week, under the pretence of checking the roof timbers for beetle infestation, and there, in the attic…”

I enjoyed the moment. I was, after all, very good at my job. Gafford swallowed, looked around as if others might be listening. The brokers had left, and the woman, a slim brunette, was still at the bar, her attention now on the barman. An Aussie, I suspected, bronzed and far too friendly to be a Londoner.

“You have them… here? With you?” The American wiped his damp palms on his coat.

I smiled, and from under the table I lifted out two cracked leather valises, the clasps corroded but still serviceable. I had checked. A century in a dry, dusty attic had fortunately done little harm.

He took one of them from me, placing it in front of him. He turned it over a few times, peered inside, and frowned.

“But this… this is empty.”

“The contents were irrelevant to our deal,” I said. “Mouldering shirt-collars, hair brushes and so forth.”

He placed the valise down, hands shaking. “What kind of a limey con is this? You expect me to pay $10,000 for some old luggage?”

“I procured exactly what was specified in our communications. The carriers, Geo. Phillips and Son, you see, had gone to 422 Cheyne Walk, not 472. An easy mistake, given the handwritten labels used in those days.”

And with some pride I pointed to the clear TMC engraved on the brass clasp of the nearest valise.

“I have found them, Mr Gafford, just as you requested. These are indeed…”

I waited a moment. Gafford looked at me with a kind of horror, like a man whose soul has brushed the Outer Circles, and yet even as he stared at the two leather valises, he could not stop himself from finishing my sentence.

“Carnacki’s lost cases.”

Odd people, the Americans. Sometimes you just can’t please them.

Miss you, Sam. You would have got the title of this post in a millisecond…

We do book reviews, and we don’t. We’re interested in undercurrents, themes and interconnections, though we do appreciate good prose in its own right. So it’s easy enough to state that the debut collection by Laura Mauro, Sing Your Sadness Deep (Undertow), is a work of fine and accomplished writing, as near to flawless in its execution as you might wish for. Her language is evocative but clear; her characterisation is compelling. And…

We almost want to stop there, not because we have some wormy criticism to add – this is simply an excellent collection- but because it’s often more difficult to put down quite what captures the imagination, and explain why some stories reverberate. Also, Laura Mauro is young, clever and interesting, qualities which really annoy crumpled old writers like greydog. But we shall be brave…

SING YOUR SADNESS DEEP

Laura Mauro, Undertow Press 2019

There is a mythic quality to many of the tales included here. It’s a quality you see in a number of contemporary female writers – Priya Sharma and Gwendolyn Kiste immediately spring to mind, along with others – and suggests the creation of new myths which ought to be old. Themes which you feel are timeless, applied to, and acted out by, genuine people rather than vaguely sketched archetypes.

Being mythic, sacrifice and transformation therefore abound in Laura Mauro’s stories. Characters make sacrifices for love, for family (‘Obsidian’) and also for understanding (‘Letters from Elodie’). ‘Obsidian’ could easily be a genuine Finnish or Scandinavian folk story, painted afresh to apply to real life. People do things which are unwise; they do things which have an inevitability about them. The sacrifice of a former existence or of a degree of security in favour of an unknown future; the willingness to embrace change.

Transformation is everywhere – any minute you expect a troubled young woman to mutate into a huge swan and soar into the night, free of natural restraints at last. Possibly a tattooed, risk-taking swan, though, not a self-satisfied princess. Matters of the body corporeal are not stinted on. From ‘Sundogs’ to ‘Strange as Angels’, physical change is as important as any psychological shift, and the two interact on a number of levels. And the transformative aspects of medical syndromes and illnesses are also represented in a number of stories – birth conditions, disease, and leukaemia (‘In the Marrow’) amongst them. Mauro ‘gets’ bodies.

Our other reflection, which sometimes seems to get skipped in reviews, is about the reader. Not ‘Is the collection inventive?’ or ‘Has it literary merit?’ (that’s a Yes to both in this case), but ‘Is it basically a good read?’ Contemporary weird fiction (which we love, by the way) can occasionally be – how shall we put it? – liminal, multi-layered and slightly incomprehensible. Stuff happens, and it happens intriguingly, even amazingly, but you may have to suspend any yearning for clarity. We often look at a new collection and ask – if the reader isn’t already an enthusiast of the field, will they get anything out of it?

