Continuing with some Sword & Planet reading, I decided to check out one of ERB's earliest imitators: Otis Adelbert Kline. Kline was an editor and literary agent predominantly, but he wrote a number of adventure stories in a Burroughsian vein in the 30s and 40s. The Planet of Peril, serialized in Argosy All-Story Weekly in 1929, is his first planetary romance, and the first of a trilogy about Robert Grandon of Terra on the planet Venus.
Overall, the beats of the story are various much in the mold of A Princess of Mars. Grandon arrives on Venus (Zarovia) by telepathic transmission, gets in some danger, meets a friend, meets a girl, then has numerous perilous episodes before he and girl can be united marriage. And of course, Grandon ascends to a place of rulership.
Kline's prose is probably as good as Burroughs' and his adventuresome perils are as imaginative as the typical Burroughs work (if maybe not quite as good as ERB's best): there jungle beasts, intelligent, giant ants, and lecherous potentates. The pace is quick and punctuated with serialized adventure fiction cliffhangers. Kline seems to have put just as much thought into his Venusian neologisms and invent biosphere.
The differences between The Planet of Peril and the Barsoom stories are interesting. John Carter's combat prowess is explained by his status as a sort of eternal "fighting man." Grandon, by contrast, is just a bored rich guy. On the other hand, Grandon's transport to Venus is given more of a story justification (if a pseudoscientific one) rather than just happening. Also, unlike the Barsoomians, Kline's Venusians can and do employ armor when it would benefit them to do so. Vernia has the interesting wrinkle of being more of an antagonist than Dejah Thoris, but on the other hand, Kline doesn't sell her allure with near the facility that Burroughs does his Martian princess.
Overall, if you like Burroughs' planet romance fiction, you'll probably like Kline's.
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