Yet another fit of nostalgia has me hunting online used bookstores for old-school sword & sorcery paperbacks. Cheesey or not, I love this stuff. First up:

The Sword of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett (1953)



An Earthman on colonized Mars, Matt Carse is trapped in the tomb of the cursed ancient Martian god Rhiannon and sent back in time to before Mars died. From there it gets very E.R. Burroughs, with the twist that the ancient god shares his consciousness. Battles are fought, wars are won, a long-hated god is redeemed and Carse eventually finds his way back to his own time, with a beautiful princess from the past at his side.

Trev, we have an AMAZING paperback shop near here, paperbacks usually $1 to $1.50. Those folks have a whole section loaded with pulps. It's pretty great. I grabbed a load of then-out of print stuff for dirt cheap.

I don't know why I'm telling you this, since it will inevitably result in you asking me to look for something for you and me refusing to do so on account of you being a godless liberal. But there it is.

Hey, if they have any Astounding pulps from the early 1940s, can you ... wait, what?

Haven't read the book, but I've read an anthologized short story that this must have been expanded from.

That book sings like a bird in flight. I would love to love it.

Cyborg Caveman should post here- S&S is his bread and butter.

Please. He thinks Tarzan is a barbarian.

Excellent book by Leigh Brackett writer of some very famous classic movies (The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo, El Dorado & co-writer of The Empire Strikes Back), who was also the wife of Edmond Hamilton.
The Sword Of Rhiannon is a favorite. Great story.

I'm not sure I think of him that way either, but I can see where he's coming from--



All of the bolded definitions apply.

Leigh Brackett is God to me.

Not to really get into this again, but, no, they don't. If you read all the Burroughs books, you'll find that Tarzan lives in a big house/compound in Africa. He also has a castle in England, for what it's worth. He goes native when he wants to or when he has to to rescue Jane from some crazy Nazi midgets or something. He is very cultured and refined, he speaks French, English, and maybe a few more languages too.

He isn't Greek though.

Technically, if you're into genre breakdowns, what Brackett wrote is considered to be Planetary Romance. This also the genre covering Burrough's John Carter stories as well as REH's only venture into it, Almuric.

I've only read the first book. Those terms define him as I read him there.

There are 24 books,

Thank you.

I suppose since Conan lives in a castle (as King Conan), speaks multiple languages, and is knowledable about numerous tribes and cultures, he also is not to be considered a barbarian?

And, disappointingly, not one of them features Nazi midgets.

Which is a shame.

C'mon, Hanzo. Harry Potter goes to school in a castle, does that make him a barbarian in training? I gave you some facts about Tarzan that you didn't know and now you're twisting that back to make this argument?

It has to do with the intent of the author as expressed through the attitudes and actions of the characters. Conan was a barbarian, Tarzan was not. Conan was an example of the primal savage triumphing over civilization. Tarzan was an example of the inherent nobility of a man, an English lord, triumphing over his savage upbringing. He was Lord of the Jungle and Lord Greystoke too.

Don't believe me? Read the books, all the books.

No need to twist facts...
Tarzan fought a lost Roman colony in Tarzan and the Lost Empire. Those Romans considered him a barbarian.
His all too civilized opponents from a variety of the world's cultures have at one point or another all referred to him as a savage or a brute
In an era of guns his preferred weapons are the knife, the bow and arrow, the spear.
He prefers to eat meat raw.
He prefers to go about mostly unclothed.
Repeatedly, so much so that I find it odd that I have to even bring it up, it is mentioned in book after book that Tarzan prefers the wild to the city, sleeping under the stars to sleeping under a roof, antipathy toward all the vices of civilization, that when he removes the garb of the civilized world he becomes his true self, and on and on. It's just so bizarre to me that you guys can't accept he's a barbarian. I have to assume it's some kind of knee-jerk rejection of the term itself.

Saying that Tarzan isn't a barbarian just because he can behave in a civilzed manner and hold intelligent discourse is like saying that Superman isn't an alien because he can dress and act like a human.

No, just pointing out that a character who we all consider a barbarian has many of the traits you cite to prove than Tarzan isn't one. He becomes royalty, is incredly cultured and educated, etc.



I won't claim to know anything about ERB's intent, but will defer to Caveman's comments above. Tarzan seems to prefer aspects of barbarism as opposed to the civilized life of he times-- but again, I don't know what ERB was going for. He certainly seemed to like having Tarzan prefer the trappings of the barbarian.



I believe you. I loved the first novel but was bored by the second one and quit halfway through. I'd like to get back at it and try again at some point, though.

Bottom line-- I don't care if Tarzan's a barbarian or not. I can just see the argument that he is, based on his preference for a more "savage" way of life.

I guess if you just look at the surface trappings; the loin cloth, the ape yell, the jungle life, the fighting, etc. Tarzan would look like a barbarian. But he's not.