Gotta Love Those “Wow!” Moments

Don’t you love those moments when you’re reading, when everything in the real world starts to fade away?  You’re turning pages at a smooth yet slightly increasing pace to see what’s going to happen next.  Your heart starts to race, your muscles tense.  And then – “Wow!”  You get hit with something that makes you stop.  It’s really more like a “Pow!” because you have to step back from the book to contemplate, to admire, to be amazed. 

Now, I’m not talking about the awesome grandeur you experience with vast, intricate Tolkien-esque world-building: I’m talking about those timeless, wonder-filled moments – a scene, an act, a decision – that’s like a punch in the gut, like when Dorothy steps out of her black and white house to the Technicolor Land of Oz.  

“Wow!”

It still delivers after all these years.Recently, I was listening to the audio book of Roger Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber.  This is a book that my friends and I have read multiple times throughout our high school and college days.  (I even used to be able to tell page numbers when they described or read a passages to me.)  Anyway, it’d been awhile since I’d revisited it.  I’d made it to the part where Corwin, the narrator who has amnesia, has escaped from the hospital where he was being drugged and held against his will, and he’d just been reacquainted with his siblings Flora and Random. 

Okay, if you’ve not read it, here’s the big concept: Amber is a city, the one true world, and the shadows it casts create a multitude of worlds, including our own.  The royalty of Amber can “shift,” or travel through and manipulate those shadows, but Corwin, of course, has no memory of this.  Since the story is told from his point of view – and first person at that – the reader has no idea what’s going on either, until Random begins leading Corwin through shadow toward Amber.  And this is my “Wow!” moment, when reality begins to change, subtly at first, and then drastically.  I remember getting up and walking around the room the first time I read it, and listening to it this time brought the same elation.  I just had to stop what I was doing and shake my head and whisper, “wow!”  Honestly, I did.  “Wow!”  It was amazing, utterly amazing.  Again. 

It happens in movies, too, I know, but it’s these special, unforgettable moments that make a book so rewarding and keeps pulling us back to it again and again.    

Anyway, that was mine, what’s yours?  What scene made your heart leap?  Time stop?  Tears well?  Share it with us.  Provide the title, author and a description of the scene, please, and post a pic of the cover, too, if you can.                

THE GREAT TARZAN ADVENTURE #1: Tarzan of the Apes

Ballantine. Neal Adams art.Who doesn’t know Tarzan of the Apes?  I wouldn’t even venture a guess as to how many do simply because of Disney.  That being said, I’d bet not many at all these days know the story by Edgar Rice Burroughs that introduced the character to the world in the pages of All-Story Magazine back in 1912.  Until recently, I only knew Tarzan from films, cartoons, and comics, and it was not until I read Tarzan of the Apes that I realized I really didn’t know the character at all.  Tarzan is not a good-natured, ignorant brute, nor is he someone who tree-surfs through the jungle – he is unlike anything most people think they know about the character.  If you want to get to know the original Lord of the Jungle, you will want to read Burroughs’s book.     

Tarzan emerged from the pulp magazines, where one could read anything from sports stories to westerns.  The magazines were cheaply made to be affordable for the common, working man, so it’s not too surprising that the stories inside were escapism in their purest forms.  Many of science fiction and fantasy’s most beloved icons developed their talents in their pages, greats like Ray Bradbury, Robert E. Howard, C.L. Moore and Fitz Leiber.  Before they had begun to define the science fiction and fantasy we know and love today, Edgar Rice Burroughs had been creating characters and worlds that would loom large across both genres, inspiring writers and readers alike.  Tarzan proved to be his most lucrative creation and has gone on to become a cultural icon.          

Okay, if you haven’t read the book, be warned.  There be spoilers lurking in the paragraphs ahead.

Of course, most people know the basic story of Tarzan: boy raised by apes, becomes big and strong man, falls in love with Jane, they live happily ever after.   However . . . even this watered-down story regarding our ape-man hero is incomplete and often wrong in spots.  For example, the story of the fear and struggle surrounding Tarzan’s birth is hardly ever covered, nor what it was like for him maturing among the apes.  Personally, l had never encountered Tarzan teaching himself to read until I read Burroughs.  I knew nothing of his first interactions with other humans and how he ruthlessly killed some of them with – of all weapons –  a lasso!  And while I knew Tarzan visited the states, I didn’t know it was to meet Jane only to leave her betrothed to another man.  Where’s the happily-ever-after in that we’re all used to getting?

