Tag Archives: Mars (planet)

Under the Moons of Mars

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library] ed and intro by John Joseph Adams, foreword by Tamora Pierce, with Joe R Lansdale, David Barr Kirtley, Peter S Beagle, Tobias S Buckell, Robin Wasserman, Theodora Gross, Austin Grossman, L E Modesitt jr, Genevieve Valentine, Garth Nix, Chris Claremont, S M Stirling, Catherynne M Valente, and Jonathan Maberry, with different illustrations for each story by different artist (including Molly Crabapple, Charles Vess, Michael Kaluta, Jeremy Bastien, Meinert Hansen, John Picaccio, and Daren Bade), and an appendix by Richard A Lupoff; “inspired by the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs” but also it was not “prepared, approved, licensed, or authorized by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. or any other entity associated with the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate.”

Adams Under the Moons of Mars

While the publishers of this anthology of new Barsoomian fiction probably hoped to capitalize on the concurrent Disney movie John Carter, the commercial failure of the latter certainly shouldn’t be held against them. Designer Tom Daly seems to have taken into some account the lovely Frazetta-illustrated editions of ERB’s Barsoom under the Nelson Doubleday imprint that were my initiation to that planet in the 1970s. This book sits next to them on the shelf like a member of the family. All of these stories were written for this collection, and there is a piece of original art (black and white) to illustrate each. The world of science fiction writers teems with those who love Barsoom in one way or another, and artists also enjoy its charms. 

I found all of the stories reasonably enjoyable. Only a few are straightforward pastiche; most attempt some inversion or diversion of the received standards of the Barsoomian tale. A few are told from the perspective of John Carter’s foes, a few by green Martians, one by Woola the calot, and one by a “sidekick” earthling who didn’t appear in the ERB stories. Two involve Tarzan cross-overs. Prose styles vary from the straightforward fantasy adventure narrative that Burroughs did so much to invent, to more poetic and introspective pieces. 

The art was less impressive to me. Each illustration is given a full page, and while some were terrific (those by Charles Vess and Michael Kaluta of course, and also Jeremy Bastien, Meinert Hansen, John Picaccio, and Daren Bader), many of them seemed on the weak side, not to mention sometimes overdressed. After all, artists working with this subject matter have to endure comparison with Richard Corben and Michael Whelan, in addition to the aforementioned Frazetta. I certainly would have liked to see one of Frank Cho’s drawings of Dejah Thoris here. Still, including this great variety of illustration was a sound idea.

I liked Tamora Pierce’s forward, even if it wasn’t very enlightening. The glossary by Richard S. Lupoff seemed pretty comprehensive and accurate, but not terribly necessary. I can recommend the book as an acquisition for die-hard collectors of Barsoomiana, and as a good one to borrow from the public library for those looking for light entertainment of the sword-and-planet flavor.

World of Mars

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews John Carter: World of Mars [Amazon, Abebooks, Publisher, Local Library] by Peter David, Luke Ross, & al.

David Ross Burroughs John Carter World of Mars

This “Official Prequel” to the Disney John Carter movie collects the four issues of the Marvel comic John Carter: World of Mars. It is only indirectly rooted in the Burroughs stories; it is very faithful to the Disney screenplay and visual designs. In a frame story narrated by John Carter (who is thus only pictured in cover art and the opening pages of issue #1, along with the final panel of #4) this book provides back-stories for Tars Tarkas, Dejah Thoris, and Sab Than — the last of whom is presented as even more of a sociopath and tyrant than in the movie. Peter David’s story works pretty well, and the Luke Ross art is effective enough. Anyone who liked the movie (I did) should be able to enjoy this little graphic novel. 

The book is padded out at the end with some design sketches and the complete typescript draft of the first issue, effectively appending “roughs” from both the artist and the writer. I find design sketches an interesting addition to a volume like this, but the script just seems like an indulgent waste of paper that added nothing to the final content. 

Since the book is really fixed in the movie continuity, it actually doesn’t connect very smoothly with the other Marvel title John Carter: A Princess of Mars, which is more of an adaptation of the Burroughs book, albeit with some anticipation of the Disney treatment.

