Synthetic Men of Mars

Edgar Rice Burroughs had this problem in all of his series: After a while, the quality of the books would start to slip -- maybe he was getting bored or maybe he'd just start repeating himself. Arguably, this is where the Mars series begins its downhill slide (which means that, percentage-wise, John Carter has less dross than the other major series -- Tarzan, Venus and Pellucidar).<br /><br />This book is again narrated from the perspective of a native Barsoomian, Vor Daj, who accompanies John Carter on one of his adventures. Carter plays a fairly minor role in the book, really, and is off-stage for much of it; otherwise he'd probably overshadow Vor Daj. Ras Thavas, the Master Mind of Mars also returns, so this book again has some science fictional elements -- brain transplants and artificial life and the like. Naturally there's a beautiful woman; naturally Our Hero falls for her; naturally, the Fates conspire to make things as difficult as possible for them until the end.<br /><br />This isn't so much an actively <i>bad</i> book as it is somewhat tired and occasionally silly. I wouldn't say it should be avoided, but I wouldn't say it needs to be sought out unless you absolutely, positively have to read more Barsoomian adventures. (For which I wouldn't blame you -- I've certainly read the book many times over the years.)

Another great Barsoom adventure. Never a dull moment in these fast paced books. Very recommended

Although not generally well-thought of compared with other ERB stories set on Barsoom, this is a personnal favorite aside from the openning sequence of the first three John Carter books. How can you resist a character grown in a culture vat, whose name Tor-Dur-Bar means four-million-eight, and whom the hero first encounters as a severed head which complains it can't see from where it is being carried in a net strapped to the back of a giant man-carrying bird?!?<br /><br />Especially, when later on our current hero Vor Daj has his brain transferred into Tor-Dur-Bar's repulsive body in order to rescue princess Janai, the current damsel-in-distress, after first transferring the loyal Tor-Dur-Bar's brain into the well-built and handsome physique of erstwhile opponent, Gantun Gur. All of this in aid of finding and retrieving the Mastermind of Mars, Ras Thavas, whose skills are required to heal John Carter's beloved, 'the incomparable' Deja Thoris, who lies at death's door following an injury.<br /><br />Meanwhile, back at Ras thavas' laboratory, things have gone horribly wrong with the culture vats, and the resulting immense, multi-headed monstrousity breaks free from confinment and threatens to engulf the entire planet as it grows beyond all constraints to overwhelm Ras thavas' entire island base. Fortunately Helium's airforce is up to the challenge of fire-bombing the repulsive, oozing mass of protoplasm and turning it into a stinking, festering, char-broiled cinder.<br /><br />These stories are not high art, or even good sci-fi/fantasy; but they are terrific yarns with exotic Barsoomian locales, fantastic beasts, flamboyant princesses, dastardly villains, and cliff-hanging adventures in which the hero gets the girl and the bad guy meets his (or her) just deserts.<br /><br />I've read and re-read these stories over the years, and even recorded them onto DVD for the local radio station for blind and reading-impaired listeners.

"Synthetic Men of Mars" is the 9th of 11 books in Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars series. It first appeared serially in "Argosy Magazine" in early 1939, and is one of the most way-out entries in the Carter series. The book may be seen as a sequel of sorts to book #6, "The Master Mind of Mars," in that Ras Thavas, the eponymous superbrain of that earlier work, here makes a return, and the bulk of the action once again takes place in the dismal and forbidding Toonolian Marshes of Barsoom (Mars, to you and me).<br /><br /> In "Synthetic Men," Carter and one of his lieutenants, Vor Daj, go in search of Ras Thavas, to enlist his aid when Carter's wife is critically injured in a midair collision. Thavas is engaged in creating an army of synthetic men (the so-called hormads), who have taken over an island in the Toonolian Marshes, made an unwilling slave of Ras Thavas himself, and are now plotting to take over all of Barsoom. Things get pretty wild when Vor Daj has his brain put into one of the hormad's bodies, so that he might better protect a pretty female prisoner who is being held on the island also. Then things go over the top completely, as one of the vats in which the hormads are created goes blooey, and a giant blob of living tissue spreads and spreads and threatens to envelop the entire planet! This blob is comprised of living heads and hands and other body parts; it feeds on itself and seemingly cannot be stopped. All this takes place in the first half of the novel; things get even hairier, if possible, in the final stages of the tale. Before all is said and done, we have been treated to a civil war amongst the hormads, an escape through the swamps of Toonol, encounters with giant insects and reptiles, a marsupial society, wild swamp savages, a Martian zoo, a tense little air battle, and the final confrontation with that living blob mass. It's as if Burroughs ate a headcheese and Fluffernutter sandwich before going to bed one night, had the wildest dream, and the next morning put it down on paper. The book has nice touches of incidental humor, and Vor Daj's predicament of being trapped in the body of a monstrous hormad while trying to win the affection of the girl of his dreams is an involving one. This leads to John Carter delivering one of his most touching lines: "It is the character that makes the man...not the clay which is its abode." So what we have here is a fantastic tale of wild imagination, with some touching passages and incessant action.<br /><br />So why, then, have I only given this novel three stars? Well, as with most Carter novels, there are problems of inconsistency, and this novel contains one of the worst in the entire series. During the swamp escape, Vor Daj is accompanied by a party of five others, including a man named Gan Had, who later deserts him. Later in the book, it is stated that this deserter was named Pandar, one of the others of the five. The two characters are mixed up and confused by Burroughs for the remainder of the book, to the point that the reader doesn't know who Burroughs is talking about. This is a terrible and egregious error, I feel. I have discussed it with the founder of the ERB List, a really fine Burroughs Website, and he has told me that he and others have concocted some explanations for this seemingly incredible screwup, while admitting that the reader must read between the lines and do some mythmaking of his/her own to explain it. This giant problem aside, there is also the inconsistency of a character named Ur Raj, who is said to hail from the Barsoomian nation of Ptarth, and four pages later is said to be from the nation of Helium. This is the kind of sloppiness that I, as a copy editor, find especially deplorable. I also regret the fact that the ultimate fate of some of the book's main characters (Sytor, Gan Had and Ay-mad) is never mentioned. Another example of careless writing, I feel. "Synthetic Men of Mars" is a wonderful entertainment, but could have been made so much better by the exercise of just a little more care on the part of the author and his editors. Still, I quite enjoyed it, and do recommend it to any lover of fantastic literature.

