Before there were starships, before there were warp drives, before science fiction had even settled on a name for itself, there was a failed businessman from Chicago who imagined a naked swordsman standing on the dead sea bottoms of Mars, fighting six-limbed green warriors under the light of two moons. His name was Edgar Rice Burroughs, and he changed everything.
Burroughs didn't just write adventure stories — he created entire worlds. His Mars (which he called Barsoom) and his Venus (called Amtor) were complete civilizations with their own geography, politics, cultures, and languages. They were also, not coincidentally, some of the most thrilling settings in the history of popular fiction.
The Unlikely Origin Story
Edgar Rice Burroughs was born in 1875 in Chicago. By the age of thirty-five, he had failed at virtually everything he'd tried. He'd been a cattle rancher, a gold miner, a railroad policeman, a department store manager, and a salesman of pencil sharpeners. None of these careers lasted. He was, by any conventional measure, a failure — a middle-aged man with a family to support and no evident talent for making a living.
Then, in 1911, he read a pulp magazine story so bad that he thought, "I could do better than that." He sat down and wrote "Under the Moons of Mars," which was serialized in The All-Story magazine in 1912 under the title "Under the Moons of Mars" (later published as a novel titled A Princess of Mars).
It was an immediate sensation. Within months, Burroughs followed it with "Tarzan of the Apes," and his life was transformed forever. The failed pencil-sharpener salesman became one of the most commercially successful writers in American history.
Barsoom: The Mars Series
A Princess of Mars, the first Barsoom novel, introduces John Carter, a Civil War veteran who is mysteriously transported to Mars. On a planet with lower gravity, Carter discovers that he possesses superhuman strength and agility. He encounters the Tharks — enormous four-armed green warriors — and eventually meets Dejah Thoris, the beautiful princess of Helium, a red-skinned humanoid civilization.
The plot is pure adventure: rescues, escapes, battles, and breathtaking acts of courage. But what elevates the Barsoom books above mere adventure is Burroughs' world-building. Mars is not Earth in costume — it is a dying world with ancient canals, multiple intelligent species, incomprehensible technology, and a social complexity that unfolds across eleven novels.
Why Barsoom Endures
- The sense of wonder. Burroughs had an unmatched ability to make the reader feel the strangeness and beauty of an alien world. His descriptions of Mars' dead sea bottoms, towering ruins, and crimson skies create a vivid visual experience that works beautifully in the audio format, where the imagination is free to build the imagery.
- The romance. John Carter's love for Dejah Thoris is one of the great romances in adventure fiction — not because it's psychologically complex, but because it's utterly sincere. Carter will cross a planet, fight armies, and defy gods for the woman he loves, and Burroughs makes you believe every moment of it.
- The pacing. Burroughs never lets a chapter end without a crisis, a revelation, or a cliffhanger. His serialized training made him a master of momentum. You may intend to listen to one chapter before sleep, but you'll find the next chapter starting before you can reach for the pause button.
- The influence. Without Barsoom, there is no Flash Gordon, no Star Wars, no Avatar. Every planetary adventure that followed owes something to Burroughs' vision of a swordsman beneath alien skies.
Amtor: The Venus Series
In the 1930s, having thoroughly explored Mars, Burroughs turned his attention to Venus — which he called Amtor. The Venus series, beginning with Pirates of Venus (1934) and continuing with Lost on Venus (1935), follows Carson Napier, a young adventurer who intended to travel to Mars but miscalculated and ended up on Venus instead.
If the Barsoom books are planetary romance in a desert setting, the Venus books are planetary romance in a jungle. Burroughs' Venus is a world of perpetual cloud cover, vast oceans, and dense forests inhabited by a bewildering variety of civilizations and creatures. The tone is slightly different from the Mars series — more humor, more social satire, and a protagonist who is more fallible and self-deprecating than the heroic John Carter.
Venus as Social Commentary
The Venus novels contain some of Burroughs' most pointed social satire. Pirates of Venus features a society governed by a totalitarian ideology that satirizes both fascism and communism. Lost on Venus explores a city of immortals who have traded their freedom for eternal life. The critiques are broad rather than subtle, but they demonstrate that Burroughs was thinking about more than just swordfights and damsels.