This particular collection is absolutely a good read. That’s not only down to Mauro’s evident command of her craft, but also down to her presentation of stories which hold up in different ways. ‘Looking for Laika’, for example, is a tale for anyone. It’s sad, moving – and accessible. ‘When Charlie Sleeps’ is what we might call weird horror – not graphic but strange and satisfying; ‘In the Marrow’ harks back to a particular folk belief, but executed almost perfectly; reality, myth and delusion are beautifully entwined until you can’t be absolutely sure – but it still has a ‘completeness’ about it. ‘The Grey Men’ explores an utterly weird occurrence, but acts as both a strong story and a question about ourselves; ‘The Looking Glass Girl’ is – well, it’s a ghost story.

Laura Mauro is also an internationalist – an added bonus is the wide range of settings, and the varying feel of tales in different geographies, from the States to Siberia.

Just to end on a contrary note, we rather liked ‘Red Rabbit’, which doesn’t quite end, doesn’t necessarily make any sense, but where the ride for the reader is worth it, even if the ride for the characters involved is rather less satisfying. So we’re probably not consistent – weird fiction does that to you – and you can ignore us.

Except that we think you should pick up a copy of  Sing Your Sadness Deep by Laura Mauro. Don’t ignore that bit.

Laura can be found at her blog here: https://lauramauro.com/

And… something different again. Do keep up – if it’s odd, we like it. Today, best beloved, we have the writers Fritz Leiber, Joe Lansdale and Philip José Farmer, doyens of speculative and dark fiction, but probably not as you know them. For we venture, surprisingly, into the world of Tarzan novels, with editor Dave Brzeski – beating his chest manfully – as our guide…

Tarzan Novels after Edgar Rice Burroughs

by Dave Brzeski

Like so many people, Tarzan was my introduction to the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs. I was lucky enough to be given a small collection of hardcovers that belonged to my uncle when he was a child, and this included a copy of Tarzan of the Apes. I’d seen several of the films by then and, don’t get me wrong, I loved them, but the book was a revelation! From that point on, I devoured everything ERB that I could lay my hands on.

In 1974 everything changed. I came across the UK paperback edition of Tarzan Alive by Philip José Farmer. Not only did this book cost me a fortune, as I tracked down the appearances of all those cool characters in the Wold Newton family, but it was a new Tarzan book, albeit not by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I should mention here that I had actually picked up several of the unauthorised Tarzan novels by Barton Werper, but let’s not pull punches – these were utter crap!

Anyway, I digress… My thirst for more Tarzan had been rekindled—and it never really went away.

Fast forward to 2018 and I realised that there’s suddenly a lot more Tarzan material out there. I already had plans to review the new edition of Philip José Farmer’s Tarzan and the Dark Heart of Time, but I had this great idea—What if I wrote an overview of all the worthwhile post ERB Tarzan novels?

A year later reality set in. If I actually held back until I’d read all of the books, it was going to take years before the overview was finished—not to mention the possibility of new publications appearing as I worked on it between other projects. Two things became clear to me…

1) There was no way I would ever get around to everything.

2) The only practical approach would be a series of articles/reviews.

So, here is Part One, covering the three earliest, important non ERB Tarzan novels.  The next part, whenever I find the time to read them, will focus on the Tarzan novels of Will Murray, who has already produced another book since I came up with this plan of action.

LIEBER, LANSDALE AND FARMER DO TARZAN

1) Tarzan and the Valley of Gold

Author: Fritz Leiber

Publisher: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. & Gollancz/SF Gateway

I admit to some trepidation in approaching this book. Not because I had any concerns about the skills of the author, far from it, but simply due to the fact that it’s a film novelization. I decided it might be best to view the film first, better to see how and where Leiber might have fleshed the story out.

Thankfully, Sy Weintraub decided to go back to Burroughs’ original concept for the films he produced, which meant Tarzan no longer spoke pidgin English. In fact Weintraub made quite a big thing of this approach, stating in an interview for The Sunday Times in 1965 that:

“Tarzan is no longer the monosyllabic ape-man but the embodiment of culture, suavity and style. He’s equally at home in a posh nightclub or the densest jungle.”

