Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of "the Scientific Romance" in the Munsey Magazines, 1912-1920 (63 page)

"
The Gods of Mars
is coming out as a serial," he had announced in the December, 1912, THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE. "This yarn is a sequel to
Under the Moons of Mars
, of never-to-be-forgotten popularity. The author's imagination again riots over the periphery of our terrestrial neighbor. Once more we play with thoats and snarks and so forth, and six-legged gents, and the scientific paraphernalia that can exist nowhere except on Mars, where, as we learn from our savants, 'they do those things better.'"

Three pages of raves about
Tarzan of the Apes
and
Under the Moons of Mars
followed in a chorus that would continue for years. There was one point of discord. The readers were disappointed at the poor shake that Tarzan got at the end in losing the girl. They demanded a sequel in which this unfair situation would be remedied.

The column ended with the comment: "There are many other letters about
Tarzan
. Most all of them are complimentary, though lots of folks don't seem to like the finish and are sitting round and barking for a sequel.

"Mr. Burroughs wrote us a letter the other day, and he ended by saying: 'About a score of readers have threatened my life unless I promise to write a sequel to
Tarzan
—Shall I?'

"We wonder."

Now the sequel had been written and rejected, but all was well, because
The Gods of Mars
, the continuation of
Under the Moons of Mars
, had begun with the January, 1913, issue and would run through May, and the ecstatic letters of praise were already pouring in.

Following Metcalf's suggestion, Burroughs, in
The Gods of Mars
, had taken John Carter on a two-thousand-mile voyage down the river Iss, on which all Martians go at the age of one thousand, never to return. It flows into the valley of Dor, where a race of vegetable men wait to devour the unfortunates upon arrival. This finding is a savage thrust at religion, questioning those who take dogma for granted. Such thrusts would occur again and again, even in the Tarzan stories, but remain unnoticed because they were attributed to savage or alien creatures rather than earthmen.

Tars Tarkas, the six-armed hideous-appearing but heroic Martian chieftain and friend of John Carter, figures in the adventures. John Carter rescues his own son from the aged black goddess Issus, returning to Helium in a stolen airship, to learn that Dejah Thoris, his wife, has left for the valley of Dor in search of her son. He finds her only as a revolving chamber in which she has been placed is slowly closing, not to reopen for three years. As she leaves his sight, he sees Phaidor, a Martain woman whom he had rejected, drive a dagger at the heart of Dejah Thoris. There the story closed, and if the readers had been disturbed at the inconclusive ending of
Tarzan of the Apes
, they were understandably beside themselves in frustration at the termination of
The Gods of Mars
.

The
same
line drawing of a four-armed Martian in bas-relief against a Martian sky that had headed each installment of
Under the Moons of Mars
was deliberately used almost like a trademark for all six chapters of
The Gods of Mars
. The fact that it was a sequel appeared on each issue's contents page, as well as prefacing the chapter.

Metcalf was considerably relieved when the manuscript of a thirty-two-thousand-word novelette,
The Inner World
, dealing with the adventures of David Innes in Pellucidar, the land inside the earth, was mailed to him and received on February 6. Since the mail from Chicago to New York took two days, the alacrity with which he read the story can be surmised by the fact that a check for four hundred and twenty dollars was dispatched on February 12, and this was the highest word rate Burroughs had so far received.

Metcalf's security was rudely shaken when word spread through the trade that Street & Smith Publications had bought the sequel to Tarzan for THE NEW STORY MAGAZINE. A letter from Burroughs confirmed the rumor.

Burroughs could not afford to lose the time he had put into
Ape Man
. He had surveyed the market, and Street & Smith's third contribution to the adventure pulp field, THE NEW STORY, impressed him as offering a possible market. THE NEW STORY was the result of many incarnations. It had originally been started by Street & Smith as GUNTER'S MAGAZINE. Failing to make it go, they had sold the title to the LaSalle Publishing Company of Chicago, who changed the title to THE NEW (GUNTER'S) MAGAZINE. Its present series dated from November, 1910, where it started from scratch as Volume 1, Number 1, and the title NEW STORY. Street & Smith took it back again in 1912 and made it a magazine similar in policy and format to the popular magazine and people's magazine, carrying 192 pages for fifteen cents. In policy, its fiction was somewhat more exotic and not quite as forthright as its companions'.

