A Fighting Man of Mars is an Edgar Rice Burroughs science
fiction novel, the seventh of his famous Barsoom series. Burroughs
began writing it on February 28, 1929, and the finished story was
first published in Blue Book Magazine as a six-part serial in the
issues for April to September, 1930. It was later published as a
complete novel by Metropolitan in May, 1931.
A Fighting Man of Mars is an Edgar Rice Burroughs science
fiction novel, the seventh of his famous Barsoom series. Burroughs
began writing it on February 28, 1929, and the finished story was
first published in Blue Book Magazine as a six-part serial in the
issues for April to September, 1930. It was later published as a
complete novel by Metropolitan in May, 1931.
As Tan Hadron crosses Mars ("Barsoom", as Burroughs calls it)
searching for Sanoma Tora, he encounters some of Burroughs's most
ferocious beasts—huge, many-armed, flesh-eating white apes,
gigantic spiders, and the insane cannibals of U-Gor. He also meets
the mad scientist Phor Tak, who cackles "Heigh-oo!" and is crazed
with the desire for revenge.
The initial simplicity of Burroughs' well-worn pursuit plot is
elaborated by Hadron's rescue of an escaped slave, Tavia, from a
band of six-limbed green Tharks, en route to the city of Jahar
where Hadron believes Sanoma Tora has been taken. Tavia is an
atypical Burroughs heroine; depicted as self-reliant and competent
with weapons, witty and intelligent, she compares favorably for
both reader and Hadron with beautiful but shallow Sanoma Tora, who
ultimately shows herself unworthy of the virtuous hero. With the
addition of Nur An, a disaffected Jaharian warrior, and another
escaped woman slave, Phao, Hadron's quest becomes more
collaborative than Burroughs' usual, although Tavia, in an
unsurprising plot development, is revealed to be a princess at the
end.