Using my Nook, so that no one will see what I am really reading, I just finished the second book in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pellucidar series, a Hollow Earth conceit featuring the usual tropes – dinosaurs, cave men, etc – and ‘Pellucidar’ being the name of that particularly world within our world.

I have no read At the Earth’s Core and it’s sequel, Pellucidar.

While reading the first volume, I came to realize that I had read it as a child. I devoured science fiction and fantasy from used bookstores and must have picked up At the Earth’s Core, perhaps recognizing the author’s name. I was aware of Burroughs – I remember a Tarzan book in the little room we used as a library at our home in Norfolk, Virginia, though I never read it.

In my defense, I will say that the Pellucidar novels are not infected by the racism which appears in most of Burrough’s work. Not that Burroughs wasn’t racist, just that since these stories did not take place in Africa, Asia, Central America nor among Native Americans, he had less opportunity to express those thoughts. But it’s not a very good defense, is it?