Edgar Rice Burroughs - A Timeline of Pulp Sword and Planet Yarns

I'm not sure what started it, but at the age of 19 while I was just starting to try figuring out what to do with my life, I discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs. Particularly the Barsoom series. I think it was one of those things where I just happened upon it in the library, or maybe my dad had bought the Joe Jusko Burroughs card set, probably on sale and I probably liked the artwork. Between him and Michael Whelan, who did all the book covers for the Del Rey reprinting, they really shaped the Barsoom of my mind. Truly, if the John Carter movie had followed their lead, I would have enjoyed it more. But that's another topic.

At any rate, these cards got me to check out Burroughs and after reading the first book, I was hooked. I started to work through the books in the Barsoom series, picking up some at the library, and others at the used book store. It was during these trips to the second hand store that I discovered Burroughs had written more than just Tarzan and John Carter. I recall one trip got all 5 of the Venus books into my hands, and others got me the Pellucidar series and eventually all of the Mars books. Now you can get almost all of his work, a good chunk of Otis Kline's and a few others for free in Kindle or on Gutenberg (and Gutenberg Australia...if you're in Australia)

What struck me as cool though, was how Burroughs linked his stories together. Pelludicar has a Tarzan crossover, and Pellucidar's Jason Gridley crosses over into the Venus stories a bit as well as Barsoom. So they're all connected. Burroughs created the shared universe decades before Marvel comics did, and like a century before the Avengers movies thought of it. That to me was so cool, that his adventures all took place in the same literary universe. I suppose all writers do it to a point, why not?

Once I get more than a first book done, you can bet I'm going to connect them where it makes sense to.

At any rate as I was discovering Burroughs, and later longing for more I discovered Den Valdron's work. Den wasn't content with Burroughs' characters sharing their own universe, but he picked up on clues in many other works that in fact, these many other books could have also taken place in Burroughs' universe. Just on the sly.

And his previously linked article page breaks down all of these stories and how they fit into Barsoom, with some small modifications. It's flippin' amazing.

Now all of it doesn't work, some of it take with a grain of salt, but on the whole, if you read these other books as if they are part of the same universe, can help give you the feeling of a larger universe, lending to a larger more expansive space opera. Without Den's articles, I would never have rediscovered Lin Carter or his Burroughsian work. I never would have picked up Leigh Brackett, Farley or Otis Kline.

So it is to him and his articles that I am indebted to here for the below construction. I apologize on the formatting, I copied and pasted it from Excel and blogger doesn't give me a table function or an attach option. So try pasting it into Excel yourself and see if it works.

Basically, what I did was go through his articles (seriously, Den, dump those articles into word, format it and throw it on Kindle, I'll buy it for $3), take a quick look at some of the actual books mentioned and I threw them into a loose timeline. Take this with a grain of salt. I put them in the order that they should have happened, more or less, not when they were published. I don't consider it complete, or authoritative so feel free to modify it to suit your reading needs. I probably will/would modify as I read through the books just to get things right. I haven't read a lot of the Carter or Brackett stuff, so that could be totally off base, and meshing Burroughs with some of the authors was hard. I suppose you could mix it up more if you desired, but for now I put it in the order listed.

I mainly only included stuff directly related to Mars and the solar system at large that was a good tie in. I didn't include Tarzan, because there's so many, and I've read exactly 2 of them. He doesn't really need to be on this list, overall. I put it on the list also if it was unique, like the Caspak stuff or Pellucidar.

At any rate, enjoy.

