Erbzine.com Homepage
The First and Only Weekly Online Fanzine Devoted to the Life and Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs
Official Edgar Rice Burroughs Tribute Site
Since 1996 ~ Over 15,000 Webpages in Archive
Volume 0747
and
ERB C.H.A.S.E.R ENCYCLOPEDIA
present
SAVAGE PELLUCIDAR
J. Allen St. John: Savage Pellucidar - 6 b/w interiorsSavage Pellucidar
Click for Larger DJ Image
Click for Large Cover

"To my first grandson James Michael Pierce"
Working title: Girl of Pellucidar ~ Composed of four parts: Return to Pellucidar (WT Hodon and O-aa) written September 1940 ~ 
Men of the Bronze Age written in October 1940 ~ Tiger Girl written in November 1940 ~ Savage Pellucidar written in October 1944
READ THE E-TEXT EDITION


PUBLISHING HISTORY (USA)
PULP
Amazing: February 1942 ~ "The Return to Pellucidar"
    J. Allen St. John: two interiors
Amazing: March 1942 ~ "Men of the Bronze Age"
    J. Allen St. John: two interiors
Amazing: April 1942 ~ "Tiger Girl"
    J. Allen St. John: two interiors
Amazing Stories Quarterly: Fall 1942: reprints of Return to Pelllucidar, Men of the Bronze Age, Tiger Girl ~ 752 pages
    Julian S. Krupa: front cover ~ McCall: back cover ~ St. John six reprinted  interiors
Amazing : November 1963 ~ "Savage Pellucidar"
    Larry Ivie: two interiors and back cover
FIRST EDITION
Canaveral Press: November 25, 1963 ~ 274 pages
    J. Allen St. John: DJ and six interiors from pulps ~ Map of Pellucidar on endpapers
REPRINT EDITIONS
Ace paperback: May 1964 and later reprints ~ 221 pages
    Frank Frazetta cover and title page (later used in Ace and Temp printings of Cave Girl)
Ace paperback: January 1973 ~ 255 pages
    Frank Frazetta: new cover art
Ballantine - Del Rey: May 1990 ~ 231 pages
    David B. Mattingly cover
Bison - University of Nebraska: 2007
Cover art adapted from J. Allen St. John
For detailed information, see Robert B. Zeuschner's
Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Bibliography (ERB, Inc., 2016).
Click on www.erbbooks.com or call 214-405-6741 to order a copy.

Savage Pellucidar
Two explorers from the Earth's surface had carved themselves an empire at the Earth's core- Pellucidar. The dangers were many. Untamed tribes and vicious beasts were a constant peril, and there were times when the lives of the surface-men were at stake. But, just when things seemed hopeless, they came up with a trump card-a new weapon. What they didn't realize was that it was a weapon that could bring its makers to the brink of disaster. 

A LOST AIRSHIP, A LOST EMPRESS, A LOST WORLD: Abner Perry had invented the Iron Mole which dug into the crust of the Earth to plunge into the hollow interior world, eternally lit by a central sun, and inhabited by caveman and cave beasts. This was Pellucidar and, in it, Abner and his friend David Innes carved themselves an empire. Abner's introduction of aeronautics into SAVAGE PELLUCIDAR was to plunge David and his primitive empress, Dian, into the danger of a series of new adventures among the unexplored lands and untamed tribes. This is the last novel of Pellucidar that Edgar Rice Burroughs ever wrote.

.

PULP MAGAZINE PREFACE 
TO THE GIRL OF PELLUCIDAR SERIES
Some of you oldsters who can still remember the history you learned many years ago will recall that Pellucidar was discovered in January 1913, by David Innes and Abner Perry, a discovery which was quite as accidental as was Columbus' discovery of America some four hundred twenty years previously, but none the less epochal.

Columbus started out for India and discovered a new world. David Innes and Abner Perry started out  to prospect for coal in an invention of Perry's which they called an Iron Mole, and they discovered a new world -- at the center of the Earth.

Columbus never really got to America; but Innes and Perry got to Pellucidar, and they are still there.  They found it inhabited by men still in the Stone Age of evolution and by strange forms of life which had developed along very different lines from similar species in the outside world.

They have made it their life work to bring civilization to the poor, benighted humans of Pellucidar; at leas Perry has.  Perry was an old man when he came to Pellucidar, an old scientist -- a sweet and lovable character.  He has done the best he could to bring the blessings of civilization to the Pellucidarians.  He found them killing one another with stone hatchets, stone tipped spears, and a few bows and arrows.  He gave them gunpowder.  He built a navy and armed it with cannon.