Tarzan and the Valley of Gold may well be one of the best of the many Tarzan movies, but it’s still far from perfect. For one thing it’s only 90 minutes or so long and the setting of modern day Mexico wasn’t all that convincing. It transpires that the original treatment had it set in Brazilian Amazonia, which works much better, and that’s the setting Leiber uses. Leiber also restores several scenes from Clair Huffaker’s original script that were not used in the film version.

The novel, first published in 1966, opens with Tarzan taking part in a bullfight of all things, in Central Mexico. Naturally, Tarzan doesn’t approve of such things and finds a way to create a relatively bloodless display. This is, in fact, one of the weaker parts of the book, as it elevates Tarzan’s ability to communicate with animals to an almost Dr Doolittle level.

It will be no surprise to anyone that the book really starts to gain momentum as soon as Tarzan sets off into the Amazonian jungle in pursuit of the villains. From that point it just keeps getting better and better.

I have no way of knowing exactly how the late Fritz Leiber approached the job, but I can easily imagine him watching the movie over and over, along with reading the original script treatment, making copious notes on what did and didn’t work. Frankly, he did an astonishing job of it. I was recently reliably informed that Philip José Farmer considered this to be one of the best Tarzan novels he ever read. I can’t disagree with that appraisal.

I list two publishers above. I actually read the SF Gateway Kindle edition of the novel (not available in the USA), but when I heard that Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. were about to issue the first ever hardcover edition, I had to acquire a copy. The fabulous cover by Richard Hescox, and the internal black and white illustrations by Douglas Klauba, alone made it worth the cost.

New Hardcover edition.

https://www.edgarriceburroughs.com/tarzan-and-the-valley-of-gold-first-ever-hardcover-edition-now-available/

Amazon Kindle edition (UK only).

Tarzan and the Valley of Gold

2) Tarzan: The Lost Adventure

Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs & Joe R. Lansdale

Publisher: Dark Horse Books

Unusually for a prose story, this one was originally published by Dark Horse in 1995 in a four issue mini-series—Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan: The Lost Adventure—along with reprints of some John Carter comic strips. Having proven to be a good seller, this was quickly followed by a hardcover book version without the comic strips. A Ballantine Books paperback edition (with a truly horrible cover in my opinion) was also published in 1997.

Again, I felt some trepidation in reading this book, This time it was because I’d gleaned some hints online that it wasn’t particularly well thought of. I later was informed that Lansdale had to complete the novel – from the unfinished eighty-three page typescript that had been discovered in ERB’s safe after he died – under severe time constraints, and this may be one reason that it wasn’t as good as it could have been. Being a great fan of Lansdale’s work, I really didn’t relish being forced to be less than complimentary.

I needn’t have worried at all. In fact I really enjoyed it. It has a lost city, evil men, a few good people, Jal-Bal-Ja the lion, Nkima the monkey, a particularly nasty monster—in fact everything you could really ask of a Tarzan novel. My only complaint is that it leaves Tarzan in a tricky situation awaiting a sequel.

I later found out that the open ending was very likely at the request of the publisher, Dark Horse, as they had plans for more stories. Oddly, the 1996 Dark Horse comics miniseries, Tarzan vs Predator at the Earth’s Core refers to the ending of Tarzan: The Lost Adventure, stating that Tarzan’s escape route was blocked, so he had no choice but to follow the underground caves which may have eventually led to Pelucidar. But the extremes of heat and cold forced him to turn back, so now he was back with Jane at the start of this series. Unless I managed to miss a bridging story between the two somewhere, this seems a bit of a cop-out on the part of Dark Horse to say the least.

It’s a shame if it is true that Lansdale wasn’t given enough time to complete the book to his own satisfaction, let alone anyone else’s.

The hardback is odd, in that it’s only guillotined on the top and bottom edges, leaving the outside edge very rough—like a pulp magazine—which was possibly the point. The beautiful cover painting is by Dean Williams and the book is profusely illustrated by Studley O. Burroughs, Gary Gianni. Michael Kaluta. Charles Vess and Thomas Yeates.

This overview is strictly limited to Tarzan novels. However, I could not resist checking out Joe Lansdale’s short story in Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Baen 2013) edited by Mike Resnick and Robert T. Garcia.

