If You Liked Avatar, Here Are More Books and Movies You May Enjoy

The movie "Avatar" set box office records and has even been described as the Star Wars of a new generation. James Cameron has said that there will be sequels to Avatar. But if you find it hard to wait before satisfying your yen for voyages to strange new worlds, there are several movies and books that I think you might enjoy in the meantime. Let me tell you a little bit about each one.

"What has 14 legs and catches flies?" is an old human joke. Although on Earth we are used to things like mosquitoes, spiders, and lobsters having more than 4 legs, when it comes to apex predators, horses, and many other animals we're used to seeing quadrupeds. But in "Avatar" things are different. The creatures that inhabit the lush forests of Pandora have a distinctly alien look. Many of the creatures are hexapodal, with 6 legs. The Pandoran Direhorse, which the Na'vi ride on the ground, is one such six-legged creature. Another 6-legged animal is the Viperwolf, an animal which hunts in packs, and which gives Jake Sully a memorable scare one night.

To find another fictional world inhabited by animals with quantities of legs that defy human expectations, we can turn to the world of Mars as imagined by science fiction legend Edgar Rice Burroughs. In fact, James Cameron has cited the Martian tales of Burroughs as being an influence when he created the world of Pandora for "Avatar".

Edgar Rice Burroughs is well known as being the creator of "Tarzan". Burroughs's Martian tales are probably not be as widely known as his Tarzan tales. However, that may soon change, as Disney will soon be releasing a live-action movie version of Burrough's first interplanetary romance. The movie "John Carter" will be based on Burrough's novel "A Princess of Mars", which tells of how John Carter of Virginia makes an incredible journey to Mars and of his adventures as he struggles to survive on the savage, war-torn world which the native inhabitants call "Barsoom".

One of the first things that John Carter sees after his arrival on the red planet is a Green Martian riding a Thoat. The Green Martians are, when full-grown, much larger than a human, reaching adult heights of from ten to fifteen feet tall. The Green Martians are ferocious fighters, and the Thoats which they ride are savage steeds. The Martians, both rider and steeds, have more arms/legs than an Earthly quadruped. The Green Martians have a total of 6 limbs, including an intermediary pair that may serve as either arms or legs, giving them formidable advantages in wielding weapons and hand-to-hand combat. Thoats have even more legs, with a total of 8. Woola, a Martian hound, or Calot, who becomes John Carter's faithful companion and protector, also has more than 4 legs.

Communication between the Green Martians and their Thoats is telepathic. This is an interesting point of comparison with the relationship between mount and rider on Pandora, where the Na'vi make direct neural connections to the 6-legged Direhorses they ride. In each case, spoken words are not necessary for the rider to give directions to the mount. John Carter discovers that establishing successful communication with Thoats will be essential for him to be able to survive on Barsoom, and perhaps someday to escape his savage captors, the Green Men of Mars.

Another interesting parallel between "Avatar" and "A Princess of Mars" is that a human in a strange world finds himself falling in love with a girl who belongs to that alien, other planet.

Burroughs has a supreme gift for telling a story at a rapid, suspenseful pace while still giving enough details to make the strange peoples, animals, and plants of Mars come to life in the reader's imagination. Over the years, a great many illustrators have depicted their own conceptions of the landscapes, flora, and fauna of Barsoom, making it fun to track down different versions of the books from various publishers and compare how the denizens of Mars appear in each version.

"A Princess of Mars" is only the first of many Martian tales written by Burroughs. You can read many of them for FREE at Project Gutenberg or Google Books.

Edgar Rice Burroughs not only wrote science fiction about Mars, he also wrote it about Venus.
Above I described a little bit about Burrough's hero, John Carter of Mars. In other stories, Burroughs sends Carson Napier of Earth on a rocket ride to Venus. Carson Napier finds Venus no less strange and alien than John Carter finds Mars. The Venus stories have lots of action and romance, just like the the Mars stories, and perhaps even more humor.

In "Avatar", Jake Sully finds out that Na'vi who wish to become full-fledged warriors must pass through a rite of passage in which they form a bond with an Ikran. The Ikran is an intimidating animal that is as dangerous as it looks. Using four wings to fly, the Ikran looks like a cross between a dragon and a dragonfly. To form a bond with a particular Ikran, a Na'vi must find which Ikran chooses him or her and then physically connect the Na'vi's braid organ to a similar organ of the Ikran, enabling direct communication between the nervous systems of the Na'vi and the Ikran. Once the connection is made and the bond established, the Na'vi is able to climb onto the Ikran, whose powerful wings are able to carry the Ikran and its Na'vi rider swiftly and agilely through the air.