For you who may have forgotten, may I remind  you that there is no such thing as Time in Pellucidar.  A stationary sun hangs perpetually at zenith.  It is always noon, and one of the psychological effects of this is most weird.  As I write this, David Innes and Abner Perry have been in Pellucidar for twenty-seven years; yet they are no older than when they left the outer crust! At least, they look and feel no older.  Where there is no way of measuring time, there can be no passage of time.  When Pellucidarians are tired, they crawl into a dark cave and sleep; when they are hungry, they eat. An hour, a day, a month, or a year may have passed on the outer crust where all men are the slaves of Time; but in Pellucidar it is still noon just as it was when they started doing whatever they may have been doing; therefore, they are no older, not even by a second.  This, I think you will agree, is quite sound reasoning.  Suppose you started to build a house at noon on a certain day and finished it at noon on t he same day -- you wouldn't be any older, would you?  And it is always the same day in Pellucidar.  It always has been.

Another unique characteristic of Pellucidar is that it is horizonless.  Wherever you may be standing on the surface of Pellucidar there is no horizon.  You are standing on the inside surface of a sphere.  The ground rises gently all around you, the view fading away gradually in the distance, limited only by the power of your vision.  Always the sun is directly above you and your shadow directly beneath you.

When Dave Innes left Sari to go in search of von Horst, Perry was toying with the idea of an aeroplane.  Now, Abner Perry is a scientist.  He knows a great deal about a great many things; he knows a little about a great many other things, and he knows nothing about a considerable number of things. On the outer crust he was, by choice, a metallurgical engineer.  He was never an aeronautical engineer; but, being Perry, he would build an aeroplane. As you may recall, one of his first inventions after he reached Pellucidar was gun powder. What he achieved looked like gun powder, smelled like gun powder, and tasted like gun powder.  All that was wrong with it was that it wouldn't burn.  Dave Innes suggested that they might use it as a fire extinguisher.  That hurt Perry. Of course, he succeeded in manufacturing gun powder later by the well known system of trial and error.

~ ERB

PULP MAGAZINE PREFACE 
TO THE TIGER GIRL EPISODE
In this ever-changing world it is sometimes difficult to keep abreast of historical events, but who is there who does not know  that strange stone age world at the center of the earth, which was discovered by David Innes and Abner Perry many years ago?  Into this stone age world they brought some of the blessings of civilization, such as gunpowder, rifles, and cannon.  They built a navy and established a federation of states, which they called the Empire of Pellucidar.  Perry even built an aeroplane, which would not fly, and a balloon, which did; and which broke loose and carried Dian the Beautiful, David Innes' mate, into a strange land beyond the nameless strait which connects the Sojar Az with the Korsar Az; and forms the southwestern boundary of the land mass where lies the land called Sari, which is the home of David Innes and Dian the Beautiful and Abner Perry.

Down upon this strange land, near the farther shore of the nameless strait, drifted the balloon in which was Dian the Beautiful.  It was a strange, a terrifying, land to her, this terra incognita of her people; but she was well received, for the yellow race which inhabited that portion of the country felt that she must be a goddess coming down out of the heavens; and they treated her as such until Hor, the high priest, fearing her increasing power, turned the people against her, and Gamba, the king; so that they barely escaped from the city with their lives.

With bronze swords and bronze daggers and fire, they constructed a canoe and set forth upon the waters of the nameless strait in an attempt to cross it and reach the continent where lies Sari, while David Innes drifted southward from Sari in another balloon which he had had Perry build, in the hope that thus he might find Dian.

At the same time, Hodon the Fleet One, with a small ship and a few warriors, was searching the vast Lural Az for O-aa, whom he knew to be drifted upon the ship Sari.

The wind and a powerful ocean current had carried the Sari and little O-aa into the nameless strait and thrust her ashore near the city of Tanga-Tanga, who had fought with the men of Lolo-lolo for possession of Dian the Beautiful when her balloon had grounded between the two cities.  They had lost Dian the Beautiful; now they had another Noada, or goddess, in the person of O-aa, who was making herself unpopular with the high priest and the king b y tossing the money offerings which the people brought to her temple back to them; because, being a girl of the stone age, she knew nothing about money; and it delighted her to see the people scramble for it.

This is all history, with which, of course, you should be familiar.


THE PULP MAGAZINE 
LAST PARAGRAPH OF TIGER GIRL
(Originally meant to be the closing story of the sequence)
As the Lo-har beat back toward the nameless strait on its return voyage to Amoz it sighted such a ship as no one there had ever seen; and Dian feared that it was a Korsar.  The little Lo-har tried to escape, but the ship overhauled her as though she were anchored; and when it fired a shot across her bow, she came about; and then Hodon and O-aa and David Innes and Dian the Beautiful were reunited, for this strange ship was the clipper John Tyler.


The Blurb Originally Intended 
for the Hard Cover Dust Jacket Flap
While this could scarcely be called "A collection of flowers of literature," it might still be called a sort of anthology -- an anthology of adventure. It is a tale not alone of the adventures of the girl, O-aa; but of those which befell Hodon the Fleet One and Dian the Beautiful and Abner Perry and David Innes and the little old man from Cape Cod, whose name was not Dolly Dorcas, and many others.

It will take you to strange lands across the nameless strait in the Stone Age world at the Earth's Core, and to adventures upon the terrible seas of Pellucidar.  It will take you form the terrors with which you have been for years accustomed -- the terrors of a world gone mad with hate -- to the cleaner, finer terrors of prehistoric hunting beasts and savage, primeval man.

