Tag Archives: Helium

Shadow of the Assassins

A few weeks ago, when I discussed the graphic novel Warlord of Mars: The Fall of Barsoom, I mentioned that I didn’t know of many novels that told new stories in the worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs. What I hadn’t realized when I said that is that Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc – the company Burroughs himself founded to manage his literary estate – has recently started publishing new novels by noted authors set in the worlds Burroughs created. This includes novels about Tarzan, Barsoom, Pelucidar, and more. As I perused their offerings, I discovered that one of their Barsoom novels, A Princess of Mars: Shadow of the Assassins had received a very good review from Anthony R. Cardno, whose work appears in Hadrosaur Productions’ anthology Kepler’s Cowboys. I took that as a solid recommendation and decided to try the book.

A Princess of Mars: Shadow of the Assassins, written by Ann Tonsor Zeddies, is a prequel to Burroughs’ Barsoom series. In the novel, we meet Dejah Thoris on the cusp of adulthood. She’s the daughter of Mors Kajak, Jed (or prince) of Lesser Helium and granddaughter of Tardos Mors, Helium’s Jeddak (or king). As the story opens, Dejah Thoris’s brother has just left on a scientific expedition. She’s just at the age to bristle at not being included, so she sets out on her own to follow him just as far her father’s orders will allow. Unfortunately, she comes across a tribe of Barsoom’s twelve-foot-tall four-armed green warriors making an incursion into Helium’s territory. They shoot at her flier, so she has to retreat. Of course, Mors Kajak is not going to let this incursion stand, so he prepares to go out and do battle with the green warriors. However, an ambassador from the city-state of Zor appears and indicates he wants to build better relations with Helium. He invites Mors Kajak to a series of games to be held in Zor. Mors Kajak must beg off, but Dejah Thoris persuades her father to let her go in his place.

When Dejah Thoris arrives in Zor, accompanied by one of her mother’s close advisors and a guard detachment, she finds the people are not as refined as they are in her own country of Helium. The Jed of Zor, Jan Vajo, is a little too forward and ill-mannered as he courts Dejah Thoris. What’s more, plots seem to be afoot. Assassins are stalking the streets and the Jed must maintain food tasters and guards at all time to assure that his own people don’t attack him. When the games happen, it becomes apparent that the Jed and his sister have favorites and expect Dejah Thoris in her role as arbiter of the games to pick them as winners. While those favorites win based on technicalities, the princess decides to give accolades to others who show skill and bravery as well. After the games, the princess and one of the athletes she favored are kidnapped and taken out to the desert where it looks like they may be held as hostages. Of course, this being Dejah Thoris, she won’t sit still and wait for whatever ransom demands might be forthcoming.

All in all, I rather enjoyed this 2024 novel about Barsoom. All of the familiar characters feel authentically like Burroughs’ creations. While Dejah Thoris bristles at the boundaries her parents set for her, I liked the way she came to see the wisdom of their boundaries and how she learned to respect what they told her, even if she still insists on forging her own path forward. There was a nice balance between court intrigue and action. I was especially impressed by how well this short novel maintained a voice consistent with Burroughs. Aside from a couple of more modern turns of phrase, I could almost imagine I was reading a lost novel of Barsoom.

The book also contained a bonus novella, John Carter of Mars: Swords of the Mind by Geary Gravel. This story opens with John Carter on his way home from a visit to a friend at Mars’s south pole. He soon crosses paths with a damaged flier that belongs to his son Carthoris. Carter is able to catch up with the flier and get aboard. However, he finds it empty. Reasoning that Carthoris must have gotten in trouble and sent the flier on autopilot home so people would know to come looking for him, Carter sets the flier to take it back to where the flight started. The ship takes him to the hidden and mysterious city of Lothar, which is under the rule of a man named Tario, who can create soldiers with his mind who are so real, they can inflict damage on their opponents. Within the city’s walls, Carter discovers not his son, but his grandson Djon Dhin. It turns out Tario has taken him captive and is trying to teach him mind control powers so Djon Dhin can help him rule all of Barsoom. Tario has also captured Carthoris and is using him as leverage to bend Djon Dhin to his will.

John Carter of Mars: Swords of the Mind was a nicely balanced novella. Again, I felt like I was reading a lost Burroughs story. I liked how Gavel expanded the Burroughs cannon a little bit by explaining how the mammalian Martians engineered themselves to lay eggs as an adaptation to their difficult environment. He doesn’t expound on that idea much, but it was nice to see a thoughtful nod to one of the oddities of the Barsoom series. I was so impressed with both the short novel and novella that I plan to read more of the novels published by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. You can find their complete catalog online at: https://www.edgarriceburroughs.com/ which includes not only these newer books, but authorized editions of the original Edgar Rice Burroughs classic novels. The editions are also available from your favorite online retailers.

