The Land That Time Forgot (Modern Library Classics) - Tapa blanda

1. 1. Originally published in three installments in magazine form, The Land That Time Forgot remains a trilogy of sorts. How do the novel’s three parts work together? Does the division into parts make the whole more effective? 2. 2. Many have described this work as an important precursor to the modern science-fiction novel. In what ways do you see it as a precursor? What later writers would you characterize as owing a particular debt to Burroughs? 3. 3. The science-fiction writer Mike Resnick calls The Land That Time Forgot “Burroughs's most imaginative book,” and Caspak Burroughs’s “most intriguing concept,” noting Burroughs’s ability to create “fully-fleshed worlds.” Do you agree? 4. 4. Resnick also notes that all of Burroughs’s heroes hold to a “firm Victorian moral code.” What are some of the characteristics of this code? How does it inform the actions of the various central characters in The Land That Time Forgot ? 5. 5. What is the “wonderful, the miraculous, the gigantic truth” of Caspak? 6. 6. What accounts for the differences between the types of humans that inhabit Caspak? 7. 7. How does Burroughs’s work make use of contemporary scientific notions about evolution and human development? 8. 8. Many have characterized Burroughs’s literary style as direct, unadorned, plainspoken. Would you agree? How else might you describe Burroughs’s style and technique as a writer? 9. 9. Edgar Rice Burroughs remains one of the most popular writers of all time. What do you think accounts for his enduring popularity?

Brian Aldiss is the author of more than twenty full-length works and more than three hundred short stories, among them The Twinkling of an Eye, Supertoys Last All Summer Long, and When the Feast Is Finished. He lives in Oxford, England.