I admit that this was partly because I’d wondered if it might be a sequel of sorts to Tarzan: The Lost Adventure, but sadly not. However, ‘Tarzan and the Land That Time Forgot’ is an excellent story, well worth seeking out. It is also just one of three Tarzan tales included in that collection.

Tarzan: The Lost Adventure

3) Tarzan and the Dark Heart of Time

Author: Philip José Farmer

Publisher: Meteor House

It was, in fact, the reprinting of this particular book that initially sparked my interest in writing a feature on post-ERB Tarzan novels.

Tarzan and the Dark Heart of Time was originally published as The Dark Heart of Time: A Tarzan Novel by Del Rey/Ballantine in 1999. Apart from a second printing a few months later, that was the only English Language version until this 2018 Meteor House edition.

Along with a gorgeous cover and a couple of internal black and white illustrations by noted artist, Mark Wheatley, this edition also adds a new foreword by Robert R. Barrett and editor’s introduction by Win Scott Eckert.

Robert R. Barrett tells us the history of how the book came to be and how he, himself was involved in the process. Interestingly, he tells of one scene the editor at ERB Inc. wasn’t keen on “in which Tarzan was captured and bound and used a near-unbelievable method of escape.” With the support of Danton Burroughs, Barrett and Farmer managed to keep the scene. I quoted his actual words above, because in this particular case, I actually agree with that editor that it does stretch credibility a bit further than even “near unbelievable” would cover.

Win Scott Eckert, in his Editor’s Introduction, gives us much more detail on how and where this book fits in with the accepted Tarzan chronology. That task is somewhat hampered by the fact that discrepancies in ERB’s own writing result in a seemingly insurmountable disagreement between ERB scholars as to Tarzan’s birth date.

Unlike the Joe Lansdale book, this one is an inserted novel, rather than a completion of an unfinished ERB manuscript. As such I would definitely recommend reading it between the two ERB novels it bridges. If anything, the fact that it wasn’t directly based on notes for a never finished Burroughs work allowed Farmer more freedom to inject more of his own personality and style into the book than he might otherwise have done. Indeed, while remaining true to ERB’s character, it’s very much a Philip José Farmer book. This is absolutely no bad thing in my opinion.

Tarzan discovered that Jane is still alive at the end of Tarzan The Untamed and is en route to find her, which he does in Tarzan the Terrible. The events of this story (apart from the final chapter) occur between those two ERB novels. In Tarzan The Untamed, Tarzan comes across an ancient map laying by the body of a sixteenth century Spanish soldier. He puts the map in the bottom of his quiver, to peruse at a later date, but for now he has a wife to find. One has to assume that Burroughs intended to use this map as the springboard for another novel at some point, but he never did, which was a gift for Farmer, as no one was ever better than he at crafting stories to fit a few flimsy unresolved details in a character’s narrative.

One of the other more obvious strengths in Farmer’s writing of the Ape Man is the pragmatic approach Tarzan takes concerning death in the jungle. Tarzan kills to eat; he eats creatures that would disgust civilised people and he eats them raw. He may feel some small regret at the death of another human, or animal, but he doesn’t feel any guilt about it. If it would inconvenience him, or his mission to prevent it, he won’t bother.

The book is currently available in hardcover and paperback from Meteor House and other booksellers. A Kindle edition was recently made available from Amazon.

http://meteorhousepress.com/tarzan-and-the-dark-heart-of-time/

The really cool thing is that Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. announced at the ERB panel at San Diego Comic-Con on July 19, 2019 that certain previously published authorized Burroughs novels by other writers—specifically Philip José Farmer’s Tarzan and the Dark Heart of Time and Fritz Leiber’s Tarzan and the Valley of Gold—are considered official canonical novels in terms of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe™ (ERBU), and granted Meteor House permission to add the official logo to the current hardcover and future paperback printings of this book.

http://meteorhousepress.com/2019/08/12/tarzan-and-the-dark-heart-of-time-enters-the-edgar-rice-burroughs-universe/

Now if only they could come to an arrangement with Dark Horse and let Joe Lansdale write the Tarzan novel he might have written, had he been given sufficient time and freedom to do so.

PLEASE NOTE: Illustrations by Douglas Klauba © 2019 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. and used by permission. Please do not reproduce.

Part Two, covering the Tarzan novels of Will Murray will follow, but don’t ask me when.