All 11 volumes of the 'Martian Series' (roughly) 7' by 4 1/4' (inches) are tight clean square & true, all orange edges, flat mostly all uncreased spines, 159, 190, 158, 158, 220, 160, 192, 191, 160, 191, 157 pages, all of the books are in at least Very Good Plus condition with minor edge wear, book # 7 has a small thumb size open tear to very last page, Vol. The scans you see are the books you get. Consider the Oyster by M.F.K.Soft Covers.The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame Published by the Mad Parrot Press.Animal Farm by George Orwell Published by the Arion Press.At least I think that was where he was going with that. Not a fan of forced labor but thought it was funny that bachelors were being punished for being celibate and thrown in the mix. The labor was performed by convicts, prisoners of war, delinquent debtors and confirmed bachelors who were too poor to pay the high celibate tax which all red-Martian governments impose. One of the “funnier” passages that struck me in reading the book again was this one: And, of course, using warfare to keep population at a level the planet could carry seems a tad immature and problematic and maybe influenced by the hopefully never-to-be-repeated heyday of eugenics that was a thing in the U.S.A. Some of the plot devices, like Carter forgetting that he knew the door combination for the atmosphere factory until the last minute were harder to believe than his “science” fiction devices.īased on what seems like a natural modern human desire for the fountain of youth, I found it interesting that he made Martians basically immortal but voluntarily (with a little push from society when necessary) “ending” their lives in a pilgrimage to the land of the dead at the age of one thousand. The effects of gravity, explaining the lines as canals, the manufacture of air, population control, and the additional elements that allowed for technology not discovered on earth were credible. In this book, however, he did a credible job of using the little we know of Mars and building technology, culture and society, and a world around it. Even as a teen I laughed at some of the stretches ERB made in his books and some of the “mistakes” he made in understanding science or geography or zoology. Inspiration and joy in creating a new character and world. Like a lot of first books in what later became series, you can really feel the author’s Can they still hold your interest? Do they still hold up? What stands out that maybe you didn’t notice or can’t remember from a read forty years ago? A Princess of Mars grabbed me right away once again. Rereading books you loved at other times in your life is always interesting.

A princess of mars first edition 1917