Weird Worlds

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars: Weird Worlds [Amazon, Abebooks, Local Library]  by Marv Wolfman, John Byrne, Murphy Anderson, Gray Morrow, Sal Amendola, Joe Orlando, Howard Chaykin, & c.

Burroughs Wolfman et al John Carter Mars Weird Worlds

Well, despite being nonplussed by the recent Barsoomian offerings from Marvel Comics, I admit they do improve on the crude Tarzan and Weird Worlds DC material of the early 1970s collected in this trade paperback from Dark Horse. Writer Marv Wolfman shows an appropriate level of humility about his wooden writing when reflecting on it in his 2010 introduction. 

The best art of the volume is in the single issue by Gray Morrow, which — if nothing else — relieves the reader from the goofy goggle eyes that Murphy Anderson bestowed upon his version of the Tharks, subsequently taken up by Sal Amendola. In fact, some of the better art in the whole book is in a trio of cover thumbnails (7), showing work by Joe Kubert, Michael Kaluta, and Howard Chaykin. (Wouldn’t you know it, Chaykin manages to have a Barsoomian babe in manacles and fishnet hose on the cover of Weird Worlds #7!)

I don’t know how well the four-color style hues in this book track with the original comics, but there is some obvious difficulty with Martian skin tones. The Red Martians are often as white as John Carter. (Exhibit A is the book’s cover, showing the palest Dejah Thoris ever.) Morrow dissents from the other artists on yet another issue of Thark anatomy: he only gives the females two teats (20), contrasted with the four afforded by Anderson and Amendola. 

The book in hand covers the full run of DC Barsoomiana, which amounts to adaptations of A Princess of Mars and Gods of Mars with a very little other material mixed in. I’m happy to have it in my library for comparative and historical purposes, but its value pretty much ends there.

A Princess of Mars

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter: A Princess of Mars [Amazon, Abebooks, Local Library]  by Roger Langridge, Filipe Andrade, &al.

Langridge Andrade John Carter a Princess of Mars

This book collects the Marvel Comics title (issues 1-5) released to capitalize on the Disney John Carter film. It is more an adaptation of the original Burroughs story, although the final issue includes an epilogue that draws on the frame story established in the film. 

The writing is reasonably capable, although I was a little put off by the implicit comparisons of Than Kosis to Saddam Hussein. Carter refers to deposing him as “regime change,” and there is a panel of the Zodangan people pulling down the statue of Than Kosis with his right arm outstretched just like this.

The art by Filipe Andrade was deeply unsatisfying to me. As in the Disney movie, Dejah Thoris wears entirely too much clothing. All of the human and Red Martian physiques are impressionistically ropy, and the faces are distorted in stylized ways that make them look as alien as the Tharks. 

Overall, I found this version inferior to the bulk of the current Barsoom comics from Dynamite.

ETA: The “John Carter (TM)” super-title creates the odd effect of suggesting that Captain Carter is himself “a princess of Mars”!

The Gods of Xuma

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews The Gods of Xuma, or Barsoom Revisited [Amazon, Abebooks, Publisher, Local Library] by David J Lake.

Lake The Gods of Xuma

The Gods of Xuma is a mildly metafictional take on Burroughs’ Barsoom, framed by a “harder” SF scenario of attempted 24th-century emigration from the solar system. Instead of being the nearest planet in our system, as Barsoom was, Xuma is in the nearest star system that has an Earth-like planet. The explorers have read the old Barsoom stories, and they are intrigued by the arid planet with a canal-based civilization. The protagonist is the crew’s linguist Tom Carson (note the shared meter and assonance with “John Carter”), who is the first to land on the planet and engage the natives.

In an interesting counter, Carson is not given low-gravity superpowers by the below-Earth gravity of Xuma, because he (like all healthy surviving humans) has actually grown up in even lower gravity among the human settlements on the Moon and Mars. What the humans do have is excessive military technology. The Xuman natives, while suspiciously advanced with respect to cultural continuity and general sciences, have no automated transport or weaponry beyond a medieval standard. But the humans barge in with beam weapons, tanks, and orbital barrages. Thus the star-faring humans are mistaken, first by the natives, and later by themselves, for “The Gods of Xuma.”

