Sat Sep 27, 2008 — by Robert Greenberger

Another Martian Classic Reprinted

1933 Serial Completely Collected for the 1st Time

With a lot of attention focused on Pixar’s attempts to adapt John Carter of Mars to film, the small publisher Paizo has been exploring a different take on the Red Planet.  They announced a release of Otis Adelbert Kline's The Swordsman of Mars. The 1933 tale was first serialized in Argosy Magazine, which also ran Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Under the Moons of Mars in 1912.

The serial was finally collected in hardcover by Avalon in 1960.  Later that year, Ace published a paperback edition as part of their growing SF line. According to Paizo, though, “entire chapters are missing, key character and location descriptions are completely absent, and the final product cuts a slash across the chest of Kline's literary reputation that would be totally invisible to readers unable to assemble the original Argosy serial and compare the two texts.”

The publisher, under their Planet Stories imprint, is finally releasing the complete and unabridged tale of swords and monsters on a world not our own this month.
 

Be the first person to comment!