Burroughs as a Bedtime Author
Edgar Rice Burroughs may be the ideal bedtime audiobook author. His particular strengths align perfectly with the needs of pre-sleep listening:
Vivid Imagery Without Graphic Violence
Burroughs' action scenes are exciting but not disturbing. Swords clash, heroes triumph, and villains are defeated, but the violence is more swashbuckling than graphic. You can enjoy the thrill of adventure without the kind of visceral imagery that might keep you awake.
Complete World Immersion
The detailed world-building of Barsoom and Amtor creates an immersive mental environment that displaces the real-world concerns of the day. When you're imagining yourself crossing the dead sea bottoms of Mars or navigating the cloud-covered jungles of Venus, there's simply no mental bandwidth left for tomorrow's meeting or yesterday's argument.
Serial Structure
Burroughs' novels were originally serialized in magazines, and each chapter functions as a semi-complete episode. This makes them ideal for nightly listening — you can enjoy a chapter or two per night, each ending with a satisfying mini-conclusion (or a delicious cliffhanger that gives your dreams something to work with).
The Comfort of Competence
John Carter and Carson Napier always prevail. There is no ambiguity about whether the hero will survive, no dark nihilism about the futility of effort. In a world full of uncertainty, there is something deeply comforting about a story where courage and loyalty are always rewarded. This predictability, far from being a literary flaw, is a feature for bedtime listening — it lets you relax into the story without anxiety about the outcome.
A Reading Order for Insomnus
If you want to explore Burroughs on Insomnus, here's a suggested order:
- A Princess of Mars — Start here. It's where everything began, and it's still the most iconic Burroughs novel.
- Pirates of Venus — For a change of scenery, move to the cloud-covered jungles of Amtor.
- Lost on Venus — Continue Carson Napier's adventures in the most richly imagined of the Venus novels.
Pair these with a 528 Hz solfeggio frequency — the warmth and emotional richness of the "love frequency" complements the romantic adventure of Burroughs' planetary romances beautifully.
The Legacy of Planetary Romance
Burroughs died in 1950, having published over seventy novels and become one of the wealthiest authors of his era (the Los Angeles community of Tarzana is named after his Tarzan ranch). His direct literary influence extends through virtually every adventure and science fiction franchise of the 20th and 21st centuries.
But his most enduring contribution may be more fundamental: he demonstrated that popular fiction could create complete, internally consistent imaginary worlds — worlds that readers would return to again and again, worlds that felt as real as any place on Earth. In doing so, he laid the groundwork for modern fantasy and science fiction world-building, from Middle-earth to Arrakis to a galaxy far, far away.
For more on the literary era that shaped Burroughs and his contemporaries, see our articles on Arthur Conan Doyle and the golden age of science fiction magazines.
The Burroughs Method: Why These Books Still Work
Critics have spent a century pointing out that Burroughs was not a great prose stylist. His dialogue can be wooden, his science is nonexistent, and his plots follow formulas that become predictable after a few books. All of this is true, and none of it matters.
Burroughs succeeded because he understood something fundamental about storytelling: transportation matters more than technique. A reader who is fully immersed in Barsoom — who can feel the thin Martian air, see the twin moons rising over the dead sea bottoms, hear the clash of sword on shield — doesn't care whether the prose would satisfy an English professor. What matters is the vividness of the world and the urgency of the adventure.
This is why Burroughs translates so naturally to audiobook format. His strengths — vivid imagery, relentless pacing, complete world immersion — are amplified by oral delivery. His weaknesses — occasionally stiff prose, formulaic plotting — are smoothed by a skilled narrator's voice. A Burroughs novel read aloud becomes what it was always meant to be: a campfire story writ large, told by a master of the form to listeners who want nothing more than to be carried away to somewhere extraordinary.
For the sleepless listener, Burroughs offers the ultimate escape. You cannot worry about tomorrow's presentation while you're crossing the Martian desert on the back of a thoat, sword at your side, with a princess to rescue and a city to save. The problems of the waking world simply cannot compete with the wonders of Barsoom — and that displacement is exactly what an anxious mind needs to finally let go and drift toward sleep.