Synthetic Men of Mars

Rating:
Summary: A WAY-OUT BUT CARELESS ENTRY IN THE CARTER SERIES
Review: "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). 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.
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.

Rating:
Summary: Classic Pulp. Wonderful concept.
Review: A likeable, action-packed book--perhaps not as memorable as the author's Tarzan series, but admittedly, unquestionably =different=. That is to say, ERB's writing style isn't really different, and his pacing is typically breakneck, but it is a different topic, with some original ideas.

What's also fun, nearly 80 years later, is to read the thinly-disguised social commentary that ERB inserts into his work. One of the Tarzan books includes a section on a society destroyed by income tax--a new idea in ERB's time, and one that he personally was affected by. This book contains a short section on how streets should be engineered to speed traffic along. It isn't exactly a description of a freeway, but it's darned close!

Anyway, like all great pulp, a sense of adventure pervades and you're left both satisfied with the story and wanting more. They just don't write 'em like this anymore

Rating:
Summary: Classic Pulp. Wonderful concept.
Review: A likeable, action-packed book--perhaps not as memorable as the author's Tarzan series, but admittedly, unquestionably =different=. That is to say, ERB's writing style isn't really different, and his pacing is typically breakneck, but it is a different topic, with some original ideas.

What's also fun, nearly 80 years later, is to read the thinly-disguised social commentary that ERB inserts into his work. One of the Tarzan books includes a section on a society destroyed by income tax--a new idea in ERB's time, and one that he personally was affected by. This book contains a short section on how streets should be engineered to speed traffic along. It isn't exactly a description of a freeway, but it's darned close!

Anyway, like all great pulp, a sense of adventure pervades and you're left both satisfied with the story and wanting more. They just don't write 'em like this anymore

Rating:
Summary: Despite the odd title, one of the best of the Mars novels
Review: I found this book very engaging. Of course, you have to make allowances for the writer's style-- the book was written in the late 1920's. Synthetic Men had some of the best (scariest) monsters and one of the best plots of the eleven Burroughs Barzoom (Mars) novels. Ras Tharvas, the wicked scientist, is always a hoot. But the story has a serious tone as a young man in love is desperately trying to save his sweetheart from a terrible fate -- marriage to a Hitler-like emperor-criminal. He becomes a monster to reach her and save her, but she's terrified of him, naturally. How he works all this out, stymies the wicked guys, and gets the girl, is quite a heck of a read!

Rating:
Summary: These John Carter books are non-stop action!!!
Review: If you enjoy books where there's never a dull moment, with lots of fighting & romance, then you've GOT to read the John Carter series! This particular book isn't really about John Carter, but one of his friends. It's about these ugly, artificial "people" who overthrow the "mad scientist" who created them. An exciting, fun story, with a large cast of characters complete with good guys, bad guys, weird guys, and (as always with Burroughs), at least one hot babe!

Rating:
Summary: An ERB Martian novel that synthesizes what came before
Review: Ras Thavas, the Mastermind of Mars, returns in "Synthetic Men of Mars," the ninth Martian novel from pulp fiction master Edgar Rice Burroughs. Originally serialized in six-parts in "Argosy Weekly" in early 1939, this story brings together many of the characters in the series, which was ERB's best. When Dejah Thoris, princess of Helium, is seriously injured in a collision of two airships, John Carter seeks out Ras Thavas, the greatest surgeon on Barsoom, to repair her broken back. The story is told by Vor Daj, a young padwar who accompanies Carter when he goes to search for the scientist's former assistant, Vad Varo, in Duhor. This time around the framing device is that the story was translated into English by Ulysses Paxton (Vad Varo), who then sent it to Jason Gridley on Earth via the Gridley wave. At first it look like ERB is trying something different, and that instead of his hero searching Barsoom for his beloved, Carter is searching for someone to help his wife. But then Vor Daj is unattached, which means he is going to stumble across his own damsel in distress while accompanying the Warlord of Mars on his mission and take on the central role in the adventure.

The title of the story comes from the race of supermen that Thavas is creating when Carter and Vor Daj finally find him. The experiments are not going well, but no matter how deformed they are these creatures want to live. With World War II right around the corner there is obviously a sub-text for this novel that has to do with the rise of totalitarianism, especially when the synthetic men decide they would rather conquer Barsoom than be its slaves. But what readers of the Martian series will notice the most is that ERB is throwing in a little bit of everything into this novel from his previous efforts, such as assassins, a new race of living heads, escaping from a prison, and a big battle between the Jeds. However, with the growing mass of tissue in Vat 4 in Morbus, there are some actually horror elements in this ERB potboiler as well.

