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Synopsis:
Ulysses Paxton, a captain in the US army (and a fan of the Mars books) is shot, and assumes he is dying. Then he wakes up an Mars, fully intact and butt nekkid (say what you like about the Mars books, they have plenty of naked men). He is quite pleased about this (the being alive, not the nekkidnis), until he realises that he is to become assistant/servant/prisoner of a mad scientist, Ras Thavas, whose pet project is brain transplantation. He serves his master long enough to learn how to speak Martian and to transplant brains. Also to fall in love with a captive Martian girl (she is unconscious throughout the falling in love process, by the way), whose body is promptly pinched by a rich (and old and ugly and evil) Jeddara. He then sets off on a quest to get his girlfriend's body back, along with a Martian warrior, whose body's been pinched by another (evil) Martian warrior (who convieniently happens to work for the evil Jeddara), and an ape with the brain of a man.
Review:
It's Martian religion bashing time again. There can't be many religions left on Mars that haven't been overthrown by Earthmen. Ulysses (or Vad Varo to use his Martian name - the mad scientist guy gave him a new name on the grounds that his Earth name was silly. Which was a good thing, as I kept getting the Ulysses 31 theme tune stuck in my head) seemed more tolerable than John Carter, but it probably just seemed that way due to the relief that he wasn't John Carter (who does a cameo. Check out the chapter headings if you want to know where).
This was an OK sort of book, although Vad's primary motivation was a bit suspect. See below:
The creature here with the face and form of Xaxa (evil Jeddara) was not Xaxa at all, for all that made the other what she was had been transferred to this cold corpse. How frightful would be the awakening, should awakening ever come! I shuddered to think of the horror that must overwhelm the girl when first she realised the horrid crime that had been perpetrated upon her. Who was she? What story lay locked in the dead and silent brain? What loves must have been hers whose beauty was so great and upon whose fair face had lain the indelible imprint of graciousness! Would Ras Thavas ever arouse her from this happy semblance of death? - far happier than any quickening could ever be for her.
Yup, he thinks she's rather be dead than ugly. Luckily, she has a slightly more sensible attitude:
And so I told her. She listened intently and when I was through she sighed. "After all," she said, "it is not so dreadful, now that I really know. It is better than being dead." That made me glad I had pressed the button. She was glad to be alive, even draped in the hideous carcass of Xaxa. I told her as much.
"You were so beautiful," I told her.
"And now I am so ugly?" I made no answer.
"After all, what difference does it make?" she inquired presently. "This old body cannot change me, or make me different from what I have always been. The good in me remains and whatever of sweetness and kindness, and I can be happy to be alive and perhaps do some good. I was terrified at first, because I did not know what had happened to me. I thought that maybe I had contracted some terrible disease that had so altered me - that horrified me; but now that I know - pouf! what of it?"
"You are wonderful," I said. "Most women would have gone mad with the horror and grief of it - to lose such wonderous beauty as was yours - and you do not care."
"Oh, yes, I care, my friend," she corrected me, "but I do not care enough to ruin my life in all other respects because of it, or to cast a shadow upon the lives of those around me. I have had my beauty and enjoyed it. It is not an unalloyed happiness I can assure you. Men killed one another because of it; two great nations went to war because of it; and perhaps my father lost his throne or his life - I do not know, for I was captured by the enemy while the war still raged. It may be raging yet and men dying because I was too beautiful. No one will fight for me now, though," she added, with a rueful smile.
But, despite all this (and I have no idea what the pouf has to do with it), he still leaves her in the deep freeze and goes charging off to nick back her body.
On the Martian religion front, the city that the evil Jeddara rules over worshipped a god called Tur. These guys are the Martian equivalants of religious fundamentalists, and Vad doesn't think much of them:
Much of this and a great deal more I gathered from one source or another during my brief stay in Phundahl, whose people are, I believe, the least advanced in civilisation of any of the red nations upon Barsoom (Mars in Martian). Giving, as they do, all their best thought to religious matters, they have become ignorant, bigoted and narrow, going as far to one extreme as the Toonolians do to the other.
The Toonolians were athiests who believed only in science and reason, and Vad didn't seem to approve of them either. You just can't please some people. Anyway, Vad pretends to be Tur and makes everything right by ordering the stupid religious people to do everything he wants. Which is rather funny really.
I think this series is getting consistantly better...
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