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The Mysteries of Mars
The City Outside the World
MARS: THE SKULL OF A PLANET PICKED CLEAN BY THE WIND OF TIME
North Beyond the desert of Meroe, past the ancient cliffs of the dust-locked continents, past the dry wharfs of a city that was old when Earth was new, the caravan crept into the unmapped waste called Umbra. It was into this shadowed land that the lost nation of the People had ridden and vanished—in a time beyond memory. It was here that the outworlder Ryker followed the golden-eyed Valarda and found the Child-of-Stars.
North Beyond the desert of Meroe, past the ancient cliffs of the dust-locked continents, past the dry wharfs of a city that was old when Earth was new, the caravan crept into the unmapped waste called Umbra. It was into this shadowed land that the lost nation of the People had ridden and vanished—in a time beyond memory. It was here that the outworlder Ryker followed the golden-eyed Valarda and found the Child-of-Stars.
Mass Market Paperback
First published October 1, 1977
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About the author
Lin Carter
426 books171 followersLin Carter was an American author, editor, and critic best known for his influential role in fantasy literature during the mid-20th century. Born in St. Petersburg, Florida, he developed an early passion for myth, adventure stories, and imaginative fiction, drawing inspiration from authors such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, and J. R. R. Tolkien. After serving in the U.S. Army, Carter attended Columbia University, where he honed his literary skills and deepened his knowledge of classical and medieval literature, myth, and folklore — elements that would become central to his work.
Carter authored numerous novels, short stories, and critical studies, often working within the sword-and-sorcery and high fantasy traditions. His own creations, such as the “Thongor of Lemuria” series, paid homage to pulp-era adventure fiction while adding his distinctive voice and world-building style. His nonfiction book Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings was one of the first major studies of Tolkien’s work and its mythological roots, and it helped establish Carter as a knowledgeable commentator on fantasy literature.
Beyond his own writing, Carter was a central figure in bringing classic and forgotten works of fantasy back into print. As editor of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series from 1969 to 1974, he curated and introduced dozens of volumes, reintroducing readers to authors such as William Morris, Lord Dunsany, E. R. Eddison, and James Branch Cabell. His introductions not only contextualized these works historically and literarily but also encouraged a new generation to explore the breadth of the fantasy tradition.
Carter was also active in the shared literary universe of the “Cthulhu Mythos,” expanding upon the creations of H. P. Lovecraft and other members of the “Lovecraft Circle.” His collaborations and solo contributions in this genre further cemented his reputation as both a creative writer and a literary preservationist.
In addition to fiction and criticism, Carter was an active member of several science fiction and fantasy organizations, including the Science Fiction Writers of America. He frequently appeared at conventions, where he was known for his enthusiasm, deep knowledge of the genre, and willingness to mentor aspiring writers.
Though sometimes critiqued for the derivative nature of some of his work, Carter’s influence on the fantasy revival of the late 20th century remains significant. His combination of creative output, editorial vision, and scholarly enthusiasm helped bridge the gap between the pulp traditions of the early 1900s and the expansive fantasy publishing boom that followed.
Lin Carter’s legacy endures through his own imaginative tales, his critical studies, and the many classic works he rescued from obscurity, ensuring their place in the canon of fantasy literature for generations to come.
Carter authored numerous novels, short stories, and critical studies, often working within the sword-and-sorcery and high fantasy traditions. His own creations, such as the “Thongor of Lemuria” series, paid homage to pulp-era adventure fiction while adding his distinctive voice and world-building style. His nonfiction book Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings was one of the first major studies of Tolkien’s work and its mythological roots, and it helped establish Carter as a knowledgeable commentator on fantasy literature.
Beyond his own writing, Carter was a central figure in bringing classic and forgotten works of fantasy back into print. As editor of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series from 1969 to 1974, he curated and introduced dozens of volumes, reintroducing readers to authors such as William Morris, Lord Dunsany, E. R. Eddison, and James Branch Cabell. His introductions not only contextualized these works historically and literarily but also encouraged a new generation to explore the breadth of the fantasy tradition.
