The Warlord of Mars
++++++++++++ caution contains what some might construe as spoilers++++++++++++++++++
The Warlord of Mars is a science fiction novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the third of his famous Barsoom series following
The Gods of Mars (Townsend Library Edition)
. Burroughs began writing it in June, 1913, going through five working titles; Yellow Men of Barsoom, The Fighting Prince of Mars, Across Savage Mars, The Prince of Helium, and The War Lord of Mars.
The finished story was first published in All-Story Magazine as a four-part serial in the issues for December, 1913-March, 1914. It was later published as a complete novel by A. C. McClurg in September, 1919
This novel continues where the previous one in the series, The Gods of Mars abruptly ended. At the end of the previous book, John Carter's wife, the princess Dejah Thoris, is imprisoned in the Temple of the Sun by the vile pretender goddess Issus. It is said one has to wait an entire Barsoomian year before the room the prisoner is in revolves back to the entrance
John Carter discovers that a First Born knows the secret of the Temple of the Sun and he and the Holy Hekkador Matai Shang want to rescue the Holy Thern's daughter, who is imprisoned with Dejah Thoris and another Barsoomian princess, Thuvia of Ptarth. John Carter follows them in the hope of liberating his beloved wife. His antagonists flee to the north, taking the three women along. Thereafter John Carter follows them untiring into the north polar regions where he discovers more fantastic creatures and ancient, mysterious Martian races. These he overcomes in battle, and is later proclaimed "Warlord of Barsoom" by his allies. This book is the last to feature Tars Tarkas, John Carter's ally, in any major role; indeed, the green Barsoomians of whom Tars Tarkas is an oligarch disappear altogether from most of the later novels.
Characters
* John Carter: Protagonist of the first three novels. Carter is an American Civil War veteran, transported to the planet Mars by a form of astral projection. There, he encounters both formidable alien creatures and various waring Martian races, wins the hand of Martian princess Dejah Thoris, and rises to the position of Warlord of Mars.
* Dejah Thoris: A Martian Princess of Helium, who is courageous, tough and always holds her resolve, despite being frequently placed in both mortal danger and the threat of being dishonored by the lust of villains. She is the daughter of Mors Kajak, jed of Lesser Helium and granddaughter of Tardos Mors, jeddak of Helium; highly aristocratic; and fiercely proud of her heritage. She is the love interest of John Carter. She was imprisoned by the Martian false deity Issus, at the end of The Gods of Mars. A central character in the first three Barsoom novels, whose capture by various enemies, and subsequent pursuit by John Carter, is a constant motivating force in these tales.
* Tars Tarkas: A Green Martian, who becomes the ally of John Carter and at his behest, the overlord of his clan. An archetypal noble savage, and considered John Carter's first and closest friend upon Barsoom.
* Thuvia of Ptarth: A Princess of Ptarth, who appears in The Gods of Mars as a slave girl rescued by John Carter from the Therns. She is later imprisoned with Carter's wife Dejah Thoris, in a prison which can only be opened once per year and remains by her side until the conclusion of The Warlord of Mars. Like many of Burroughs' heroines, she is tough, courageous, proud, and strongly identified with her aristocratic position in Martian society.
Burroughs vision of Mars was loosely inspired by astronomical speculation of the time, especially that of Percival Lowell, who saw the planet as a formerly Earthlike world now becoming less hospitable to life due to its advanced age, whose inhabitants had built canals to bring water from the polar caps to irrigate the remaining arable land. [ Lowell was influenced by Italian astronomer, Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli, who in 1878, had observed features on Mars he called canali (Italian for "channels"). Mistranslated of this into English as "canals" fueled belief the planet was inhabited. The theory of an inhabited planet with flowing water was disproved by data provided by Russian and American probes such as the two Viking missions which found a dead, frozen world where water could not exist in a fluid state
A million years before the narrative commences, Mars was a lush world with oceans. As the oceans receded, and the atmosphere grew thin, the planet has devolved into a landscape of partial barbarism; living on an aging planet, with dwindling resources, the inhabitants of Barsoom have become hardened and warlike, fighting one another to survive. Barsoomians distribute scarce water supplies via a worldwide system of canals, controlled by quarreling city-states. The thinning Martian atmosphere is artificially replenished from an "atmosphere plant".
Race
The world of Barsoom is divided by the territory of White, Yellow, Black, Red and Green skinned races. Each has particular traits and qualities, which seem to define most individuals within them. This concept of race is more like a division between species than ethnicity.
