James Cameron's Inspiration for Avatar – Edgar Rice Burroughs

One of the great pleasures of my adolescence was reading, and re-reading, all of the great adventure stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs–Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, all of them.   I first started reading them as an 11 year old Army Brat living in Stuttgart, Germany — where I would order them four or five books at a time from ACE and Ballantine Books, both of whom were putting out the Burroughs novels in those days. In recent years I was lucky enough to get to know Danton Burroughs, the grandson of Edgar Rice and the keeper of the kingdom of Edgar Rice Burroughs treasures at the family homestead in Tarzana, the town in Southern California that has risen on the site of Burroughs ranch, which he called Tarzana.  Bill and Sue-on Hillman maintain a fantastic group of fan and tribute websites, and Bill noticed a few weeks ago that I had written about the Avatar-Burroughs connection.  We emailed back and forth about it — and the result is an article I’ve written for ERBzine on the Avatar-Burroughs connection.  You can click here to read it — and even if you don’t read it, check out the wonderful illustrations that Bill has added to the article–illustrations which probably say more about the Avatar-Burroughs connection than anything I can write.  Read it here:  Heady Times For Edgar Rice Burroughs Fans: Avatar, Burroughs, and John Carter of Mars.