Carter was also active in the shared literary universe of the “Cthulhu Mythos,” expanding upon the creations of H. P. Lovecraft and other members of the “Lovecraft Circle.” His collaborations and solo contributions in this genre further cemented his reputation as both a creative writer and a literary preservationist.
In addition to fiction and criticism, Carter was an active member of several science fiction and fantasy organizations, including the Science Fiction Writers of America. He frequently appeared at conventions, where he was known for his enthusiasm, deep knowledge of the genre, and willingness to mentor aspiring writers.
Though sometimes critiqued for the derivative nature of some of his work, Carter’s influence on the fantasy revival of the late 20th century remains significant. His combination of creative output, editorial vision, and scholarly enthusiasm helped bridge the gap between the pulp traditions of the early 1900s and the expansive fantasy publishing boom that followed.
Lin Carter’s legacy endures through his own imaginative tales, his critical studies, and the many classic works he rescued from obscurity, ensuring their place in the canon of fantasy literature for generations to come.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
June 11, 2019
Was Lin Carter on a one-man mission to confirm Sturgeon's Law?
I keep reading Lin Carter books thinking he'll exceed my expectations and finally deliver a story really worth reading. It's strange because he certainly had a knack as an editor for selecting excellent stuff in anthologies and recovering forgotten classics. But his original stories -- despite his constant, awkward self-promotion -- always seem like poor imitations.
He tried to write almost every sub-genre of sci-fi and fantasy. Here, he's imitating Edgar Rice Burroughs (or actually, he's imitating Leigh Brackett imitating Edgar Rice Burroughs!) with a third rate planetary romance. The hero, Ryker, is a brawny thief, and while the convention in this sort of thing is to leave the protagonist relatively two-dimensional (so readers can easily identify with them and enjoy a vicarious adventure), Carter manages to make pretty much everyone in the novel flat and uninteresting. The setting of course is Mars, though Carter slightly bucks convention by having the planet colonized by Earthlings who have Columbused the planet and displaced the Martians. Ryker is a criminal, exiled to Mars and living on the borders of Earthling and Martian society until he inadvertently rescues a trio of outcasts and tries to help them flee to their home city far to the north (or perhaps outside the world entirely). We never really get an explanation of how they arrived in the city that Ryker starts off in, nor why they were so far from home, and the story becomes a series of cliffhangers and narrow escapes in the Burroughs tradition. Except the Martian world just feels like a pastiche of Burroughs and his imitators, and the characters mostly fail to be interesting, even the villains. (I think he tries to create something original here, but simply isn't up to the job of envisioning an interesting, reasonably consistent world. Half-way through the book a footnote points the reader to another of his Martian novels, indicating his dedicated, but hamfisted world-building.)
The final chapters have some promise, right up until the horrible deus-ex-machina ending.
I keep reading Lin Carter books thinking he'll exceed my expectations and finally deliver a story really worth reading. It's strange because he certainly had a knack as an editor for selecting excellent stuff in anthologies and recovering forgotten classics. But his original stories -- despite his constant, awkward self-promotion -- always seem like poor imitations.
He tried to write almost every sub-genre of sci-fi and fantasy. Here, he's imitating Edgar Rice Burroughs (or actually, he's imitating Leigh Brackett imitating Edgar Rice Burroughs!) with a third rate planetary romance. The hero, Ryker, is a brawny thief, and while the convention in this sort of thing is to leave the protagonist relatively two-dimensional (so readers can easily identify with them and enjoy a vicarious adventure), Carter manages to make pretty much everyone in the novel flat and uninteresting. The setting of course is Mars, though Carter slightly bucks convention by having the planet colonized by Earthlings who have Columbused the planet and displaced the Martians. Ryker is a criminal, exiled to Mars and living on the borders of Earthling and Martian society until he inadvertently rescues a trio of outcasts and tries to help them flee to their home city far to the north (or perhaps outside the world entirely). We never really get an explanation of how they arrived in the city that Ryker starts off in, nor why they were so far from home, and the story becomes a series of cliffhangers and narrow escapes in the Burroughs tradition. Except the Martian world just feels like a pastiche of Burroughs and his imitators, and the characters mostly fail to be interesting, even the villains. (I think he tries to create something original here, but simply isn't up to the job of envisioning an interesting, reasonably consistent world. Half-way through the book a footnote points the reader to another of his Martian novels, indicating his dedicated, but hamfisted world-building.)
