A Fighting Man of Mars
1930
A Fighting Man of Mars
1930
Tan Hadron of Hastor is a young warrior whose world narrows to a single, impossible goal: rescue Sanoma Tora, the woman he loves, from the mysterious city of Jahar. Kidnapped by rivals who seek to claim her hand, Sanoma vanishes into Mars's trackless wastes, and Tan must traverse a planet of warring clans, beast-headed assassins, and ancient evils to bring her home. The task would try the boldest hero. Tan has only his blade, his honor, and a love fierce enough to drive him through the gates of hell itself. Set in Burroughs's legendary Barsoom universe, this is planetary romance at its purest: a world of floating cities, sword-wielding nobles, and creatures no earthling has ever imagined. But beneath the spectacle lies a simpler, older story - a man proving his worth, winning not just a bride but his own place among the warriors of Mars. The action comes fast, the politics twist like a dagger, and the romance burns with the particular intensity of one who has everything to lose. This is pulp adventure that invented the template for every space opera that followed. If you have ever wanted to be a hero on an alien world, fighting against impossible odds for love and glory, Tan Hadron's quest is the story you have been waiting for.
Editions
X-Ray
“The whole fabric of our religion is based on superstitious belief in lies that have been foisted upon us for ages by those directly above us, to whose personal profit and aggrandizement it was to have us continue to believe as they wished us to believe.””
— Edgar Rice Burroughs
“To me there always seems a way to gain the opposite side of an obstacle. If one cannot pass over it, or below it, or around it, why then there is but a single alternative left, and that is to pass through it.””
— Edgar Rice Burroughs
“The things which the Stygian darkness hid from my objective eye could not have been half so wonderful as the pictures which my imagination wrought as it conjured to life again the ancient peoples of this dying world and set them once more to the labours, the intrigues, the mysteries and the cruelties which they had practised to make their last stand against the swarming hordes of the dead sea bottoms that had driven them step by step to the uttermost pinnacle of the world where they were now intrenched behind an impenetrable barrier of superstition.””
— Edgar Rice Burroughs
“I verily believe that a man's way with women is in inverse ratio to his prowess among men. The weakling and the saphead have often great ability to charm the fair sex, while the fighting man who can face a thousand real dangers unafraid, sits hiding in the shadows like some frightened child.””
— Edgar Rice Burroughs
“In absolute and general perfection lies stifling monotony and death. Nature must have contrasts; she must have shadows as well as highlights; sorrow with happiness; both wrong and right; and sin as well as virtue.””
— Edgar Rice Burroughs
“I do not mean that the adult Martians are unnecessarily or intentionally cruel to the young, but theirs is a hard and pitiless struggle for existence upon a dying planet, the natural resources of which have dwindled to a point where the support of each additional life means an added tax upon the community into which it is thrown.””
— Edgar Rice Burroughs
“Nearly all the vessels we saw were war craft.””
— Edgar Rice Burroughs
“Only thus may we carry the truth to those without, and though the likelihood of our narrative being given credence is, I grant you, remote, so wedded are mortals to their stupid infatuation for impossible superstitions, we should be craven cowards indeed were we to shirk the plain duty which confronts us.””
— Edgar Rice Burroughs
“sentimentalists have words: love, loyalty, friendship, enmity, jealousy, hate, a thousand others; a waste of words – one word defines them all: self-interest.””
— Edgar Rice Burroughs