Its editor was a moustached, bald-headed, good-natured lawyer named Archibald Lowry Sessions, who was on his way to becoming one of the pulp field's most capable and highly regarded editors. His first big editing job was on AINSLEE'S MAGAZINE, and was obtained in a moment of pique on the part of publisher Ormond Smith with the original editor.

The magazine started with the issue of February, 1898, was general in nature, on slick paper, and contained fiction, articles, poetry, criticism, and humor. The secretary of its editor, Gilman Hall, wrote a derogatory note about the taste of Ormond Smith in fiction, which came to the publisher's eye. He fired the secretary and Gilman Hall, and put Sessions at the head of the magazine.

Sessions turned out to be a good choice, and when, after a shaky start in 1906, THE PEOPLE'S MAGAZINE needed straightening out, he was switched to that magazine and proved an excellent troubleshooter. Now he was fighting to make THE NEW STORY MAGAZINE a winner, and the submission of a sequel to
Tarzan of the Apes
by Edgar Rice Burroughs was manna from heaven. His offer of one thousand dollars for the story, made on February 8, 1913, was accepted two days later by Burroughs.

The news got around, and Bob Davis, who had been leaving THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE pretty much in the hands of Metcalf, for once was beside himself with anger. Years later, lines would appear in a letter to Burroughs dated December 29, 1916, "I will never forgive Metcalf for letting Street & Smith get the other story." He excoriated Metcalf for this blunder, and it may very well have been a factor leading to the dismissal of that editor in 1914.

It was a badly shaken Metcalf who wrote Burroughs February 26, 1913. The news had struck him as "incredible." He wrote Burroughs that he did not regard his action as "friendly." He theorized that it was taken in retaliation for his criticism of
Ape Man
, and he said if it had been intended to show him up, it had achieved its purpose.

He felt that Burroughs should have worked the story over and resubmitted it to give him a "square deal" and confirm a "friendly relationship."

Burroughs spared no feelings in his retort. "I am not writing stories out of friendship," he replied March 1; "I am writing because I have a wife and three children."

He did not stop there.

What type of friendship had Metcalf shown in asking for, then thrice rejecting,
The Outlaw of Torn
?

What type of friendship had he displayed in begging and pleading for a sequel to Tarzan and then rejecting it?

What type of friend is it, Burroughs asked, that expects a writer to place himself economically at the mercy of a subjective opinion and then regards it as an unfriendly act to sell a rejected story elsewhere?

A thoroughly chastened Metcalf asked Burroughs on March 7 to forget anything that may have been said in their exchange of letters and to set a price for first look at future manuscripts.

The poor judgment Metcalf had shown was now assuming the aspect of a catastrophe.

The sequel to the most popular story that THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE had ever printed, possibly the most popular story any American magazine had ever printed, was to be published in the pages of a direct competitor.

Since Burroughs, up to that date, had appeared exclusively in THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE, the
only
place from which NEW STORY MAGAZINE could possibly draw readers would be THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE.

In an economic sense, had they continued to buy all of Burroughs' production, their word rate to him would have remained low and crept up gradually. Now he was in the position of being able to ask for the best bid from two competitive forces.

To further their woes, if they lost him completely, the best hope they had of keeping THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE solvent would be gone.

Edgar Rice Burroughs asked for five cents a word for first look at his stories in a letter of March 10.

Four days later, Metcalf countered with an offer of two cents a word, which was almost double what Burroughs had been getting.

On March 17 Burroughs accepted the two-cent rate
for the remainder of 1913 only
.

His ready acceptance might have appeared poor business considering his good bargaining position, but as it developed, his instincts were right in not pushing too far too fast. He had submitted
The Outlaw of Torn
to Sessions for NEW STORY MAGAZINE, and on March 28, 1913, it had been rejected. Street & Smith represented no surer market than Munsey.