The Warlord of Mars introduces the Yellow Martians, supposedly extinct, whom John Carter finds in secret domed cities at the poles. They are black-bearded, exceptionally cruel, and keep slaves, acquiring these by using a giant magnetic device which sends fliers off course, and allows the Yellow Martians to capture the occupants
Numerous novels and series by others were inspired by Burroughs' Mars books: the Radio Planet trilogy of Ralph Milne Farley; the Mars and Venus novels of Otis Adelbert Kline; Almuric by Robert E. Howard; Warrior of Llarn and Thief of Llarn by Gardner Fox; Tarzan on Mars, Go-Man and Thundar, Man of Two Worlds by John Bloodstone; the Michael Kane trilogy of Michael Moorcock; The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Through the Gates of the Silver Key by H.P. Lovecraft, the Gor series of John Norman; the Callisto series and Green Star series of Lin Carter; The Goddess of Ganymede and Pursuit on Ganymede by Mike Resnick; and the Dray Prescot series of Alan Burt Akers (Kenneth Bulmer). In addition, Leigh Brackett, Ray Bradbury, Andre Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Alan Dean Foster show Burroughs' influence in their development of alien cultures and worlds.
A. Bertram Chandler's pulp novels The Alternate Martians and The Empress of Outer Space overtly borrow a number of characters and situations from Burroughs' Barsoom series.
Robert A. Heinlein's novels
Glory Road
and , and Alan Moore's graphic novels of Allan and the Sundered Veil and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II directly reference Barsoom.
In Philip José Farmer's World of Tiers series (1965-1993) Kickaha, the seri
The Number of the Beast
es' adventurer protagonist, asks his friend The Creator of Universes to create for him a Barsoom. The latter agrees only to make an empty world, since "It would go too far for me to create all these fabulous creatures only for you to amuse yourself by running your sword through them." Kickaha visits from time to time the empty Barsoom, complete with beautiful palaces in which nobody ever lived, but goes away frustrated.
L. Sprague de Camp's story "Sir Harold of Zodanga" recasts and rationalizes Barsoom as a parallel world visited by his dimension-hopping hero Harold Shea. De Camp accounts for Burroughs' departures from physics or logic by portraying both Burroughs and Carter as having a tendency to exaggerate in their storytelling, and Barsoomian technology as less advanced than usually presented.
Furthermore, his Viagens Interplanetarias series of novels and short stories, especially those set on Krishna, one of Tau Ceti's inhabited planets, owe much to the premise of feudal co-existence alongside advanced technology pioneered within the Barsoom series.
In 1989 Larry Niven and Steven Barnes published "The Barsoom Project", where a futuristic form of live action role-playing games (LARPs) is based on the Barsoom books.
The Mars-based novels of Kim Stanley Robinson (published from 1992 to 1999) also offer several nods in Burroughs' direction.
The 2008 novel In the Courts of the Crimson Kings by S.F. writer S. M. Stirling is an alternate telling of the Princess of Mars story but this time the princess is a very powerful character indeed.
DC Comics character Adam Strange's method of transportation, the Zeta Beam, recalls the way Carter is transported to Mars.
In the Commonwealth Saga novels by Peter F. Hamilton a group of humans who undertake unprecedented and often illegal genetic modifications of their own bodies are known as the Barsoomians, in apparent reference to Burroughs' creation.
Richard Corben's Den series also appears to be inspired by the Barsoom series. It features a hero, Den, who mysteriously arrives naked on a (largely) desert planet where he becomes a great warrior and where the humanoids wear no clothes. Many of the creatures resemble the description of the white apes of the Gods of Mars. Like John Carter, he also receives great physical prowess from arriving in Neverwhere, although Carter's prowess stems from gravity, whereas Den undergoes a complete physical transformation.
In Stephen King's novel The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three, Eddie Dean compares the All-World and the quest for the Dark Tower to a Barsoom novel.
The John Carter of Mars series was also felt to be one of the inspirations for the Dark Sun Dungeons & Dragons game world setting.
In A Wizard of Mars by Diane Duane, the main character Kit is a major fan of the Barsoom series and a long dormant wizard artifact recreates Barsoom as Kit imagines it to communicate with him.
I highly recommend this book and series to 12 -18 year olds who enjoy swashbuckling adventures and tales of derring-do.
Gunner March, 2012
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Top reviews from other countries
Alan W
Space Opera/Fantasy - ages Well!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 8, 2012Ian Adams
The inspiration of countless other science fiction writers!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 14, 2015