The final chapters have some promise, right up until the horrible deus-ex-machina ending.
January 1, 2016
So, Lin Carter does Leigh Brackett's Eric John Stark, or possibly C. L. Moore's Northwest Smith. It goes pretty much as anyone would expect: he veers away from interesting ideas to develop, in favor of staying loyal to the pastiche and staying safe; he hammers each point rather than allowing the possibility of the reader missing it; he uses so many damn words to say so little, fluffing it with unnecessary drama and portent and foreshadow.
"But he also knew there was no way for Zarouk's warriors to tell which of the ten thousand ravines into which the edge of the plateau was cloven was the one they had followed." (p. 83) Was there no editor willing to apply a red pen and/or scourge to Carter's work, or was the original draft so riddled that it was inevitable for something awful to slip through?
The sad part is that the first half or so, a retread of colonialism and a sort of Mos Eisley atmosphere and so much Leigh Brackett that I want to reread The Sword Of Rhiannon, is moody and effective (and why not because Leigh Brackett), suggesting conflict between the Colonial Administration government and the native culture, an ages-old civilization dwindling on a rotten, dying planet, and hidden things in the sand and in the dead places under the surface. It's all excruciatingly unoriginal and every interesting hook he suggests--the surgical modifications allowing humans to survive unprotected, the dark and dangerous subterranean environment--are not taken anywhere. But it made me want to read.
But when he introduced a cosmic element to the story, taking it outside that setting, it falls completely flat, something this book shares with Down to a Sunless Sea. He went from having a good idea that he couldn't quite make work to a bad idea he couldn't make work.
"But he also knew there was no way for Zarouk's warriors to tell which of the ten thousand ravines into which the edge of the plateau was cloven was the one they had followed." (p. 83) Was there no editor willing to apply a red pen and/or scourge to Carter's work, or was the original draft so riddled that it was inevitable for something awful to slip through?
The sad part is that the first half or so, a retread of colonialism and a sort of Mos Eisley atmosphere and so much Leigh Brackett that I want to reread The Sword Of Rhiannon, is moody and effective (and why not because Leigh Brackett), suggesting conflict between the Colonial Administration government and the native culture, an ages-old civilization dwindling on a rotten, dying planet, and hidden things in the sand and in the dead places under the surface. It's all excruciatingly unoriginal and every interesting hook he suggests--the surgical modifications allowing humans to survive unprotected, the dark and dangerous subterranean environment--are not taken anywhere. But it made me want to read.
But when he introduced a cosmic element to the story, taking it outside that setting, it falls completely flat, something this book shares with Down to a Sunless Sea. He went from having a good idea that he couldn't quite make work to a bad idea he couldn't make work.
October 23, 2019
Every work of fiction by this author is flawed, perhaps deeply flawed. Yet this one is less flawed than most.
Carter wrote simple adventure, and was an enthusiast for a number of classic fantasy and adventure sf writers, in this case Edgar Rice Burroughs and Leigh Brackett being the most relevant. I have read only the former, but, in contrast to ERB, in many ways Carter is the superior dramatist.
Is his Mars better conceived? Probably not. Is he a better writer on the sentence level? That’s iffy, though I quoted more from this book than in the Burroughs I have read. Carter was not a master of character, and, because written in a terse third person, he is behind Burroughs in this.
As in Down to a Sunless Sea, the final section of the book goes off ‘in a different direction.’ In that book Carter took us downward, in a Merritesque homage. In this book, we go down to go . . . well, I won’t give it away. I liked the ending, and note that the transcendence of a simple Martian adventure that this final section entails is better foreshadowed than in the other. (Though hardly masterful.)
