Our campaign to support the Bindery by making the special Bindery Editions of THE ILIAD and THE ODYSSEY available to those who weren’t around to back the bindery the first time is now concluded. Thanks very much to everyone who participated, in both the first time around and the second run. However, as it happens, the production schedule of three upcoming Castalia House books has made it possible to finally do something that we’ve wanted to do for a long time, which is to introduce Franklin Library-style Signed First Editions.
The Legend Chuck Dixon surprised everyone at Castalia House recently by presenting us, hitherto unannounced, a completed book entitled GUNS OF MARS, which is a sequel of sorts to the Barsoom novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs that are now in the public domain. Having learned from our experience with the Conan novels to tread lightly in the space where the public domain intersects corporate trademarks, Chuck set the novel in the Red Planet’s far future, in a time when the precious ice caps are shrinking, the great cities are dying, and the challenges of life on what was already a dangerous world have become even more perilous.
Comparative Analysis
This work captures much of the pulp adventure spirit of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom series while adopting a grittier, more morally ambiguous tone. The author demonstrates deep familiarity with Burroughs's Martian mythology - from the dying planet's water scarcity to the Green Martians (Tharks), the fascii (plant men), and various Barsoomian creatures and technologies.
The work diverges from Burroughs in several key ways. Where John Carter was an unambiguous hero driven by honor and love, this story's protagonist is a bounty hunter motivated purely by survival and profit. The partnership between the human and the Thark Kal Keddaq is built on mutual distrust and necessity rather than the eventual respect Carter earned from Tars Tarkas. The violence is more brutal and explicit than Burroughs typically portrayed, and the moral universe is decidedly gray.
The prose style deliberately echoes Burroughs's somewhat archaic narrative voice but with more visceral descriptions of violence and hardship. The world-building expands on Burroughs's framework while maintaining internal consistency with the source material - the dying canals, the various Martian races, and the planet's slow desiccation are all present.
Author Identification
This appears to be the work of Chuck Dixon, a prolific comic book writer known for his work on Batman, The Punisher, and various other titles. The clues include the straightforward action prose, the morally compromised protagonists, and the detailed violence. Dixon has written various pulp-inspired works and this demonstrates his ability to work within established mythologies while adding his own harder edge.
The manuscript succeeds as both tribute and revision, taking Burroughs's Mars and stripping away the romance to reveal a harsher survival story underneath.
Castalia House will be publishing GUNS OF MARS in the customary hardcover and ebook editions this fall, but before then, for one month, we are making the Signed First Edition of GUNS OF MARS bound in pigskin leather available for serious book collectors who are interested in a truly unique edition.
Excerpt
Kal Keddaq rested his full ten-foot height prone on the slope of a ring of ochre sand that surrounded a shallow depression. His rifle was cradled in the crooks of his upper set of arms. Raised on four elbows, he lifted his head until his eyes cleared the lip of the bowl to scan the broad plain to the south. He was careful to tilt his head back in order that the protruding ears atop his head be less visible.
All he could see was an uninterrupted horizon against an orange sky. The sun was setting, and the cold would be upon him once more. The days were shorter and nights longer as he rode farther to the north. The sand was still warm beneath him. The last of the sun’s rays touched the thick green flesh of his back, a mottled mix of olive and jade. He might risk a fire later if he were certain he’d shaken the man pursuing him.
Kal knew, deep in his bones, that he had not lost the man who’d been tracking him over the dead sea floor for the past three days. His only chance to escape the bounty man was to keep heading north to one of the settlements that ringed the pole. Even that was a risk, as he could run out of water for himself or his mounts before ever reaching one of them. And there was every chance his kind would not be welcome in the mostly human polar refuges.
He turned on his side to glance back at the two thoats grazing on patches of yellow lichen at the bottom of the bowl. The larger one was his saddle mount. The second was a pack animal bearing his remaining supplies and his last skin of water.
Before returning to his vigil, Kal removed a telescopticon from a pouch on his harness. He set his rifle aside and extended the scope to its full length before fitting an eye to the lens cup. Shifting from left to right, he fixed his gaze on the uninterrupted line of the horizon. Dervishes of dust danced across the plain as the night winds stirred the talc surface. Kal blinked a few times and strained to sharpen his sight.
There, past the curtain of swirling sand, the last light of the setting sun caught a thread of dust rising in the far distance. Kal squeezed his dry eyes shut and pressed his better eye to the cup once more.
Through the haze, he could make out a dark figure at the base of the golden column. A lifetime of living in the near-featureless barrens of the Great Sand Sea had trained his eyes to recognize details that might be missed by another. More from the approaching shape’s motion than any details he could make out, Kal recognized it as a man riding atop a thoat. From that distinct swaying cadence, he knew the man rode his mount at a walk. Even so, he would reach Kal’s position by the time the sun set. Kal collapsed the spyglass shut and returned it to its pouch.
“Damn this man,” Kal muttered as he snatched up his rifle and slid on sandaled feet to the floor of the bowl.
The Signed First Edition of GUNS OF MARS retails for $250 and will be available for one month only. It is one of the three Signed First Editions that we are using to help support the acquisition of the new machinery for the bindery, which can be purchased at the Arkhaven store or at NDM Express. We will provide more details about the other two books later this week.
Cool. Very cool.
Speaking of Dixon, any chance his second Conan book will be reprinted?