Heroic Dreams - All Things Medieval

The John Carter of Mars series of stories are a great series of book in the old pulp fantasy style and I had read the whole series a very long time ago. I dug up some of my copies of the books here:

The movie is being written by Andrew Stanton who wrote Finding Nemo and Wall-e. You can read the post about this on the Pixar Blog. And it will be interesting to see how they handle this story and the movie. Will it be fully animated or will be something else? Either way it is probably going to be really good. Pixar always makes wonderful movies.

About The Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

There are eleven Mars books in the series and four of them (listed first) are John Carter books:

• The Princess of Mars
• The Gods of Mars
• The Warlord of Mars
• John Carter of Mars (This book is a concatenation of two Novellas: “John Carter and the Giant of Mars” and “Skeleton Men of Jupiter”.
• Thuivia, Maid of Mars
• The Chessmen of Mars
• A Fighting Man of Mar
• Swords of mars
• Synthetic Men of Mars
• Llana of Gathol

I am wondering what the first movie will be about and what the real title will be. The proper first book is A Princess of Mars and this book sets everything up because it is where John Carter first finds himself on Mars. I have also heard rumors that there will be a trilogy of movies which fits with the first three Mars books.

The John Carter books are a lot of fun and they have been re-worked and repackaged several times over the last century including some covers and internal artwork by Frazetta, which is probably some of his most recognizable stuff.

How to Get some John Carter to Read:

Amazon has plenty of the Edgar Rice Burroughs stuff and seeing as the stuff is pretty old you can also download and read it for free on Gutenberg Scroll down to the bottom of this page for Burroughs

Here is the Edgar Rice Burroughs Section on Amazon.com Edgar Rice Burroughs Books 

About the famous curved rapier that is pictured on the Frazetta art. John Carter is famous for this sword and there is even a real version that has been made and is for sale. It’s pretty cool and you can take a look at it here: John Carter’s Martian Longsword

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Today is International Dungeon & Dragons Day. (http://www.dndgameday.com/)

And in conjunction with this Wizards of the Coast has released its highly anticipated 4th edition of the game. The official release was yesterday and the books are available on amazon.com which will start shipping them on June 16.

I haven’t played D&D for a very long time but I still have very fond memories of some exciting and epic adventures when I was just a lad. The first version was released in 1974 and I think it was some time in 1975 that I took a ride up to some little shop in Boston to get a copy. It was packaged in a plastic bag and the whole thing looked like somebody made it in their basement. I wish I still had that set because it is probably a collectible now.

Anyway, it’s been over thirty years and they have only released now a fourth edition. It tells you how timeless the game system really is. D &D has had a tremendous impact on the worlds of fantasy, gaming and more. It pretty much created the whole genre of Role Playing.

 The 4th Edition was released yesterday but of course there is a bit of a lag in shipping, probably because of demand and the Amazon website says it will begin shipping on June 16th. 

Dungeons and Dragons Core Rulebook Gift Set, 4th Edition 

 Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook: Roleplaying Game Core Rules, 4th Edition

Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide: Roleplaying Game Core Rules, 4th Edition 

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