Emperor of Mars

Book 0: The Clayton Drew Series

by John Russell Fearn

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

Snatched to Mars, captive of a flying saucer, Clayton Drew smashes his way through the forces of evil! In the grand tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Emperor of Mars is the first volume of the Clayton Drew Quartet.

Release date: June 30, 2015

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 128

Sample

For more than seven decades, successive generations of American readers--and indeed readers all over the world--have thrilled to the adventure novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. In the cold light of science and astronomical discoveries, we now know that there are no wild banths and beautiful princesses on Mars. No teeming jungles on Venus. But Edgar Rice Burroughs remains in print, touching the hearts and minds of each new generation of fantasy fans. The answer to this contradiction is that what was once read as science fiction can now be enjoyed as fantasy…always provided that the original author had imagination and talent.

Back in 1949, the British publisher W.H. Allen struck gold when he began reissuing Edgar Rice Burroughs novels in paperback. Their appearance paved the way for the British science fiction boom which took off in 1950, fuelled by the launch of the “Vargo Statten” paperback science fiction novels written by John Russell Fearn. Fearn was an English author who had learned his craft in the American pulp magazines, many of his stories appearing alongside the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs in the pages of Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures.

These two strands came together in the Fall of 1950, when U.K. publishers Hamilton & Co. (Stafford) Ltd. hit upon the idea of commissioning Fearn to write a series of books inspired by the success of ERB’s John Carter of Mars sf novels. Fearn’s brief was to create an up-to-date modern series: EMPEROR OF MARS, WARRIOR OF MARS, RED MEN OF MARS, and GODDESS OF MARS. Other Burroughsian elements included both green Martians, and a ‘superior’ race of red Martians, underground cities, lost races, monstrous life forms, a beautiful princess, and plot intrigues involving brain and body transplants. But the Fearn novels were not merely pastiches of ERB: Fearn brought to them his own canon of classic science fiction themes and plots which he himself had pioneered in the American pulp magazines.

The result of this combination of influences was a dynamic series that became a best-seller in the U.K. But the series was cut short when Hamilton’s main publishing rival. Scion Ltd., offered Fearn a 5 year contract to write for them exclusively as Vargo Statten. Thus the Clay Drew of Mars series came to a premature end after four novels, and was never reprinted. Now rare, these books have become legendary collectors’ items.

It is against this background that Gryphon Publications and myself are making them available to a new generation of ERB and fantasy adventure fans, with the added bonus of specially commissioned new artwork by Ron Turner. Turner was the original cover artist for most of the dozens of Fearn ‘Vargo Statten’ novels in the 1950s, and has long been recognized as the greatest sf paperback artist of that exciting period. For more details of these works and other contemporary British science fiction, interested readers are referred to my two books (with Stephen Holland) VULTURES OF THE VOID and BRITISH SF PAPERBACKS AND MAGAZINES, currently in print from Borgo Press in the U.S.A. and also available from Gryphon Publications. Just as J. Allen St. John captured the magic of ERB, so Ron Turner brilliantly portrays the sense of wonder and sf vision underlying Fearn’s stories.

Fearn, like Edgar Rice Burroughs, was a born storyteller, with talent and imagination. Like John Carter, Clay Drew’s adventures can now be enjoyed as fantasy adventure. This new Gryphon Books series is sure to become a collector’s item, and is one no ERB and fantasy fan will want to miss!

Philip Harbottle, Wallsend, England, Jan. 1995

Clayton Drew was quite convinced of one thing: he had to climb Helvellyn, the frowning Lake District Mountain beloved of all daredevils. Not that Clayton Drew was a mountaineer, or that he had any real inclination to become one. It was just that he had got to do it.

The urge came upon him in June, 1952, and from that moment he made everything bend towards his vacation in August. He booked his room at a Lakeland hotel, spent several weeks buying climber’s tackle, and had nothing to do then but pray for decent weather. His wish was granted. On August 6th he began to ascend Helvellyn, two amateur mountaineers from the hotel his only companions.

They were puzzled, and frankly admitted it. From the conversations they had had with Clayton Drew they knew he had never climbed a mountain before; but they also knew that nothing on earth would satisfy him except to reach the highest point on the peak.

Drew himself did not understand his urge, either. He tramped along through the sunny, rocky foothills, rope and tackle about him, spiked shoes digging into the hard ground, hardly speaking to the two young men who had volunteered to help him in his effort—chiefly because they were afraid he might break his neck if he tried alone.

Yes, there was something queer about it all. In the ordinary way of life Clayton Drew was an engineer, with science for his hobby. His powerful frame and craggy features were hardly in keeping with his studious pursuits. He looked more like a trained athlete than a man who spent half his life sitting down. Some of his intimates thought him a bore; girls were nothing more than acquaintances. He seemed to spend his life examining scientific or engineering mysteries with never a thought outside them. Without parents, with few friends, he was a good example of a lone wolf.

