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.
Amazon Kindle edition (UK only).
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.
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.
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.