Although Burroughs’s earlier Barsoom novels are nominally science fiction thanks to their setting, ‘The Mastermind of Mars’ moves closer to true SF and away from the fantastical romances of its predecessors. They still, however, have a lot in common including many of the same basic plot elements ERB recycled throughout his writing career.All in all, I find it a lesser effort. The sense of wonder and adventure we enjoyed in the previous novels is downplayed in favor of a slower pace and a smaller...

Do you know those old Frankenstein movies, not the original but all the then-popular knock-offs with even more brains in jars and mad scientists putting their brains in monkeys and then wondering why they got elected to public office and started a revolution?Yeah. That's what this one was like. Maybe it's good for the craving for a different time that is so very different that it's hard to imagine that ANYONE thought this was a good idea... and then I see the ongoing debate about face masks duri...

Edgar Rice Burroughs' 1927 The Master Mind of Mars, sixth of the eleven-book Barsoom series, begins with the narrative frame of a letter the fictionalized Burroughs received from Helium on Mars, dated June 8th, 1925, and written by Ulysses S. Paxton, "Late Captain, --th Inf., U.S. Army" (1981 Del Rey paperback, page 9), who in France during the First World War "regain[s] consciousness after dark" in a crater to find that a nearby shell hit had "blown away [his legs] midway between the hips and k...

Ulysses Paxton isn’t a member of John Carter’s family or another Martian: he is an American earthling like Carter himself. A fan of ERB’s Barsoom books (meta!), he is able to astrally project himself to Mars as he lays dying in a WWI trench, his legs blown off by an explosive shell. He quickly finds himself in the employ of a mad scientist who does a brisk business transplanting the brains of Barsoom’s old and powerful into the bodies of its young and unfortunate. The main problem with The Maste...

This one has some horror elements in it that really make it sing. Sword & Planet as it should be done. However, it doesn't feature John Carter but Ulysses Paxton, an admirer of John Carter who also gets transported to Mars. I didn't think there was any letdown for going with a new character.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Fun body switches. Do you love the person inside? Or does outside / inside influence other side?Ulysses Paxton narrates death in Civil War, waking naked on Mars, apprenticeship to transplant expert ancient Ras Thavas of Toonol, who calls him 'Vad Varo'. Ras does good, giving arm to worker whose own was crushed, new brain to "demented child .. from violent deaths" p 394Into lovely body, they put brain of Xaxa, old ruler of Phundahlia although "She is an ig...

This was a definite upswing in the series. The Barsoom series is at its best when there's a full cast of characters, we get reunited with old friends, bigger existential issues are tackled, and brevity is maintained. This story was about a mad scientist who allows people to pay to have their brains installed in newer, fresher bodies. The hero of this book is a John Carter dupe, a WWI soldier who finds himself dying on the battlefield and then suddenly gets transported to Barsoom which he's read

The Master Mind of Mars completes the little mini-arc of philosophy I've described. In Thuvia, Maid of Mars, we meet a city of realists and etherealists, the latter of whom believe that none of us exist but both of whom are so focused on the creations of their minds as to ignore reality; in The Chessmen of Mars, we meet a race of Martians who have developed into all brain (the kaldanes) and all body (the rykors), neither of whom enjoys the fullest pleasures of life; and in The Master Mind of Mar...

This story follows the adventures of an unrelated hero, Ulysses Paxton, an Earthman. Like John Carter, Paxton arrives on Mars via astral projection and ends up being trained by mad scientist Ras Thavas, the titular Mastermind of Mars, in the techniques of mind-body transfer. Paxton uses these techniques to restore his beloved Valla Dia's brain into her own beautiful body after her brain had been swapped with that of the hideous Xaxa of Phundahl.These stories are not high art, or even good sci-fi...

"The Master Mind of Mars" is book #6 of 11 John Carter adventures that Edgar Rice Burroughs gave to the world. It first appeared in the magazine "Amazing Stories Annual" in July 1927, and John Carter himself only puts in a cameo appearance near the book's end. Instead, our hero is another Earthman, Ulysses Paxton, who mysteriously gets transported to Barsoom (Mars) after being critically wounded on the battlefields of WW1. Paxton becomes an apprentice of the eponymous mastermind Ras Thavas, and

John Carter is not the only one who travels to Mars. Enter Captain Ulysses Paxton, US Army. While on the fields of battle in the Great War, Paxton suddenly mortally wounded and fixes his gaze on the twinkling red planet in the dark night sky. He stretches out his arms toward this sparkling light and in almost a blink of an eye finds himself laying flat on his back gazing up into a bright sun-lit sky. Standing over him is Ras Thavas, Barsoom’s greatest scientist. Thus begins the adventurers of an...

