The Chessmen Of Mars (Ballantine 23582, Mars #5)

Name: The Chessmen Of Mars (Ballantine 23582, Mars #5)
Rating: 4.3 (7 reviews)
Author: Unknown Author
ISBN: 9780345235824

by Unknown Author

4.3

(7 ratings)

220 pages1973Ballantine BooksISBN 9780345235824

Fiction Nonfiction

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About this book

Impetuous and headstrong is Tara, Princess of Helium and daughter of John Carter. Tara meets Prince Gahan of Gathol, and is initially unimpressed, viewing him as something of a popinjay. Later she takes her flier into a storm and loses control of the craft, and the storm carries her to an unfamiliar region of Barsoom. After landing and fleeing from a pack of ferocious Banths (Martian lions), she is captured by the horrific Kaldanes, who resemble large heads with small, crab-like legs. The Kaldanes have bred a symbiotic race of headless human-like creatures called Rykors, which they can attach themselves to and ride like a horse. While imprisoned, Tara manages to win over one of the Kaldanes, Ghek, with her lovely singing voice. Fifth of his Barsoom series. Burroughs began writing it in January, 1921, and the finished story was first published in Argosy All-Story Weekly as a six-part serial in the issues for February 18 and 25 and March 4, 11, 18 and 25, 1922. It was later published as a complete novel by A. C. McClurg in November 1922. "A daughter," he replied, "only a little younger than Carthoris, and, barring one, the fairest thing that ever breathed the thin air of dying Mars. Only Dejah Thoris, her mother, could be more beautiful than Tara of Helium." For a moment he fingered the chessmen idly. "We have a game on Mars similar to chess," he said, "very similar. And there is a race there that plays it grimly with men and naked swords. We call the game jetan. It is played on a board like yours, except that there are a hundred squares and we use twenty pieces on each side. I never see it played without thinking of Tara of Helium and what befell her among the chessmen of Barsoom. Would you like to hear her story?" I said that I would and so he told it to me, and now I shall try to re-tell it for you as nearly in the words of The Warlord of Mars as I can recall them, but in the third person. If there be inconsistencies and errors, let the blame fall not upon John Carter, but rather upon my faulty memory, where it belongs. It is a strange tale and utterly Barsoomian.

Publication Details

Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 1973
Pages: 220
ISBN: 9780345235824

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