Edgar Rice Burroughs (September 1, 1875) is one of the author’s favorite writers. I love his stories and the way he structured his sentences.
Writers with the same Sun Signs sometimes write about similar themes and things associated with their signs. For example, Scorpio Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde while Bram Stoker created Dracula. Scorpio is a sign associated with good and evil.
Stevenson had tuberculosis when there was no treatment. He traveled the world with his wife Piscean wife Fanny in an effort to find a clime that would have curative effects. Stoker managed a theater to make ends meet.
R.L.S. popularized pirates in Treasure Island. Jim Hawkins found a treasure map in Captain Flint’s sea chest and with some allies seeks to find the booty. However, the schooner they sail on is unknowingly manned by members of Flint’s crew led by Long John Silver.
Michael Crichton’s novels included Jurassic Park, Timeline, and the Great Train Robbery. He was a Harvard trained medical doctor who preferred writing. After he died from lymphoma, a complete manuscript was found. It was Pirate Latitudes about a fictional privateer.
One of the themes in Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan—he was a Virgo—was civilization was a thin veneer beneath which lurked savagery. William Golding had a similar notion in Lord of the Flies. Virgo at its core is nothing like well- mannered Libra, its adjacent sign.
Another prolific Virgo writer, H.G. Wells, wrote about vivisection in the Island of Dr. Moreau. Different animal parts were pieced together and made animate. Mary Shelley created the unforgettable Frankenstein in a somewhat similar manner but used human parts.
Deep thinking Tauruses can make whole systems for change when they put pen to paper. We see that with Karl Marx in his The Communist Manifesto, Sigmund Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams, John Stuart Mill On Liberty, and Adolf Hitler in a very bad way (Mein Kampf).
Gemini writers Ian Fleming and Arthur Conan Doyle created unforgettable characters. Fleming’s James Bond was the quintessential secret agent. Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes was the most astute detective. He used logic and deduction to solve cases. “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” (“The Sign of the Four, p. 111) When Doyle killed Holmes off, his readers were outraged and demanded the stories continue.
Doyle was a medical doctor who wrote in his spare time. Fleming had been involved in intelligence gathering as a naval officer. Fleming engaged in some extramarital affairs. James Bond was ruthless and highly sexed.
Capricorn Stephen Hawking wrote A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell. Similarly, Isaac Newton penned his three volume Principia which caused a great revolution in physics. Ruled by Saturn, Capricorn is naturally oriented to the sciences.
Edgar Allen Poe, another Capricorn, served in the military from 1827 to 1829; thereafter, he went to West Point for about two more. The father of the detective story, he made contributions to several genre. His most recurring themes deal with death in its different forms—decomposition, premature burial, reanimation, and mourning.
Rod Serling smoked four to five packets of cigarettes a day. Only five feet four inches tall, he saw much death and combat when he served as a paratrooper in the Pacific Theater in WW-II and helped liberate Manila. His notable works included The Twilight Zone and Planet of the Apes. Serling suffered from PTSD and was known as an angry man in Hollywood.
Science fiction has a natural association with Aquarius. Jules Verne, the French lawyer, wrote such works as 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, From the Earth to the Moon, and Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Andre Alice Norton was called the Grand Dame of Science Fiction and Fantasy. She wrote novels for seventy years and her works included Voodoo Planet, Star Gate, and The X Factor.
Compassionate Piscean writers included John Steinbeck and Victor Hugo. Steinbeck’s sympathy for workers was evident in Grapes of Wrath. Flat. Hugo’s protagonist Jean Valjean in Les Miserables served a prison sentence of nineteen years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s children.
Libran writers found Emily Post and Noah Webster in their midst. Post wrote her book Etiquette in 1922 when she was fifty. Her DOB is shown as both October 3 and 27, 1872. “She believed the best way to do almost anything was the way that pleased the greatest number of people and irritated the fewest. Good manners…included good form of speech, knowledge of proper social graces, and charm.” (“Emily Post Biography,” Encyclopedia of World Biography).
Noah Webster’s name is synonymous with the dictionary. He taught people the art of spelling. F. Scott Fitzgerald was fascinated by the wealthy and wrote about them. The Great Gatsby has been made into a film.
Erle Stanley Gardener, a Cancer, was at one time a practicing attorney with an unorthodox streak like his most famous character. His best selling books about Perry Mason sold over 300 million copies. The most popular in the series was The Case of the Velvet Claws.
Michael Connelly has gained fame from his series about The Lincoln Lawyer. He began his career as a crime reporter. The main character, Mickey Haller, is a gourmand who knows the location of every food truck in Los Angeles.
Clive Cussler combined maritime and alternate history in such novels as Raise the Titanic and Sahara. He began writing at home while his wife was at work. Cussler was an aircraft mechanic in the Korean War.
Dr. Robert Ballard, another Cancer, actually found the White Star Liner. Ballard wrote pictorial books about his explorations which included visits to the Lusitania and Bismarck.
James Patterson was born under the sign of Aries. He was the first person to sell a million e-books. He holds the New York Times record for #1 bestsellers at sixty-seven. One of this main characters is Alex Cross, a forensic psychologist who had worked for the F.B.I.
Robert Frost won four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry, the only poet to win that many. Here is the concluding stanza to his “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening:”
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. Everything has a beginning and an end. Aries is the sign of new beginnings.
Sagittarian Mark Twain was a great humorist and author. In Huckleberry Finn the main character travels down the Mississippi River. The river represents life and Huck’s trip is that from child to man. Other notable works included Tom Sawyer and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
Satirist Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver’s Travels. It makes fun of the travel narrative and ridicules English customs and politics.
Leo, the sign of creative self-expression, has two famed writers of science fiction under its mane: Ray Bradbury and Aldous Huxley. Bradbury is known for The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 while Huxley drafted Brave New World. Related to science fiction is fantasy, and J.K. Rowling showed her mastery there with her series on Harry Potter.
Writers often use a nom de plume, a pen name. They need not. Their Sun Signs peek out and reveal their identities.
Brian Hill, blog writer