![]() Vintage Science Fiction Month is the brainchild of Andrea at The Little Red Reviewer. The gist is simple: read speculative fiction written before 1980 (or the year you were born) and write about it in January. Vintage Science Fiction Month comes every year, right after Santa. But it offers a love interest whose fundamental decency shines through when she is robbed of her beautiful body, and the implicit commentary on zealots in the latter half of the book is fresh and biting. The main problem with tMMoM is that it leans so heavily on a theme-overemphasis on reason-that prominently features in the immediately previous book. He quickly finds himself in the employ of a mad scientist who does a brisk business transplanting the brains of Barsoom’s old and powerful into the bodies of its young and unfortunate. A fan of ERB’s Barsoom books (meta!), he is able to astrally project himself to Mars as he lays dying in a WWI trench, his legs blown off by an explosive shell. ![]() Ulysses Paxton isn’t a member of John Carter’s family or another Martian: he is an American earthling like Carter himself. The sequence with Ghek in the prison is also hilarious. The Chessmen of Mars earns its perfect score with a great cornucopia of cool as hell worldbuilding. The Gods of Mars earned its perfect score with perfect, propulsive pacing. Why did Edgar Rice Burroughs return to John Carter as the hero after exploring other protagonists for so long My guess: the Great Depression. The Gods of Mars is the first ERB book I have given 5 of 5 stars. There is also one bit of very cool worldbuilding in the city of Lothar and its phantoms. But it worked as a palate cleanser after The Warlord of Mars, my least favorite Barsoom book so far by a good margin, because it is well told, however conventional it is. TMoM is a pretty conventional Barsoom tale. And a completely new character, Ulysses Paxton stars in The Mastermind of Mars, with John Carter only making a sort of cameo appearance. John Carter’s daughter Tara stars in The Chessmen of Mars (unlike Cathorsis, she is a new character). John Carter’s son Carthorsis stars in Thuvia, Maid of Mars (along with the titular Thuvia). Which is a little surprising, perhaps, because John Carter is the great highlight of the first three books but plays a very limited role in these three. ![]() The three together manage to exceed ERB’s first three Barsoom books. Return to Mars collects Barsoom books 4-6: Thuvia, Maid of Mars The Chessmen of Mars and The Mastermind of Mars. My journey through Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom novels (and my Vintage SF Month 2021) continues with Return to Mars.
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