Daniel J. Davis is a writer and veteran living in North Carolina. His short fiction has appeared in Writers of the Future Volume 31, Galaxy's Edge Magazine, and Flame Tree Press' Swords & Steam anthology. He blogs about pulp fiction, gaming, and other related interests at www.brainleakage.com.

Longtime readers of my personal blog know I’m a nut for apocalyptic stories. The eventual collapse of society and a return to barbarism is something that’s always fascinated me.

In a post I wrote last year, I cheekily blamed this on watching too much Thundarr the Barbarian as a kid, but I wasn’t being entirely facetious. Ruby-Spears’ famous Saturday morning cartoon did have a disproportionate impact on me as a child. Its vivid opening crawl, clocking in at approximately one minute, was filled with scenes of mass destruction, weird science, and sorcery, all while the narrator described a cataclysm that would shatter the Earth sometime around my freshman year of High School.

That opening crawl never failed to fire my imagination each weekend, and I certainly wasn’t alone. Other apocalyptic bloggers have expressed their appreciation for the show, including podcaster Evan C. at his website, From the Wastes.

But Evan’s 2014 article “Thundarr the Barbarian—a Post-Apocalyptic Saturday Morning” is more than just a simple retrospective and appreciation. It contains an unexpected bit of trivia. According to Evan, Thundarr the Barbarian is based on an obscure and nearly forgotten pulp novel called Thundar: Man of Two Worlds, by John Bloodstone.

Like Evan, I’d seen the short “Making Of...” documentary on YouTube, where the creators of the show talk about their influences. They cite barbarian fiction in general, Frazetta illustrations, and the overall idea that society would eventually collapse, but they make no mention of Bloodstone’s novel.

Indeed, Evan’s article was the first I’d ever heard of it.

And while Evan admits that the overall story of the novel is different, he claims many of the book’s elements were obviously lifted by the creators of the show. He even mentions the main character having a sidekick called a “Mogg” instead of a Mok.

Intrigued, I started to do some searching.

As it turned out, the stories and rumors surrounding the novel are as fascinating as the novel itself. Some hits led to articles suggesting a connection between the novel and the cartoon, while others suggested that the novel was a re-working of Bloodstone’s earlier, unpublished (and unauthorized) novel, Tarzan on Mars.

But for all the rumors swirling around about the book, I could find almost nothing that was actually sourced or documented. Nearly everything relied on hearsay and secondhand stories. The best article I could find was this 2017 piece by G. W. Thomas in Dark Worlds Quarterly, and even it only offered this small snippet:

I reached out to Thomas, who graciously answered my questions about his article and his sources. And while he did have plenty of solid information regarding Bloodstone’s real name and the Tarzan on Mars project, even he admitted that most of his sources were secondhand when it came to Thundar.

Thomas told me he was forced to rely on Wikipedia for his information on the novel. He also related an old anecdote he’d heard, one he wasn’t able to confirm and thus chose not to include in his article: supposedly, the novel Thundar was so badly changed over from the Tarzan on Mars manuscript, that in places the Thundar character is mistakenly called Tarzan!

Clearly, this was a book I needed to experience for myself, if only to get to the bottom of the wild rumors and hearsay.

The Book

Thundar: Man of Two Worlds was published by Leisure Books in 1971. It features a suitably barbaric cover by Bill Hughes, with a muscular, loincloth-clad hero standing over the corpse of a freshly killed monster. The byline is given as John Bloodstone, but that was actually a pseudonym for pulp author Stuart J. Byrne.

Used copies are available online, but they don’t come cheap. They begin around $20, with some skyrocketing as high as $150.00.

Fortunately, PageTurner Editions has made the book available again, both as an ebook and as an inexpensive Print-on-Demand paperback. This new Authorized Edition includes a short introduction from the author, as well as an autobiographical excerpt at the end.

The story itself is a fairly straightforward adventure in the Edgar Rice Burroughs tradition.

Using Burroughs’ convention of a credible intermediary discovering a fantastical narrative, the framing story describes the strange disappearance and return of Michael Storm, adopted son of explorer and scientist Henry Storm.

Michael—an expert fencer, mountaineer, and boxer—disappears during an archaeological expedition with his father in the Peruvian Andes. The unnamed narrator of the framing story describes how the elder Storm was devastated upon his return. Even more tragically, Henry dies of cerebral thrombosis shortly after arriving home, leaving the details of Michael’s disappearance shrouded in mystery.

