The subject is Edgar Rice Burroughs' Moon trilogy:
Julian 5th and his crew land on the Moon in 2026. They stay for ten years, returning to Earth in 2036. Later that year, Julian 6th, son of Julian 5th and Nah-ee-lah, the Moon Maid, is born. Thus "The Moon Maid" ends. More accurately, it ends in 1967 as the Transoceanic Liner Harding arrives in Paris and Julian 5th ends his recounting of the years he and his men spent (or will spend) on the Moon. If you were reading "The Moon Maid" in 1923, you would have had to wait two years to find out what happens next: more time travel required.
The next installment in Burroughs' Moon trilogy is "The Moon Men," which picks up again in 1969. The narrator from "The Moon Maid" returns, carrying with him his customary framing device. A later incarnation of Julian--this one is Julian 9th--tells that narrator his story. When "The Moon Men" begins, the narrator is at a camp fifty miles southeast of Herschel Island in the Yukon, so we might add the introduction of "The Moon Men" to the Polar Fiction Database. Compiled by Laura Kay of Barnard College (I believe also Fauno Lancaster Cordes) the Polar Fiction Database may no longer be accessible on the Internet.
In 2050, Julian 5th's antagonist, named Orthis, returns to Earth, too. He brings with him an invading force of 100,000 Kalkars and 1,000 Va-gas. He also brings his technologically advanced weapons of war. The Kalkars are the Moon Men of the title. The Va-gas are a fierce, primitive, quadrupedal Moon race. (One of them is on the cover of the Ace edition of The Moon Maid.) All are cruel, aggressive, and well armed. The men of Earth on the other hand are almost defenseless, for they have surrendered their weapons and fighting spirit in deference to the International Peace Fleet. That fleet is, I think, descended from and a predecessor to the idea that airships (later flying saucers) are or will be the guarantors of peace on Earth, in other words, our saviors. I'm not sure that Burroughs (1875-1950) deployed his peace fleet in "The Moon Men" in any ironic way. He seems to have believed in certain progressive ideas, including Peace from Above. You can't really blame him. He was, after all, a man of his time.
Half a century passes and Julian 9th is born. The Moon Men have taken over Earth and have instituted oppressive governments worldwide. Julian 9th is born on January 1, 2100, a nice round number. His birthplace is the Teivos of Chicago. "As a boy," Julian 9th remembers, "I played among the crumbling ruins of what must once have been a magnificent city. Pillaged, looted and burned half a hundred times Chicago still reared the skeletons of some mighty edifices above the ashes of her former greatness." (p. 19) It sounds like a contemporary American city in the aftermath of a Mostly Peaceful Protest™, which is just another expression of the socialist/progressive desire to tear down and destroy everything from the past with which it comes in contact. For the true meaning of the word "Teivos," just read it backwards.
Men of Earth surrendered their weapons before the Moon Men came, thereby setting the stage for their own defeat. But envy had set in, too, and the envious help the Kalkars in their cause:
There might have been some hope had the earth men banded together against the common enemy, but this they did not do. Elements which had been discontented with this or that phase of government joined issue with the invaders. The lazy, the inefficient, the defective, who ever place the blame for their failures upon the shoulders of the successful, swarmed to the banners of the Kalkars, in whom they sensed kindred souls. (Emphasis added, p. 18)
More things are forbidden under the rule of the Moon Men. Years before Julian 9th was born, every clergyman had been murdered and it had become "a capital crime to worship God in any form whatsoever." (p. 39) Even to speak the word "God" is forbidden. Julian and his family hide a piece of contraband, an American flag, in their home and another, a rifle, buried in the yard. (Later on, Julian receives the gift of a third, a crucifix.) Books are forbidden, too: "To have a book in one's possession was to brand one as of the hated intellectuals, arousing the scorn and derision of the Kalkar rabble and the suspicion and persecution of the lunar authorities who ruled." (p. 19) Think here of the Khmer Rouge.
Julian's family and their friends are not permitted to speak freely and must watch their words at every turn. They meet in secret, talk in secret. They worship at a secret church (as if the coronavirus were on the loose). They are subject to cruel, arbitrary, and punitive taxes (as if one of our major parties were on the loose). One measure of a person's worth is what he or she does "to add to the prosperity of the community." (p. 51) In other words, the individual counts for little.