I enjoyed this book immensely and would not be afraid to say it may be the best Burroughs I’ve read.  It’s definitely one of my favorites.  My love of ERB stems mainly from the wonderful worlds he created and the fantastic adventures that sweep the heroes across those worlds.  I definitely wasn’t disappointed in that regard.  No, Burroughs’s Africa is not a Barsoom or Pellucidar, but it is just as wondrous and dangerous.  The apes, with their own language and customs, are not that far removed from the Green Martians from A Princess of Mars.  The scene where they gather for the Dum Dum to hold “council” and dance was marvelous.  I also enjoyed having Tarzan as a logical and rational protagonist (which was what I enjoyed most from Filmation’s Saturday morning cartoons).  He doesn’t have to rely on anyone, even when he’s transported to the “civilized” world.  If anything, he refuses to use anyone or anything as a crutch.

That being said, Tarzan of the Apes is not a perfect book.  I’ve heard Burroughs described as the “best worst writer.”  While I don’t proscribe to the idea he’s the worst, he’s far from the best.  His dialogue tends to be a bit stilted and plots a bit redundant.  It’s easy to argue that the man meets woman, woman can’t be with man because of social situation, man saves/wins woman through his heroic deeds is the basic plot of A Princess of Mars and At the Earth’s Core, just as it’s easy to say that he doesn’t write characters but uses character types.  The easy reply to that would be consider his medium – the pulps.  Burroughs is writing to entertain.  Pulp characters tend to be “types,” maybe more archetype than stereotype in the better ones, but that’s all the story needs.  Yes, the plots are similar, but it’s seeing how the protagonist will win out that’s important here. 

First ed. cover.Nonetheless, I would argue that Tarzan is more than a “type.”  He represents those ideals:  the individual unsullied by civilization, strong and resourceful.  Look at him early in the book – he is true to his ape upbringing.  There are he and his “people” and there are “others.”  Through the course of the book that concept changes, until he has meshed both world views together.  Tarzan becomes more than the “Noble Savage.”  He is a complex being born of two worlds, and because of these circumstances, we can see the pros and cons of civilization and the evil innocence of savagery.  In this regard, Tarzan is a precursor to what Robert E. Howard would examine in some of his Conan stories.  And again, there is that wonderful setting.  Burroughs is at his best when his imagination is allowed to run wild.  His vision of Africa is just as wonder-filled as his Mars and Pellucidar.  Burroughs’s strengths in Tarzan of the Apes, like they do in the best of his books, overshadow his weaknesses.   

Tarzan of the Apes is an excellent read.  Through the sheer power of his imagination Burroughs is able to take the elements of pulp fiction to another level.  The book is much more complex than most readers would acknowledge, definitely more so than the image of Tarzan that resides in the popular consciousness. 

And that is an excellent start to THE GREAT TARZAN ADVENTURE!  Nerdbloggers would love to hear what you folks have to say.  Feel free post to your heart’s content: agree, disagree, compare/contrast, discuss future reads, anything.  Next month, I’ll be posting my review of The Return of Tarzan, so any of you that would like to join the adventure, read or reread along.  The ebook versions are dirt cheap at Amazon.com.  You can get single books for free or the entire collection for under five dollars.  Project Gutenberg has fee ebook and free audio versions of the first ten books or so. 

You can look for the next adventure toward the middlish-end of March.  Hope to see you there!   

THE GREAT TARZAN ADVENTURE!

Having been an Edgar Rice Burroughs fan for over thirty years, I came to the startling realization last year that I hadn’t read any of his Tarzan adventures.  I began as a sophomore with Pellucidar, hopped over the John Carter, skipped to Caspak, skimmed around Venus, went to the moon, picked around various other titles here and there, then reread portions of Pellucidar and Mars, but nary a single Tarzan in all those years.  Okay, wait, I read Tarzan at the Earth’s Core as part of the Pellucidar series, but I didn’t consider it a Tarzan read at the time.  I guess I never really considered Tarzan sci-fi-y enough or not fantasy-y enough, even though I knew he discovered lost cities (and went to the center of the Earth).  Hmph, go figure. 

Via Filmation.Maybe it’s just that I got my Tarzan fix through different media.  I grew up with Jonny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan first on Dialing for Dollars (anybody remember that afternoon quiz show/daily genre movie show?) and now on DVD.  I watched every movie adaption that came out from the seventies up through Disney – except for Bo Derek’s.  I read the comic books from Gold Key, Marvel and DC and watched the Filmation series every Saturday, even when they crunched him up with the Lone Ranger.  I honestly don’t know why I never read the actual novels.  Which brings me to the task at hand: THE GREAT TARZAN ADVENTURE!