That is, until Michael returns some sixteen years later, having been arrested as a wild and half-savage stowaway aboard a Peruvian steamer. The narrator, being listed as next of kin, is the one the authorities call to come and collect him. He goes to the harbor, expecting to see Michael in a scrawny and disheveled state. But what greets him is another sight entirely:

In the months following his return, Michael steadfastly refuses to say anything about his missing time. Indeed, he barely even remembers how to speak English at first, needing a tutor to reeducate him.

The narrator takes him in, caring for him and helping him readjust, but it appears to be a largely fruitless effort. Michael spends most of his days filling five large, private diaries, which he refuses to show anyone, and gazing out over the Santa Monica hills for hours. He paces restlessly and begins taking long, unannounced walks in the hills.

At last, the narrator can stand it no longer. He breaks down begins to read Michael’s private diary. The rest of the book—save a concluding chapter to round out the framing narrative—is a story of time travel and high adventure, told in Michael’s own voice.

As it turns out, Michael and Henry Storm were exploring the Andes in search of the legendary Gate of Viracocha, which Henry believed linked the future with the present day. Henry theorized this Gate is what explained various sky gods and creation stories, as well as the appearance of the technologically advanced Inca people among their relatively primitive contemporaries.

But when Henry takes ill and is unable to continue, Michael goes on alone. After an exhausting climb, he discovers a ruined temple near the mountain summit, littered with the skeletons of long-dead conquistadors. Taking a rest, he wakes just in time to avoid being impaled on the obsidian spears of the temple’s guardians, warriors dressed in traditional Inca garb.

Michael snatches up the weapon of a dead conquistador—a splendidly balanced sword of fine Damascus steel—and throws himself into battle, fighting a running retreat deeper into the temple, until he at last finds himself perched on the edge of a swirling black pit. With no hope of outfighting his attackers, he leaps in, hoping his father’s theories are right.

When Michael wakes again, it’s in a strange, primeval landscape. The frozen mountaintop has been replaced by a hot, humid jungle. There are strange megafauna. The sky is odd. Even the day/night cycle operates on some crazed logic he can’t quite comprehend at first: the sun appears to rise in the east and then retrace its path, setting again in the same direction.

The adventure that follows is a fast-paced, Burroughsian tale involving amnesia, Neanderthal men, warring cities, a super computer, and mutant monsters. Michael gradually learns several secrets, including the fact that this strange place is the Earth over a million years in the future, and that the bizarre changes in the heavens and the climate are the result of some cosmic catastrophe that drove the planet closer to the sun.

The ending does come off a bit rushed, but overall, it’s a satisfying bit of Burroughs-inspired escapism. In terms of writing quality, I’d place it somewhere around the better “straight” pastiches, like Moorcock’s Kane of Old Mars series and Otis Adelbert Kline’s Swordsman of Mars. In terms of enjoyment, I’d probably rate it slightly higher, due to the relative originality of its setting.

So how on Earth did this book get to be at the center of so many negative rumors?

From Obsidian Spears to Ruby-Spears

Admittedly, there are some surface similarities between the book and the cartoon.

The most obvious connection is the name, albeit with a different spelling. There’s also the far-future setting, with its ravished landscape twisted by a destructive cosmic event. There are the remnants of an advanced scientific society, and the Neanderthal "dawn men" might resemble Moks if you squint at them hard enough.

But the differences far outweigh these small overlaps. For example, in Evan C.’s article, linked above, he mentions Thundar having a sidekick named Mogg. While there is a creature named a Mogg, it’s not Thundar’s sidekick. It’s a 50 foot-tall monster with faceted eyes, vertical jaws, scissoring fangs, and poisonous breath.  

The cosmic event, too, was more than likely a coincidence than a case of uncredited inspiration. According to Ruby-Spears staff writer Buzz Dixon, it was a concession to the television network to avoid unwanted political controversy.

Quoting this 2015 interview with writer and blogger Gene Bathurst:

In other words, if Byrne’s novel inspired the cartoon at all, I’m inclined to take the position put forward by blogger John Matthew Stater at Land of Nod: it might have been one of the several books and films that influenced the creators. But to claim it as the influence? That’s a bit of a stretch.

So who actually started making that claim?

It’s hard to say who first began throwing this rumor around. But I do believe I’ve found at least one smoking gun in terms of its staying power.

