Re: Books.
Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2015 1:43 am
Back to Sword & Sorcery? No, now we have Sword & Planet!! Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion 9: Kane of Old Mars is Moorcock's affectionate tribute (and partial parody) of Edgar Rice Burrows' John Carter of Mars books. As he originally did not want to be directly associated with what is essentially Young Adult SF, he penned them under an alias which in itself is a tribute to both Burroughs and Ray Bradbury. Allegedly, Moorcock wrote these three slim volumes (the omnibus is 330 pages long) in just nine days, which is utterly insane... I own the first and third book as separate volumes. The narrative structure is strongly reminiscent to A Nomad of the Time Streams. Instead of Moorcock's grandfather, here it is the alleged author himself who chances on the actual Protagonist, Michael Kane. Kane says he has an incredible story to tell, they retire to the author's abode, where Kane tells what then becomes the book, and the author promises to publish it "though most will think it fantasy I invented" (not a direct quote, just the gist).
Michael Moorcock (writing as Edward Powys Bradbury) - City of the Beast (aka Warriors of Mars): Michael Kane is a MAN! Huge, ravishing looks, bronzed, athletic body, and a brilliant physicist to boot! He invents a matter transmitter, and volunteers as the first human test subject. But bang, he lands on Mars, a Mars which is rather dry but hardly barren, in a time when Earth was just jungle and dinosaurs eating each other. The very first human (!) he meets is a ravishing girl, and, well, First Girl Wins! Alas, she is also married... Or was it just betrothed? Anyway, to a prince of a neighboring city-state, an old ally, so hands off. The main plot of the book is that the Argzoon, blue giant humanoids up to twelve feet high, attack the city. After outlasting a siege and driving the Argzoon off, Kane and his love's brother travel north to the mountains where the Argzoon dwell, to save - you guessed it - the princess, who has been kidnapped by the "witch" Horghul. Here, in the huge cave under the mountains, lies the eponymous City of the Beast. Beast gets slain, Father of princess saved (was missing for years after a punitive expedition which went into a trap), former betrothed of princess revealed as traitor and is killed, everyone returns happy, wedding is arranged... and then, finally, Kane's fellow scientist, after a week of hard work, figure out what went wrong and pull Kane back! His fantastic tale is not believed and he basically has to clear his desk at the university of Chicago... Dejected he travels the world and then meets a man named Bradbury...
Michael Moorcock (writing as Edward Powys Bradbury) - Lord of the Spiders (aka Blades of Mars): Bradbury is quite affluent, and promises to build Kane a new matter transmitter. Kane returns to Mars but shows up somewhere else (on Mars that is). The first person he meets is... a blue giant!! Named Hool Haji. But it turns out that there are two cultures of them, and these are the good guys, the Mendishar. Though they have their own serious problems, as their capital has been taken over by the former palace guard, the Priosa, once highly respected warriors, but now militaristic tyrants. A girl in the Mendishar village where they meet with other leaders of the rebellion falls in love with Haji, but when he spurns her, she flees and rats them out to the Priosa (who then kill her, she was a really sad character). The Priosa massacre nearly everyone, Kane and Haji manage to flee into a desert with some compatriots. There they find an underground complex which was once built by the Yaksha. The reader already learns in the first book that the human cultures of Mars are not really technological, instead, they employ the remnants of extremely advanced technology left by two races, the Sheev (good) and Yaksha (evil) who once - you guessed it - almost completely wiped each other out (allegedly, some of each still exist somewhere, though they never show up). This underground complex might as well belong to the Umbrella Corporation and lie under Racoon City, as it contains mutated horrors which kill some of the party. After quite a few more adventures, Kane learns he has indeed returned at the correct time, and, after crossing yet another plot of the dread Horghul, he is finally reunited with his Shihaza! And now he has the power to return at will to Earth of his own time and dictate the story to his benefactor.
Michael Moorcock (writing as Edward Powys Bradbury) - The Masters of the Pit (aka Barbarians of Mars): A time of peace follows, and Kane, still a scientist, organizes expeditions to the underground Yaksha complex to exploit it. This book was really very... linear. It read like a rather badly written roleplaying adventure, and I have the feeling that it was the most parody-like (though in this volume, Kane actually does his best to live by the rules Burroughs made for his own characters but which they seemingly never followed...). So, the heroes are on a simple quest: Travel from A to B, B being the Yaksha complex. On the way, the motor of their airship fails. They come to a city, Cend-Amrid, where the inhabitants suffer a double curse.. The rulers had acquired a capsule of Yaksha manufacture, opened it, and - SAHPRIZE, MOTHERFUCKER! - unleashed a deadly bioweapon! To somehow cope with this, they mentally turn themselves into emotionless robots. Kane and Haji manage to convince them to repair the motor and Kane swears he will find a countermeasure to the plague. Okay, back to B. But there, they meet a barbarian horde who has acquired the Yaksha weapons and also abducts the heroes! It goes on like this, they basically slide from one shitty situation to the next. Somewhere in between, the Masters and their Pit also show up (generally, the non-"of Mars" titles were kind of stupid, each time applying to only a small part of the story). There are also some Chekov's Guns, including a little vial which is forgotten for most of the book and then, in the end, may have contained the cure for the plague. Anyway, Ende gut, alles gut, wie immer halt. Kane returns to Earth once again, dictates the story, and again there's the hint that more adventures may come - but they never did.