The primary cause of many of the adventures which befell the nice and un-nice characters whose stories unfolded between these covers was Abner Perry's insatiable urge to invent.  Had he not invented a balloon, very little of this you are about to read would have happened.

On the other hand, the ships he built, the cannon and muskets and gunpowder he produced made it possible for many of these characters to live to tell of their adventures.

But may you do not like adventure?  Then do not read this story.  For it is replete with adventure and mystery and despair and courage and loyalty and -- love.

We think you will love little O-aa and her astounding mendacity.  Perhaps you will be shocked by the little old man whose name is not Dolly Dorcas and who had an inordinate appetite for human flesh, especially Swedes, a lovely old gentleman from Cape Cod where the cranberries come from.

PULP GALLERY
Covers ~ Map
Six J. Allen St. John Interiors
www.erbzine.com/mag2/0231.html


Click for Full-Size Collages


Amazing March 1942: Men of the Bronze AgePellucidar Map from ERB Sketches
Originally planned cover. Eventually appeared in Fantastic Adventures: March 1942 - War on Venus - J. Allen St. JohnRecoverings alternate cover version
Originally planned cover.
Eventually appeared in Fantastic Adventures: March 1942 - War on Venus - J. Allen St. John
Recoverings alternate cover version


Six strange looking creatures crept toward them through the underbrushThey walked on, oblivious to the creatures lurking behind them.
Hodon picked up Blug. . .The screaming thipdar winged toward her!
She leaped up, face to face with one of the lesser priestsBend your bow as you have never bent it before! exclaimed Dian.With a hoarse scream, Dian's captor tumbled into the depths.

Amazing Reprint art by Larry IvieAmazing: Larry Ivie artAmazing back cover: Larry Ivie art


PAPERBACK COVER GALLERY

Frank Frazetta cover and titleFrank Frazetta: new cover art
David B. Mattingly coverSavage Pellucidar - Tandem UK EditionJapanese Savage Pellucidar Motoichiro TakebeEnric Torres Prat for Dutch 1973 edition

Savage Pellucidar Japanese Edition


REPRINT GALLERY


Achilles art for the 1974 UK Tandem paperback edition


Bison Edition from University of Nebraska Press



Click for full-size Promo Splash Bars


From our Graphics Section

Click for Full-Size Collages

Web Refs
ERB C.H.A.S.E.R. Online Encyclopedia
Hillman ERB Cosmos
Patrick Ewing's First Edition Determinors
John Coleman Burroughs Tribute
ERBList Summary by Adams & Ekman
J. Allen St. John Bio, Gallery & Links
Edgar Rice Burroughs: LifeLine Biography
Bob Zeuschner's ERB Bibliography
J.G. Huckenpohler's ERB Checklist
Burroughs Bibliophiles Bulletin
PELLUCIDAR ST. JOHN INTERIORS
Novel Summary by David Adams
G. T. McWhorter's Burroughs Bulletin Index
Lord Greystoke's British Gallery
Illustrated Bibliography of ERB Pulp Magazines
Phil Normand's Recoverings
ERBzine Weekly Online Fanzine
ERB Emporium: Collectibles ~ Comics ~ BLBs ~ Pulps ~ Cards
ERBVILLE: ERB Public Domain Stories in PDF
Clark A. Brady's Burroughs Cyclopedia
Heins' Golden Anniversary Bibliography of Edgar Rice Burroughs
Bradford M. Day's Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Bibliography
Irwin Porges: The Man Who Created Tarzan

Armada of ERB Web Sites
Over 15,000 Webpages
The Fantastic Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs
ERB Companion Sites Created by Bill Hillman
Tarzan.com
Tarzan.com
ERBzine Weekly Webzine
ERBzine.com
Danton Burroughs Website: Tarzana Treasure Vaults
DantonBurroughs.com
Tarzan.org
Tarzan.org
Burroughs Bibliophiles
BurroughsBibliophiles.com
John Coleman Burroughs Tribute Site
JohnColemanBurroughs.com
Tarzine: Official Monthly Webzine of ERB, Inc.
Tarzan.com/tarzine
John Carter of Mars
JohnCarterOfMars.ca
Edgar Rice Burroughs
ERBzine.com/edgarriceburroughs
ERBzine Weekly Webzine
Weekly Webzine
Danton Burroughs Weekly Webzine
Weekly Webzine
Pellucidar
Pellucidar.org

John Carter Film

ERB, Inc. Corporate Site

ERB Centennial

tarzana.ca


BACK TO ERB C.H.A.S.E.R. NAVIGATION CHART

BackForward
Volume 0747


BILL HILLMAN
Visit our thousands of other sites at:
BILL AND SUE-ON HILLMAN ECLECTIC STUDIO
All ERB Images© and Tarzan® are Copyright ERB, Inc.- All Rights Reserved.
All Original Work © 1996-2002/2022 by Bill Hillman and/or Contributing Authors/Owners