Barsoom

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, McClurg, 1917.

Barsoom is a fictional representation of the planet Mars created by American pulp fiction author Edgar Rice Burroughs. The first Barsoom tale was serialized as Under the Moons of Mars in 1912, and published as a novel as A Princess of Mars in 1917. Ten sequels followed over the next three decades, further extending his vision of Barsoom and adding other characters. The first five novels are in the public domain in U.S., and the entire series is free around the world on Project Gutenberg Australia, but the books are still under copyright in most of the rest of the world.

The world of Barsoom is a romantic vision of a dying Mars. Writers and science popularizers like Camille Flammarion were convinced that Mars was at a later stage of evolution than Earth and therefore much drier,[1] took the ideas farther and published books like Les Terres du Ciel (1884), which contained illustrations of a planet covered with canals.[2] Burroughs gives credits to him in his writings, and goes as far as to say that he based his vision of Mars on that of Flammarion.[3] John Carter is transported to Mars in a way described by Flammarion in Urania (1889), where a man from earth is transported to Mars as an astral body where he wakes up to a lower gravity, two moons, strange plants and animals and several races of advanced humans. In The Plurality of Inhabited Worlds and Lumen, he further speculates about plant people and other creatures on far away planets, elements that would later appear in the Barsoom stories.

The Barsoom series, where John Carter in the late 19th century is mysteriously transported from Earth to a Mars suffering from dwindling resources, has been cited by many well known science fiction writers as having inspired and motivated them in their youth, as well as by key scientists involved in both space exploration and the search for extraterrestrial life. Elements of the books have been adapted by many writers, in novels, short stories, comics, television and film.

Series

Burroughs began writing the Barsoom books in the second half of 1911, and produced one volume a year between 1911 and 1914; seven more were produced between 1921 and 1941.[4]:229 The first Barsoom tale was serialized in The All-Story magazine as Under the Moons of Mars (1912), and then published in hardcover as the complete novel A Princess of Mars (1917).[5][6] The final Barsoom tale was a novella, Skeleton Men of Jupiter, published in Amazing Stories in February 1943.[7]:101

Collectively, this series of novels has been referred to as the Martian Series.[8]

Order Title Published as serial Published as novel Fictional narrator Year in novel
1 A Princess of Mars February–July 1912, All-Story October 1917, McClurg John Carter 1866–1876
2 The Gods of Mars January–May 1913, All-Story September 1918, McClurg John Carter 1886
3 The Warlord of Mars December 1913-March 1914, All-Story September 1919, McClurg John Carter 1887–1888
4 Thuvia, Maid of Mars April 1916, All-Story Weekly October 1920, McClurg third person 1888~1898
5 The Chessmen of Mars February–March 1922, Argosy All-Story Weekly November 1922, McClurg third person 1898~1917
6 The Master Mind of Mars July 15, 1927, Amazing Stories Annual March 1928, McClurg Ulysses Paxton 1917
7 A Fighting Man of Mars April–September 1930, Blue Book May 1931, Metropolitan Tan Hadron 1928
8 Swords of Mars November 1934-April 1935, Blue Book February 1936, Burroughs John Carter 1928~1934
9 Synthetic Men of Mars January–February 1939, Argosy Weekly March 1940, Burroughs Vor Daj 1934~1938
10 Llana of Gathol March–October 1941, Amazing Stories March 1948, Burroughs John Carter 1938~1940
11 John Carter of Mars - a novella collection containing:

John Carter and the Giant of Mars
(attributed to John Coleman Burroughs) 		January 1941, Amazing Stories July 1964, Canaveral third person 1940

Skeleton Men of Jupiter
(attributed to Edgar Rice Burroughs) 		February 1943, Amazing Stories John Carter 1941–1942

Etymology

Burroughs frequently invented words from the languages spoken by the peoples in his novels, and used these extensively in the narrative. In Thuvia, Maid of Mars he included a glossary of Barsoomian words used in the first four novels. The word "Barsoom", the native Martian word for Mars, is composed of the Martian name for planet, "soom", and the Martian word for eight, "bar". This assumes that Mars is the eighth body in the inner solar system, though to reach this figure it is necessary to count the Sun and the satellites of both the Earth and Mars itself.[9]

Character focus

A Princess of Mars, the first novel in the Barsoom series, with its sequels The Gods of Mars and The Warlord of Mars, forms a trilogy centered upon protagonist John Carter and damsel in distress Dejah Thoris. John Carter's and Dejah Thoris's son Carthoris is also introduced as a minor character in The Gods of Mars, as is Thuvia.[10]:1209–1210

Three other books focus on their descendants: Carthoris, in Thuvia, Maid of Mars, his sister, Tara of Helium, in The Chessmen of Mars, and Tara's daughter, Llana of Gathol, in Llana of Gathol.

Ulysses Paxton, another Earth man transported to Mars, is the focus of The Master Mind of Mars, and the rest of the books focus on John Carter's later adventures (Swords of Mars and John Carter of Mars), or on native Martian characters (A Fighting Man of Mars and Synthetic Men of Mars).[7]:95–101

Form

The majority of the tales are novels; but two are collections of shorter works: Llana of Gathol has four linked novelettes, originally published in Amazing Stories during 1941,[11]:664 and John Carter of Mars is composed of two novellas.

Most of the tales are first-person narratives. John Carter narrates A Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars, The Warlord of Mars, Swords of Mars, the four novellas in Llana of Gathol and "Skeleton Men of Jupiter" in John Carter of Mars. Ulysses Paxton narrates one, The Master Mind of Mars. Martian guardsman Vor Daj narrates Synthetic Men of Mars and Martian navy officer Tan Hadron narrates A Fighting Man of Mars. Two other novels, Thuvia, Maid of Mars and The Chessmen of Mars, are written in the third person, as is "John Carter and the Giant of Mars" in John Carter of Mars.

Introductions

Beginning with A Princess of Mars, Burroughs established a practice which continued in the four sequels of introducing the novel as if a factual account passed on to him personally, wherein John Carter appears as an avuncular figure known to his family for years.[9] The same device appears in several sequels: The Gods of Mars, The Chessmen of Mars, Swords of Mars, and Llana of Gathol.