One of the things I have long appreciated about the Barsoom novels is how they sparked my imagination and helped me see Mars as a real place we could visit and explore. Sure its a fanciful Mars, but its not far off from how astronomers like Percival Lowell and Camille Flammarion imagined the red planet. When NASA scientist Steve Howell and I decided to compile the anthology Kepler’s Cowboys, we had Burroughs very much in our minds. In our case, we wanted to bring real exoplanets to life in the same way Burroughs brought Mars and Venus to life in his novels. You can learn more about Kepler’s Cowboys at: https://hadrosaur.com/KeplersCowboys.php

Revisiting John Carter

Since I recently finished reading all of the original John Carter of Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, I thought it would be fun to revisit the 2012 Disney film, John Carter starring Taylor Kitsch as the title character, Lynn Carter as Martian Princess Dejah Thoris, and Willem Defoe as the four-armed Thark warrior Tars Tarkas. I’ll note that this is one of those rare movies saw right when it was first released with the whole family. We even went for the whole 3-D presentation and loved it. A full-size movie poster from the film even hangs on the inside of my office door.

The movie is essentially a retelling of Burroughs’ novel The Princess of Mars with a few updates and a few elements tossed in from later novels in the series. The film opens on Mars and shows how two city states, Zodanga and Helium are fighting for precious resources on the dying world. Zodanga is a city on legs that travels across the planet hunting for resources. It also has the help of a mysterious people called the Thern. Helium, where Princess Dejah Thoris lives, is one of the grand old cities. She’s engaged in developing technology to help extend the lives of the Martians.

Once this is established we cut to Arizona Territory in 1881 where we meet John Carter, a former Confederate soldier from Virginia who is trying to forget the tragedy of his past life and move forward as a prospector. The U.S. Cavalry wants to recruit him to fight Apaches, but Carter doesn’t want to be recruited. They toss him in the stockade. When he breaks out, they chase him, only for everyone to find themselves face-to-face with a band of Apache warriors. All hell breaks loose and Carter gets away, but not before saving the life of the colonel who wanted to recruit him. They flee into the hills and find a cave to hide. It turns out this cave matches the descriptions of one he’s been seeking, rumored to have a fortune of gold. It also has a Thern teleportation station. A Thern from Mars appears and attacks Carter, but Carter dodges and kills him first, but not before the teleport is set and sends Carter across to the red planet.

Once on Mars, Carter discovers he can leap long distances in a single bound because of the lower gravity. (Okay, in the real world, he wouldn’t be that lightweight on Mars. Still, the scene transpires about like it does in A Princess of Mars.) He soon comes across an incubator with eggs. Inside, green lizard-like creatures begin to hatch. Not long after that, adult versions of the creatures arrive to collect their offspring. These are the Tharks, the nomadic desert people of Mars. Their leader, Tars Tarkas sees Carter’s jumping ability and strength and realizes he could use a friend with such powers and so takes him back to his city.

Back at the Thark city, Carter is entrusted to a disgraced woman named Sola. She gives him the same formula given to the Thark infants. This helps Carter understand the local language. In fact, this is my only major quibble with the film. In the book, Sola teaches him the language over a few weeks and I prefer that to the “magic formula” solution of the movie. Soon after this, airships from Zodanga and Helium appear over the Thark city and begin fighting. The Helium ship crashes. Dejah Thoris and John Carter meet. Southern gentleman that he is, Carter aids the woman who has appeared from the sky to drive off the Zodangans. In the process, he learns she’s no slouch with a sword herself.

From there, John Carter and Dejah Thoris get to know each other better. They follow clues to understand how Carter arrived on Mars and discover links to the Therns who are helping the Zodangans. They also begin to unravel who Sola actually is and how she’s connected to Tars Tarkas. The movie tells a solid tale that sticks to the spirit of the first three books in the series. All of the actors did a great job of making me care about their characters. The steampunk/retrofuturistic designs for the Martian machinery and cities were extremely well done. In the book, there never is a good explanation for how and why John Carter was first transported to Mars. I liked that the movie gave us an explanation and it didn’t feel in conflict with the book.

Despite the quality, the movie didn’t do well at the box office. Some of that appears to be a very poor marketing effort on Disney’s part. I gather they changed the name of the film from John Carter of Mars to John Carter at the last minute. Most people had no idea who John Carter was. The marketing campaigns failed to mention how this was created by the same person who created Tarzan. They also failed to mention how the John Carter of Mars books influenced fantastic fiction from Superman to Star Wars. Now, I also gather the movie went seriously over budget, so I wonder if Disney deliberately scaled back their marketing to justify not allowing Andrew Stanton to direct another live-action movie. Fortunately, you can stream John Carter on Disney+ or purchase it another way and decide for yourself whether you like the film.

Certainly, the John Carter of Mars books influenced my science fiction. John Carter as an outsider influenced Ellison Firebrandt as an outsider. The mysterious Therns who use Martians as pawns is a similar idea to the Cluster in my later Space Pirates’ legacy novels. And, of course, the crew of the Aristarchus in my novel The Solar Sea pay homage to the romance of Mars itself, even if it isn’t the life-filled world Burroughs imagined. You can learn more about my science fiction novels at http://davidleesummers.com/books.html