All in all, a reasonably fun read, but it became rather boring with time. Okay, I realize that certain aspects of the story, like the protagonist being almost superhuman (I mean, he was like a MinMax character who somehow managed to hide all the Min...), are a must be for this genre, but that does not mean I have to wholeheartedly embrace them. Moorcock generally has rather boring characters, but here, they were especially cardboard-cut-outish.
Michael Moorcock (writing as Edward Powys Bradbury) - City of the Beast (aka Warriors of Mars): Michael Kane is a MAN! Huge, ravishing looks, bronzed, athletic body, and a brilliant physicist to boot! He invents a matter transmitter, and volunteers as the first human test subject. But bang, he lands on Mars, a Mars which is rather dry but hardly barren, in a time when Earth was just jungle and dinosaurs eating each other. The very first human (!) he meets is a ravishing girl, and, well, First Girl Wins! Alas, she is also married... Or was it just betrothed? Anyway, to a prince of a neighboring city-state, an old ally, so hands off. The main plot of the book is that the Argzoon, blue giant humanoids up to twelve feet high, attack the city. After outlasting a siege and driving the Argzoon off, Kane and his love's brother travel north to the mountains where the Argzoon dwell, to save - you guessed it - the princess, who has been kidnapped by the "witch" Horghul. Here, in the huge cave under the mountains, lies the eponymous City of the Beast. Beast gets slain, Father of princess saved (was missing for years after a punitive expedition which went into a trap), former betrothed of princess revealed as traitor and is killed, everyone returns happy, wedding is arranged... and then, finally, Kane's fellow scientist, after a week of hard work, figure out what went wrong and pull Kane back! His fantastic tale is not believed and he basically has to clear his desk at the university of Chicago... Dejected he travels the world and then meets a man named Bradbury...
Michael Moorcock (writing as Edward Powys Bradbury) - Lord of the Spiders (aka Blades of Mars): Bradbury is quite affluent, and promises to build Kane a new matter transmitter. Kane returns to Mars but shows up somewhere else (on Mars that is). The first person he meets is... a blue giant!! Named Hool Haji. But it turns out that there are two cultures of them, and these are the good guys, the Mendishar. Though they have their own serious problems, as their capital has been taken over by the former palace guard, the Priosa, once highly respected warriors, but now militaristic tyrants. A girl in the Mendishar village where they meet with other leaders of the rebellion falls in love with Haji, but when he spurns her, she flees and rats them out to the Priosa (who then kill her, she was a really sad character). The Priosa massacre nearly everyone, Kane and Haji manage to flee into a desert with some compatriots. There they find an underground complex which was once built by the Yaksha. The reader already learns in the first book that the human cultures of Mars are not really technological, instead, they employ the remnants of extremely advanced technology left by two races, the Sheev (good) and Yaksha (evil) who once - you guessed it - almost completely wiped each other out (allegedly, some of each still exist somewhere, though they never show up). This underground complex might as well belong to the Umbrella Corporation and lie under Racoon City, as it contains mutated horrors which kill some of the party. After quite a few more adventures, Kane learns he has indeed returned at the correct time, and, after crossing yet another plot of the dread Horghul, he is finally reunited with his Shihaza! And now he has the power to return at will to Earth of his own time and dictate the story to his benefactor.
Michael Moorcock (writing as Edward Powys Bradbury) - The Masters of the Pit (aka Barbarians of Mars): A time of peace follows, and Kane, still a scientist, organizes expeditions to the underground Yaksha complex to exploit it. This book was really very... linear. It read like a rather badly written roleplaying adventure, and I have the feeling that it was the most parody-like (though in this volume, Kane actually does his best to live by the rules Burroughs made for his own characters but which they seemingly never followed...). So, the heroes are on a simple quest: Travel from A to B, B being the Yaksha complex. On the way, the motor of their airship fails. They come to a city, Cend-Amrid, where the inhabitants suffer a double curse.. The rulers had acquired a capsule of Yaksha manufacture, opened it, and - SAHPRIZE, MOTHERFUCKER! - unleashed a deadly bioweapon! To somehow cope with this, they mentally turn themselves into emotionless robots. Kane and Haji manage to convince them to repair the motor and Kane swears he will find a countermeasure to the plague. Okay, back to B. But there, they meet a barbarian horde who has acquired the Yaksha weapons and also abducts the heroes! It goes on like this, they basically slide from one shitty situation to the next. Somewhere in between, the Masters and their Pit also show up (generally, the non-"of Mars" titles were kind of stupid, each time applying to only a small part of the story). There are also some Chekov's Guns, including a little vial which is forgotten for most of the book and then, in the end, may have contained the cure for the plague. Anyway, Ende gut, alles gut, wie immer halt. Kane returns to Earth once again, dictates the story, and again there's the hint that more adventures may come - but they never did.
All in all, a reasonably fun read, but it became rather boring with time. Okay, I realize that certain aspects of the story, like the protagonist being almost superhuman (I mean, he was like a MinMax character who somehow managed to hide all the Min...), are a must be for this genre, but that does not mean I have to wholeheartedly embrace them. Moorcock generally has rather boring characters, but here, they were especially cardboard-cut-outish.