Authorship

All of the Barsoom tales were published under the name of Edgar Rice Burroughs, except Under the Moons of Mars, the first publication of A Princess of Mars, which was published under the pseudonym "Norman Bean". Burroughs had actually typed "Normal Bean" (meaning not insane) on his submitted manuscript; but his publisher's typesetter changed it to "Norman". The first novella in John Carter of Mars, "John Carter and the Giant of Mars", is thought to have been penned by Burroughs's son John "Jack" Coleman Burroughs, although allegedly revised by his father. It was recognized by fans, upon publication, as unlikely of being Burroughs' work, as the writing is of a juvenile quality compared to that of Burroughs' other stories.[7]:101

Genre

The stories are science fantasy, belonging to the subgenre planetary romance, which has strong elements of both science fiction and fantasy.[10]:38 Planetary romance stories are similar to sword and sorcery tales, but include scientific aspects.[12]:147 They mostly take place on the surface of an alien world, frequently include sword fighting, monsters, supernatural elements such as telepathic abilities, and civilizations similar to Earth in pre-technological eras, particularly with the inclusion of dynastic or religious social structures. Spacecraft appear in the stories, but are not central to the story.[10]:38 The series can also be classified as the closely related genre sword and planet, which consists of what are essentially sword and sorcery stories that take place on another planet.

The stories also share a number of elements with westerns in that they feature desert landscapes, women taken captive and a final confrontation with the antagonist.[13]

Burroughs' Barsoom stories are considered seminal planetary romances. While examples existed prior to the publication of his works, they are the principal influence on the many works of this type that followed.[10]:38 His style of planetary romance has ceased to be written and published in the mainstream, though his books remain in print.[10]:1210

Plot

Like most of Burroughs' fiction, the novels in the series are mostly travelogues, feature copious violence, and often depict civilized heroes captured by uncivilized cultures and mimicking their captors to survive.[14]:93–94

Most Barsoom novels follow a familiar plot structure, wherein a hero is forced to a far-off location in search of a woman kidnapped by an odious but powerful villain.[15]:16–17

Female characters are frequently threatened with sexual assault;[16]:180 Dejah Thoris (on numerous occasions), Thuvia of Ptarth, and Tara of Helium are all subjected to this threat.[7]:95–101[16]:183 Having met the women the hero may misinterpret their interest in him. Female characters are likely to be virtuous and fight off amorous advances and other dangers until able to connect with the hero;[15]:16–17 who himself fights a variety of enemies and deposes petty rulers of severely repressed populations, usually with the assistance of a native.[15]:16–17

Motifs

The world of Barsoom is morally unambiguous; characters are either good or evil, there is no sense of moral relativity. A sense of honor transcends race or political affiliation and characters fight alongside one another, and against their adversaries because it is the right thing to do. Qualities of compassion, loyalty and bravery are celebrated, and callousness, deception, and cowardice are frowned upon.[17]

Typically the novels include descriptions of aspects of the Martian world such as the architecture, and the presence of desolate landscapes punctuated by abandoned cities, technological achievements, advanced medicine, cultural elements such as superstitious religious practices and eating habits, breeding practices, and methods of population control.[15]:17 Many lost cities and civilizations and journeys into forgotten underworlds appear across the series, and the environment beyond the cities is populated by a variety of ferocious beasts, many roughly equivalent with Earth creatures and most bearing multiple sets of limbs. There are numerous examples of striking coincidences and deus ex machina usually to the benefit of the protagonists.

Mad scientists also appear, Ras Thavas from The Master Mind of Mars and Synthetic Men of Mars being the principal example, although another plays a prominent role in A Fighting Man of Mars.[7]:95–101 Incidences of the use of superstition by religious cults to control and manipulate others are also common.[15]:28

A Princess of Mars was possibly the first fiction of the 20th century to feature a constructed language; although Barsoomian was not particularly developed, it did add verisimilitude to the narrative.

Villains

The majority of the villains in the Barsoom series are implacably evil; are rulers or despots of major empires, or of hidden fiefdoms; are usually hated by their subjects; and possess a voracious sexual appetite, usually directed towards the heroine. The pattern is established by Tharkian Jeddak Tal Hajus in the first novel, A Princess of Mars. Further examples include the Salensus Oll of The Warlord of Mars, Nutus of Dusar in Thuvia, Maid of Mars, and Ul Vas, Jeddak of the Tarids in Swords of Mars.[15]:27–28

Principal characters

Earthmen

John Carter.

Martians

Martian descendants of John Carter and Dejah Thoris

John Carter's descendants

Environment

While Burroughs' Barsoom tales never aspired to anything other than escapism, his vision of Mars was loosely inspired by astronomical speculation of the time, especially that of Percival Lowell, that saw the planet as a formerly Earthlike world now becoming less hospitable to life due to its advanced age.[18] Living on an aging planet, with dwindling resources, the inhabitants of Barsoom have become hardened and warlike, fighting one another to survive.[14]:94 Once a wet world with continents and oceans, Barsoom's seas gradually dried up, leaving it a dry planet of highlands interspersed with moss-covered dead sea bottoms. Abandoned cities line the former coasts. The last remnants of the former bodies of water are the Great Toonolian Marshes and the antarctic Lost Sea of Korus.

Barsoomians distribute their scarce water supplies via a worldwide system of canals, controlled by quarreling city-states at the junctures thereof. The idea of Martian "canals" stems from telescopic observations by 19th century astronomers who, beginning with Giovanni Schiaparelli in 1877, believed they saw networks of lines on the planet. Schiaparelli called them canali, meaning "channels" but mistranslated in English as "canals". During the time Burroughs wrote his first Barsoom stories, the theory was put forward by a number of prominent scientists, notably Lowell, that these were huge engineering works constructed by an intelligent race. This view, though utterly false as is now known, inspired much science fiction. The thinning Barsoomian atmosphere is artificially replenished by an "atmosphere plant" on whose function all life on the planet is dependent.[19]:205

The Martian year comprises 687 Martian days, each of which is 24 hours and 37 minutes long. (Burroughs presumably derived this from the figures published by Lowell, but erroneously substituted the number of 24-hour Earth days in the Martian year, rather than the number of 24.6-hour Martian days, which is only 669.) The days are hot (again known to be false) and the nights are cold, and there appears to be little variation in climate across the planet except at the poles.[4]:230–292

Burroughs explained his ideas about the Martian environment in an article "A Dispatch on Mars" published in the London Daily Express in 1926. He assumed that Mars was formerly identical to the Earth; therefore a similar evolutionary development of fauna would have taken place. He referenced winds, snows, and marshes supposedly observed by astronomers, as evidence of an atmosphere, and that the wastes of the planet had been irrigated (probably referencing Lowell's "canals"), which suggested that an advanced civilization existed on the planet.