Pulp Solar System Timeline	Book	Author
Approximate Date of Event
Ancient Era  ?
Ancient Past	Sword of Rhiannon	Brackett
Ancient Past	Down to a Sunless Sea	Carter	after time travel
Ancient Past	Flame of Iridar	Carter
Ancient Past	The City Outside the World	Carter
Ancient Past	Warriors of Mars	Moorcock
Ancient Past	Blades of Mars	Moorcock
Ancient Past	Barbarians of Mars	Moorcock
Pulp era 1865 - 1945
1866	A Princess of Mars	Burroughs
1870	Gulliver of Mars	Arnold
1886	Gods of Mars	Burroughs
1886	Warlord of Mars	Burroughs
1897	The Crystal Egg	Wells
1898	Thuvia Maid of Mars	Burroughs
1898	Chessmen of Mars	Burroughs					Barsoom
1899	Mars The Homefront	Effinger					Earth Proper/Moon
1899	LXG 2 Prelude	Moore					Pellucidar
1899	First Men in the Moon	Wells					Venus
1899	War of the Worlds	Wells					Jupiter and its Moons
1899	War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches	Various					Events mentioned
1903	At the Earth's Core	Burroughs
1913	Pellucidar	Burroughs
1916	The Land That Time Forgot	Burroughs
1916	The  People That Time Forgot	Burroughs
1916	Out of Time's Abyss	Burroughs
1917	Mastermind of Mars	Burroughs	Delivered in 1925
1920	Swordsman of Mars	Kline	delivered in 1930ish
1920	Outlaws of Mars	Kline
1923	Aelita	Tolstoy
1925	Tanar of Pellucidar	Burroughs	reported in 1928
1926	Tarzan at the Earth's Core	Burroughs
1926	Back to the Stone Age	Burroughs
1926	Land of Terror	Burroughs
1926	Radio Planet	Farley
1928	Pirates of Venus	Burroughs
1928	Lost on Venus	Burroughs
1929	A Fighting Man of Mars	Burroughs
1929	Planet of Peril	Kline
1930	Prince of Peril	Kline
1930	Port of Peril	Kline
1933	A Vision of Venus	Kline
1933	Swords of Mars	Burroughs
1937	Carson of Venus	Burroughs
1937	Out of the Silent Planet	Lewis
1938	Synthetic Men of Mars	Burroughs
1939	Llana of Gathol	Burroughs
1940	Escape on Venus	Burroughs
1940	Wizard of Venus	Burroughs
1940	John carter and the Giant of Mars	Burroughs
1940	Perelandra	Lewis
1940			Mentioned in Moon Maid, contact with Mars.
1945	That Hideous Strength	Lewis
1964	Maza of the Moon	Kline
1967			Solid contact with Mars, Moon Maid. Commerce of ideas
1943	Skeleton Men of Jupiter	Burroughs
1972	Jandar of Callisto	Carter
1972	Black Legion of Callisto	Carter
1973	Sky Pirates of Callisto	Carter
1975	Mahars of Pellucidar	Holmes
1975	Mad Empress of Callisto	Carter
1975	Mind Wizards of Callisto	Carter
1975	Lankar of Callisto	Carter
	Ylana of Callisto	Carter
	Renegade of Callisto	Carter
1979	Journey to the Underground World	Carter
1980	Zanthodon	Carter
1981	Hurok of the Stone Age	Carter
1981	Darya of the Bronze Age	Carter
1982	Eric of Zanthodon	Carter
2015			First Mars to Earth Trip
2025	Moon Maid	Burroughs	Trade with Mars established?
2100	The Moon Men	Burroughs
2408	Red Hawk (Moon Men pt ii)	Burroughs
Colonial Era	Suggested dating starts in the 1960's, but can go up to 2100's - 2300's
?	Down to a Sunless Sea	Carter
?	Martian El Dorado	Carter
?	The Valley Where Time Stood Still	Carter
?	The City Outside the World	Carter
?	Down to a Sunless Sea	Carter	Before Time travel
?	Black Amazon of Mars	Brackett
?	Eric John Stark:  Outlaw of Mars	Brackett	(People of the Talisman and Secret of Sinharat)
?	Coming of the Terrans	Brackett
?	Nemesis from Terra	Brackett
?	Beast Jewel of Mars	Brackett
2150	The Man Who Loved Mars	Carter	approx date

The Most Exclusive Website on the Internet

Recently read about the most exclusive website on the internet. The website that let's 1 person in at a time, and only for 60 seconds. Once you're in, you can post a short message, and by the time you realize that, your time is almost up. Once you have a message in, a cat video plays and you can read other posts. Upon logging out after 60 seconds, you can still read some of the posts.

At any rate, I got in for the second time yesterday, and this is what I saw.

The Terminator Timeline Explained

Who doesn’t love Terminator?

For years, T1 and T2 were all there was. But even so, we were left with “did they stop Judgment Day”? I certainly hoped so due the alternate ending that showed a future not overrun by machines. The normal ending I believe left it open to interpretation.

But in the end, the viewer was left to decide.

And I had always hoped that the events of T2 had wiped out Skynet before it was created.

Then I read the book T2:  Infiltrator. That was an excellent story, but for some reason I never read the other two, though I would like to. I had also read one paperback novel that was under the T2 banner and found it to be just OK. I bought one of the others in that second series, but probably never read it.

At any rate, T3 came out not long after this. I went to see it in the theater and I felt it was mostly a rehash of T2. It also flattened my hopes that Judgment Day had been averted. I did like, though, that the Terminatrix sort of maybe seemed inspired by the villain in the T2:  Infiltrator. I was disappointed though that Skynet was basically an internet worm and not like some actual thing or AI that was developed.

Terminator 4 came out. I did like it, overall. It was a good action movie and I had always been curious to see the war in the future. I was disappointed that we didn’t get to see Skynet…which I guess is software, but the software needs hardware somewhere, right? I was also disappointed that we didn’t get to see the time machine. It’s a shame that it never became the trilogy it should have, and it’s even more shameful that Christian Bale was not returning for Terminator:  Genisys. But I felt that way about Edward Furlong for T3. I mean, really, what else was he doing?

Genisys held zero interest for me. A T-800 Schwarzenegger model goes back to protect Sarah Connor as a girl. No thanks. Thanks for destroying what passed for continuity in this series. But then I saw the second trailer, which basically spoiled the biggest twist the movie had to offer. And now I’m actually excited to see it. Go figure. Even Avengers 2 didn’t get me excited to see it. No, I haven’t seen it yet.

Anyways. Why am I writing all this? Besides to draw some hits to my blog and hopefully get you to buy and/or review my book?(Free on Kindle 7/2 and 7/3 of 2015 in this timeline only!)