The first story to receive the increased rate was
The Cave Girl
, a thirty-thousand-word novelette for which he was paid six hundred dollars on April 14. A sissified, anemic young Bostonian is shipwrecked on an uncharted island. The rigors of survival slowly convert him into a superb physical specimen, able to hold his own not only against wildlife but also against a lost tribe of primitives who have survived unknown on that island for ages. He is attracted to Nadara, a lovely island woman whom he takes as a mate. When rescue comes, he avoids it and chooses to remain on the island with the woman he loves. The story ends as the landing party discovers a locket in a skin bag, "To Eugenie Marie Celeste de la Vois, Countess of Crecy, from Henri, her husband." The two had been lost twenty years earlier, and the reader becomes privy to the possibility that "The Cave Girl" may very well prove to be their daughter.

The Cave Girl
was published in three installments, July-September, 1913, with a cover by Clinton Pettee. The timing of publication was calculated to have Burroughs appear in unbroken continuity now that the serialization of
Ape Man
, under the title of
The Return of Tarzan
, had commenced with the June, 1913, NEW STORY MAGAZINE, where it would run for seven installments, through December, 1913. They could not prevent any Burroughs fan from buying the competition, but they could see that he had no reason to stop buying THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE.

The Return of Tarzan
was a sectionalized novel, a series of quite skillfully done adventures, which may have been what Metcalf meant when he complained that it lacked "balance." In phase one, a worldly, sophisticated Tarzan (who will even smoke a cigarette) travels from America to France, where he is almost killed in a duel; he conducts espionage among the Arabs; he engages in a victorious battle with a hungry lion; he is thrown into the sea from aboard ship by enemies, to reach the shores of Africa not far from where he was born and establish himself as a chief over a tribe of blacks; and he discovers "the City of Gold," the remnant of drowned Atlantis, whose men have mated with apes and become part-beast. The royal women have kept their bloodlines clean, and La, high priestess, falls in love with Tarzan, a prisoner. He escapes and takes from the ancient city a fabulous treasure in gold. Jane Porter, the girl he loves, has told Clayton she cannot marry him, and returning to Africa, is captured by the beast men of Opar but is saved from sacrifice at the hands of La by Tarzan. They are married, and the story ends.

Tarzan of the Apes
was a scientific romance in spirit, but its sequel was scientific romance in fact, as were in part or wholly a large percentage of the many Tarzan novels to follow. Not only were the Tarzan stories very closely allied with Burroughs' other scientific romances, but in the future Tarzan would visit Pellucidar, scene of a series set in a land at the center of the earth.

The first
three
issues of NEW STORY MAGAZINE carrying
The Return of Tarzan
had full-color covers illustrating the story. The June and August, 1913, covers were by that master of book and magazine illustration, Newell Convers Wyeth. The last was used on the jacket of the first hardcover edition of
The Return of Tarzan
, published in 1915 by A. C. McClurg. Burroughs so admired it that he wrote to Sessions to see if it were for sale. When Wyeth through Sessions asked one hundred dollars for the original, Burroughs refused, stating tartly, "Evidently he wants it more than I do."

The reader reaction was evidently so positive on the first installment of
The Return of Tarzan
that, on July 19, Sessions wrote Burroughs asking to see
The Outlaw of Torn
again. It was sent to him, and he tried to buy it for three hundred and fifty dollars. The low price was turned down, so on August 12, 1912, Sessions returned the novel to Burroughs, but raised the ante to five hundred dollars.

Thinking it over, Burroughs decided to accept, with the proviso that he be paid 2VS cents a word if it should prove to be a big hit with the readers. This "deal" was agreed to by Sessions in a letter of August 18 in which he offered a flat $3,000 for another Tarzan story.

It is puzzling, contrasting the quality of what was being bought and published by the pulp magazines of 1913, why they were so reluctant to give
The Outlaw of Torn
a home. It involved the reader with its first page and carried him with pleasant color and excitement through to the end. The story, which was begun in the January, 1914, NEW STORY MAGAZINE and ran through to April, never received a cover illustration and was referred to as a "New Serial by the Author of
The Return of Tarzan
" Overshadowing it was the appearance of
Allan and the Holy Flower
(published in England as
The Holy Flower
), the latest novel by H. Rider Haggard, which had begun in the December, 1913, issue of NEW STORY MAGAZINE, in which
The Return of Tarzan
ended. Allan was Haggard's most popular character next to "She," and his appearance in this novel brought with it many of the romantic, mystical, and lost-race elements that were the author's trademark. It featured three covers, including several by N. C. Wyeth, and ran for seven installments, ending in the June, 1914, number.