I can remember spending many an hour in my boyhood, arms resolutely outstretched in an empty field, imploring what I believed to be Mars to transport me there.
-Carl Sagan, Cosmos
Last month, inspired by the progress of the Phoenix Mission and by this image
Diane Turnshek projected as part of her life in the universe lecture, I determined to sojourn to the planet Barsoom for a much-needed holiday. Having prepared by refreshing myself on A Princess of Mars via this summary project, I embarked on its sequel The Gods of Mars to find Barsoom every inch the Eden of fun I’d expected.
Specifically, the Eden of Mars where John Carter awakens after astrally projecting back to Barsoom from Earth is a Lost World akin to Conan Doyle’s (published a year before The Gods appeared as a serial). It is geographically isolated, not atop an equatorial plateau, but in a valley at the planet’s southern extremity, as Burroughs explains in The Gods Ch. VIII.
“The Otz Valley!” I exclaimed; “but, man, is not there where lie the domains of the therns from which I but just escaped?”
“Yes,” answered Xodar. “You crossed this ice field last night in the long chase that you led us. The Otz Valley lies in a mighty depression at the south pole. It is sunk thousands of feet below the level of the surrounding country, like a great round bowl. A hundred miles from its northern boundary rise the Otz Mountains which circle the inner Valley of Dor, in the exact centre of which lies the Lost Sea of Korus. On the shore of this sea stands the Golden Temple of Issus in the Land of the First Born. It is there that we are bound.”
The Otz Valley holds a deeper secret, and in the same chapter Burroughs applies hollow earth theory (to which he’d return in the Pellucidar series) to his fantasy planet. This stronghold of Barsoom’s ultimate predators and architects of its religious system is accessible through a Barsoomian Axis Mundi/Mount Meru.
As we neared the dark, truncated cone the vessel’s speed was diminished until we barely moved. Then we topped the crest of the mountain and below us I saw yawning the mouth of a huge circular well, the bottom of which was lost in inky blackness.
***
For quite half an hour we descended and then the shaft terminated abruptly in the dome of a mighty subterranean world. Below us rose and fell the billows of a buried sea. A phosphorescent radiance illuminated the scene. Thousands of ships dotted the bosom of the ocean. Little islands rose here and there to support the strange and colourless vegetation of this strange world.
***
Phaidor and I were dumbfounded. Neither had either heard or dreamed that such a world existed beneath the surface of Barsoom.
In any case, I was forced to extend my stay unexpectedly due to The Gods of Mars‘ cliffhanger ending, so, despite my intention to limit my novel reading exclusively to firsts and, occasionally, seconds before publishing my own first novel, I tore through The Warlord of Mars and completed Burroughs’ trilogy.
Warlord’s original cover has some hot Twin Pillars action,
as does the cover of the edition of A Princess of Mars I read back in 2004. This artist also situated John and Dejah atop a mini-step pyramid!
In Warlord, we are introduced to the sith, a name most famously appropriated by George Lucas to refer to his dastardly Jedi sect as well as a variant of an Old Irish term for various spirit-beings and/or their habitations. Here’s the paragraph in which Burroughs describes his insectoid sith.
Imagine, if you can, a bald-faced hornet of your earthly experience grown to the size of a prize Hereford bull, and you will have some faint conception of the ferocious appearance and awesome formidability of the winged monster that bore down upon me.
Frightful jaws in front and mighty, poisoned sting behind made my relatively puny long-sword seem a pitiful weapon of defense indeed. Nor could I hope to escape the lightning-like movements or hide from those myriad facet eyes which covered three-fourths of the hideous head, permitting the creature to see in all directions at one and the same time.
A Pixar adaptation of A Princess of Mars (by the writer/director of WALL-E, which I’ve heard from folks is awesome) is in pre-production now, so if you’re going to holiday in Barsoom, I’d recommend leaving soon. Should you make it to The Gods though, make sure you have The Warlord handy!
Tags: A Princess of Mars, Barsoom, Barsoom Trilogy, Carl Sagan, Diane Turnshek, Edgar Rice Burroughs, George Lucas, hollow earth, inner earth, Phoenix, sith, The Gods of Mars, The Warlord of Mars