Peoples and culture

All Barsoomian races resemble Homo sapiens in most respects, except for being oviparous[12]:148 and having lifespans in excess of 1,000 years (though actual life expectancy is far shorter.)[5] The traditional Martian lifespan of 1,000 is based on the customary pilgrimage down the River Iss, which is taken by virtually all Martians by that age, or those who feel tired of their long lives and expect to find a paradise at the end of their journey. None return from this pilgrimage, because it leads to almost certain death at the hands of ferocious creatures.[16] The longer lifespan of the people appears to be due to the Martian environment, as John Carter's aging is greatly slowed down while he is on Mars; Ulysses Paxton meets him in the late 1910s, but Carter, who was in his 80s by then, seems to show no signs of age.

While the Martian females are egg-laying, Martians have inexplicably mammalian characteristics such as a navel and breasts.[4]:244–245 While they have skins of various colors, and their bodies differ in some cases from traditional humans, they are very similar to varieties of Earth humans and there is little examination of difference.[5] There is only one spoken language across the entire planet, but a variety of writing systems.[7]:95–101

All Martians are telepathic among one another, and also with domestic animals. Other telepathic abilities are demonstrated across the books. The Lotharians in Thuvia, Maid of Mars, are able to project images of warfare that can kill by suggestion.[7]:95–101 In The Warlord of Mars, the nations are described as bellicose and self-sufficient; but in The Gods of Mars inter-city state merchants are mentioned, and in Thuvia, Maid of Mars, towering staging posts for inter-city liners are also described.[4]:245

Most of the cultures are dynasties or theocracies.

Red Martians

The Red Martians are the dominant culture on Barsoom. They are organized into a system of imperial city-states including Helium, Ptarth, and Zodanga, controlling the planetary canal system, as well as other more-isolated city-states in the hinterlands. The Red Martians are the interbred descendants of the ancient Yellow Martians, White Martians and Black Martians, remnants of which exist in isolated areas of the planet, particularly the poles. The Red Martians are said in A Princess of Mars to have been bred when the seas of Barsoom began to dry up, in hopes of creating a hardy race to survive in the new environment.[7]:95–101[20]:132

They are, like all the humanoid races of Mars, oviparous, i.e., their newborn hatch from eggs.[21]

The Red Martians are highly civilized, respect the idea of private property, adhere to a code of honor and have a strong sense of fairness. Their culture is governed by law and is technologically advanced. They are capable of love and have families.[19]:203–208

Green Martians

A four armed Green Martian on his thoat, as represented in the original 1920 edition of Thuvia, Maid of Mars.

The Green Martians are 15 feet (4.6 m) tall (males) and 12 feet (3.7 m) tall (females), have two arms, two legs and two intermediary limbs that can be used as either arms or legs at will. Their eyes are mounted at the side of their heads and can move independently of each other in order to see in two directions at once. They are nomadic, warlike and barbaric, do not form families, have little concept of friendship or love and enjoy inflicting torture upon their victims. Their social structure is highly communal and rigidly hierarchical, consisting of various levels of chiefs, with the highest office of Jeddak obtained by mortal combat.

The Green Men are primitive, intellectually unadvanced, do not have any kind of art and are without a written language. While they manufacture edged weapons, any advanced technology they possess, such as 'radium pistols', is stolen from raids upon the Red Martians. They inhabit the ancient ruined cities left behind by civilizations which lived on Barsoom during a more advanced and hospitable era in the planet's history.[14] They apparently arose from a biological experiment which went awry and as with all other Martians, they are an egg-laying species, concealing their eggs in incubators until hatching. Tars Tarkas, who befriends John Carter when he first arrives on Barsoom, is an unusual exception from the typical ruthless Green Martian, due to having known the love of his own mate and daughter.[7]:96[19]:2

In the novels, the Green Martians are often referred to by the names of their hordes, which in turn take their names from the abandoned cities they inhabit. Thus the followers of Tars Tarkas, based in the ruined ancient city of Thark, are known as "Tharks". Other hordes bear the names of Warhoon, Torquas, and Thurd.

Yellow Martians

Okarians

Yellow Martians are supposedly extinct, but in The Warlord of Mars they are found hiding in secret domed cities at the North Pole of Mars. At the time John Carter arrives on Barsoom, the Yellow Race is known only in old wives' tales and campfire stories.

The only means of entrance to the Okarians' city is through The Carrion Caves, which are every bit as unpleasant as the name suggests. Air travel over the barrier is discouraged through the use of a great magnetic pillar called "The Guardian of the North," which draws fliers of all sizes inexorably to their doom as they collide with the massive structure.

Their cities are domed hothouses which keep out the cold, but outdoors they favor orluk furs and boots. Physically they are large and strong, and the men usually wear bristling black beards.[7]:98[19]:2

White Martians

Orovars

The White Martians, known as 'Orovars', were rulers of Mars for 500,000 years, with an empire of sophisticated cities with advanced technology. They were white-skinned, with blond or auburn hair. They were once a seafaring race, but when the oceans began to dry up they began to cooperate with the Yellow and Black Martians to breed the Red Martians,[22] foreseeing the need for hardy stock to cope with the emerging harsher environment. They became decadent and 'overcivilized'. At the beginning of the series they are believed to be extinct, but three remaining populations - the Orovars, Therns and Lotharians - are still living in secret and are discovered as the books progress.[7]:95–101

Lotharians

The Lotharians are a remnant population of the original White Martians, which appear only in Thuvia, Maid of Mars. There are only 1000 of them remaining, all of them male. They are skilled in telepathy, able to project images that can kill, or provide sustenance. They live a reclusive existence in a remote area of Barsoom, debating philosophy amongst themselves.[7]:98–99