Told from the perspective of Vor Daj, companion of John Carter as they search for Ras Thavas, the only surgeon on Mars who can help the injured Dejah Thoris. The two of them fall into the hands of the Hormads, creatures created by Thavas in vats on an island in the great Toonolian Marshes.<br /><br />If all of this sounds a bit confusing, one only needs to read the previous John Carter books to make sense of it. All of these names and places stem from the previous tales.<br /><br />Burroughs seems to delight in creating ever more grotesque creatures as this series goes on; in this case it is the Hormads, misshapen creatures that can not be killed except by fire. Heads and limbs that are severed continue to writhe and speak, and they look like the stuff of nightmares. <br /><br />I only have two more books to complete the John Carter series. It's been a wild ride!<br />

I loved this whole series. It's pretty sexual and macho and they're all massive page-turners.<br /><br />Same review for each.

Continuing my read of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Mars series. In this volume, John Carter seeks out Ras Thavas, the Mastermind of Mars to save Dejah Thoris who was injured in an accident. Carter and his friend Vor Daj find that Ras Thavas has been enslaved to create artificially grown soldiers for a Martian City State. Vor Daj is captured and meets the beautiful Janai. Before he can express his feelings for her, Vor Daj's brain gets transferred into one of the synthetic bodies! Solid action and adventure and a fun read. By this point, Burroughs may be just a little too comfortable with his formula, but he still manages to pull out some interesting and fun ideas.

John Carter, Mighty Warlord of Mars, rides to new and terrifying adventures. <br /><br />Captured by deadly warriors mounted on huge birds he is taken to the ill-omened city of Morbus. <br />There he meets Ras Thavas, evil genius and master surgeon. A man who has succeeded in his nightmare wish of creating life in his own beings – creatures that ultimately rebel and threaten the lives of Ras Thavas, of John Carter and of all Mars. <br /><br />Blurb to the 1973 NEL paperback edition. <br /><br />Using more or less the same plot as ‘A Princess of Mars’ Burroughs takes us back to the dying planet of Barsoom where the ‘incomparable’ Dejah Thoris has been crippled in a flying accident. No other man can save her but the thousand year old evil genius and scientist-surgeon, Ras Thavas, Master Mind of Mars. <br />Setting out to find Ras Thavas, John Carter takes along young Vor Daj to the great Toonolian Marshes where, before long, the two have been captured. <br />The hero and narrator of this the ninth in Burroughs’ Martian series, is Vor Daj who perhaps predictably, falls in love with a captured beauty, Janai, who is also coveted by an evil Jeddak (much as John Carter when he was captured by the green man of Mars fell in love with a captured Dejah Thoris, who was also coveted by an evil green Martian Jeddak). <br />Our heroes end up in the laboratory of Ras Thavas who has been performing cloning experiments and has, as my mother might have pointed out to him, made a rod for his own back. The malformed clones have taken over and are forcing Ras Thavas to create a vat-grown army with which to take over all of Mars. <br />Vor Daj persuades Ras to transfer his brain into one of the monsters so that he can infiltrate the Jeddak’s guard and rescue his love. This he does, while wooing her in a kind of Cyrano De Bergerac/Beauty and The Beast fashion while all the time hoping that his body hasn’t been used for spare parts or been eaten by the mass of living flesh which escapes from vat No. 4. <br />Burroughs adds nothing new to the series here, but it’s interesting to see the concept of cloning appearing (although it is not described as such) and to compare this work with Richard E Chadwick’s ‘The Flesh Guard’ which posited a similar premise in which vat-grown creatures were employed as soldiers by a Nazi Regime.

This is the tale of one Vor Daj. John Carter went in search of Ras Tavas, and yielding to pleas, brought along one soldier. They quickly find that finding him will not be easy.<br /><br />Indeed, they are taken prisoner, along with some others, include one woman, and taken to the city, encircled by marshes, where they find that Ras Thavas is the prisoner of his own synthetic men, and forced to produce more and more of the virtually unkillable monsters. And to transplant the brains of the most powerful of them to the bodies of red men -- much to the peril of Janai, the woman.<br /><br />Ras Thavas is perfectly willing to do what John Carter asks -- if they can only escape. And Vor Daj is worried about Janai's fate.<br /><br />The rest of the tale involves disappearance, claims to the throne, bodyguards, a cowardly race that regards sea shells as treasure, an experiment spreading wildly, and much more

Dejah Thoris is having personal, lady troubles, so John Carter hooks up with a random bro to help him find Barsoom's greatest mad scientist. Shub-Niggurath ensues.<br /><br />So the old "beauty = good/ugly = evil" trope gets the full treatment here. So imagine the poor hero's consternation when his gentlemanly brain is stuffed into an ugly body, and he's so ashamed that he's unable to confess his love for a beautiful princess. In fact, he even considers suicide.<br /><br />Will she discover her love for him, despite his hideous form? There is much hand-wringing over the issue. You'd think such manly warriors wouldn't be so vain.