A look through the revision history of Stuart J. Byrne’s Wikipedia page reveals the following edit made on 12 September 2012, by a former user going by the name Liber8:

Glancing this user’s brief edit history, it seems the only thing he did in his short tenure was try to get the exact same claim to stick on the Thundarr the Barbarian page.

But while another editor removed the claim within an hour and a half over on the television show’s page, no one ever bothered to remove it from Byrne’s page. Indeed, when an editor performed a stylistic clean-up on 22 February 2017, he removed the speculative "A case can be made" language, but chose to let claim itself stand.

And just like that, an unsourced and unverified "fact" was born.

Thundar on Mars

So what about the second rumor? Is Thundar: Man of Two Worlds a reworked version of Tarzan on Mars?

In all likelihood, this rumor has been around longer. The story G. W. Thomas told me—about the patch-up job being so badly done that Thundar is mistakenly called Tarzan in places—has the ring of something overheard at a sci-fi convention, the type of wild speculation that used to go around about the secret authorship of The Eye of Argon.

On the other hand, it’s not outside the realm of possibility, either. After all, Byrne was a member of the penny-a-word brigade. He earned his chops selling to the pulps, where time and sweat spent over the typewriter was money. He very well could have decided to re-purpose an unsellable manuscript. Or at least parts of it.

At the very least, there is a partial connection between the two books. One that may also reveal the source of the rumor.

In the introduction to the 2009 Authorized Edition, Byrne mentions the idea for Thundar came during some legal wrangling over the fate of the Tarzan on Mars project.

In 1955, Other Worlds editor Ray Palmer—having published several of Byrne’s other SF tales—began touting “John Bloodstone” as a potential successor to Edgar Rice Burroughs. Taking up the challenge, Byrne wrote Tarzan on Mars as a showcase for what he could do with Burroughs’ characters. Palmer took the book to ERB, Inc. seeking the rights to publish, but was eventually turned down.

The Tarzan on Mars manuscript was trunked, but bootlegged copies managed to find their way into fan circles anyway, quickly becoming sought after collectors’ items.  

According to Byrne, one ERB, Inc. attorney was so impressed with his writing, he suggested Byrne try writing a Burroughs-style adventure with an original character and setting. This suggestion is what led to Byrne conceiving and writing Thundar.

It’s not difficult to see the germ of the rumor that Thundar is a rewrite of Tarzan in this anecdote. One can imagine Byrne relating the tale at a convention, and a years’-long game of telephone gradually morphing the story into something resembling the one G. W. Thomas related to me via messenger.

Of course, the only person who would be able to tell me for sure would have been Byrne himself. But he passed away back in 2011. However, I was able to take the next best course of action: speaking with his friend and colleague, PageTurner Editions Publisher Jean M. Stine.

Ms. Stine knew Byrne for many years, and graciously answered several of my questions via email. She doesn’t believe Thundar: Man of Two Worlds is based, either wholly or partially, on the Tarzan on Mars manuscript. Furthermore, she doesn’t remember Mr. Byrne ever saying anything to indicate it was.

Ms. Stine also said I didn’t need to take her word for it. She provided me with a copy of Tarzan on Mars, and invited me to do my own side-by-side comparison.

The Comparison

Remembering G. W. Thomas’ rumor about the inept changeover, I decided to purchase a used copy of the 1971 Leisure Books edition. After all, I’d found no evidence of the fabled "Tarzan Typo" in the 2009 Authorized Edition, but that could have been a corrected text. If the present article is going to be exhaustive, I reasoned, then I needed to be sure to cover all possible bases.

Upon the book’s arrival, I spent several hours scanning both texts, looking for any similarities of language, re-used scenes, characters, or phrases.

The verdict?

I agree with Ms. Stine. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that Thundar: Man of Two Worlds is a wholly original novel, and owes nothing to the earlier Tarzan on Mars manuscript. 

For one thing, Tarzan on Mars is written in third person, while Thundar is written in first person. The shift in language alone necessary to accommodate that change would have required a ground-up rewrite of every single chapter, completely negating the entire point of reusing the old material: saving time.

For another, Byrne’s characterizations are wildly different between the two novels. Michael Storm/Thundar bears almost no resemblance to Tarzan in terms of his personality or actions. He is somewhat closer to John Carter, but not the established and powerful Jeddak of Jeddaks Byrne is writing about here. Rather, Michael Storm is similar to the John Carter we meet in Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars. He’s an inexperienced stranger in a strange and hostile land, one he must learn to master by his wits and skills before it kills him.  

