The Moon Maid
Beschrijving van het boek
The Moon Maid by Edgar Rice Burroughs - is a fantasy novel by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs. It was written in three parts, Part 1 was begun in June 1922 under the title The Moon Maid, Part 2 was begun in 1919 under the title Under the Red Flag, later retitled The Moon Men, Part 3 was titled The Red Hawk. As evident from its name, Under the Red Flag, it appears to have been originally set in contemporary Soviet Russia, with the Bolsheviks as villains (when it was actually set in a future America, but under Marxist Soviet rule, the center of the story being in a future Marxist Chicago); as this was not popular with the publishers, Burroughs transferred it to a science-fictional setting, with the evil Communist-like "Kalkars" taking over the Moon (in the first part) and then the Earth (in the second part, with the help of a renegade Earthman) and being finally overthrown in the third part.
Future history
The prologues to both parts, "The Moon Maid" and "The Moon Men", constitute a future history, effectively Burroughs' vision of what the 20th century held in store for humanity, which could be considered a kind of retroactive alternate history—a genre rare in Burroughs' writings and a bit reminiscent of such works as H. G. Wells' The Shape of Things to Come. Burroughs was writing in the early 1920s, several years after the end of the First World War in 1918; clearly, however, he did not regard the war as having truly ended but only changed in intensity—especially as it had been directly followed by the October Revolution in Russia and the intervention of the Western powers in an effort to crush that revolution (Britain and France did send token forces to "crush the Revolution", but American forces sent by President Wilson had no orders to try to end Marxist rule), which the staunchly anti-Communist Burroughs supported. As envisioned by Burroughs, there would follow many decades of unceasing worldwide fighting at various locations and at various intensities until a great outburst in 1959, leading to eight years of all-out war. In Burroughs's vision posterity would not divide this into a "first war", an "inter-war period" and a "second war"; rather, one single war, "The Great War" would be deemed to have started in 1914 and lasted until 1967.
Future history
The prologues to both parts, "The Moon Maid" and "The Moon Men", constitute a future history, effectively Burroughs' vision of what the 20th century held in store for humanity, which could be considered a kind of retroactive alternate history—a genre rare in Burroughs' writings and a bit reminiscent of such works as H. G. Wells' The Shape of Things to Come. Burroughs was writing in the early 1920s, several years after the end of the First World War in 1918; clearly, however, he did not regard the war as having truly ended but only changed in intensity—especially as it had been directly followed by the October Revolution in Russia and the intervention of the Western powers in an effort to crush that revolution (Britain and France did send token forces to "crush the Revolution", but American forces sent by President Wilson had no orders to try to end Marxist rule), which the staunchly anti-Communist Burroughs supported. As envisioned by Burroughs, there would follow many decades of unceasing worldwide fighting at various locations and at various intensities until a great outburst in 1959, leading to eight years of all-out war. In Burroughs's vision posterity would not divide this into a "first war", an "inter-war period" and a "second war"; rather, one single war, "The Great War" would be deemed to have started in 1914 and lasted until 1967.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
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