The Gods of Mars

The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

John Carter, called back to Mars by his longing for it, finds himself alone in an unfamiliar grove on the shore of an unknown sea, then witnesses plant men slaughtering a party of green Martians and joins the fight, discovering his rescued companion is his old friend Tars Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark. Tars Tarkas explains he undertook the pilgrimage down the River Iss hoping to find both his lost love and John Carter waiting in the paradise of the Valley Dor. Fleeing plant men and white apes, the two take refuge in a hollow tree and climb into the Golden Cliffs, where they are trapped in a chamber and terrorized by illusions and loosed beasts before discovering the truth: the Valley Dor is no heaven but a trap run by the Holy Therns, a cruel white race who harvest pilgrims for the plant men, apes, and their own table. They free a slave, Thuvia, who has tamed the valley's banths, and with freed prisoners fight and flee through the therns' underground galleries. Carter disguises himself in a slain thern's wig and jewel to pass as "Sator Throg." During a raid by the black pirates of Barsoom, Carter escapes with Thuvia and Tars Tarkas by commandeering an air flier, but is separated from them and captured, along with Phaidor, daughter of the thern Matai Shang, by the black First Born under the Dator Xodar. Xodar explains the First Born's origin myth from the ancient Tree of Life and reveals their fear of the therns' own periodic devastating retaliation. He and his prisoners are taken by submarine down through a polar shaft to the subterranean Sea of Omean and thence to the underground Temple of Issus, home of the First Born and their goddess. Carter learns the First Born, too, exploit the therns as the therns exploit the outer world's red men. Phaidor, spared to serve as a temple slave, declares her love for Carter; he refuses her, professing eternal devotion to Dejah Thoris, and she vows vengeance. Before the hideous goddess Issus—revealed as merely an ancient, malevolent old woman—Xodar is stripped of rank for having been bested by Carter, and Carter is condemned to combat in the Isle of Shador's arena. There he meets a mysterious, uncannily familiar young red Martian who refuses to name his father, and the two fight brilliantly side by side. At the monthly "Tribute to Issus," when a slave girl is about to be given up to Issus's table, Carter incites a mass revolt among the prisoners and slaves, storms the throne with the youth, and nearly kills Issus, who escapes down a trapdoor into which Carter and the boy also fall. Trapped beneath the arena, they use the boy's knowledge of secret tunnels dug by slave labor to reach the submarine dock, and by forging orders under false names they bluff their way past the guards and are returned, still unarmed, as prisoners to Shador, where Xodar—now fully disillusioned with Issus's supposed divinity—awaits them. The three begin plotting to steal a fast flier from the Sea of Omean and escape.

By Edgar Rice Burroughs · First published 1912 · Genre: Science Fiction, Adventure, Fantasy · 22 chapters · 91,653 words

First lines

As I stood upon the bluff before my cottage on that clear cold night in the early part of March, 1886, the noble Hudson flowing like the grey and silent spectre of a dead river below me, I felt again the strange, compelling influence of the mighty god of war, my beloved Mars, which for ten long and lonesome years I had implored with outstretched arms to carry me back to my lost love.

Not since that other March night in 1866, when I had stood without that Arizona cave in which my still and lifeless body lay wrapped in the similitude of earthly death had I felt the irresistible attraction of the god of my profession.

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science fiction · fantasy · adventure · Mars · alien civilizations · war · exploration · heroism · romance · mythology · sword and planet · action

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