"Dinotopia", the miniseries, has some very interesting parallels to the Na'vi-Ikran flying sequences, as well as other aspects of "Avatar". The Dinotopia miniseries is based on the books written and illustrated by highly accomplished artist James Gurney. (More on the books below). In the miniseries, two brothers crash-land off the coast of the island of Dinotopia and are taken to Waterfall City to find out what their places will be in the unique Dinotopian culture. Dinotopia's culture strives to make reality a utlopian ideal of peaceful coexistence between humans and sentient dinosaurs. Eventually, one of the brothers is sent to try to become a Skybax rider. The Skybax is a great Pterosaur, or flying reptile, a holdover from the age of dinosaurs that has long vanished in other parts of the world. Because the miniseries has a total running time more than three times as long as "Avatar's" running time, there is plenty of time to devote to the long and grueling training process of becoming a Skybax rider. Despite the closeness that can exist between dinosaurs and humans in Dinotopia, bonds must be formed without using the "plug and play" braid of the Na'vi and other creatures of Pandora. Once the bond between steed and rider is formed, there are other challenges that must be overcome, including the menacing Pteranodons who regularly enforce "No fly" zones in some portions of the island.

Not only is the story of "Dinotopia" interesting, but the special effects used in the miniseries for depicting the flight of the Skybax and crew are top-notch. The culture shock experienced by the brothers as they try to adjust to the Dinotopian culture, and as the Dinotopians try to adjust to the brothers, is interesting and often very humorous. The miniseries succeeds very well in imbuing its scenes with a sense of wonder. The ever-unfolding sense of wonder is enhanced and amplified by the excellent musical score by composer Trevor Jones, who also wrote the powerful, soaring theme of "Last of the Mohicans"

If you enjoy the miniseries, be sure to check out the original Dinotopia books as well. James Gurney's highly imaginative drawings and paintings show a high degree of technical proficiency and scientific knowledge (Gurney has done numerous non-fictional scientific illustration of dinosaurs), along with a grasp of historical and cultural backgrounds that makes the world of Dinotopia seem very believable, although no less amazing.

When Jake Sully wakes up to discover that his consciousness has been transferred into the blue body of his Avatar, or genetically engineered Na'vi-Human hybrid body, he finds there are a lot of things to get used to. For one, his surrogate body is able to breathe the atmosphere of Pandora, which would render a human body unconscious in seconds. For another, his Avatar body is huge compared to his human body, and awkward until Jake gets used to it. And for another, his Avatar body has a sort of braid or pigtail that actually allows it to make a direct neural connection with the nervous systems of other Pandoran creatures and other Na'vi individuals.

In the science fiction cult classic "A Voyage to Arcturus", the tantalizing possibilities of being enfleshed in an alien body, with entirely new capacities for sense perception and communication are taken far beyond what is hinted at by Sully's experiences in "Avatar".

In "A Voyage to Arcturus", the protagonist, Maskull travels from Earth to Tormance, a planet which orbits the star Arcturus. Upon arriving at Tormance, Maskull finds that his strange and ominous guide Krag has disappeared and that Maskull's own body has changed, now provided with new organs that allow him to communicate with the inhabitants of Tormance. But that is just the beginning of Maskull's strange, ultramundane adventure. As he travels through the varying, often unstable geography of Tormance, and encounters more of its inhabitants and cultures, Maskull's body also continues to change. Sometimes he gains new powers of perception or communication, sometimes he loses powers and even the insights that he once made with them. "A Voyage to Arcturus" is such as unique story that I won't try to describe it in any detail here. The reader must experience it to begin to understand it.

"A Voyage to Arcturus" was written by Scottish writer David Lindsay. Although the book was not very successful during Lindsay's lifetime, it has exerted a powerful effect on scholars, critics, and writers including Gary K Wolfe, Colin Wilson, and Harold Bloom. Science fiction writer C. S. Lewis thought very highly of "A Voyage to Arcturus". In his essay, "On Stories", Lewis described Lindsay's unusual, and unusually compelling powers of imagination and creation that are on display in the pages of "Arcturus":

"In each chapter we think we have found his final position; each time we are utterly mistaken. He builds whole worlds of imagery and passion, any one of which would have served another writer for a whole book, only to pull each of them to pieces and pour scorn on it."

In a transcript of a tape-recorded conversation with some friends, including writer Brian Aldiss, C. S. Lewis again praised "Arcturus" and emphasized the powerful attraction that Lindsay's work exerted upon him, despite the fact that the story describes a worldview that Lewis described as "Manichean". Lewis even confessed to being more familiar with the geography of Tormance (the planet where most of the action in "Arcturus" occurs) than with the geography of England.

As is the case with Edgar Rice Burroughs's Mars tales, "A Voyage to Arcturus" can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg for free. At least one free e-book edition is available for Amazon's Kindle device as well.