Women have it especially bad, for they have been enslaved by this new society:
"If we have the hearts to suffer always it will not break," said mother, "but it is hard, so hard--when one hates to bring a child into the world," and she glanced at me, "because of the misery and suffering to which it is doomed for life. I yearned for children, always; but I feared to have them--mostly I feared that they might be girls. To be a girl in this world to-day--Oh, it is frightful!" (p. 27)
Julian 9th rescues and falls in love with a young woman named Juana St. John--her very name is an affront to the atheistic State--who wears a headband sewn with "numerous tiny shells."
It was her only attempt at ornamentation; but even so it was quite noticeable in a world where women strove to make themselves plain rather than beautiful--some even going so far as to permanently disfigure their faces and those of their female offspring, while others, many, many others, killed the latter in infancy. (pp. 39-40)
If all of this sounds familiar to you, it's not because you're imagining things. He may have been a mere popular writer, but Edgar Rice Burroughs saw as clearly as anyone what life would be like under socialist rule, and this was before the Bolsheviks had seized power completely in Russia. Of all people, he anticipated Winston Churchill, who famously said:
"Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy." (1948)
and:
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." (1945)
"But then the world [under the Moon Men] is all hate--hate and misery." (p. 51)
* * *
In every socialist society, "counterrevolution" is impermissible and "counterrevolutionary" a pejorative reserved for the worst of offenders. To plan for and work towards the upending of a carefully maintained socialist stasis is among the worst of crimes. So it is in the world of "The Moon Men." "[T]hey were always afraid of revolution," Julian observes. "That is why they ground us down so." (p. 68) And yet Julian and his friends plan for and aspire to a revolution that might restore the rights of the people, including rights of ownership and self-governance. And then comes a key passage:
"We looked for no perfect form of government, for we realized that perfection is beyond the reach of mortal men [. . . .]" (p. 99)
Unfortunately, Julian 9th and his revolution fail, and like a Jewish journalist in the world of today, he goes before the butcher.
* * *
Perfection--Utopia--is beyond the reach of mortal men. We should all know that by now and remember it. Perfection is beyond the reach of mortal men. Its only worldly substitute--the only thing that approaches it of which we are capable--is actually its opposite, Dystopia, what Julian 9th calls "the lunar theory" (p. 77) and "the lunar fallacy." (p. 104) Dystopia approaches perfection, and yet it is imperfect, for it is made by men. Beyond that, within each of us is planted the perfect seeds of its destruction: our natural freedom. As it is in the real world, so it is in works of the imagination, including in the sequel to "The Moon Men."
* * *
The point of all of this is to draw parallels between the Alien Invasion-type story and stories of Dystopia (and apocalypse or post-apocalypse, of which "The Moon Men" is also a type). Next comes "The Red Hawk."
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| "The Moon Men" was first in Argosy All-Story Weekly in February-March 1925. Here is the cover for the first installment with art by Stockton Mulford (1886-1960). In the center is the protagonist, Julian 9th. On the left is the woman he loves, Juana St. John (note her headband, decorated with shells). On the right is presumably one of the Moon Men or one of their degenerate allies of Earth. Juana St. John bears the name of a saint, but it's also the name of Edgar Rice Burroughs' regular artist and contemporary J(ames) Allen St. John (1875-1957). I can't help but see her name as a tribute to St. John. (Although it may also be a reference to St. John the Baptist--with Julian 9th as the Christ figure? Or is Julian the St. John figure?--consider his fate.) As for Julian 9th, I guess his name and designation are meant to evoke memories of the secular-temporal past--as in the name of a Roman emperor or a European king--possibly also of the religious-churchly past--as in the name of a pope. One of the themes of "The Moon Men" is faith, religious belief, and religious practice in a society that forbids each and all under penalty of death. This is part of the "lunar theory" or "lunar fallacy" in "The Moon Men"--and part of the socialist program in the real world of the past century: the Soviet Union was created 99 years ago next month. |
Original text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley
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