Also, behind it all is an interesting understanding of myth and religious lore that is lacking in ERB. But I won’t make too much of that for, in the end, this is not a masterwork we are dealing with, and, being a throwback, is hardly a milepost of literature. It is a pleasant and mostly well-done pastiche from a writer I might actually wish to have known. But the sense of personality, of interiority — the book does not offer that. In this it more closely resembles that kids’ adventure books I read as a young teen.
Now, for a confession. I read this book because I saw someone online remark that the sexual encounters in this book were ‘dodgy.’ Uh, what? There are tactfully mentioned rapes by conquerors, but nothing else of a ‘dodgy’ nature.
I am beginning to think we live in an age of resumed prudery.
Carter wrote simple adventure, and was an enthusiast for a number of classic fantasy and adventure sf writers, in this case Edgar Rice Burroughs and Leigh Brackett being the most relevant. I have read only the former, but, in contrast to ERB, in many ways Carter is the superior dramatist.
Is his Mars better conceived? Probably not. Is he a better writer on the sentence level? That’s iffy, though I quoted more from this book than in the Burroughs I have read. Carter was not a master of character, and, because written in a terse third person, he is behind Burroughs in this.
As in Down to a Sunless Sea, the final section of the book goes off ‘in a different direction.’ In that book Carter took us downward, in a Merritesque homage. In this book, we go down to go . . . well, I won’t give it away. I liked the ending, and note that the transcendence of a simple Martian adventure that this final section entails is better foreshadowed than in the other. (Though hardly masterful.)
Also, behind it all is an interesting understanding of myth and religious lore that is lacking in ERB. But I won’t make too much of that for, in the end, this is not a masterwork we are dealing with, and, being a throwback, is hardly a milepost of literature. It is a pleasant and mostly well-done pastiche from a writer I might actually wish to have known. But the sense of personality, of interiority — the book does not offer that. In this it more closely resembles that kids’ adventure books I read as a young teen.
Now, for a confession. I read this book because I saw someone online remark that the sexual encounters in this book were ‘dodgy.’ Uh, what? There are tactfully mentioned rapes by conquerors, but nothing else of a ‘dodgy’ nature.
I am beginning to think we live in an age of resumed prudery.
January 11, 2020
This just barely gets two stars from me. It’s one of the worst things Carter ever wrote.
It’s divided into 5 parts.
The first two are awful. Ryker is no way likable, it’s cringy even by 70s standards, things start to contradict the setup of the world form the previous two books. Which is a pity given that the previous two books started really well and the setting developed here is really quality stuff for a pulp adventure.
Then there is a plot twist. The plot is so contrived. Carter really felt like he was phoning this one in, and for a guy who is derivative that is saying something.
However, this book has a redeeming second half. It does the whole corruption of Eden motif that was in the 2nd book. But in my opinion much better. It also almost had a weird fairy tale quality to the environment. Really his vision for a Western S&P Mars was good. It redeems the book a bit.
Then the ending just feels like something out of OG Star Trek (like the last book.). Just peachy and moralistic and naive.
I really do think conveyed a corruption of Eden well enough to just save this book from 1 star.
This series is really disappointing. Some of Carter’s work can be fun and he had potential but man this was just bad for the most part.
It’s divided into 5 parts.
The first two are awful. Ryker is no way likable, it’s cringy even by 70s standards, things start to contradict the setup of the world form the previous two books. Which is a pity given that the previous two books started really well and the setting developed here is really quality stuff for a pulp adventure.
Then there is a plot twist. The plot is so contrived. Carter really felt like he was phoning this one in, and for a guy who is derivative that is saying something.
However, this book has a redeeming second half. It does the whole corruption of Eden motif that was in the 2nd book. But in my opinion much better. It also almost had a weird fairy tale quality to the environment. Really his vision for a Western S&P Mars was good. It redeems the book a bit.
Then the ending just feels like something out of OG Star Trek (like the last book.). Just peachy and moralistic and naive.
I really do think conveyed a corruption of Eden well enough to just save this book from 1 star.
