I had the pleasure of meeting Clark Brady last year and given the previlege of reading the compedium. I was very impressed and jealous (just kidding) as I am an aspiring writer myself and have yet to find my niche. What that we could all have the determination to compile the info required for this work. Hopefully the author will continue and possibly give us new works on such contemporary works as Indiana Jones?

Glenn

New Orleans

'I have never told this story nor shall mortal man see this manuscript until I have passed over for eternity. I know that the average human mind will not believe what it can not grasp''

Written in 1912 this book is well written for its time. Captain Carter is telling the story form memory as an old man of his adventures here on earth and on the planet of Barsoom (Mars). There are encounters with many strain creatures, situations, and yes even a 'Princess of Mars'. The forward to the book alone will capture your imagination.

Edgar Rice Burroughs will always be remembered first and foremost for his creation of Tarzan, but it was the character of John Carter, who first appeared in "A Princess of Mars" who truly served as a template for other science fiction writers. From Lin Carter's "Green Star" series to John Norman's "Gor" novels there are tales of the man from Earth traveling to a strange new world and having wondrous adventures. John Carter was a gentleman of Virginia and Civil War veteran who finds himself looking down at his dying body in an Arizona cave. Opening his arms to the planet Mars, Carter is suddenly whisked to the Red Planet, where rival tribes battle while the planet's atmosphere continues to dissipate. Captured by a band of six-limbed giants, Carter soon earns their respect for his prowess as a warrior and forges a lasting friendship with Tars Tara's of the Tharks. But then the Tharks attack a fleet of airborne vessels and capture Dejah Thoris, the Princess of Helium, the greatest city on Barsoom (as the Martians call Mars). Of course, they get off on the wrong foot, since Carter knows nothing about the culture of the red humanoid race. But the lovely Princess of Mars has captured the Virginian's heart. Abandoning dreams of returning to Earth, he wants nothing better than to win her love. In the meanwhile, he has to protect her from the amorous attention of the depraved ruler of the Tharks, bring some semblance of civilization to the barbarian tribes, and stop all out war between the green men and red men from ending Barsoom's last chance for survival.

"A Princess of Mars" is the first of eleven novels in the Martian Series by Burroughs, most of which seemed to avoid the pitfalls of some of ERB's lesser Tarzan novels. If Dejah Thoris is not the most beautiful woman in the history of fantasy and science fiction, then she certainly has the all-time best name. John Carter is able to take advantage of the Red Planet's lesser gravity to do great feats of leaping about, but it is his innate intelligence and intense sense of personal honor that make him almost idealistically noble. When I first read every ERB novel I could get my hands on in Middle School, Tarzan was always Tarzan, but there was something about John Carter that somehow made him the greater hero in my eyes. Maybe it was the way he handled a sword or how he was always determined to make Barsoom a better place that made him seem Burrough's finest creation while Tarzan was finding lost civilizations in the interior of Africa. Certainly you will find ERB's most imaginative work, including the great game of Martian Chess, in this series. Do not stop at the first book, because while these novels are fast approaching being a century old, they hold up much better than the writings of Jules Verne or H. G. Wells. Not in terms of science, of course, but rather in terms of adventure fantasy.

If you collect the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, you absolutely need a copy of this book. Everyday on eBay and Yahoo, "experts" are auctioning ERB novels as "1st editions" when they don't have a clue as to what they are talking about. This guide is your insurance policy against those amateurs. This guide is an absolute necessary when you are compiling your collection. It is well-researched, comprehensive, and easy to use. Plus, it is full of great artwork from various editions of the ERB novels and pulp magazines. James Bergen, You've done a magnificent job. I salute you.

This is the most comprehensive pricing guide there is for Burrough's works. Until a new one is written, it is THE book to have!!