Because I love time travel. It’s such a fun literary device to use. And one that always only confuses things.

I’m here to try to puzzle out the time travel in Terminator.

OK, first, you have Terminator 1. This one’s easy, thanks to the time I spent playing Soul Reaver, which I don’t recommend anybody do.

There is no “Timeline Zero”. No timeline when Skynet developed naturally. No timeline where John had a different father than Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn, you da bomb yo!). Terminator one is the result of an infinity loop. Skynet is made and John is made because things from the future ended up in 1984. They always did. Skynet could not go back to change the past, though it tried. All it did was ensure its own birth. Same too for John Connor. He sent Kyle Reese back to save his mom from Skynet. He had no choice.

In so doing we see that in Terminator, there was no free will by two different sentient beings. Skynet mistakenly thought it could prevent its future defeat at John’s hands by going back and killing him before birth. But at the point it sent the terminator back, it had already lost. It was immutable.

John too had no choice. He probably made an impulse decision or one made by years of being fed the line that he was mankind’s savior and sent his dad/friend back in time to save his mom. He had no choice but to do so.

So terminator 1, the travelers from the future changed nothing, despite their best efforts. The couldn’t. They had always gone back. Every action that they undertook was what had happened in 1984. All both parties did was to ensure their own survival.

Lucky for Skynet.

Pausing for a moment. If we take T1 at face value, Skynet and the humans only sent back the one party on each side. However. As Skynet was being defeated and sending one terminator back in time, it perhaps had the option to send back several. So, it could have sent 1 to 1984, another to 1994ish and so one. Where that gets tricky though is would they all be in the same timeline? I would say yes, given the rules of T1. Anything sent back had always been sent back. So Skynet could send back 100 terminators and it would have made no difference. Because John Connor could just send back another 100 human/terminators to offset that. In an offscreen moment, probably in the movie novelization, that’s what he did with the T800 that he sent back for T2.

But T2 is where it also starts to get murky.

The problem we have with T2 is that we have at least 2 possibilities of what happened. 1) If we continue with the rules of time travel from T1, namely “History abhors a paradox” then everything they do in T2 to prevent judgment day is for naught. Sure, John and Sarah live, but judgment day isn’t far off, and none of their actions have stopped it. That would make everything cut and dry, and if you only like those 2 movies, you can forget the rest. And really if you just take those 2 movies, it can be a closed infinity loop. Or if you prefer, you can take the “good future” ending and say they did change judgment day.

That is the simplest way to take it.

Option 2) though, and unfortunately this seems to be what happened, mainly because of T3. Option 2 is that the rules of time travel were changed. Really, this boils down to making unnecessary sequels to make more money.

In universe though, for some unexplained reason, the rules of time travel work differently going into T3 than they did in the previous 2 movies. Really, T3 should have just been a movie about the future war, but instead it was another failed attempt to change the future. Had it been about the future war, you could have kept your infinite loop.

T3 shows us that Judgment Day in 1997 never happened and we are led to believe that this is because of the events in T2. But if T1 is an infinite loop, every incursion into the past ought to be as well. But what was it that changed the rules? In the Soul Reaver games, the past could only be changed at critical points, with the Soul Reaver and even then it was not guaranteed. And even when it was changed, the “river of time” pushed back to try to resume its original course. In the Terminator series, there is no such “rule breaker.”

So basically T3 really should not exist.

Except for the fact that the T2:  Infiltrator novel (and 2 subsequent books I guess) do offer an attempt to explain the paradoxes. Skynet (if it was this novel) remembers conflicting histories simultaneously. So those novels perhaps offer us an out of sorts.

While I only read book 1 of 3, it explains that time is like a river analogy. More or less. That no matter what changes are made, time prefers to stay its course. That’s why T1 was fairly cut and dry. Perhaps what Infiltrator is suggesting is that T1 everything was fine, though time became somewhat malleable due to the temporal distortion. But the second incursion of T2 gave the already “vibrating” or unstable timeline another jolt, and thus the river of time flowed a little further off course which resulted in T3 and the delayed Judgment Day. Even so, Judgment Day still occurred. So some events are changed, but the overall course is not. Whether or not Infiltrator’s 2 sequels corroborate my theory and tie into T3 remains for me to see, but I suppose it’s possible.

I don’t know how or if the other T2 tie-in books contribute to this or if the T3 and 4 tie-in books add anything, but Infiltrator’s storyline does connect some dots and actually deals with the deeper issues of the implications of time travel. I shall have to go read them. I also don’t know how the Sarah Connor Chronicles tie in either, but I would like to know.

This unstable timeline continues silently through T4 (Salvation), which in reality is a victim of studio politics and money, but in universe you can say there’s no time travel to occur and hasn’t occurred in years, so the reverberating timeline settles down. But the timeline has changed enough to give us Terminator:  Genisys.

Which looks like a mess. But I am excited to see how it all plays out, because, each instance of time travel seems to create a more extreme reaction in the timeline.

I may have to do a revised blog after reading the novels and seeing Genisys.

Enjoy!