Raymond A. Palmer is a double-edged sword that many Science Fiction purists would like to forget. On the one hand he was one of two men who created the very first fanzine in 1930, The Comet. As an editor, he provided magazine space for writers who did not want to kowtow to John W. Campbell and his idea of Science Fiction. Palmer was the editor who brought Edgar Rice Burroughs back to Fantastic Adventures in 1940. Most of ERB’s later collections/novels first appeared in a Palmer magazine. Palmer is remembered by First Fandomers as a quirky, enthusiastic and giving member of SF.
But there is the other side of Palmer too. The Shaver Mysteries, weird ideas about creatures dwelling under the earth and influencing humanity, written by Richard S. Shaver and presented as fact. Using the Shaver Mystery to drive sales, Palmer brought Amazing Stories to its height. If that weren’t enough, Palmer left Ziff-Davis in 1949 and started his own magazines with little success. One of these was Other Worlds, which ended up as Flying Saucers From Other Worlds by 1958, and ran as a non-fiction Ufology mag until 1976. Palmer has been called “The Man Who Created UFOs” for all his promotion of the idea after 1947.
Ray Palmer was an Edgar Rice Burroughs fan. What could be more appealing to the four-foot tall man with the humpback? To imagine himself as the apex of masculine health that is Tarzan. And in 1955 he got a big idea. A really BIG idea. Ray Palmer wanted to appoint the successor to the mantle of the author of Tarzan, John Carter of Mars and so many other famous characters. He declared this is the November 1955 issue of Other World in a piece called “Tarzan Never Dies”
I hereby propose that the Edgar Rice Burroughs interests nominate a successor to Edgar Rice Burroughs to continue the adventures of all of his famous characters. I further propose they nominate a man who has proved he can continue in the high standard and tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs, as based on 100,000 words already written. I propose that Tarzan and all of his friends be allowed to live again, and walk once more through the pages of the books of the land, for the enjoyment of millions of fans everywhere.
In “Tarzan Never Dies” Palmer is vague as to who the successor to Burroughs’ crown is and what this 100,000 word novel is called. He did reveal that the novel featured both Tarzan and John Carter as well as La of Opar and Kar Kormak. In the June 1956 issue, Palmer published a one pager where he lists some big name allies in Ray Bradbury, Forrest J. Ackermann and Everett E. Evans, and announces that the writer is John Bloodstone (pseudonym of Stuart J. Byrne), and the novel was called Tarzan on Mars.
We can only suppose he went to ERB Inc. with Tarzan on Mars, with the thought of serializing it in Other Worlds, but was rejected. The direct course unavailable to him, he figured to get public opinion on his side. After writing “Tarzan Never Dies”, a three pager explaining his love of Burroughs’ work, his satisfaction at having been part of publishing the last works of ERB, and finally to suggest that a successor be appointed, he ran this campaign under the name “Dimes For Tarzan”. The letter columns were filled with the struggle up until 1956, when C. R. Rothman sent a letter (that Ray Palmer published in the letter column) saying that Tarzan was a copyrighted name and that Palmer did not have the right to use it in his “Dimes for Tarzan”. Palmer retaliates with a long tirade about Wheaties and how if his supply of Wheaties had been stopped he would be using that word a lot. Either way, the Dimes for Tarzan effectively stopped after this and Palmer turned back to UFOS.
Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc.’s motives and thoughts on all this seem a little obscure. As Palmer put it in “Tarzan Never Dies”: “Certainly the Burroughs interests stand to profit immensely.” Palmer claimed to have 20,000 signatures from his Dines For Tarzan campaign, a rich book deal offer from Street & Smith as well as the notice of Hollywood. But would they? Palmer had no real way to know what was going on at ERB Inc. in the years before Burroughs’ death. In 1923, Edgar Rice Burroughs had been incorporated. ERB was the first author to do this, a sign of how profitable his writing empire was.
By the 1940s, ERB had two ex-wives and no control over the company he had created. He lived in Hawaii to cut costs and wrote those last stories for Ray Palmer because he needed the money. Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. sped on quite well without him, making money from movies, radio, comics and numerous other forms of merchandizing. Burroughs was no longer needed and his death made little difference to the workings of the company. So why bring in Ray Palmer in 1955 and have him muddy the waters with poorly written pastiches? The profits for Palmer were obvious but not the heirs of Burroughs. Marion Burroughs, ERB’s first wife, had a standing policy: that having other writers produce ERB works weakened the copyright, and in turn, lessened potential profits, not increased them.
In the end Tarzan on Mars by John Bloodstone never appeared. Or did it? The 1971 book Thundar: Man of Two Worlds is a reworking of this novel. Since the book appeared during the Sword & Sorcery book, it got a Sword & Planet gloss-over. The book did in fact inspire the cartoon, Thundarr the Barbarian and in this way John Bloodstone made his mark on fantastic literature. He did not get to be the successor of Edgar Rice Burroughs but as Ray Palmer should have realized, why does ERB need a successor? Which brings us to 2017. Is Tarzan public domain? From what I can gather, he is though the name “Tarzan” might not be. When that changes, there will be a glut of Tarzania like you’ve never seen. Just as with the proliferation of Sherlock Holmes novels today, soon Tarzan adventures, written by lesser talents, will fill Amazon in such a flood that even old Raymond A. Palmer might choke. Or maybe not. Maybe old Ray would laugh, off in his alien UFO heaven, laugh and pick up another mock-Tarzan novel and smile.
For more on the story of Thundarr, Daniel J. Davis digs deeper in “Devil Dogs! A Thundarr Novel?”.
