by Edgar Rice Burroughs
1913

Make no mistake: this is your grandfather’s Mars.

Or, maybe, your great-grandfather’s. Originally published serially in All-Story Magazine in 1913, “The Gods of Mars” is the second of 11 books that Edgar Rice Burroughs set on Mars—a Mars with breathable air and peopled with warring civilizations using fantastic technologies, both barbaric and advanced - written before anyone could prove otherwise.

“The Gods of Mars” follows the adventures of Captain John Carter of Virgina, a man who was transported to Mars by uncertain means and for unknown reasons to find that the lesser gravity of the red planet makes human muscles super-powered. He can out-run, out-jump and out-fight any Martian he faces, even the 8-foot tall, four-armed green warrior Martians.

In the previous book, Carter fought his way to the top and became the most respected warrior on Mars, found love, married the red Martian princess Dejah Thoris and even saved the the planet from some kind of atmosphere problem, only to be inexplicably cast back to Earth.

In “Gods” he awakes on Mars again, 10 years later, only to find himself trapped more or less in the Martian afterlife. On Mars, when you choose to die, you take a pilgrimmage down the river Iss to the Valley Dor, from which none ever return—something like Tolkien’s Western Lands. Carter discovers, though, that it’s no paradise at all, and the reason that no one comes back is because it’s full of monsters, among them blue tentacled plant monsters that suck out your blood and giant hairless white apes. The moment a happy Martian floats down the river into the valley, he gets eaten.

That’s because the Holy Therns have been using religion to manipulate all of Mars for millenia. The Therns are a twisted priest-culture of white Martians, who make slaves of any survivors of the monsters, and eat the bloodless flesh of the dead. The Therns have kept secret the true path to the afterlife, which is through the Temple of Issus.

Except, as things turn out, there’s actually another secret race on Mars, which has been using religion to control the Therns so that, in their “afterlife,” the Therns actually find themselves enslaved or cannibalized, in turn.

Which is pretty funny. I remember enjoying C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy, which was a Christian allegory set in a sci-fi solar system, but ultimately its lessons were lost on me. Burroughs’ message is more my speed: religion is bunk, and if given half a chance, the priests will eat you.

While this might sound heavy-handed, the story is wrapped in non-stop action, which is really what the Mars adventures are all about. John Carter hacks and slashes his way across half the planet, is reunited with old friends, meets new ones, gets imprisoned, escapes, meets beautiful but difficult Martian women, gets imprisoned again and starts a revolt, all against impossible odds that only a hero could best. Maybe partly because of the serial nature of the original work, the action never lets up and, chapter by chapter, the story delivers round after round of adventure.

For a modern reader, the book is fun for the sheer audacity of throwing aside everything you know about about our cold and barren solar system and choosing to believe that Mars could be full of people and monsters, but it’s also a great read in its own right. There are even scenes so slick and action-packed that they feel improbably enough like they were written for film.

For example, at one point, Carter and his companions are caught between two sides in a chaotic battle on a terraced garden that they need to cross. In order to create a diversion and increase their chances, they release a pack of wild Martian tiger-things into the fray, which start attacking everyone. The group starts to make its way across the gardens, but gets drawn into the battle, instead. Suddenly, Carter is knocked down from behind by an unknown force, which also knocks down the foe he was facing—looking up, he sees it was an anchor from one of the airships attacking from above! With a leap, he grabs the anchor chain and climbs quietly up to the airship. Just as he gets to the deck, an enemy face appears over the edge, so he grabs him by the throat so he can’t yell and sound the alarm. With his super-Martian strength, Carter chokes the foe with one hand, then pulls him over the side and flings him to the distant ground below. Carter then pulls himself onto the deck and uses the element of surprise to defeat everyone onboard and take command of the ship. Swashbuckling!

Scenes like this are fascinating beause they have clearly choreographed action that would do a summer movie proud, yet they were written nearly a hundred years ago and, in turn, wear their own influnces of earlier pirate stories and 19th century warfare on their sleeves. It’s funny to think about how far back these standards go.

By the end of the book, all of Mars is engulfed in war in a grand finale that brings all the cultures and characters introduced along the way into play. By the last page, readers knows that they, like John Carter, must return to Mars someday