"Swords of Mars" is the 8th of 11 John Carter of Mars books that Edgar Rice Burroughs gave to the world. It first appeared serially in the "Blue Book Magazine" in six parts, from November 1934 to April 1935, and is one of the best in the Carter series. For the first time since book 3, "The Warlord of Mars," Carter himself takes center stage, rather than making a brief cameo appearance, and his return as the lead character is perhaps the best single element of this book. This time around, Carter goes to the Barsoomian city of Zodanga to put an end to the assassins guild that is thriving there. In the first half of the novel, Carter goes undercover to infiltrate this Murder Inc.-type of organization, and this segment is extremely tense and exciting. In the second half, Carter's wife, Dejah Thoris, in what to any reader of this series must come as an instance of Dejah vu (sorry...couldn't resist!), is abducted again, and Carter follows her kidnappers to one of the Martian moons, using one of that planet's first spaceships. His subsequent adventures on the moon propel the reader into the realm of pure fantasy. Both parts of the novel are as fun as can be, although very much different in tone.
This novel features very few of the inconsistencies--both internal and with other books in the series--that mar every previous Carter novel. There are some, however. For example, the great Scarlet Tower of Greater Helium is referred to in this book, whereas in previous novels, this tower was referred to as being in Lesser Helium, and besides which, was destroyed in book 5, "The Chessmen of Mars." More of a problem in the current volume are the book's implausibilities. For example, Carter & company jump out of their spaceship on that Martian moon, without bothering to check on the moon's breathable air. Fortunately, the air is just fine, thank you, although Burroughs makes nothing of this...surprising, given the pains he had taken in previous books to explain the breathable air on Mars itself. The invisibility-inducing hypnosis that the moon people use against Carter is a bit much to buy, but that's alright; it's all in good fun. But Burroughs' theory that a person who lands on this 7-mile-wide moon would be the same relative size that he would be on Mars--in other words, that he would shrink in proportion to the planetoid's mass; his so-called "compensatory adjustment of masses"--is, as Carter puts it, "preposterous," though, as it turns out, such is the case in the book. Like I said, it's all in good fun. And this book IS as fun as they get.
Oh...one other nice touch. As pointed out in the ERB List, a fine Burroughs Website, if you take the first letter of each first word of each chapter in this book, you will find a secret message that Burroughs incorporated for his new bride. A nice touch.

It's a great book like the rest of the series! Buy it

This is a great book. If you like westerns' read it. If you like mystery read it. If you like adventure read it. If you like romance read it. If you like comedy read it. You love the hero. You are guessing through out the book. It is about Buck Mason (I know bad name.) who is the "Deputy Sheriff Of Commanche County." There is evidence against him say he killed a man. His family had had a feud with this man over land. When he finds out that he is being blamed he goes into hiding. He wants to prove his innocents and hunt down the real killer's. But after he went in to hiding everybody believed him guilty.

This book is easy to read. If you can find it buy it. I only read Louis L'amour when it come to western's. But this guy is good.

This is one of the first science fiction/fantasy books I ever read and I couldn't bear to see it languish without a review. My copy (which originally belonged to my father) dates from 1931 and its story was originally published in six parts in the "Blue Book Magazine" from May to September 1930. It is wonderful to see these books reissued, as they are the progenitors of many, if not all of the heroic fantasy serials that take up so much room on modern bookshelves. Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) was the first and also (in my opinion) the best writer of multi-volume fantasies.

'Fighting Man' is the seventh book in ERB's Mars series and differs from most volumes in the series in that John Carter, gentleman of Virginia and Warlord of Barsoom (Mars) is only a peripheral figure.

The adventure is narrated in the first person by Hadron of Hastor, a warrior in the service of John Carter. Hadron's family is rich in honor but not in material possessions and when he falls in love with the wealthy Sanoma Tora, she snubs him. For months, the soldierly Hadron haunts the palace of Tor Hatan, Sanoma Tora's father, but his hope of winning her are vanishingly small until she is abducted one night by a mysterious flier.

The strange ship is armed with a weapon that disintegrates the metal of a pursuing flier, and the Warlord realizes that there is now a new weapon of mass destruction let loose upon the dying seas of Barsoom (it's hard not to adopt ERB's style after reading one of his books).