Probably more like a 4.5 or 4.75 . . .For this volume we're back to first-person narration, but it's not John Carter -- it's Ulysses Paxton, another Earth man who makes his way to Barsoom from the trenches of WWI-era Europe. Paxton already has a basic familiarity with Barsoom because he's read ERB's previous books, although he thought they were fiction. (Burroughs was meta before meta was a thing.)This is an interesting installment -- it has much more of a science fictional feel to it than other...

“The Master Mind of Mars” by Edgar Rice Burroughs is the sixth book in the Barsoom series. Burroughs moves further away from John Carter by introducing a new hero, Ulysses Paxton, who uses his Martian name Vad Varo for most of the book. Ulysses is a much different hero than John Carter, or for that matter Cathoris or Thuvia from “Thuvia Maid of Mars” or Gahan of Gathol or Tara of Helium from “The Chessmen of Mars”. Ulysses’s connection with John Carter is that when on Earth he read the stories o...

This book introduces a new hero, Ulysses Paxton, a young soldier who finds himself on Mars after having his legs blown off in the trenches of WWI. Ulysses finds himself working for a scientist in the business of buying beautiful bodies and performing brain transplants for the discontented rich. Ulysses falls in love with a beautiful young girl whose body has unfortunately been sold to an evil ugly Empress, and so he sets out to recover it for her and swap the two brains back into their rightful

By this point in the series, ERB follows his typical formula--the hero must rescue a princess of Barsoom from a perilous situation. In this book, the hero, princess and the perils are relatively new. The hero is another Earthman that has found his way to Barsoom. The princess is from a new kingdom. The peril is the best part. The Master Mind of Mars is essentially a Barsoomian Dr. Frankenstein that swaps brains and bodies and body parts. No experiment is too extreme as long it piques his interes...

Ulysses Paxton, fighting in World War I, finds himself transported to Mars with no more reason than John Carter -- though this goes more briskly than in Princess. He finds himself in the lair of Ras Thavas, a slightly mad scientist who transplants organs, including brains, and can often revive the dead. He has room after room of bodies suspended as if time did not pass.He trains Paxton, thinking that a man with nowhere to go is the most trustworthy he can find, and knowing he needs someone to tr...

In this book, the series takes on a new dimension by introducing a character outside of the family of John Carter. In my opinion, it's not the best step. The character introduced, Ulysses Paxton, fails to take any real advantage of his superior abilities an Earthman has over a Martian, something well played with John Carter.The story itself, a mad scientist with the skill to transfer brains from one body to another, is intriguing and harkened somewhat to Frankenstein and other horror scifi's of

In this tale of Barsoom, author Edgar Rice Burroughs shifts perspectives again, this time focusing on a newcomer to the franchise named Ulysses Paxton, who became acquainted with John Carter in the autumn of 1917. While on the battlefields of the First World War, with maimed legs, Paxton becomes drawn by the scarlet glow of Mars, where he becomes whole again. Paxton first meets an old man on Barsoom, whose life he saves, after which the elder leads him to a cave where he conducts sundry experime...

The Mastermind of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs was pretty good. I especially loved that it gave some food for thought, allowing us to reflect on what we should truly aspire to; perfection in some aspects with a lack thereof in others, or imperfection in all aspects without a dramatic difference in any of them. My favorite character is Ras Thavas, but only because he is kind of insane and paranoid, two things I love in a character. My favorite quote from it is said by Ulysses in chapter 12, stati...

Burroughs continues his post-script Barsoom trilogy with another well-meaning, idea-laden, and unfortunately rather rote experience."Master Mind" embraces yet more self-awareness of Barsoom's offbeat pseudoscience. Ulysses Paxton, a World War I soldier, is familiarized with John Carter's past adventures (in yet more of Burroughs' low-key humour). A dire injury and desperate reach send him to the red planet, where he becomes the involuntary aide to the eponymous mastermind. He hatches a plan to e...