I recently listened to an audiobook edition of Edgar Rice Burroughs's pulp fiction classic A Princess of Mars. I found it enjoyable, if reeking of colonialist attitudes, as I suppose I should have expected for a book published in 1885. I have two questions, probably both answerable by /u/AncientHistory:

1. Is Burroughs visualization of Mars as a living world with water and an oxygen atmosphere entirely a flight of fantasy, or are aspects of the world of John Carter in keeping with contemporary understandings of proper scientific astronomy? Clearly Burroughs did some research, because he correctly recognizes that Mars would only have about a third of Earth's gravity, but heavy items would still have the same mass an momentum (so John Carter can lift a cannonball, but not catch one).

2. Has there been any study of how John Carter's attitudes towards the Martian, especially the Green Men, reflects contemporary attiudes toward colonialism and native Americans? I'm not just referring to the framing device in the early chapters, but the entire way that John Carter makes a big deal of the distinction between "primitive" and "civilized" people that seems somewhat arbitrary and bigoted to a reader of the early 21st-century.

Congratulations to our newest Interesting Inquirer flair, /u/The_Manchurian!

Join Dr Jacqui Turner for an AMA on suffrage, feminism, and citizenship, on Tuesday 11 October here on /r/askhistorians and then watch live through the University's Facebook page.

From the event page: "Suffrage is arguably the most important single event in women's history; despite popular conception it was not a fight for freedom, it was the campaign for equal citizenship waged by men and women across the class divide and the political spectrum. The refusal of the law to allow women to take part directly in political life relegated them to often disparate lobbyists and pressure groups, leaving the decision to grant the vote at the mercy of sympathetic individuals and the political priorities of the parliamentary parties. This lecture will consider the parliamentary politics, the campaigns and divisive issues of class, marriage and militancy that fractured the suffrage movement and ultimately, we will ask the question - is this best described as first wave feminism?"

Dr Turner is a Lecturer in Modern History and Director of Outreach at the University of Reading. Her present research examines the contribution of female pioneers in politics and early female MPs. Jacqui currently works with Parliament on the Vote100 Project, BBC Radio 4 and the Smithsonian. In 2019 she will manage the Astor100 project celebrating the centenary of women sitting in the House of Commons.

This week in archive work I accidentally became a photograph preservationist supreme, we were donated more than fifty boxes of scrapbooks, negatives and photos dating from the late 1800s to the early 2007s. The bulk of it from the 50s and 60s from the local photo studio owner who also worked part time as the police department photographer so its fantastic to see wedding pictures right next to murder scenes and car crashes

Edit: I forgot to add that the dudes wife was a local historian and her entire personal library is in my hands, my curator believes we now have the most comprehensive historical collection of the tricounty area there is. Feelsgoodman.jpeg

Would anyone be interested in a Mesoamerican panel? Or even a pre-Columbian Americas panel?

It's been forever since we had one.

A. B. Leonard, of Portsmouth, Ohio, writes to the Eyrie: “In your January number you ask the question, Do the readers like interplanetary stories? and make the comment that only a few readers have written complaints about this type of story. The rest of us are so enraged that we can’t see straight enough to write to you. Interplanetary stories are not weird. They are merely thrillers. The same events could be at home in any of the adventure magazines merely by changing the locale. Take the present serial for instance: the yellow men of Venus are Chinamen, and the red juice they are constantly spitting is the betel-nut juice of the Orient. The toads are merely African savages, and the hairy men are Bolsheviks. The hero and heroine are the typical characters of adventure stories. And such people as these interplanetary authors depict! Bugs, crawdads, iron statues, square men, gaseous men, toads and what not. Oh, and the usual globular men. Why do all interplanetary stories have to have globular men? I have read countless of these stories and practically all of them have globular men in them. And returning to the other freaks we meet in these stories, I can just picture the author sitting at his desk scratching his head and muttering to himself, ’Now what kind of a queer duck can I use here?’ And another thing, if one—if even one—of these stories ever had a different plot from the one laid down by Mr. Burroughs in his Mars books, I might be able to condone the fact that they are not weird tales. But no—every one is cut to the same pattern. The superman from the earth outfights, outruns, outjumps, outthinks, outloves every man on the new planet and tears in tooth and toenail and whips them all to a frazzle, grabs the most beautiful girl of the most advanced kingdom, becomes king and conquers the entire planet, and introduces universal peace. And another thing. If the heroine is as beautiful as the stories say she is, why get mad at the villain for wanting her?’’