Hadron is promised Sanoma Tora's hand if he can rescue her. The Warlord dispatches the doughty warrior in search of his love, and asks him to keep an eye peeled for the new metal-disintegrator weapon.

Since this story was originally written to be serialized, there is a cliff-hanger at the end of every chapter. Hadron's flier is shot down by the terrible green warriors of Barsoom. He escapes and is trapped in a deserted tower by a man-eating white ape. He escapes, rescues a slave named Tavia from the green men and the two of them take to the air in Tavia's flier.

Unfortunately, they are forced to land in the demesne of a very paranoid tyrant. While Hadron is confined in the tyrant's Pit, he learns the secret of the invisible metal-disintegrating ray from a fellow prisoner.

Hadron, now under a sentence of death must escape to save both Sanoma Tora and all of Helium (John Carter's Barsoomian kingdom).

Our hero battles his way across the dead seas of Barsoom, evading or slaughtering cruel tyrants, mad scientists, formidably-tusked green warriors, etc. until the final reaches of chapter seventeen when he resolves all of the plot lines and finds his own true love (not who you might think).

'Fighting Man' has all of the color and breathless dash of its predecessors in ERB's Mars chronicles. It's okay to start your adventure on Barsoom with 'Fighting Man,' although I would strongly recommend beginning at the first volume, "A Princess of Mars." 'Fighting Man' can stand alone because ERB includes a long forward in which he describes the flora, fauna, principal races, and wars of Barsoom.

Although Edgar Rice Burrough's style can get predictable at times, he can come up with some literary gems such as the first few Tarzan novels and (if he had just foregone the "sequals") "the Land that Time Forgot". "Tanar of Pellucidar", along with "Escape on Venus" stand out for their simple, straightforward observations (often humerous) of human nature as expressed through the practices of various societies. Even if you aren't a Burroughs fan, these two titles I recommend for any lover of good fiction.

I WAS IN STANDERD 8TH, A FRIEND HANDED ME THIS BOOK, IN FIRST FEW PAGES I WAS CAUGHT BY THIS LARGER THEN LIFE CHARECTER. LATER ON I WENT ON TO READ ALL THE 24 BOOKS. I LIKED THEM ALL BUT THIS BOOK WILL ALWAYS BE MY FAVARATE.ALL YOU NOBLE TARZAN FANS MARK MY WORDS YOU WILL KNOW WHAT I FELT READING THIS BOOK.

If you're looking for good 1930's era pulp fiction, you've come to the right place. Fans of ERB's Mars, Venus, Pellucidar, or Tarzan books will enjoy this novel. True, the plot is somewhat predicatable, and the chapters read like monthly installments (like they were), but its great fun to read. You also have to ignore some of the prejudices of the era, particularly the roles of women and men, but as long as you know that going in, you'll enjoy a good story.

There are books that everyone 'knows' but hardly anybody reads any more. Reading these classics can be quite illuminating; they are not what you think. For example, do you really know how Dracula was killed? Or why The Virginian said "Smile when you call me that"? Read the originals; you'll be surprised.

"Tarzan of the Apes", the first of 23 Tarzan adventures by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is full of surprises. The Tarzan of this book is not the Johnny Weissmuller or Ron Ely that you might know. He is not raised by gorillas (as I had thought) but by mythical 'anthropoids', a sort of missing link between man and gorilla, with rudimentary speech and a social structure that includes ritual and dance. This is a science fiction tale, a sort of "Lost World" meets "Jungle Book". Tarzan befriends and converses with (and kills and eats) a variety of beasts.

There are aspects of the story that modern readers will find as hard to swallow as some of Tarzan's raw meat dinners. For example, this jungle is populated with lions, hyenas and elephants, creatures that in reality never go near rain forests. We are also asked to believe that Tarzan teaches himself to read and write from books that he finds.

Many modern readers will also find the racialism difficult to take. He boasts of being "Tarzan, killer of beasts and many black men". Coming on a village deep in the jungle, he immediately readies his bow and poisoned arrows. When his European companion admonishes him that it is wrong to kill humans, the hero protests "But these are black men". (Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't believe that scene was included in the Disney version). This is a 1914 American novel, with all the prejudices intact.

