The Dueling Writers of Mars!

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

The first manuscript I had an opportunity to read after being welcomed aboard the Planet Stories staff was Otis Adelbert Kline's The Swordsman of Mars. As a lifelong Edgar Rice Burroughs enthusiast I had, of course, heard about Kline and the long-standing notion among Burroughs's readers that the two men, Kline and Burroughs, considered themselves bitter rivals. Kline's Venus series is generally recognized as having been penned in the style of Burroughs's Mars (or Barsoom) books, and so the story goes that Burroughs launched his own Venus series to impart some kind of retribution against his popular imitator. The notion of a Burroughs-Kline feud, however, bears little evidence to support it, but even so, I must admit it was with some skepticism that I picked up The Swordsman of Mars and began to read it. After all, there's little doubt in my mind that fate would never have led me to a job at Planet Stories if as a kid I had never read ERB, the author who ignited my interest in reading and writing, and by a long and tangled path, editing. Above all, Burroughs is an incomparable Storyteller, capital S, and his works have never gone out of print in the 97 years since he published the serialization of his first novel, Under the Moons of Mars (later retitled A Princess of Mars), in All-Story Magazine—the same novel that introduced me to ERB and got me permanently hooked. When I was in my teens, I devoured ERB's works—systematically, ruthlessly, obsessively—racing first across the dead sea bottoms of Barsoom with John Carter, then on to the lands that time forgot of Caspak and Pellucidar, touring savage jungles and lost cities with Lord Greystoke, flying through the shrouded skies of Amtor (Venus) with Carson Napier, and reveling in the adventure and romance of every one of Burroughs's many standalone novels. How could Kline possibly measure up to that? It was such a game of expectations that kept me from reading Kline for all these years in the first place.

I was in for a heck of a surprise. What I found when I finally pored over The Swordsman of Mars was that Otis Adelbert Kline knew his ERB. In particular, he knew ERB's Mars books. He had an almost uncanny knack for creating Barsoomian-sounding names and terminology—Sheb Takkor, Sel Han, Lal Vak, Kov Lutas, Rad, Jen, Dixtar—and his descriptions of exotic settings, such as "the glittering, frost-covered jungles" of the Takkor Marsh or the dark pits of the Martian baridium mines, are on par with ERB's own. Kline was apparently so well studied in his Burroughs that some fans have gone so far as to conjecture that The Swordsman of Mars and its sequel The Outlaws of Mars (a forthcoming Planet Stories release) take place on some remote corner of ERB's own Barsoom!

But much more important than the literary artifices he employs, Kline understood the mechanics of story on the same instinctive level as Burroughs. For with both authors, it's all about the romance and adventure, pulling the reader in to the point where the distinction between reader and hero begins to blur—and that's where Kline (and Burroughs) grabs you. For at that point of identification, as the hero at last gets within fingertip-reach of the ultimate goal, the conditions shift unexpectedly. The hero suddenly finds that what had seemed a simple outcome of success or failure is instead a head-swirling, heart-wracking turn of events that leaves you racing to the next page to find out how the author can possibly maneuver out of what is seemingly the ultimate inextricable dilemma.

And that's why Otis Adelbert Kline deserves his place in history—like Burroughs he is a Storyteller who, on a primal level, has the ability to mesmerize his audience with a captivating tale of honor and betrayal. A pulp writer, yes, but one with a rare gift of the bards of ancient days, whose simple words enchant and bring to life the archetypes that lie in wait in the imagination. Readers of Burroughs should love The Swordsman of Mars. I know this one did.

Christopher Carey
Planet Stories Editor