The really cool Ballantine covers.I am publicly declaring that it is my intent, my mission, my moral obligation as a Burroughs fan, to read the Tarzan stories from beginning to end.  I will start at Tarzan of the Apes and end twenty-four books later with Tarzan and the Castaways.  I will not include the kiddy Tarzan Twin stories as they are not considered part of the official Tarzan series according to . . . well, most everybody.  I will be reading the Ballantine editions from seventies (the really cool black covered ones with the great Neal Adams and Boris Vallejo artwork).  I also bought The Complete Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs for my kindle, so I will have Tarzan with me wherever I go. 

It’s my intention to read one per month.  I’ve already read the first two, so I will post my first review toward the middle of February.  I think it would be great to have as many readers participate as possible – that’s why I’m going to wait a bit before I start posting my reviews – and ideally we can get lots of discussions going to examine the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the Tarzan stories.

So, join me on Nerdbloggers as I plunge into the exciting journey I like to call THE GREAT TARZAN ADVENTURE!

2012 Nebula Winners

The 2012 Nebula Winners have been announced.  You can find them, along with the nominees, over at the SFWA.  Have to admit I haven't read many of these.  Guess I got some good summer reading to do.  Enjoy!

Quick Review: The Wind Whales of Ishmael

"With no seas to sail and no safe harbor to call home, Ishmael must take to the Heavens in pursuit of a beast more fearsome and deadly than he was ever known."From the back cover: “Ishmael, lone survivor of the doomed whaling ship Pequod, falls through a rift in time and space to a future Earth – an Earth of blood-sucking vegetation and a blood-red sun, of barren canyons where once the Pacific Ocean roared.  Here too there are whales to hunt, but whales that soar kike airships through a too-dark sky.”

I haven’t read a whole lot of the late Philip Jose Farmer’s vast output.  I’ve read through Riverworld twice, and I’m familiar with his Wold Newton alternate literary history.   I’ve always heard that the World of Tiers was his high point, so I’ve been promising myself to read those in the near future.  I’ve always taken him to be a high concept writer – I mean, it doesn’t get much bigger than resurrecting the entire human race along the banks of a world-spanning river, right?  So when I picked up a copy of The Wind Whales of Ishmael, saw that it was the Ishmael from Melville’s Moby Dick, I had to read it.  Had to.

Being a fan of Melville’s masterpiece, I couldn’t wait to see how Farmer would continue Ishmael’s story, let alone plop him into the middle of a science fiction story.  I was honestly expecting to read a tale of the Wold Newton family.  For those not familiar with the concept, it’s basically a linking of a vast array of literary characters (Tarzan, Doc Savage and Sherlock Holmes, just to name a few) to the meteor strike in Wold Newton, England in the late 1700’s.  Even though it wasn’t a part of that universe, the story was a wild, exhilarating ride.  It picks up right after Ishmael’s rescue by the Rachel at the end of Moby Dick.  Five pages later – bam – Farmer has him a billion years or so in the future, trying to not only stay alive, but also to understand what’s going on around him. 

As I was reading, and after I’d determined this wasn’t part of the Wold Newton universe, I kept trying to figure out why have Ishmael as a character.  He could have created any other John Carter-style hero fit the bill.  Brave guy from our world transported to a strange world, becomes a hero, saves the known world, marries the princess – how many times have you read that?  I guess if you wanted to, the comparison between the setting here and Jack Vance’s Dying Earth are pretty evident.  There’s no super-science or sorcery here, but the alien landscape and the ever-present bloated, red sun is.  Farmer, however, is not copying anyone.  His fading earth has regressed.   Cities are isolated and rivals, and people “fish” the skies in boats that are not too unfamiliar to the protagonist’s time.  Then it struck me, why Ishmael? John Carter types are doers.  Ishmael is a scholar, a thinker, an observer.  We see this future earth in some detail through his eyes, we speculate about its origins with him, and by the end, we will have pondered the follies of Captain Ahab battle with the white whale to identify the nature of mankind’s ultimate enemy.    

Do you have to have read Melville to get it?  Definitely not.  The astute reader will understand Ishmael in the end.  Does it help?  Definitely.  There are references to Queequeg and his coffin, Ahab, even Typee.  That was just like icing on the cake for this reader.  In the end, there’s even a Moby Dick equivalen.  From start to finish, The Wind Whales of Ishmael is an exciting, fun read. 

Titan Books is currently reissuing several of Farmer’s works, including some about the Wold Newton universe.  The Other Log of Phileas Fogg (yes, it’s the guy from Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days) is available now.  They are providing a great opportunity to get acquainted or reacquainted with one of the grand masters of science fiction. 

(Full Disclosure: Titan Books provided Nerdbloggers with a preview copy of this novel. We received no payment or compensation for this review and find the act of writing paid reviews pretty scuzzy).