It's quite well written; Burroughs is very readable. The plotting is a strange mixture of ingenuity and clumsiness. There is a very clever device that involves Jane thinking there are two ape-men, one an admirer, the other her rescuer. But the plot also requires three separate mutinies, two of which just happen to involve cousins, to take place off the same remote African beach. This is beyond coincidence.

So is this genre classic still worth reading? I think so, for the same reason "Dracula" and "The Virginian" are still worth reading; this is the book that started it all.

Listed in Cawthorn's and Moorcock's "Fantasy: The 100 Best Books".

The Weissmuller movies didn't get him right. The TV series haven't got him right. And the Disney movie CERTAINLY won't get him right. Burrough's original narration of the story of Tarzan is a mix of bloodthirsty savagery and unrestrained suspension of disbelief that few would attempt to capture these days.

The Tarzan series is unique among his author's body of work. Where the Barsoom, Pellucidar and Caspak series concern modern men travelling to exotic lands and falling in love with native women, this time around it is a modern woman who comes to the wilderness and steals the heart of the savage protagonist, who must now step up to her civilized ways.

The tale is laced with bloody scenes of man-against-man and man-against-beast rampage. The great apes among which Tarzan grows are a cannibal species, who eat the prisioners of raids against other simian clans. The king ape kills Tarzan's father in a moment where he is caught off guard, mourning the recent death of his wife. When Tarzan first encounters men (an African tribe), he hunts and kills one of them to steal his arrows (killing being the way of the jungle, since Tarzan knows nothing of human behavior). Also, these men turn out to be cannibals too. And when the white men finally arrive, they raid their village and kill almost every one in an attempt to rescue a captured comrade.

After growing wild among beasts, Tarzan (whose name menas White Skin) realizes that he is different from his ape family. And through a series of inventions of his own (like making a rope) and fortunate coincides (like the use of a found hunting knife), he steps up the evolutionary ladder by himself. The moment he learns to read and write from illustrated primers and a dictionary is among the most improbable in the whole book. But if we have kept up with it until now, allowing ourselves to accept that a human child can be raised by apes, then his ascension to superiority isn't that hard to embrace.

Tarzan turns out to be the primeveal lovesick nerd. After the first time he sees Jane Porter (the first white woman he ever casts his eyes on), his heart is all for her. He writes her a love letter, which smacks of the most pityful puppy love ("I want you. I am yours. You are mine... When you see this you will know that it is for you and that Tarzan of the Apes loves you"). Yet our hero is true and noble, and he holds the upper hand in his homeland. The girl can't do anything but be carried away by her primeveal pretender.

I recommend you get this edition I'm reviewing, the one by Penguin. Besides the introduction which gives a valuable background to the place of Tarzan among popular literature and some details on the life of Edgar Rice Burroughs, it contains a series of notes that signal where he took some liberties with his story's setting (like placing American plants in the African jungle).

The English is a little bit archaic, the characterization tends to cartoon and stereotype, but the story is powerful and nothing captures the beauty of the original like the original itself. Read Tarzan of the Apes, and meet again for the first time an archetypical hero of timeless charm.

Edgar Rice Burroughs will never be nominated for world's great writer. But to quote Stephen King, "it's all about story dammit, story. Edgar Rice Burroughs knew this better than anyone." In Tarzan of the Apes you will discover the true meaning of "suspension of disbelief." You will not care about the geographical liberties Burroughs takes with Africa. The fact that Tarzan's jungle has lions and elephants which live in the more arid regions of Africa. All you will care about is "travelling along the middle terrace" of Tarzan's world and racing along to his next adventure. You will cheer for the heroes and utterly loathe the villains. Also do not expect the grunting, snorting, and nearly mute Tarzan of film. In all 24 Tarzan books he never said, "me Tarzan, you Jane." you will find in Burroughs' Tarzan a symbol of every ones desire to go primitive. If you are not a fan of highly imaginative fiction avoid this book at all costs. But if you do love a good STORY by all means pick up this book.