ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION: EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS’ FIRST TWO PELLUCIDAR STORIES

Recent online discussions among film critics dealt with how the Jurassic Park series could be livened up.

Personally, I think it shot its bolt and should be done and left alone. Filmmakers who still want to deal in large numbers of dinosaurs should start adapting the Pellucidar novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs instead. They’re just begging for modern adaptations!

AT THE EARTH’S CORE (1914) – This tale was originally serialized in several issues of All-Story Weekly in 1914, then was assembled in novel form in 1922. American mining heir David Innes and his much older inventor friend Abner Perry test-drive Abner’s diesel-punk subterranean tunnel-drilling vehicle the Iron Mole.   

The pair inadvertently drive the train engine sized vehicle to an Inner Earth realm called Pellucidar in the language of the native inhabitants. Amazed by this find, David and Abner set out on foot to explore some of the rainforest region and realize it is inhabited by thousands of dinosaur species long extinct on the Earth’s surface.

Pellucidar, lit by an inner sun, is also inhabited by various human races not much past the Stone Age in development. Innes and Perry are captured – along with several people of this Inner Earth. Their captors are a hairy humanoid race called the Sagoths, who have captured them all to use as slaves for their masters, the dinosaurid species called the Mahars.

During months of captivity, David and Abner learn the language of Pellucidar and are taught the history of the immediate area. The Mahars are telepathic lizard-like and eerily intelligent creatures who put me in mind of cruelly smart Xenomorphs from the Alien franchise.

(In the 1976 movie version of At the Earth’s Core the Mahars were simply people in Barney the Purple Dinosaur-sized costumes and looked ridiculous. Today’s special effects could do them justice.)

The human inhabitants of Pellucidar consist of different tribes of white skin and different shades of brown and black skin, so a varied cast is baked right into the story. The human captives have a common cause against the Sagoths and their Mahar masters who enslave them all.

A romance develops between David Innes and Dian, Princess of Amoz, one of the nations of Pellucidar. David finds a male friend in Ghak of Sari, another Pellucidaran country. Presently, a villainous Amozian captive named Hooja the Sly One manages to escape, forcing Dian to come with him. 

Abner Perry’s brilliant mind is recognized by the telepathic, non-speaking Mahars and they use him to organize the crude writings that the Mahars have psychically forced the Sagoths to write over the millenia. Abner does so while also taking note of the dinosaur species of Pellucidar.

With Abner safe for the present as a forced librarian of sorts for the Mahars, David escapes to track down Hooja the Sly One and his prisoner Dian of Amoz. After assorted adventures involving dinosaurs and the tribes of Pellucidar, David makes several allies.

He also wins Dian in a battle with Jubal the Ugly, a strong brute who took her from the weak Hooja. Dian and David are married in a ceremony of her people. David now leads an attack by the allied nations against the Mahars and the Sagoths.

Our hero parlays that into an entire uprising against the villains. He is also reunited with Abner, who has learned that the Mahar are all females and reproduce parthenogenetically. Using that to their advantage, David and the allied forces win a major battle.

Those Mahars and Sagoths not killed in the fighting flee the area, leaving Innes, Perry, Dian, Ghak and the other humans in control of the former Mahar city.

EPILOGUE: Soon, David and what he thinks is Dian ride the Iron Mole back to the Earth’s surface to get arms and supplies to help the humans of Pellucidar in the war that has just begun. Once topside, he realizes Hooja the Sly somehow abducted Dian from the Iron Mole before it left Pellucidar but he vows to get her back. 

PELLUCIDAR (1915) – This story was first published in serialized form in All-Story Weekly in 1915, then collected as a novel in 1923.

David Innes uses his mining wealth to load up the Iron Mole with weaponry and other supplies to help his allies in Pellucidar against the Mahars and the Sagoths. He learns that the war has been going against the humans during his absence, and Hooja has found asylum among the Sagoths with his captive Dian. 

David negotiates for information about Dian’s whereabouts while his allies are taught by Abner how to use the technology that Innes brought back with him. Naturally, dinosaurs of all kinds complicate matters as the war continues. 

Our hero forges an alliance with an island nation called Anoroc to help the humans against their foes. While the combined human nations fight on against the Mahars and Sagoths, David ventures off to covertly find Hooja, whom he kills in combat. Dian returns to the human-held territories with Innes.

His mind now free to focus on the war to the exclusion of everything else, David Innes leads the humans of Pellucidar in a series of brilliant campaigns that completely wipe out their deadly adversaries. With victory won, David cements the allied nations into the Human Empire of Pellucidar with himself as emperor and Dian as empress.

Innes and Perry will continue teaching the Pellucidarans how to use technology to improve their lives and crops, etc. Attempts to live side by side with the countless dinosaurs will continue as well.

*** There were five more Pellucidar novels to follow, one of them a crossover story in which Tarzan meets David Innes and company in an adventure in other areas of Pellucidar.

Eventually, a seafaring Muslim nation was encountered, having entered the Inner Earth centuries earlier via the cave entrance at the North Pole. An Asian nation at about Bronze Age levels of progress was also discovered as the stories went on.

Burroughs even included a map of all the regions of Pellucidar.

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