The Venus Series / Edgar Rice Burroughs

Pirates of Venus
and
Lost on Venus

category: space opera, author:

Edgar Rice Burroughs

book 1 & 2 of The Venus Series
original copyright 1932, 1933,
read in September 2011 (and before, in 1997)

Agamedes' opinion: 7 out of 10

Carson Napier makes a one way trip to Venus... How does his story get back to Earth? Luckily for us, Carson was taught telepathy...

Amtor (or Venus, as we call it) is populated by humans, near-humans and sub-humans. Evolution on Amtor follows a similar path to that on Earth, with the human form being top of the evolutionary ladder. The good humans look good and the bad humans have shifty eyes.

The jungles of Amtor are populated by wild beasts -- mostly ferocious, mostly bad-tempered. There are many harmless beasts but they are generally eaten then forgotten. Only the vicious killers get more than a page of description!

These adventures on Amtor are full of heroic acts and incredible coincidences...

Carson manages to despatch many a vicious creature and many an evil adversary. Fortunately, he had some fencing lessons before he left Earth... Yet there are some creatures which are simply too ferocious and too strong to be beaten single-handed... By a lucky coincidence, these beasts will be attacked -- in the nick of time -- by an equally ferocious other beast!

On Amtor, the men wear a "G-string" plus weapon belts. The women wear a ribbon wrapped around breasts and hips. Even this ribbon is happily shed, when it is required to help escape from a locked room. (Yes, I too expected the heroes to climb down the ribbon...)

All this sounds a lot like Burrough's Martian adventures... (I can't wait to see the costumes when the John Carter movie is released!) Ancient Barsoom (our Mars) and more prehistoric Amtor are different worlds but the sword and sandal adventures are similar. Yet the book styles are different.

Barsoom is all battles, beasts, heroism and the torment of true love. Amtor is all the same stuff -- but the underlying ideas are different.

On Barsoom, John Carter is extraordinarily strong: his Earthly muscles give him a huge advantage in the lighter gravity of Mars. He is a hero who overcomes all obstacles. He is the absolute master of all his battles.

Carson Napier actually has some self doubt. Twenty years after his first Mars book, Burroughs allows his hero to be -- slightly -- more real. There is also, in the Venus books, some social and political commentary.

For example:

In the perfect city of Havatoo, any person who is less than perfect is executed. The policy was implemented by King Mankar the Savior. His first act was to kill each and every politician... At the time, Mankar was known as King Mankar the Bloody.

Now you can guess that Carson would pass all the Havatoo tests with flying colours...

Wrong!

Our hero, Carson Napier, is less than perfect! Perfect physically, of course. But with less-than-perfect psychological attributes... Fortunately he is saved from immediate execution by a lucky coincidence.

Burrough's writing has matured since his first book, John Carter's adventures in A Princess of Mars. He has added a tiny amount of depth to his heroes. The imagination is just as wild. The stereotypes are very slightly less obvious.

The adventures are just as entertaining.

But see also: my 2021 review

Enjoy!

..o0o..

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