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A review by dotorsojak
Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs
2.0
I just reread this book after many decades. I probably last read it some time in the early 1970s, but am not sure. The edition I read is the Ace paperback series first published in the 1960s, a paperback I have owned since the ‘70s. This is an early ERB, first published in 1915, an immediate sequel to AT THE EARTH’S CORE. It’s not as good as the first one, but it does contain pointed Burroughsian comments on evolution and race and human society generally. Here’s an interesting quotation from David Innes, our hero. He is reflecting on “the dominant race” of Pellucidar, the Mahars, who look like a cross between crocodiles and pterodactyls. Noting the reptilian intelligence of the Mahars, Innes says:
She was a member of the dominant race of Pellucidar. By a strange freak of evolution her kind had first developed the power of reason in that world of anomalies.
To her, creatures such as I were of a lower order. As Perry had discovered among the writings of her kind in the buried city of Phutra, it was still an open question among the Mahars as to whether man possessed means of intelligent communication or the power of reason.
Her kind believed that in the center of all pervading solidity there was a single, vast, spherical cavity, which was Pellucidar. This cavity had been left there for the sole purpose of providing a place for the creation and propagation of the Mahar race. Everything within it had been put there for the uses of the Mahar. (Chap 1)
And here’s another. Innes, who has been captured by the Mahars, comments on what a dominant group thinks of the inferiors whom the dominant ones enslave:
While it had always been difficult for me to look upon these things [the Mahars] as other than slimy, winged crocodiles… I was now forced to a realization of the fact that I was in the hands of enlightened creatures—for justice and gratitude are certain hallmarks of rationality and culture.
But what they purposed for us further was of most imminent interest to me. They might save us from the tarag [a beast who devours humans in the arena] and yet not free us. They looked upon us yet, to some extent, I knew, as creatures of a lower order, and so as we are unable to place ourselves in the position of the brutes we enslave—thinking that they are happier in bondage than in the free fulfillment of the purposes for which nature intended them—the Mahars, too, might consider our welfare better conserved in captivity than among the dangers of the savage freedom we craved. (Chap. 5)
You can’t say that ERB is exactly enlightened, but he clearly thinking about the implications of so-called racial superiority.
This book ends badly. Innes ends up bringing “civilization” to Pellucidar. This civilization mostly consists of repeating rifles, canons, and large ships (which can carry canons). The world envisioned as civilized most resembles an aggressive imperial raj.
She was a member of the dominant race of Pellucidar. By a strange freak of evolution her kind had first developed the power of reason in that world of anomalies.
To her, creatures such as I were of a lower order. As Perry had discovered among the writings of her kind in the buried city of Phutra, it was still an open question among the Mahars as to whether man possessed means of intelligent communication or the power of reason.
Her kind believed that in the center of all pervading solidity there was a single, vast, spherical cavity, which was Pellucidar. This cavity had been left there for the sole purpose of providing a place for the creation and propagation of the Mahar race. Everything within it had been put there for the uses of the Mahar. (Chap 1)
And here’s another. Innes, who has been captured by the Mahars, comments on what a dominant group thinks of the inferiors whom the dominant ones enslave:
While it had always been difficult for me to look upon these things [the Mahars] as other than slimy, winged crocodiles… I was now forced to a realization of the fact that I was in the hands of enlightened creatures—for justice and gratitude are certain hallmarks of rationality and culture.
But what they purposed for us further was of most imminent interest to me. They might save us from the tarag [a beast who devours humans in the arena] and yet not free us. They looked upon us yet, to some extent, I knew, as creatures of a lower order, and so as we are unable to place ourselves in the position of the brutes we enslave—thinking that they are happier in bondage than in the free fulfillment of the purposes for which nature intended them—the Mahars, too, might consider our welfare better conserved in captivity than among the dangers of the savage freedom we craved. (Chap. 5)
You can’t say that ERB is exactly enlightened, but he clearly thinking about the implications of so-called racial superiority.
This book ends badly. Innes ends up bringing “civilization” to Pellucidar. This civilization mostly consists of repeating rifles, canons, and large ships (which can carry canons). The world envisioned as civilized most resembles an aggressive imperial raj.