“Do you suppose,” he asked, when he and his two companions had stopped to study the rearing, friendless heights of the mountain, “we can make the ascent in one day?”

His two colleagues looked at one another in wonder, then back to Drew’s powerful profile, his keen blue eyes weighing up the sheer precipices and savage rocks.

“Depends,” one of them said. “You’re not a professional climber, Clay, so it will take you longer than it will us. We can try, of course—but what’s the hurry? We’ve all the tackle for pitching a camp.”

“I didn’t come here to camp,” Drew answered briefly. “I want to get to the top of Helvellyn. Come on—let’s get started.”

Quite convinced that he was mildly crazy his two comrades began to unwind their safety rope. All preparations were made and the ascent began—a slow, toe-and-finger-hold climb up sheer rock faces, clawing upwards into the blue of the sky, the hot sun shafting down through the eternally drifting cloudbanks.

The ascent had begun at ten in the morning. By noon some seven hundred feet had been ascended and a broad ledge gained. Here the trio paused and refreshed themselves, contemplating the patchwork far below where fields and lanes and streams lay inter-twined, the small dots of cottages and farmhouses relieving the monotony here and there.

“Look, Clay,” one of the men said, setting down the thermos flask, “there must be some reason for this climb you’re trying to make. A chap doesn’t suddenly decide on a job like this unless he’s either a keen mountaineer or plain crazy. What’s the angle?”

Clay shook his head slowly. His rugged features were preoccupied. Then he shrugged and pushed his hand through his untidy dark hair.

“I’ve got what the Yanks call a ‘yen’,” he responded. “I just can’t help myself. Sudden phobia maybe. I developed it in June and since then I’ve hardly been able to think of anything except climbing this blasted mountain.”

“From the way you refer to it,” the other man said, “you obviously don’t really want to climb it.”

“I detest it,” Clay admitted frankly. “I just have to, that’s all.”

“For a bet, maybe?”

“No—nothing like that. Just an urge—pure and simple.”

Silence—at least for a time. Silence, that is, save for the soft moaning of the wind through countless niches and crevices. Then, presently, as the three got to their feet to continue the ascent, the sound changed. It took on a deep humming as though a giant bee were loose somewhere. It became louder with the seconds, having something of the persistency of a humming-top.

“What the devil’s that?” one of the men demanded finally, looking about him and then at the drifting citadels of cumulus cloud. “It sounds like a queer type of ’plane, or else a ….. Great heavens, look!” he broke off, pointing.

His instruction was unnecessary. His companion and Clay were both gazing fixedly at an object sweeping down from the heights. Now and again the clouds hid it, but at each revelation it was much lower in altitude, and as it came nearer the deafening drone increased. It was like an enormous cartwheel, spokes radiating from perimeter to hub. It glittered in the sunlight with the sheen of gold.

“It’s a flying saucer!” Clay ejaculated suddenly, staring in amazement; then he whipped out field-glasses from the case on his shoulder and focussed them quickly.

Under the power of the lenses the speeding object took on pin sharp detail. He could see now that the “spokes” of the thing were actually as transparent as glass and there seemed to be tiny objects moving in the midst of them like living flies in amber. The “hub” had deeply sunken portholes; whilst the outer rim, also transparent, contained what seemed to be machinery.

So much the three astounded men had time to notice, then the object hurtled past them overhead, pursuing an unerring straight line through the narrow pass and sweeping upwards with feather-light ease upon reaching the end of it.

“Flying saucer is right!” declared the climber next to Clay. “I thought those things vanished two years ago. Quite a flock of them at one time—supposed to be, anyway—but nobody ever got near enough to examine them.”

“Those other ones had exhaust trails, though,” the other man said. “I remember reading about them ….”

“It’s coming back,” Clay interrupted. “And lower down, too. If we don’t watch ourselves we’re liable to get hurt.”

Spinning round on itself in the most extraordinary fashion the flying saucer dropped some fifty feet in twenty-five seconds, then came whizzing back with a scream of hidden power engines. The blast of air it split as it came past sent all three men reeling back against the wall of the ledge. Hardly had they straightened than the saucer began to return yet again—lower still.

“It’s an attack!” one of the men said desperately. “If we don’t get into rock protection we’ll …..”

He got no further. The saucer flashed by, no more than thirty feet overhead. At the same instant, something the colour of lavender jetted from the outer rim of the thing. It seemed to be some kind of beam. Whatever its nature the hapless climber stood no chance. He was blasted clean out of existence and the ledge was as bare as though he had never been there.

Clay exchanged a dazed look with the remaining man. Both of them were too horrified to think straight—then, so rapidly that Clay hardly had time to realise it, the lavender beam struck again as the saucer came hurtling back. Clay saw smoke and flame explode round the man a foot or two from him, and he himself was flung to the ground by a savage electric shock. Half paralysed, conscious of the fact that the second man had been utterly disintegrated, he lay staring at the golden wheel as it twisted and twirled like a flung discus on its journey back to him.

He c. . .