The first installment of "Under the Moons of Mars" was published in The All-Story in February 1912. By April, readers would have been halfway through Burroughs' first published work and the first of what would be eleven volumes recounting John Carter's adventures on Mars.
There was a far bigger story in April 1912, though. On April 15, after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean, the RMS Titanic went to Davy Jones' locker. More than 1,500 people died in the disaster, including the American mystery writer Jacques Futrelle (1875-1912). Born in the same year as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Futrelle died as Burroughs was reaching the greatest success of his young life.
There are several covers of Weird Tales depicting snowy scenes and many with ships, but only two that I have found showing ice, and only the first of these also shows a ship.
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| Weird Tales, October 1923. Cover story: "The Amazing Adventure of Joe Scranton" by Effie W. Fifield. Cover art by R.M. Mally. |
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| Weird Tales, May 1939. Cover story: "The Hollow Moon" by Everil Worrell. Cover art by Harold S. De Lay. Note that "Almuric" (part one) by Robert E. Howard was also in this issue. Almuric, an uncharacteristic work by Howard, is more or less a pastiche of Burroughs' Mars novels. |
May all who perished rest in peace.
Text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley
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