Master Mind of Mars

Name: Master Mind of Mars
Rating: 4.4 (5 reviews)
Author: Unknown Author
ISBN: 9780345215260

by Unknown Author

4.4

(5 ratings)

324 pages1969Ballantine BooksISBN 9780345215260

Fiction Nonfiction

About this book

HELIUM, June 8th, 1925MY DEAR MR. BURROUGHS: It was in the Fall of nineteen seventeen at an officers' training camp that I first became acquainted with John Carter, War Lord of Barsoom, through the pages of your novel "A Princess of Mars." The story made a profound impression upon me and while my better judgment assured me that it was but a highly imaginative piece of fiction, a suggestion of the verity of it pervaded my inner consciousness to such an extent that I found myself dreaming of Mars and John Carter, of Dejah Thoris, of Tars Tarkas and of Woola as if they had been entities of my own experience rather than the figments of your imagination.It is true that in those days of strenuous preparation there was little time for dreaming, yet there were brief moments before sleep claimed me at night and these were my dreams. Such dreams! Always of Mars, and during my waking hours at night my eyes always sought out the Red Planet when he was above the horizon and clung there seeking a solution of the seemingly unfathomable riddle he has presented to the Earthman for ages.Perhaps the thing became an obsession. I know it clung to me all during my training camp days, and at night, on the deck of the transport, I would he on my back gazing up into the red eye of the god of battle- my god-and wishing that, like John Carter, I might be drawn across the great void to the haven of my desire.

Publication Details

Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 1969
Pages: 324
ISBN: 9780345215260
Language: en

About Unknown Author

Edgar Rice Burroughs was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of a businessman. During the Chicago influenza epidemic in 1891, he spent half a year on his brothers' ranch on the Raft River in Idaho. He attended the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts and then the Michigan Military Academy, from which he graduated in 1895. He failed the entrance exam for West Point, and so became an enlisted soldier with the 7th U.S. Cavalry in Fort Grant, Arizona Territory. He was discharged in 1897, having been found ineligible for service due to a heart problem. He drifted, working odd jobs at ranches across Idaho, then came to work at his father's firm in 1899. He married Emma Centennia Hulbert in 1900. In 1904 he left his job and found less regular work, ending up back in Chicago. He held several low-wage jobs for the next seven years, then, while working as a pencil sharpener wholesaler, he began to write fiction in 1911. He began reading pulp fiction magazines and decided to aim his fiction toward getting published in these magazines. His first published story, "Under the Moons of Mars," was serialized in The All-Story magazine in 1912. He began writing full-time and his first published novel, Tarzan of the Apes, was published in October of 1912. In 1919 he purchased a ranch north of Los Angeles, California which he named "Tarzana," a name which was later adopted by the citizens of the community that sprang up around the ranch. In 1923 he set up Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. and began printing his own books. He divorced Emma in 1934 and married former actress Florence Gilbert Dearholt in 1935. In 1941, when Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was attacked, he was a resident of Hawaii and he volunteered to become the oldest war correspondent for the U.S. during World War II. He divorced his second wife in 1942. After the war he moved back to Encino, California, where, after many health problems, he died of a heart attack in March of 1950. Over the course of his writing