• Weird Tales March 1933

You have to love the letters columns of pulp magazines almost as much as the stories themselves, because they really were where you got an insight into the fans and their interaction with the material. Beyond strict literary criticism, however, they are also interesting cultural artifacts that bear close reading at times. The odd comment that "the yellow men of Venus are Chinaman [...]" is actually a fairly penetrating look at how early science fiction (or "weird science" as Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright put it) was fairly directly adapted from Colonial-era fiction, and how 1930s understandings of race and race relations could be translated, intact, into exotic settings. Something that was still true when Star Trek came on the air with episodes like "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" (1969), and today with Star Trek: Discovery.

I feel like I'm having a lot of trouble getting my questions noticed on this sub. Besides "ask better questions," are there any tips to change that?

I've been reading some papers from Admiral Jacky Fisher, and came across his recounting of this incident on an exercise:

The following example of the methods of military defence at present extended to our naval arsenals by the Army is a good enough instance of what may be expected in war time. (*Notes of what actually happened!)

St. Ann's Head, Milford Haven. Time, 11pm.

Enemy had been firing on friendly submarine boats for five minutes!

Naval Officer telephones to military centre. - "Tell the fire commander that the enemy's destroyers have been firing on our boats for five minutes, and ask him to open fire on them at once!"

Five minutes' interval

Reply. - "There a'int no fire commander, only a fortress commander."

Naval officer.- "Do not care twopence what he calls himself, tell him to open fire."

Three minutes' interval.

Reply. - "Do you want fortress commander told?"

Naval officer. - "----, yes."

A very long interval.

Reply. - "Fortress commander says '*How is he to know that they are enemy's destroyers?' "

At 8 a.m. Admiral was asked to apply to the General Officer Commanding to court-martial the fortress commander for incompetence. But this was not considered advisable. It is doubtful whether the military authorities consider it necessary for their officers to have any knowledge of what they are to shoot at, provided they know all about the gun they shoot with. What use are guns if it is not known when to use them?

Fisher was certainly prone to exaggeration, but this shows the levels of inter-service cooperation present in the 1900s.

If there's interest, I'll continue to post more interesting tidbits from Fisher's papers, as well as those from other British admirals of the period.

Turnspit dogs went extinct when people no longer needed them to turn wheels to cook meat evenly.

What are some other animals bred for a specific purpose that have gone extinct when their purpose was no longer required?

So, my wife and I discovered that we had accidentally names both of our children after the same star constellation. Our son, we named Orion because it is my wife's favorite constellation. When our daughter was born, we named her after Freyja, the Norse goddess. It was only after a few weeks when I was reading more about the Norse myths, that I found out that the Old Norse had a name for the Orion constellation: Freyja's Girdle.

So my question is this: are there any other names for this constellation in other languages and cultures?

Thoughts on the new Ken Burns Vietnam War documentary? How accurate/biased is it?

Basically, I haven't seen the series yet, but wanted to watch it as I want to learn more about the Vietnam War. Though I've been hearing some mixed things about it. Some say it is very good and pretty thorough, others are criticizing it. This article in particular seems to take issue with it's supposed lack of focus on civilian costs of the war, and a lot of people in the comments say it gives a biased view of the US perspective (that it's not critical enough of US government and military) and that it glosses over or ignores Vietnam's perspective on the war.

Has anyone here seen it and can give their thoughts? Note, I'm not asking for someone to list out all the nitpicked minor inaccuracies and little details. I'm just looking for big picture things. Obviously almost every documentary has some issues, but I just want to know if there are any glaring fundamental flaws before I spend hours watching it.

I’ve done a lot of research on the 82nd Airborne During WWII. It seems like talking about the details of operation Husky where 23 Allied planes were shot down by friendly forces is a taboo subject. I’m wondering if they could pin point the commander in charge who ultimately was to blame for this tragedy. ? Thanks