Consequently, "The Synthetic Men of Mars" is pretty much the generic Martian novel written by Burroughs, incorporating a little bit of everything from what has gone on before. That is right: this novel is essentially a synthesis of the previous eight volumes. The result is a standard Burroughs adventure and the last decent volume in the series.

Rating:
Summary: An ERB Martian novel that synthesizes what came before
Review: Ras Thavas, the Mastermind of Mars, returns in "Synthetic Men of Mars," the ninth Martian novel from pulp fiction master Edgar Rice Burroughs. Originally serialized in six-parts in "Argosy Weekly" in early 1939, this story brings together many of the characters in the series, which was ERB's best. When Dejah Thoris, princess of Helium, is seriously injured in a collision of two airships, John Carter seeks out Ras Thavas, the greatest surgeon on Barsoom, to repair her broken back. The story is told by Vor Daj, a young padwar who accompanies Carter when he goes to search for the scientist's former assistant, Vad Varo, in Duhor. This time around the framing device is that the story was translated into English by Ulysses Paxton (Vad Varo), who then sent it to Jason Gridley on Earth via the Gridley wave. At first it look like ERB is trying something different, and that instead of his hero searching Barsoom for his beloved, Carter is searching for someone to help his wife. But then Vor Daj is unattached, which means he is going to stumble across his own damsel in distress while accompanying the Warlord of Mars on his mission and take on the central role in the adventure.

The title of the story comes from the race of supermen that Thavas is creating when Carter and Vor Daj finally find him. The experiments are not going well, but no matter how deformed they are these creatures want to live. With World War II right around the corner there is obviously a sub-text for this novel that has to do with the rise of totalitarianism, especially when the synthetic men decide they would rather conquer Barsoom than be its slaves. But what readers of the Martian series will notice the most is that ERB is throwing in a little bit of everything into this novel from his previous efforts, such as assassins, a new race of living heads, escaping from a prison, and a big battle between the Jeds. However, with the growing mass of tissue in Vat 4 in Morbus, there are some actually horror elements in this ERB potboiler as well.

Consequently, "The Synthetic Men of Mars" is pretty much the generic Martian novel written by Burroughs, incorporating a little bit of everything from what has gone on before. That is right: this novel is essentially a synthesis of the previous eight volumes. The result is a standard Burroughs adventure and the last decent volume in the series.

Rating:
Summary: One of the top three books in the series
Review: The incomparable Dejah Thoris is injured and only the dangerous scientist Ras Thavas (The Master Mind of Mars) can save her life. So John Carter, the Warlord of Barsoom, sets out with a single companion, Vor Daj, to bring Thavas back from the Toonolian Marsh in time to operate on the dying princess.

Alas! Nothing goes right, and Carter and Daj are forced to make the most difficult choices of their lives. All Barsoom is threatened by Thavas' latest mad scheme, and it falls to Vor Daj to keep a lid on things until Carter can bring all his power to bear against the threat. In one of the best race-against-time stories ever written, the reader is forced to turn page after page to keep pace with all the setbacks, double-crosses, and unbelievable strokes of good fortune.

Along the way, the author pokes a little fun at a few long-cherished social conventions and hooty-tooty groups. But the most resounding comment of all is the statement that true friendship knows no boundaries, and that love is solidly based in friendship. This is simply a great and thoroughly enjoyable book to read.

Rating:
Summary: One of the top three books in the series
Review: The incomparable Dejah Thoris is injured and only the dangerous scientist Ras Thavas (The Master Mind of Mars) can save her life. So John Carter, the Warlord of Barsoom, sets out with a single companion, Vor Daj, to bring Thavas back from the Toonolian Marsh in time to operate on the dying princess.

Alas! Nothing goes right, and Carter and Daj are forced to make the most difficult choices of their lives. All Barsoom is threatened by Thavas' latest mad scheme, and it falls to Vor Daj to keep a lid on things until Carter can bring all his power to bear against the threat. In one of the best race-against-time stories ever written, the reader is forced to turn page after page to keep pace with all the setbacks, double-crosses, and unbelievable strokes of good fortune.

Along the way, the author pokes a little fun at a few long-cherished social conventions and hooty-tooty groups. But the most resounding comment of all is the statement that true friendship knows no boundaries, and that love is solidly based in friendship. This is simply a great and thoroughly enjoyable book to read.