The plot, too, is wildly different, with almost none of the material bearing any resemblance to the events in Thundar. Most of Tarzan on Mars concerns a conspiracy to resurrect the forbidden religion of the Iss, and the associated intrigue and backstabbing that takes place on Barsoom. Indeed, we’re in Chapter 17 before the famous apeman even arrives on Mars.

The Martian gravity, too, has its usual effect on Tarzan’s muscles. In his first encounters with Barsoom’s great white apes, Tarzan leaps great distances and snaps their necks with ease. In the climactic battle, warriors from Helium remark that his strength is greater than even that of John Carter.  

Michael Storm, on the other hand, enjoys no such super powers. Indeed, he’s at a decided disadvantage when it comes to strength, especially in physical contests against the Neanderthal “dawn men.” 

So, was this rumor a complete fabrication, then? Mostly.

I didn’t find any major differences between the 1971 Leisure Books Edition and the 2009 Authorized Edition. There were only some typo corrections and some minor differences in typesetting. Certainly nothing as egregious as the fabled "Tarzan Typo."

That said, every rumor does have some kernel of truth to it. And the kernel of truth to the “rewrite” rumor just might be found in Chapter 21 of Tarzan on Mars.

In Chapter 21, “The Gates of Death”, Tarzan and La of Opar—who is also on Mars—are facing death in a Thark arena. Tarzan, thinking quickly, lures a charging zitidar into the pilings supporting the balcony above the arena. The resulting collapse dumps all of the watching Tharks into the arena below, where they’re quickly trampled by the rampaging monster. Then, taking advantage of the chaos, Tarzan frees the rest of the imprisoned captives, leading a revolt to turn the tide against his captors.

While the writing, execution, and pacing are different, the basic idea of this action sequence is recycled into the climactic scene of Thundar.

Thundar, imprisoned by the villainous Turaan, is facing death in the arena. While he is given one final chance to plea for his life and that of the Princess Cylayne, he instead uses it to make a defiant threat. Turaan unleashes a dragon, and Thundar uses a similar trick, luring the charging beast into the pillars beneath the balcony, spilling the villain and his henchmen onto the sand below.

But instead of consigning the villain to the beast, Byrne uses this set-up to give the Thundar an immensely more satisfying, mano-a-mano showdown with the villain.

Of course, one recycled idea doesn’t equal a rewrite. Most likely, Byrne just thought it was a neat bit of action choreography, and felt like re-using it.

But like with Byrne’s anecdote about the ERB lawyer, it’s easy to see the germ of the “rewrite” rumor in this moment. One can imagine a disgruntled fan calling “Bloodstone” a hack, saying the book was a rewrite of Tarzan of Mars based on this recycled plot device.

Once again, add in a years’-long game of telephone, played mostly by people who haven’t read either book, and well... it’s easy to see how the rumors begin to grow.

Conclusion

So what do I make of Thundar: Man of Two Worlds and the strange rumors surrounding it?

On its own terms, Thundar is a competently told, imaginative, and at times downright exciting tale. The world presented is exotic and immersive. The action scenes are vividly drawn, and Byrne has the pulp writer’s natural gift for weaving exposition into the action in a way that keeps the tale moving.

Honestly, the worst crime Byrne’s novel commits is that it’s not Burroughs.

Which, sadly, may have been its single biggest undoing. To put it bluntly, Burroughs isn’t a measuring stick many writers would fare well against, but that’s exactly the comparison Ray Palmer began shouting from the rooftops in 1955.

Byrne himself even speculated that Palmer overselling him as the “natural successor” to Burroughs was what damaged the publishing deal for Tarzan on Mars. And while Palmer had nothing to do with the publication of Thundar, Leisure Books was more than happy to repeat the “natural successor” claim just before the title page of the 1971 edition.

Between setting impossible expectations with the Burroughs comparison, recalling a popular bootleg manuscript with the author’s pseudonym and—perhaps unintentionally—with a re-used plot point, Thundar: Man of Two Worlds was in some ways doomed to be at the center of rumors bigger than itself.

It’s a book that never quite got out from under the shadow of its infamous creation story, because that creation story “grew in the telling,” as they say. Which is a shame. Because in the end there’s a pretty good SF/F adventure story hiding under all those rumors.

Note: The author would like to gratefully thank Jean M. Stine and G. W. Thomas, for their time and patience in answering his questions, as well as their generosity in providing various resources. This article would have been impossible without their assistance.