Therns

Descendants of the original White Martians who live in a complex of caves and passages in the cliffs above the Valley Dor. This is the destination of the River Iss, on whose currents most Martians eventually travel, on a pilgrimage seeking final paradise, once tired of life or reaching 1000 years of age. The valley is actually populated by monsters, overlooked by the Therns (who control these creatures) and ransack and eat the flesh of those who perish, enslaving those who survive. They consider themselves a unique creation, different from other Martians. They maintain the false Martian religion through a network of collaborators and spies across the planet. They are themselves raided by the Black Martians. They are white-skinned (of a skin tone close enough to human Caucasians that John Carter was able to easily pose as one) and the males are bald but wear blond wigs.[7]:97

Black Martians (First Born)

Legend suggests that the Black Martians are inhabitants of one of the moons of Mars, when in fact they live in an underground stronghold near the south pole of the planet, around the submartian Sea of Omean, below the Lost Sea of Korus, where they keep a large aerial navy. They call themselves the 'First-Born', believing themselves to be a unique creation among Martian races, and worship Issus, a woman who styles herself as the God of the Martian religion but is no such thing. They frequently raid the White Martian Therns, who maintain the false Martian religion, carrying off people as slaves. John Carter defeats their navy in The Gods of Mars.[7]:97

Others

Kaldanes and Rykors

The Chessmen of Mars introduces the Kaldanes of the region Bantoom, whose form is almost all head but for six spiderlike legs and a pair of chelae, and whose racial goal is to evolve even further towards pure intellect and away from bodily existence. In order to function in the physical realm, they have bred the Rykors, a complementary species composed of a body similar to that of a perfect specimen of Red Martian but lacking a head; when the Kaldane places itself upon the shoulders of the Rykor, a bundle of tentacles connects with the Rykor's spinal cord, allowing the brain of the Kaldane to interface with the body of the Rykor. Should the Rykor become damaged or die, the Kaldane merely climbs upon another as an earthling might change a horse.[7]:95–101

Kangaroo Men

A lesser people of Barsoom are the Kangaroo Men of Gooli, so called due to their large, kangaroo-like tails, ability to hop large distances and the rearing of their eggs in pouches. They are presented as a race of boastful, cowardly individuals.[15]:591 Their moral character is not highly developed; they are devout cowards and petty thieves, who value (aside from their lives) only a "treasure" consisting of pretty stones, sea shells, etc.

Hormads

In addition to the naturally occurring races of Barsoom, Burroughs described the Hormads, artificial men created by the scientist Ras Thavas as slaves, workers, warriors, etc. in giant vats at his laboratory in the Toonolian Marsh in Synthetic Men of Mars and "John Carter and the Giant of Mars". Although the Hormads were generally recognizable as humanoid, the process was far from perfect, and generated monstrosities ranging from the occasional misplaced nose or eyeball to "a great mass of living flesh with an eye somewhere and a single hand."[23]

Technology

When Burroughs wrote the first volume of the Barsoom series, aviation and radio technology was in its infancy and radioactivity was a fledgling science. Despite this, the series includes a range of technological developments including radium munitions, battles between fleets of aircraft, devices similar to faxes and televisions, genetic manipulation, elements of terraforming and other ideas. One notable device mentioned is the "directional compass"; this may be believed to be the precursor to the now-common "global positioning system", or GPS for short.[24]

Martian flier on cover of The Gods of Mars.

Fliers

The Red Martians have flying machines, both civilian transports and fleets of heavily armed war craft. These stay aloft through some form of anti-gravity, which Burroughs explains as relating to the rays of the Sun.[7]:95–101 Fliers travel at approximately 166.1 miles per hour (267.3 km/h) (450 Martian Haads per hour).[11]:170

In Thuvia, Maid of Mars, John Carter's son, Carthoris, invents what appears to be a partial precursor of the autopilot (several decades before it became a reality). The device, built upon existing Martian compass technology, allows the pilot to reach any programmed destination, having only to keep the craft pointed in the set direction. Upon arrival, the device automatically lowers the craft to the surface. He also includes a kind of collision detector, which uses radium rays to detect any obstacle and automatically steer the craft elsewhere until the obstacle is no longer detected.[11]:213 This device works in principle almost identically to the backscatter radiation detector used to fire the braking rockets on the Soyuz space capsule. In Swords of Mars a flier with some kind of mechanical brain is introduced. Controlled by thought, it can be remote-controlled in flight, or instructed to travel to any destination.[11]:542

Weapons

Firearms are common, and use 'Radium' bullets, which explode when exposed to sunlight. Some weapons are specific to races or inventors. The mysterious Yellow Martians, who live in secret glass-domed cities at the poles and appear in The Warlord of Mars have a form of magnet which allows them to attract flying craft and cause them to crash. Scientist Phor Tak, who appears in A Fighting Man of Mars, has developed a disintegrator ray, and also a paste which renders vehicles such as fliers impervious to its effects. He also develops a missile which seeks out craft protected in this fashion, and a means of rendering fliers invisible which becomes a key plot device in the novel. However, while advanced weapons are available, most martians seem to prefer melee combat — mostly with swords — and their level of skill is highly impressive. Warriors often are armed with four weapons (in descending order, pistol, long-sword, short sword and dagger) and it is considered unchivalrous to defend with any weapon but the one used in an attack (or a lesser one.) [7]:95–101

Atmosphere plant

There are many technological wonders in the novels, some colossal works of engineering. The failing air of the dying planet is maintained by an atmosphere plant, and the restoration of this is a plot component of A Princess of Mars.[7]:95–101 It is described as being 4 miles (6 km) across with walls 100 feet (30 m) in depth, and telepathically operated entrance doors of 20-foot-thick (6.1 m) steel.[16]:180

Medicine and biology

Martian medicine is generally greatly in advance of that on Earth.[15]:25–26 Various "ointments" and "salves," particularly as ascribed to the Green Martian women, are capable of healing all but instantly deadly wounds in a matter of hours—as first seen in A Princess of Mars. In The Master Mind of Mars aging genius Ras Thavas has perfected the means of transplanting organs, limbs and brains, which during his experiments he swaps between animals and humanoids, men and women and young and old.[7]:95–101 Later, in Synthetic Men of Mars, he discovers the secret of life, and creates an army of artificial servants and warriors grown in giant vats filled with organic tissue. They frequently emerge deformed, are volatile and are difficult to control, later threatening to take over the planet.[25]

