Scarce had he stepped beyond the threshold than twelve Torquasian warriors leaped upon him. Then he rose and slowly left the structure. He wanted water more than any other thing, and so he kept on up a broad avenue toward the great central plaza, where he knew the precious fluid was to be found in a half-ruined building opposite the great palace of the ancient jeddak, who once had ruled this mighty city.ĭisheartened and discouraged by the strange sequence of events that seemed foreordained to thwart his every attempt to serve the Princess of Ptarth, he paid little or no attention to his surroundings, moving through the deserted city as though no great white apes lurked in the black shadows of the mystery-haunted piles that flanked the broad avenues and the great plaza.īut if Carthoris was careless of his surroundings, not so other eyes that watched his entrance into the plaza, and followed his slow footsteps toward the marble pile that housed the tiny, half-choked spring whose water one might gain only by scratching a deep hole in the red sand that covered it.Īnd as the Heliumite entered the small building a dozen mighty, grotesque figures emerged from the doorway of the palace to speed noiselessly across the plaza toward him.įor half an hour Carthoris remained in the building, digging for water and gaining the few much-needed drops which were the fruits of his labor. This book details that process with three dozen colorful maps and other illustrations, a history of Barsoom over the past million years, and a Gazetteer for all locations mentioned in the novels.Weak from loss of blood, Carthoris made his way slowly toward Aaanthor, reaching its outskirts at dark. Painstakingly referencing clues in all eleven books, plus astronomical observations of the Red Planet spanning a hundred years, noted historian and cartographer Oberon Zell has created the definitive map of Burroughs' Barsoom. Over the past century, many fans have tried to compile such a map, but none have truly succeeded. These were the first sci-fi adventure tales ever written that took place on another world, with alien races, civilizations, and creatures-and they pre-ceded and inspired every subsequent extra-planetary adventure series from Flash Gordon to Star Trek and Star Wars.īut despite locating the adventures of John Carter on the canal-covered Mars depicted by Victorian astronomers, Burroughs never provided a map showing the locations of his Barsoomian cities and other features. Burroughs' Barsoom was a dying world of ancient ruined cities, dry seabeds, desert-spanning canals, towering mountains, polar ice caps, dense forests, and under-ground rivers. The first novel was A Princess of Mars, and it was followed by ten more books over the next 30 years plus countless comic books, and in 2012, a spectacular Disney movie, John Carter.Įnthralled readers encountered the incomparable Martian Princess Dejah Thoris four-armed giant Green Men hideous blue Plant Men Thoats, Calots, Banths, Apts, White Apes and other multi-legged Martian beasts. Over one hundred years ago, in 1911, Edgar Rice Burroughs (the creator of Tarzan) introduced an astonished readership to the adventures of John Carter, a Civ-il War soldier from Virginia who, in 1866, found himself trans-ported to the planet Mars.
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