Earthman Clayton Drew battles against the Martian Warlords who would destroy the world. In the grand tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Warrior of Mars is the second installment in the Clayton Drew quartet.
Release date:
June 30, 2015
Publisher:
Gateway
Print pages:
127
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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
Twenty Million miles from Mars, and a similar distance from Earth, there moved the armada of Lexas, self-elected ruler of the red planet. Two hundred space machines, every one circular in design and bearing an exact resemblance to the enigmatic “flying saucers” seen at various times in the skies of Earth.
The machines themselves were peculiar enough, but inside them matters were even more puzzling. For every man looked alike and it was impossible to tell one woman from another, except by identification tags. Every woman was patterned in synthetic flesh after the image of Thalia, uncrowned Empress of Atlantis, ousted from her position as ruler of the remnants of her brilliant race by Lexas and his power-hungry hordes. In some ways he considered himself justified. The few Atlanteans who had domiciled themselves under the surface of dying Mars were not genuinely entitled to the planet: it belonged to the Martians, and Lexas was convinced that he could drive the lesson home—by force if necessary.
At this moment Thalia sat alone in the suite which had been provided for her in the leading space machine. Her surroundings were as luxurious as those to which she was normally accustomed in her underworld Martian palace. There was no sense of flight: all gravitational troubles were compensated for by artificial neutralisers. There was just the void outside the window, black beyond imagining, blazoned with the ceaseless glitter of the stars and punctuated here and there by the steady shining of a planet. To Thalia it was nothing new. She had seen space often before—and yet it still held her with its incomparable majesty and loneliness.
The door of the suite clicked and she looked up. There was a suspicion of tears in her sea-green eyes. She rose with stately majesty — young, slender, her mass of golden hair falling to her smooth shoulders.
“I had the impression, Highness, that I might be able to lighten your loneliness,” the visitor remarked, coming towards her.
Thalia eyed him coldly and said nothing. Though he was the exact duplicate of the man she loved—as indeed was every man in the armada—there was no mistaking the cold brain behind the voice. Lexas of Mars was invariably polite, when he was getting what he wanted.
“My navigators tell me it will only be a matter of perhaps seven or eight hours before we reach Earth,” Lexas continued, moving so that the light of the prominence-girdled sun fell on his craggy features. “After that there will be the trifling matter of conquering Earth to deal with, then I can be wedded to you. A dream come true, Highness.”
“I would sooner die,” Thalia said, half to herself. “In fact perhaps I shall.”
“I think not, Highness. I consider you too valuable for that. I would not have taken the risk of stealing you from the Martian mausoleums under the very nose of the Earthman Clay Drew—whose body became the pattern for mine—had I not thought you worth having. Not only because you are a beautiful woman, Highness, but because the race must be perpetuated.”
Thalia flashed him a look of disgust and he smiled crookedly. Then her memories wandered back across the gulf to Mars and the last moments she had experienced. Time and again she had been snatched from Lexas by the strategy and courage of Clay Drew, Earthman, himself a descendant of the Atlantean race and of royal birth, only to find herself abducted after all. And now ….
“I look forward to this approaching battle,” Lexas mused, gazing at the distant green world of Earth. “To make conquest possible all of us have endured much—that is, those of my own race. Our brains transplanted from our Martian bodies into Earth ones, synthetically, made, so that they can function perfectly on a world of heavier gravity and air pressure than our own. The only thing I regret is that necessity made it that all the males of my race must look like me—and therefore identical with my bitterest enemy, Clay Drew; and all the women like you. I want you to be unique, Highness, and what do I find? I find you everywhere. Every woman is you …. yet not quite.”
Suddenly Thalia realised that Lexas’ arm had stolen about her waist. She pulled herself free impatiently.
“Even if circumstances compel me to be with you, Lexas, I would prefer you not to touch me,” she snapped.
“I hope you are not forgetting, Highness, that I am the complete master of the situation?”
“I imagine you will make sure that I don’t.”
Lexas smiled slightly at her bitter expression, the angry fire in her green eyes. He gave a shrug.
“What a pity your imagination does not permit you to think of me as Clay Drew, your would-be Emperor of Mars. It would make it easier for both of us.”
“Between you and Clay Drew, Lexas, there yawns infinity. You are like him in body, and there the similarity ends. I have only one hope now: that when you invade Earth with your armada you will experience the greatest defeat every.”
“That is impossible, Highness. You must remember that this armada is supplied with the mightiest array of scientific weapons ever assembled in one fleet. Weapons which your brilliant race conceived, and which will encompass the total destruction of those clods on the third world ….. However,” Lexas added, moving energetically towards the door, “I have much to do. I think before I am finished I will convince you of the futility of resisting me.”
He departed and the door closed sharply. For a moment or two Thalia stood thinking; then she wandered to the outlook port and gazed over the golden armada glinting in the blazing sunlight. She looked beyond it to the dull red of distant Mars, twenty million miles away, and wondered what Clay Drew must be thinking. By this time he would have discovered that she had been abducted—He might follow. Thalia shook her head. No, he would not do that. Courageous he definitely was, but he was not a fool. One man against two hundred space cruisers armed with every conceivable weapon could blast him right out of existence in a matter of seconds.
There had to be some way out of the predicament in which she found herself. Ahead was the carnage and destruction of war with Earth—and if it ended with Lexas as conqueror, as seemed inevitable, she would be forced into marriage with him. Recalling him as he really was in his natural Martian body, a giant eight feet tall, with green flesh and unthinkably ugly, she shuddered. That he had the temporary physique of Clay Drew did not mean a thing: he was still Lexas, egotistical conqueror bent on the final domination of every planet in the System.
Thalia turned as her particular servant entered. She was a Martian, looking like her twin sister except in clothes. She was always respectful, because Lexas had ordered her to be, but at heart she had the smouldering hatred of all Martians for the “usurper race,” as they called the Atlanteans.
“Your Highness would like refreshment?” the servant asked, as Thalia looked at the absolute image of herself with green eyes and golden hair.
“Er ….” A thought flashed through Thalia’s mind. “Yes, if you please.”
The servant went out again with Thalia’s own majestic movements. Thal. . .
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