Measurements

Burroughs developed a system of Martian measurements for the novels. He also drew maps for his own reference while writing, which used the Martian haad as a unit of length.[26] Martian measurements include the following:[11]:170[26]

Unit Martian Imperial Metric
1 sofad 11.68+ inches 0.2967 m
10 sofads = 1 ad 9.75 feet 2.97 m
200 ads = 1 haad 1,949.05 feet 594.07 m
100 haads = 1 karad 36.92 English miles 59.407 km
2.709 haads 1 English mile 1609 m
1.683 haads 0.621 English miles 1000 m

The following are excerpts from the second novel The Gods of Mars:

"For those who may be interested, however, I will explain that the Martian day is a trifle over 24 hours 37 minutes duration (Earth time). This the Martians divide into ten equal parts, commencing the day at about 6 A.M. Earth time. The zodes are divided into fifty shorter periods, each of which in turn is composed of 200 brief periods of time, about equivalent to the earthly second. The Barsoomian Table of Time as here given is but a part of the full table appearing in Captain Carter’s notes.
200 tals = 1 xat
50 xats = 1 zode
10 zodes = 1 revolution of Mars upon its axis"[27]:256
"The ten Earth years I had spent upon Barsoom had encompassed but five years and ninety-six days of Martian time, whose days are forty-one minutes longer than ours, and whose years number six hundred and eighty-seven days."[27]:314

Conversions from Barsoom time units to Earthly measurements are:

 1 zode = 2h 28m 4.80s 
 1 xat = 2m 57.70s 
 1 tal  = 0.89s

In Warlord of Mars, it's noted that Barsoomians have a type of wristwatch with a display "like an odometer."

Clothing

The Martians wear no clothing other than jewelry and leather harnesses, which are designed to hold everything from the weaponry of a warrior to pouches containing toiletries and other useful items; the only instances where Barsoomians habitually wear clothing is for need of warmth, such as for travel in the northern polar regions described in The Warlord of Mars.

This preference for near-nudity provides a stimulating subject for illustrators of the stories, though art for many mass-market editions of the books feature Carter and native Barsoomians wearing loincloths and other minimal coverings, or use strategically placed shadows and such to cover genitalia and female breasts.

Fauna

It appears that most of Burrough’s Martian creatures are roughly equivalent to those found on Earth, though most seem to have multiple legs (usually a total of six limbs, but sometimes as many as ten) and all are egg-laying.

"Insects", "reptiles" and "birds"

"Mammals"

Green Martian riding a thoat, as illustrated by J. Allen St. John in first edition of Thuvia, Maid of Mars

The martian mammalian equivalents all have fur, and both domestic and wild varieties are described by Burroughs.

Domesticated

Wild

Ulsio as illustrated by J. Allen St. John in first edition of Chessmen of Mars

Other

Themes

American frontier

Barsoom might be seen as a kind of Martian Wild West. John Carter is himself an adventuring frontiersman. When he arrives on Barsoom he first compares it to the landscape of Arizona which he has left behind. He discovers a savage, frontier world where the civilized Red Martians are kept invigorated as a race by repelling the constant attacks of the Green Martians, a possible equivalent of Wild West ideals. Indeed, the Green Martians are a barbaric, nomadic, tribal culture with many parallels to stereotypes of American Indians. The desire to return to the frontier became common in the early 20th century America. As the United States become more urbanized, the world of the 19th century frontier America became romanticized as a lost world of freedom and noble qualities.[14]

Race

Race is a constant theme in the Barsoom novels and the world is clearly divided along racial lines. Red, Green, White, Black, and Yellow races all appear across the novels, each with particular traits and qualities which seem to define the characters of the individuals. In this respect, Burroughs' concept of race, as depicted in the novels, is more like a division between species. The Red and Green Martians are almost complete opposites of one another, with the Red Martians being civilized, lawful, capable of love and forming families, and the Green Martians being savage, cruel, tribal and without families or the ability to form romantic relationships. Yet, friendship between individuals of different nations and races is a frequent topic driving the stories.[19]:2

Religious deception

The Barsoom series features a number of incidents of religious deception, or the use of superstition by those in power to control and manipulate others.[15]:28 Burroughs is particularly concerned about the hypocrisy of religious leaders.[15]:41 This is first established in A Princess of Mars,[15]:28 but becomes particularly apparent in the sequel, The Gods of Mars. Upon reaching 1,000 years of age almost all Martians undertake a pilgrimage on the River Iss, expecting to find a valley of mystical paradise; what they find is in fact a deathtrap, populated by ferocious creatures and overseen by a race of cruel, cannibal priests known as Therns, who perpetuate the Martian religion through a network of spies across the planet.[16]

John Carter's battle to track down the remnants of the Therns and their masters continues in the sequel, The Warlord of Mars.[7]:98 More deceitful priests in a nation controlled by such appear in The Master Mind of Mars, on this occasion manipulating a temple idol to control followers.[7]:100

Burroughs continued this theme in his many Tarzan novels. Burroughs was not anti-religious; however, he was concerned about followers placing their trust in religions and being abused and exploited, and saw this as a common feature of organized religion.[15]:41

Excessive intellectualism

While Burroughs is generally seen as a writer who produced work of limited philosophical sophistication, he wrote two Barsoom novels which appear to explore or parody the limits of excessive intellectual development at the expense of bodily or physical existence. The first was Thuvia, Maid of Mars, in which Thuvia and Carthoris discover a remnant of ancient White Martian civilization, the Lotharians. The Lotharians have mostly died out, but maintain the illusion of a functioning society through powerful telepathic projections. They have formed two factions which appear to portray the excesses of pointless intellectual debate. One faction, the realists, believes in imagining meals to provide sustenance; another, the etherealists, believes in surviving without eating.

