Invisible Men of Mars
“Invisible Men of Mars” (Amazing Stories, October 1941) begins after John Carter and Llana of Gathol have escaped from Pankor in the north. The flier has no food so Carter lands in a forest to find fruit or game. What he finds instead is invisible enemies who capture Llana then make a prisoner of him. He is lead through the Forest of Lost Men on a leash. He is taken by the unseen to their city, Invak, which is a weird combination of seen and unseen. He makes a friend of the invisible man, Kandus, but an enemy of another named Motus. This braggart kicks Carter while invisible, a crime that John compares to kicking a blind man. JC will get his revenge later.
John Carter makes another friend in Ptor Fak of Zodanga. Both men are chained to trees in a courtyard. It is here that Motus kicks Carter, while the Earthman also impresses an invisible woman named Rojas. After Motus kicks John, he manages to grab the villain’s leg and hurls him across the courtyard into a wall. Carter goes back to his pseudonym “Dotar Sojat” and makes a joke about being the “Sultan of Swat”. This is an unusual current reference for ERB. He usually avoided such topical details, one of the reasons his work is still read a hundred years later.
A City of the Unseen
Carter is introduced to the jeddak of Invak, Ptantas. He also sees Rojas again, who claims to be in love with him. Carter, admittedly, does something unbecoming. He pretends to return her affection so he can rescue Llana and get out of Invak. When he asks her to find Llana so they can all escape together she goes off in a fit of jealous rage. This puts Llana in jeopardy. Carter needs to hurry their escape. He later sees Rojas again and explains that Llana is his granddaughter. She says she will help them escape. She gives him and Ptor Fak the pills that create invisibility. Ptor Fak helps in the plan by donating a fabulous medallion as a bet for John Carter.
Carter challenges Motus to a duel to the death. Motus’s reputation is the best swordsman on Mars. John Carter knows otherwise. Ptantus sees this as a chance to get rid of the fascinating new prisoner. The two men meet in the arena. Very quickly Motus realizes he is outmatched. Carter plays with him, stalling as part of his escape plan, waiting for the invisibility pills to kick in. Motus tries to cheat by having the referee stand behind his opponent but Carter is hip to his trick. Instead, it is the ref who gets Motus’s blade.
Death Duel
John Carter taunts Motus by telling him the exact moment he will kill him. He counts down the time, finally dispatching him to the appointed second. (As you can see on the cover, Motus is wearing some kind of odd suit with a dome over his head. ERB never really explains this. I suspect he included it for some plot reason then didn’t bother with it as he wrote.)
Carter turns invisible and escapes. When he bumps into people in the crowds he says he is the ghost of Motus. This causes a panic which he uses to gather up Ptor Fak, Llana and Rojas. They escape in his captured flier. Once in the air, safe from Invak, Carter feels he must tell Rojas he lied about loving her. She laughs. She lied too. She wanted to escape Invak so badly she would have done anything.
The companions fly to Helium. John Carter sends a fleet to free Gathol. The Helium airships destroy Hin Abtol’s ships and Pankor is taken. From the frozen slaves, Pan Dan Chee is freed. Llana realizes her love for him, and they will marry. Burroughs does all of this tying up in a page. If he had written the book as a novel, all this conclusion would have been many chapters. Since he wrote Lllana of Gathol as a series of short stories, he wraps it up quickly so he doesn’t have to write any more tales for this book.
Conclusion
“Invisible Men of Mars” is not my favorite. I did enjoy the invisibility element, which ERB works out in a fascinating way. How could you have a city that is filled with people who can’t see each other? What kind of unusual behavior would this create? Burroughs plays up the paranoia of never really knowing if you are alone. The duel with Motus seems repetitive since Carter dueled in the earlier chapters. And then there is that suit Motus is wearing….Burroughs only had one more Barsoom tale in him after this, “Skeleton Men of Jupiter” (Amazing Stories, February 1943) which is the beginning of another batch that never got written because of WWII. What new adventures would John Carter have met? I guess we will never know.