Communications between the humans and Xumans are established quickly and easily, although without any cross-species telepathy or magical translation. Although superficially quite humanoid, the Xumans have a very different developmental and sexual cycle, which produces real but not insurmountable cultural distances from the explorers. The book does not shirk from an account of the first sexual encounter between humans and Xumans, along with the subsequent developments of this possibility.

The human characters are reasonably fallible, sometimes verging on pathetic, and the Xumans are a little incredibly benevolent. On the whole, the book is a pretty effective anti-imperialist fable. It has a sequel (Warlords of Xuma), but it doesn’t cry out for one.

The Man Who Loved Mars

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews The Man Who Loved Mars [Amazon, Abebooks, Bookshop (New), Local Library] by Lin Carter.

Carter The Man Who Loved Mars

This novel by Lin Carter is the first of his “Mysteries of Mars” stories inspired by the planetary romances of Leigh Brackett. He does nice work with the form here, playing up the political sensibility found in Brackett’s Mars yarns (especially the Eric John Stark ones). The anti-imperialist sentiment is probably more bracing for American readers now — or at least it should be — than it was when Carter wrote the story forty years ago. 

The characters are a little flatter than what I would expect from Brackett, but their motives are still interesting, and the planet is nicely realized. I have read complaints about the deus ex machina conclusion, but it was enjoyable as far as I was concerned, and it was almost necessary in order to make this story, told by the first Earth human to rule Martians as a Martian, more significant than the past events to which the narrator constantly alludes.

The science of the business isn’t really any more believable today than Burroughs’ Barsoom was in the 1960s, but for readers more interested in a good story than a historical forecast, this quick read justifies itself well enough.

So in a sense it isn’t me; it’s something in me that even that thing Palmer Eldritch can’t reach and consume because since it’s not me it’s not mine to lose. I feel it growing. Withstanding the external, nonessential alterations, the arm, the eyes, the teeth—it’s not touched by any of these three, the evil, negative trinity of alienation, blurred reality, and despair that Eldritch brought back with him from Proxima. Or rather from the space in between.

Philip K Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]

Hermetic quote Dick The Three Stigmata of Eldritch Palmer sense something in me not touched by evil trinity alienation blurred reality despair from space between

Ares Express

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews Ares Express [Amazon, Local Library] by Ian McDonald.

McDonald Ares Express

Ares Express is classed as a sequel to the author’s wonderful far-future Mars story Desolation Road. As I anticipated, the continuous characters from Desolation Road are few and somewhat peripheral. It would be a fine stand-alone read, and no one should avoid it for lack of familiarity with the previous volume.

Unlike his first Martian book with its sprawling ensemble, McDonald really focuses this one on the single heroine Sweetness Octave Glorious Honey-Bun Asiim Engineer 12th, and the time-frame of the story is much briefer, so McDonald doesn’t pull off the same astonishing combination of little stories adding up to a big one. Although he still manages to avoid the word Mars throughout the novel, he also furnishes a lot of additional information about the fourth planet and its history, religions, and relations to “Motherworld,” in ways that are more direct than those of Desolation Road. 

“Naked to our lens, human imagination had engineered its surface. Whether watered by slow canals, galloped across by green or red barbarians; contemplated by a wistful autumn people; the little world next one out, unlike the other globes in the system, rocky or smothered with steam, had always possessed a geography. Names were written on its skin.” (251-2)

Ares Express is full of thematic and iconic connections to Peter Pan. Sweetness kicks off the events of the book by fleeing her arranged wedding: she doesn’t want to grow up, at least not in the way dictated by her family — part of the engineer caste perpetually living on the massive nuclear-powered trains that serve as the principal long-distance transport on Mars. The Captain Hook role is occupied by Devastation Harx, a cult leader attempting to incite planetary cataclysm from his airship cathedral. The book is chock-full of urchins and micro-societies of voluntary castaways. 

While the central course of events in Ares Express make up a coming-of-age novel, the most significant secondary plot-line features the adventures of Sweetness’ Grandmother Taal in her efforts to rescue the girl (and the planet). As a counterpoint to the rollicking cinematic action of Sweetness’ journey, Grandmother Taal’s story is more literary and episodic.

It’s no wonder to me that McDonald took about thirteen years to finish a second Mars story — his vision is too fine to waste on a rush job, and it’s clear that he had the necessary inspiration to continue here. Maybe there’ll be a third someday!