The Chessmen of Mars is the second example of this trend. The Kaldanes have sacrificed their bodies to become pure brain, but although they can interface with Rykor bodies, their ability to function, compared to normal people of integrated mind and body, is ineffectual and clumsy.[32] The Kaldanes, though highly intelligent, are ugly, ineffectual creatures when not interfaced with a Rykor body. Tara of Helium compares them to effete intellectuals from her home city, with a self-important sense of superiority; and Gahan of Gathol muses that it might be better to find a balance between the intellect and bodily passions.[15]:29–30

Paradox of "Superiority"

Some of Barsoom's peoples, especially the Therns and First-Born, hold themselves as "superior" to the "lesser order" peoples on Barsoom. A paradox is established in that the Therns and First-Born, though they hold themselves in such high esteem, nonetheless are dependent on these lesser orders for their sustainance, labor, and goods. The Therns and First-Born are "non-productive" peoples and do not produce anything or invent, as such labor is seen as beneath them. This is punctuated by the fact that the Therns and First-Born are obliged to create strongholds in the south polar regions, to insulate themselves from the remainder of the planet dominated primarily by red and green Martians. A particular ironic twist is introduced by the fact that the white Therns think that they control and manipulate the entire planet, when they are in turn unknowingly exploited by the black First-Born.

Antecedents and influences on Burroughs

Scientific inspiration

Martian canals depicted by Percival Lowell.
The arid, lifeless surface of Mars as seen by the Viking Probe.

Burroughs concept of a dying Mars and the Martian canals follows the theories of Lowell and his predecessor Giovanni Schiaparelli. In 1878, Italian astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli observed geological features on Mars which he called canali (Italian: "channels"). This was mistranslated into the English as "canals" which, being artificial watercourses, fueled the belief that there was some sort of intelligent extraterrestrial life on the planet. This further influenced American astronomer Percival Lowell.[33]

In 1895 Lowell published a book titled Mars which speculated about an arid, dying landscape, whose inhabitants had been forced to build canals thousands of miles long to bring water from the polar caps (now known to be mostly frozen carbon dioxide or "dry ice") to irrigate the remaining arable land.[18] Lowell followed with Mars and Its Canals (1906) and Mars as an Abode of Life (1908). These books formed prominent scientific ideas about the conditions on the red planet in the early years of the 20th century. Burroughs does not seem to have based his vision of Mars on precise reading of Lowell's theories, however, as a number of errors in his books suggest he got most of his information from newspaper articles and other popular accounts of Lowell's Mars.[4]:{{{1}}}

The concept of canals with flowing water and a world where life was possible were later proved erroneous by more accurate observation of the planet. Later landings by Russian and American probes such as the two Viking missions found a dead world too cold (and with far too thin an atmosphere) for water to exist in its fluid state.[18]

Previous Mars fiction

Martians, escaping a dying Mars, invade Earth in The War of the Worlds.

The first science fiction to be set on Mars may be Across the Zodiac, by Percy Greg, published in 1880, which concerned a civil war on Mars. Another Mars novel, dealing with benevolent Martians coming to Earth was published in 1897 by Kurd Lasswitz, Auf Zwei Planeten. It was not translated until 1971, and was thus unlikely to have influenced Burroughs, although it did depict a Mars influenced by the ideas of Percival Lowell.[34] Other examples are Mr. Stranger's Sealed Packet (1889), which took place on Mars; Gustavus W. Popes's Journey to Mars (1894); and Ellsworth Douglas's Pharaoh's Broker, in which the protagonist encounters an Egyptian civilization on Mars which, while parallel to that of the Earth, has evolved somehow independently.[10]:38

H.G. Wells' novel, The War of the Worlds, most definitely influenced by Lowell and published in 1898, did however create the precedent for a number of enduring Martian tropes in science fiction writing. These include Mars being an ancient world, nearing the end of its life; being the home of a superior civilization, capable of advanced feats of science and engineering; and a source of invasion forces, keen to conquer the Earth. The first two tropes were prominent in Burroughs' Barsoom series.[18] Burroughs, however, claimed never to have read any of H.G. Wells' books.[15]:38 Lowell was probably the greater direct influence on Burroughs.[20]:90–91

Richard A. Lupoff claimed that Burroughs was influenced in writing his Martian stories by Edwin Lester Arnold's earlier novel Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation (1905) ( later retitled Gulliver of Mars). Gullivar Jones, who travels to Mars by flying carpet rather than via astral projection, encounters a civilization with similarities to those found on Barsoom, rescues a Martian Princess, and even undertakes a voyage down a river similar to the Iss in The Gods of Mars. Lupoff also suggested that Burroughs derived characteristics of his main protagonist John Carter from Phra, hero of Arnold's The Wonderful Adventures of Phra the Phoenician (1890), who is also a swashbuckling adventurer and master swordsman for whom death is no obstacle. Lupoff's theories were disputed by numerous scholars of Burroughs' work; Lupoff countered, claiming that many of Burroughs' stories had antecedents in previous works and that this was not unusual for writers.[35]

Burroughs’ influence

Scientists

Burroughs' Barsoom series was extremely popular with American readers and many scientists who grew up reading the novels, and helped inspire public support for the US space program. Readers included some of the first space pioneers and those involved in the search for life on other planets. Scientist Carl Sagan read the books as a young boy, and they continued to affect his imagination into his adult years.[36] He remembered Barsoom as a "world of ruined cities, planet-girdling canals, immense pumping stations – a feudal technological society". For two decades, a map of the planet, as imagined by Burroughs, hung in the hallway outside of Sagan's office in Cornell University.[20]:132

Science fiction

SF Writer Arthur C Clarke was inspired by Barsoom.

Well-known early science-fiction writers Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke both read, and were inspired by, Burroughs' series of Barsoom books in their youth. Bradbury admired Burroughs' stimulating romantic tales, and they were an inspiration for The Martian Chronicles (1950), in which he used some similar concepts of a dying Mars. Robert A. Heinlein also wrote fiction inspired by Burroughs' Barsoom series, and for many others the Barsoom series helped to establish Mars as an adventurous, enticing destination for the imagination.[20]:239–249[37]

The John Carter books enjoyed another wave of popularity in the 1970s, with Vietnam War veterans who said they could identify with Carter, fighting in a war on another planet.