This series is really disappointing. Some of Carter’s work can be fun and he had potential but man this was just bad for the most part.
February 6, 2017
Very cool Lin Carter novel. One of his better ones.
To reference another of his other titles...He is the man who truly loves Mars...
To reference another of his other titles...He is the man who truly loves Mars...
August 25, 2014
Mars is the 22nd century's version of colonial Australia (penal colony subsequent the decimation of indigenous peoples). A former man of Earth (i.e. convict) is again on the run on
Mars. He sees a captivating dancer at a bar... stalks her, and then saves her from a mob with his powerful illegal guns. He and her coterie then escape the martian cities looking for a caravan to the barren north; presumably where her people come from.
This story reminded me of Edgar Rice Burroughs and his 'John Carter on Mars' series of books (similarly I believe Lin Carter wrote other books based in this Martian universe). It assumes a violent native race on Mars that is near enough to humanity for its women to be desirable, and a strong Earthican hero/savior.
The one female character in this story is almost exclusively seen naked and dancing, and of course eventually falls in love with the main character. Women are mentioned once or twice otherwise, when either the main character or the author/narrator is lamenting what happens to women (and children) captives of war (!!). The one woman has a 10 or 11 year old boy who accompanies her, also always seen naked, with much authorial focus on the impish boy's nudity.
There are other stupid, under-edited moments in the book; this quote particularly caught me (page 50): "They rode on that day, due west, following the curve of the meridian." Meridians are the lines connecting north and south, definitionally one cannot go west on them.
It's a martian fantasy adventure story with a lot of problematic 1970s cultural baggage. The adventure part of the story was fun, but with all the shortcomings I'm not at the moment interested in reading any more of this author.
Mars. He sees a captivating dancer at a bar... stalks her, and then saves her from a mob with his powerful illegal guns. He and her coterie then escape the martian cities looking for a caravan to the barren north; presumably where her people come from.
This story reminded me of Edgar Rice Burroughs and his 'John Carter on Mars' series of books (similarly I believe Lin Carter wrote other books based in this Martian universe). It assumes a violent native race on Mars that is near enough to humanity for its women to be desirable, and a strong Earthican hero/savior.
The one female character in this story is almost exclusively seen naked and dancing, and of course eventually falls in love with the main character. Women are mentioned once or twice otherwise, when either the main character or the author/narrator is lamenting what happens to women (and children) captives of war (!!). The one woman has a 10 or 11 year old boy who accompanies her, also always seen naked, with much authorial focus on the impish boy's nudity.
There are other stupid, under-edited moments in the book; this quote particularly caught me (page 50): "They rode on that day, due west, following the curve of the meridian." Meridians are the lines connecting north and south, definitionally one cannot go west on them.
It's a martian fantasy adventure story with a lot of problematic 1970s cultural baggage. The adventure part of the story was fun, but with all the shortcomings I'm not at the moment interested in reading any more of this author.
July 26, 2016
An entertaining, fast-paced action sci-fi novel. If you like the Conan books, you'll probably really dig this one. I read it in two days, I just couldn't put it down, which is impressive even for a middling sci-fi novel. Go into it expecting basically a toned-down Conan on Mars and you'll really enjoy the adventure, but I don't know what the hell else anyone reading a Lin Carter novel would expect. Seriously, if you read his books anticipating anything other than great adventures in the Conan vein (whether they be fantasy or sci-fi), you're a f'n retard of the highest caliber.
October 17, 2015
Action sci-fi. A hunted outcast on Mars travels with semi-civilized companions to a deserted city in the wastes of a desolate desertscape. There's little character development, but it's a fast and easy to read adventure tale.
July 26, 2010
I don't recall much about this one. About typical for Carter, I'd imagine. Most of his work was at around the same level.
December 27, 2010
A simple, yet entertaining book. Fast read. If you can disregard the hokey Mars setting, it has a good plot and story line.
August 5, 2011
One of Carters five Mars books conected by seting but not charactors. Written in the style of Leigh Bracket.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews