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