Showing Tag: "erb" (Show all posts)

KORAK AT THE EARTH’S CORE: MY REVIEW

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, February 29, 2024, In : Review 

I can’t remember after so many years if it was for a book or a movie, or possibly even a TV show, but years I ago I read a review in which the writer began by saying that the best review he could ever imagine sharing would consist of just a single word: “Wow!”


That single word review pretty well sums up my reaction to Win Scott Eckert’s latest addition to the ever-expanding mythology created well over a century ago by my all-time favorite storyteller, Edgar Rice Burroughs. I’ve wri...


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TARZAN: BATTLE FOR PELLUCIDAR (A REVIEW)

Posted by John Allen Small on Friday, September 4, 2020, In : Review 

(The following review is based on an advanced readers' copy.)



Now THIS is Tarzan!


A few years back, in a review of one entry in the recent spate of new novels featuring the famed jungle hero that have been authorized by Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. over the past decade or so, I made the following observation: "As a life-long fan, I have long been of the opinion that even lackluster Tarzan tales are ultimately better than no new Tarzan tales at all. (I’ll be the first one to admit that some stori...


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CARSON OF VENUS: THE EDGE OF ALL WORLDS (A Review)

Posted by John Allen Small on Monday, April 20, 2020, In : Review 

As a lifelong fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs (I began reading my father's copies of the Ballantine and Ace ERB editions as a third grader in the early 1970s), I have spent much of that life feeling mixed emotions whenever I encounter new adventures of Burroughs' heroes written by authors other than the master himself. Certainly these return voyages into the ERB realm have been uneven at best. On the one hand we have seen the heights of Tarzan and the Valley of Gold, Swords Against the Moon Men a...


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ERB MOVIES OF THE 1970s

Posted by John Allen Small on Monday, June 19, 2017, In : Pop Culture 

As Phillip R. Burger pointed out in an essay included in the 2005 Bison Books reissue of Richard Lupoff’s Master Of Adventure, 1975 was a particularly good year to be a fan of Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs.

For one thing, it was the centennial of ERB’s birth, which meant that much attention was being paid to the author and his works. As part of the centennial celebration, Irwin Porges finally published his long-anticipated (and definitive) ERB biography, Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man...
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR. BURROUGHS

Posted by John Allen Small on Monday, August 31, 2015, In : Pop Culture 

Tomorrow, September 1, marks the 140th anniversary of the birth of my favorite author: Edgar Rice Burroughs, father of Tarzan, chronicler of Barsoom and Pellucidar, and the man whose stories helped teach me to read and made me want to become a writer myself. 


In celebration I thought it might be appropriate to share a poem in tribute to Burroughs that I wrote roughly 20 years ago now…



IN MEMORIAM: ERB


A Poem By John Allen Small



With simple words on paper

He drew a map that led me

On a ...


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RETURN TO PAL-UL-DON: A REVIEW

Posted by John Allen Small on Friday, July 3, 2015, In : Opinion 

In his tribute essay “Caliban,” one of the several items of supplemental material included in the 2013 deluxe hardcover reissue of Philip José Farmer’s classic fictional biography Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (Meteor House), author and pulp historian Will Murray twice makes statements to the effect that no other writer was as qualified as Farmer to step into the shoes of Edgar Rice Burroughs with regard to the task of telling new tales of Tarzan of the Apes.


Those comments of Murr...


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Happy Birthday ERB!

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, August 30, 2012, In : Pop Culture 
(Thanks to my old friend Julian Frye for sharing this photo; please note no copyright infringement is intended.)


Since this Saturday (September 1) is the 135th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Rice Burroughs, I thought I'd share this poem I wrote a number of years ago in honor of my favorite storyteller. It's not great but it came from the heart:


IN MEMORIAM: ERB


A Poem By John Allen Small



With simple words on paper

He drew a map that led me

On a pathway to adventure:

From Africa and Hell's ...


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YOUNG READERS DISCOVER CLASSIC AUTHOR

Posted by John Allen Small on Friday, May 18, 2012, In : Pop Culture 
(Art by the legendary Frank Frazetta!)

 

For much of the past several months I have been devoting much of my free time to helping to promote what is STILL my favorite motion picture of the year thus far: the Disney Studios’ release John Carter


As I noted in this space earlier this year, this wonderfully crafted film – based on the first novel in an 11-volume series of science fiction tales penned by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan – was unfairly pegged as a “flop” even ...


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FROM THE ARCHIVES: VERONICA AS DEJAH

Posted by John Allen Small on Monday, April 2, 2012, In : Pictures 

This is another one of those Archie-themed pieces I did some years back that I just recently decided to start sharing with my friends. Again, it's nothing spectacular but then I mainly did it just for laughs.
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I Don't Care What Anyone Says; I LIKED "John Carter"

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, March 29, 2012, In : Opinion 

Every now and then I find myself in the unusual (and not always desirable) position of championing some cause that seems to fly in the face of mass public opinion. I guess it is not altogether unfair to blame my parents for this tendency; after all, they are the ones who drummed into my mind as a child the importance of standing up for what you believe, and the notion that what is popular is not always what is right.


Sometimes those battles place me on what some would consider to be the wron...


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About Me


John Allen Small John A. Small is an award-winning newspaper journalist, columnist and broadcaster whose work has been honored by the Oklahoma Press Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press, the National Newspaper Association, and the Oklahoma Education Association. He and his wife Melissa were married in 1986; they have two sons, Joshua Orrin (born 1991) and William Ian (born 1996). Mr. Small is the News Editor and columnist for the Johnston County Capital-Democrat, a weekly newspaper headquartered in Tishomingo, OK. He obtained his nickname, "Bard of the Lesser Boulevards," from a journalism colleague - the late Phil Byrum - in recognition of the success of his popular newspaper column, "Small Talk." (In addition to the many awards the column itself has received over the years, a radio version of "Small Talk" earned an award for "Best Small Market Commentary" from the Society of Professional Journalists in 1998.) John was born in Oklahoma City in 1963; lived in the Bradley-Bourbonnais-Kankakee area of Illinois for most of the next 28 years (with brief sojourns in Texas and Athens, Greece, thrown in to break up the monotony); then returned to his native state in 1991, where he currently resides in the Tishomingo/Ravia area. He graduated from Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School in 1981, and received his bachelor's degree in journalism from Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais in 1991. The years between high school and college were a period frought with numerous exploits and misadventures, some of which have become the stuff of legend; nobody was hurt along the way, however, which should count for something. In addition to his professional career as a journalist he has published two short story collections: "Days Gone By: Legends And Tales Of Sipokni West" (2007), a collection of western stories; and "Something In The Air" (2011), a more eclectic collection. He was also a contributor to the 2005 Locus Award-nominated science fiction anthology "Myths For The Modern Age: Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Universe," edited by Win Scott Eckert. In additon he has written a stage play and a self-published cookbook; served as project editor for a book about the JFK assassination entitled "The Men On The Sixth Floor"; and has either published or posted on the Internet a number of essays, stories and poems. He has also won writing awards from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the National Library of Poetry. He is a past president of the Johnston County Chamber of Commerce in Tishomingo; was a charter member and past president of the Johnston County Reading Council, the local literacy advocacy and "friends of the library" organization; served as Johnston County's first-ever Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator in 1994-95; served two terms as chairman of the Johnston County (OK) Democratic Party; and has taught journalism classes for local Boy Scout Merit Badge Fairs. He is a member of the New Wold Newton Meteorics Society.

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