Novels and short stories

Numerous novels and series by others were inspired by Burroughs' Mars books: the Radio Planet trilogy of Ralph Milne Farley; the Mars and Venus novels of Otis Adelbert Kline; Almuric by Robert E. Howard; Warrior of Llarn and Thief of Llarn by Gardner Fox; Tarzan on Mars, Go-Man and Thundar, Man of Two Worlds by John Bloodstone; the Michael Kane trilogy of Michael Moorcock; The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Through the Gates of the Silver Key by H.P. Lovecraft, the Gor series of John Norman; the Callisto series and Green Star series of Lin Carter; The Goddess of Ganymede and Pursuit on Ganymede by Mike Resnick; and the Dray Prescot series of Alan Burt Akers (Kenneth Bulmer). In addition, Leigh Brackett, Ray Bradbury, Andre Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Alan Dean Foster show Burroughs' influence in their development of alien cultures and worlds.

A. Bertram Chandler's pulp novels The Alternate Martians and The Empress of Outer Space overtly borrow a number of characters and situations from Burroughs' Barsoom series.

Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey mentions a secret psychological experiment codenamed BARSOOM, in which test subjects were made believe they were in contact with extraterrestrials.

Robert A. Heinlein's novels Glory Road and The Number of the Beast, and Alan Moore's graphic novels of Allan and the Sundered Veil and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II directly reference Barsoom.

In Philip José Farmer's World of Tiers series (1965–1993) Kickaha, the series' adventurer protagonist, asks his friend The Creator of Universes to create for him a Barsoom. The latter agrees only to make an empty world, since "It would go too far for me to create all these fabulous creatures only for you to amuse yourself by running your sword through them." Kickaha visits from time to time the empty Barsoom, complete with beautiful palaces in which nobody ever lived, but goes away frustrated.

L. Sprague de Camp's story "Sir Harold of Zodanga" recasts and rationalizes Barsoom as a parallel world visited by his dimension-hopping hero Harold Shea. De Camp accounts for Burroughs' departures from physics or logic by portraying both Burroughs and Carter as having a tendency to exaggerate in their storytelling, and Barsoomian technology as less advanced than usually presented.

In 1989 Larry Niven and Steven Barnes published "The Barsoom Project", where a futuristic form of live action role-playing games (LARPs) is based on the Barsoom books.

The 2008 novel In the Courts of the Crimson Kings by S.F. writer S. M. Stirling is an alternate telling of the Princess of Mars story but this time the princess is a very powerful character indeed.

Richard Corben's Den series also appears to be inspired by the Barsoom series. It features a hero, Den, who mysteriously arrives naked on a (largely) desert planet where he becomes a great warrior and where the humanoids wear no clothes. Many of the creatures resemble the description of the white apes of the Gods of Mars. Like John Carter, he also receives great physical prowess from arriving in Neverwhere, although Carter's prowess stems from gravity, whereas Den undergoes a complete physical transformation.

In A Wizard of Mars by Diane Duane, the main character Kit is a major fan of the Barsoom series and a long dormant wizard artifact recreates Barsoom as Kit imagines it to communicate with him.

"Mars: The Home Front", a short story by George Alec Effinger, published in War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches, is a crossover between the Barsoom series and H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds - with Wells' Martians being depicted as a malevolent additional Barsoomian race and John Carter fighting them to help foil their invasion of Earth.

In the first chapters of Gore Vidal's novel Washington, D.C., the character Peter Sanford - sixteen at the outset of the plot - indulges in vivid and detailed fantasies of being John Carter, and adds explicit erotic scenes not appearing in the original Burroughs books.

In Karl Schroeder's novel Lockstep, set over 14,000 years in the future, Mars has been terraformed and is renamed Barsoom, with its human inhabitants no longer remembering that the world was ever named Mars. This Barsoom is covered in canals and ruins from the civilizations of previous millennia, and is also mentioned to be inhabited by genetically engineered Tharks. The ruler of Barsoom is also the son of a man named Carter.

Poetry

The science fiction poems in Oscar Hurtado's book La Ciudad Muerta de Korad (The Dead City of Korad, in Spanish) are full of intertextualities with the Barsoom series, as well as with the Sherlock Holmes novels by Arthur Conan Doyle, the Iliad, children folk tales, and other references.

The Dead City of Korad was published in 1964 and marks the beginning of the Science Fiction genre in Cuba.[38]

Film and television

Roleplay games

Of course, the sword & sorcery world of Barsoom proved to be very interesting for roleplay games as well:

Adaptations

Comic strips

With the Tarzan comic strip a popular success, newspapers began a comic strip adaptation of A Princess of Mars drawn by Edgar Rice Burroughs' son, John Coleman Burroughs. Never as popular as Tarzan, it ran in only four Sunday newspapers, from December 7, 1941 to March 28, 1943.

John Carter appeared in one of the last Sunday Tarzan comic strip stories, drawn by Gray Morrow.

Comic books

Film

Princess of Mars was a 2009 direct-to-video film, produced by The Asylum, starring Antonio Sabato Jr. as John Carter, and Traci Lords as Dejah Thoris. This adaptation starts with John Carter as a present-day sniper, wounded in Afghanistan and then teleported to another world as a part of a government experiment.

John Carter, released on March 9, 2012, was a big-budget but critically denounced and financially unsuccessful film by The Walt Disney Company, directed by Andrew Stanton and starring Taylor Kitsch as John Carter and Lynn Collins as Dejah Thoris.

