Burroughs, Edgar Rice- A Fighting Man of Mars

[ray gower]

Part of the Mars Series

synopsis
The beautiful Sanoma Tora, daughter of Tor Haton, One of the richest and most powerful families of Helium, is kidnapped by forces unknown. It falls upon the love smitten Hadron of Hastor, a young Padwar of the 91st Umak, to trace and recover this daughter of Helium.
The chase leads him into many adventures across the dieing planet of Mars, until he discovers a major plot for the destruction of the great Martian powers and the ultimate realisation of what love is.

Science fiction is always at its best when the language is kept simple and the story familiar.

Parallels with our own world then start falling out of the trees like coconuts for all to admire.

1/ Mars is dieing. It has been destroyed by the Martians themselves and they continue to bicker over what is left, rather than use their technology to improve the environment. Not so very far from today?

2/ Our hero finds the truth that, as Granny Weatherwax would observe, "Cooking lasts, looks don't".

3/ The rich and powerful only ever have one goal, to get richer and more powerful.

Looking at the technology it is always quaint to see that although a culture has many advanced devices, e.g. motors that work by harnessing the magnetic core of the planet and the fabled radium pistol, it then gets tasked on to some very old fashioned technology, they have no aircraft, instead they use dirigible balloons, or even downright archaic technology, people would rather use swords and bows rather than the mentioned radium pistol!

Overall it is a very old fashioned book, boasting what used to be the popular ploy of a foreword to explain how the story is true. The story is strictly linear as our hero systematically falls from frying pan to fire, props appear from no where in just the nick of time (like the invisible airship as he is about to be eaten by savages) and characters come in two flavours: the enthusiatically good guys and the diabolically bad ones. So probably not a great literary work, but it is a fun read. The story rolls along at a nice steady clip.

 

[Robert Gibson]

Part of the Mars Series


Science fiction is always at its best when the language is kept simple and the story familiar.

Parallels with our own world then start falling out of the trees like coconuts for all to admire.

1/ Mars is dieing. It has been destroyed by the Martians themselves and they continue to bicker over what is left, rather than use their technology to improve the environment. Not so very far from today?

2/ Our hero finds the truth that, as Granny Weatherwax would observe, "Cooking lasts, looks don't".

3/ The rich and powerful only ever have one goal, to get richer and more powerful.

Looking at the technology it is always quaint to see that although a culture has many advanced devices, e.g. motors that work by harnessing the magnetic core of the planet and the fabled radium pistol, it then gets tasked on to some very old fashioned technology, they have no aircraft, instead they use dirigible balloons, or even downright archaic technology, people would rather use swords and bows rather than the mentioned radium pistol!

Overall it is a very old fashioned book, boasting what used to be the popular ploy of a foreword to explain how the story is true. The story is strictly linear as our hero systematically falls from frying pan to fire, props appear from no where in just the nick of time (like the invisible airship as he is about to be eaten by savages) and characters come in two flavours: the enthusiatically good guys and the diabolically bad ones. So probably not a great literary work, but it is a fun read. The story rolls along at a nice steady clip.

Actually I think it is a great literary work. All the defects you mention are real - all your criticisms are true - but this only makes it more remarkable that the book nevertheless manages to be so good. We as critics are closest to discovering the secret of storytelling, when we examine works which somehow manage to cast a spell despite their faults.

 

[Extollager]

I ought to see how this book would stand up to a rereading after several decades. I'm pretty sure that it was the first ERB book I ever read; in a second-hand Ace paperback, back around 1970. Within weeks of reading it I'd read about fifteen more of Burroughs' books. But then, I was in my early teens then. Within the past few years I tried a rereading of A Princess of Mars and didn't manage to finish it.

 

[Vince W]

I think one of the reasons we may have trouble reading Burroughs as we get older is that we've read so much more to compare it to. When Burroughs' books were originally published there wasn't the same amount available so it stood out as a jewel among the rest. Now it's not as... sophisticated as modern sf.

That doesn't mean that Burroughs should not be read and enjoyed, but we need to come at it with a different frame of mind. We need to just let go of any our preconceptions and just enjoy the stories for what they are and try not to make comparisons to more modern works.

 

[ddawson]

I actually read several of his books again in the last few years including some of the Martian series, Tarzan, Venus and a couple of other oddball ones. didn't enjoy them as much as 40 years ago, but still liked them. I did notice he tended to write the same plot in varying ways of the women being hauled off by the bad guys and the hero rescuing them in almost every book.

The fun thing about the Tarzan books was how he frequently came up with lost or hidden civilizations that were fantastic.