Copyright

The American copyright of the seven earliest novels has expired in the United States, and they appear on a number of free e-text sites. However, because they were separately copyrighted in Great Britain, these works remain protected under the Berne Copyright Convention in the UK and throughout much of the world. The Australian copyright of the remainder, not including John Carter of Mars (1964), has also expired and they too appear online.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "The Planet Mars: A History of Observation and Discovery. Chapter 6: Confirmations and Controversies. University of Arizona Press". Uapress.arizona.edu. Retrieved 2015-07-05.
  2. ↑ "canals of Mars". Daviddarling.info. Retrieved 2015-07-05.
  3. ↑ Bill and Sue-On Hillman (1908-08-09). "ERBzine 3197:". Erbzine.com. Retrieved 2015-07-05.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Clareson, Thomas D. (1971). SF: the Otherside of Realism. S.l.: Popular Press. ISBN 0-87972-023-9.
  5. 1 2 3 Dick, Steven J. (1999). The Biological Universe: The Twentieth Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits of Science (1st. paperback ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 239. ISBN 9780521663618.
  6. ↑ Stableford, Brian (2006). Science Fact and Science Fiction: an Encyclopedia. New York [u.a.]: Routledge. p. 284. ISBN 0-415-97460-7.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Bleiler, Everett F.; Bleiler, Richard J. (1990). Science-fiction, the Early Years: A Full Description of More Than 3,000 Science-fiction Stories from Earliest Times to the Appearance of the Genre Magazines in 1930. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press. ISBN 0-87338-416-4.
  8. ↑ John Carter of Mars ◄ (2011-08-12). "Archive " British". Lovecraft is Missing. Retrieved 2015-07-05.
  9. 1 2 Bainbridge, William Sims (1986). Dimensions of Science Fiction. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. p. 131. ISBN 9780674207257.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Westfahl, Gary; Gaiman, Neil (2005). The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy (1st ed.). Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-32953-2.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 Porges, Irwin; Hulbert, Burroughs; Bradbury, Ray (1975). Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man who Created Tarzan (1st ed.). Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press. p. 664. ISBN 9780842500791.
  12. 1 2 Harris-Fain, Darren (2005). Understanding Contemporary American Science Fiction: The Age of Maturity, 1970–2000. Columbia, SC: Univ. of South Carolina Press. ISBN 1-57003-585-7.
  13. ↑ White, Craig (2006). Student Companion to James Fenimore Cooper (1. publ. ed.). Westport, Conn. [u.a.]: Greenwood Press. p. 143. ISBN 0-313-33413-7.
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 Sharp, Patrick B. (2007). Savage Perils: Racial Frontiers and Nuclear Apocalypse in American Culture. Norman, Okla.: Univ. of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0-8061-3822-X.
  15. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Holtsmark, Erling B. (1986). Edgar Rice Burroughs. Boston: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-7459-9.
  16. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Sampson, Robert (1984). Yesterday's Faces: A Study of Series Characters in the Early Pulp Magazines. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green Univ. Popular Press. p. 182. ISBN 0-87972-262-2.
  17. ↑ Burroughs, Edgar Rice; James P., Hogan; Beachler, Scott (2003). Under the Moons of Mars. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. p. XVI. ISBN 0-8032-6208-6.
  18. 1 2 3 4 Yeffeth, Glenn (2005). The War of the Worlds: Fresh Perspectives on the H.G. Wells Classic. Dallas, Tex.: Benbella Books. pp. 186–187. ISBN 978-1-932100-55-6.
  19. 1 2 3 4 5 Slotkin, Richard (1998). Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-century America (Oklahoma paperbacks ed.). Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0-8061-3031-8.
  20. 1 2 3 4 Basalla, George (2006). Civilized Life in the Universe: Scientists on Intelligent Extraterrestrials ([Online-Ausg.]. ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-517181-5.
  21. ↑ "A Barsoom Glossary Redmen of Mars". Erblist.com. Retrieved 2015-07-05.
  22. ↑ Prakash, Gyan; Kruse, Kevin M. (2008). The Spaces of the Modern City: Imaginaries, Politics, and Everyday Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 72. ISBN 0-691-13343-3.
  23. ↑ "Chapter VII - The Vats of Life - Synthetic Men of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs, Book, etext". Web.archive.org. Archived from the original on June 9, 2007. Retrieved 2016-01-24.
  24. ↑ Burroughs, Edgar Rice; Hogan, James P.; Beachler, Scott (2003). Under the moons of Mars. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. p. XVI. ISBN 0-8032-6208-6.
  25. ↑ Telotte, J.P. (1995). Replications: A Robotic History of the Science Fiction Film. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. pp. 41–42. ISBN 0-252-06466-6.
  26. 1 2 "A Barsoom Glossary - Maps". Erblist.com. Retrieved 2015-08-08.
  27. 1 2 The Gods of Mars
  28. 1 2 Porges, Irwin; Burroughs, Hulbert; Bradbury, Ray (1975). Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man who Created Tarzan (1st ed.). Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press. p. 163. ISBN 978-0-8425-0079-1.
  29. 1 2 3 Burroughs, Edgar Rice (2004). Thuvia Maid of Mars (Glossary). Kessinger Publishing. pp. 248–9. ISBN 1-4179-2330-X.
  30. ↑ "The Warlord of Mars - ON THE RIVER ISS". Cs.cmu.edu. Retrieved 2015-07-05.
  31. ↑ "The Gods of Mars - CHAPTER IV". Cs.cmu.edu. Retrieved 2015-07-05.
  32. ↑ Scholes, Robert; Rabkin, Eric S. (1977). Science Fiction: History-Science-Vision (2. print. ed.). New York: Oxford Univ. Press. pp. 13–14. ISBN 0-19-502174-6.
  33. ↑ Seed, David (2005). A Companion to Science Fiction (1. publ. ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. p. 546. ISBN 978-1-4051-1218-5.
  34. ↑ Hotakainen, Markus (2008). Mars: From Myth and Mystery to Recent Discoveries (1. ed.). New York: Springer. p. 258. ISBN 0-387-76507-7.
  35. ↑ Arnold, Edwin L.; Lupoff, Richard A.; Hoppenstand, Gary; Floyd, Thomas (2003). Gullivar of Mars (Commemorative ed.). Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press. p. VII-XVI. ISBN 0-8032-5942-5.
  36. ↑ Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, episode "Blues for a Red Planet"
  37. ↑ Burroughs, Edgar Rice; Parrett, Aaron (2004). The Martian Tales Trilogy: A Princess of Mars, the Gods of Mars, the Warlord of Mars. New York: Barnes & Nobel. p. XII-XVI. ISBN 0-7607-5585-X.
  38. ↑ "Guaicán Literario: Semblanzas". Cubaliteraria.com. Retrieved 2015-07-05.
  39. ↑ "Man of Extremes". The New Yorker. 2009-10-26. Retrieved 2015-07-05.
  40. ↑ "JMSNews". JMSNews. 1995-10-07. Retrieved 2015-07-05.
  41. ↑ Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons
  42. ↑ http://www.grey-elf.com/barsoom.pdf
  43. ↑ http://www.arion-games.com/affBarsoom.pdf
  44. ↑ Buchal, [sest.: Jiří (2001). Velká kniha komiksů (1. knižní vyd. ed.). Praha: BB Art. ISBN 80-7257-658-5.

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