Three Achievements And One Disappointment

When an editor asks an author to contribute to an anthology of original stories, he does not know what he is going to get. Does he?

Poul Anderson's Technic History

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Future Quest, ed. Roger Elwood, 1974.

"Lodestar" IN Astounding: The John W. Campbell Memorial Anthology, ed. Harry Harrison, 1973.

"Rescue on Avalon" IN Children of Infinity, ed. Roger Elwood, 1973.

Clifford Simak's City future history

"Epilog" IN Astounding... (see above)

(We are talking about only two editors and two authors here.)

We already know what outstanding additions to his Technic History those three stories by Anderson are.

"Epilog" (this should be my last reference to City): the Ants, who have covered most of the Earth with a single Building, and the robots who had helped them have died. The deathless robot Jenkins learns this when the Building begins to crumble and he is able to enter it for the first time. All that it contains is a lot of now dead ant hills. Coincidentally, when the Building begins to crumble, some wild robots who had left Earth in interstellar spaceships visit and take Jenkins away with them. End. Point?

Addendum: There is a serious omission in this post which will be addressed. The title should have been "Four Achievements..."

Later: Now see here. 

Trappings And Texts

A book is very different when you reread it sixty years later. Case in point: Clifford Simak's City. In my teens, I focused on the sf trappings: machines, mutants, Martians etc. Now I notice that, in Chapter VI, when a man and a woman converse in Geneva, the text, transcending its trappings, reads almost like a contemporary novel.

In Poul Anderson's works, the novelistic interactions, so to call them, are more closely incorporated into the sf:

Christopher Holm joins an Ythrian choth and becomes estranged from his father even though the latter identifies with the Domain of Ythri and speaks of "deathpride" when confronting a Terran;

van Rijn and Falkayn clash over Mirkheim;

Aycharaych appeals to Flandry to help him to preserve Chereion;

Commonalty Ranger Daven Laure learns that he cannot marry a Kirkasanter...

New blog readers might not understand many of these references. However, explanations can be found by searching this blog and also by reading Poul Anderson's works which the blog urges all its readers to do.

Astounding Memorial

Astounding: John W. Campbell Memorial Anthology (1973, Ed. Harry Harrison) is an original anthology which includes:

"Lodestar" by Poul Anderson, intended when written to be the last Nicholas van Rijn story although Anderson subsequently added Mirkheim;

"Epilog" by Clifford Simak, one last City story, included in later editions of City;

an addition by Isaac Asimov to his very obscure "Thiotimoline" series.

For these and other contents, see the above link. I have not checked whether any of the other stories are additions to series by their authors.

"Lodestar" is both a van Rijn story and an Ythrian story. Of Anderson's seven Ythrian instalments, the first, "Wings of Victory," was published in 1972 and the rest in 1973: a rare burst of creativity.

In my estimation, "Lodestar" has to be the jewel in the crown of the Astounding Memorial anthology although it is interesting to learn that there are at least two other series stories.

"Lodestar":

signals the beginning of the end of the Polesotechnic League;

introduces van Rijn's granddaughter, Coya Conyon, who will marry David Falkayn;

shows the dramatic confrontation between van Rijn and Falkayn and also the generation gap between van Rijn and Coya;

brings together van Rijn and his trader team (including Falkayn) and the Ythrians;

is included in that ultimate future history collection, The Earth Book Of Stormgate;

presents a brief sense of life and work in the Solar Commonwealth through Coya;

refers back to the Satan affair and became the precursor of Mirkheim.

What's not to like?

Real World Issues

After roaming about town, I have returned home and might, before midnight, post more about Poul Anderson's Rustum or about Clifford Simak's future history. However, I have meanwhile acquired the current copy of a journal containing analyses of the global economy and of some contemporary military conflicts. I really ought to spend more time reading about our problems and less about those of fictional characters. Except in the most general terms, real world issues do not belong in blog posts although anything goes (just about) in the combox.

This post is an explanation and partial apology but any departure from the blog will only be temporary. 

Laterz.

Not Time II

See Not Time. 

This line of thought has been occasioned by reading an sf work not by Poul Anderson but by Clifford Simak. However, there is an underlying issue here that Anderson gets right but that most people most of the time get wrong and the people who get it wrong include not only Simak but also HG Wells and James Blish! - so let's stay with the line of thought for a while. (N.B.: Neither Wells nor Blish confuses the nature of time as much as Simak.)

The Issue

Matter moves through space and motion takes time but we then think of time itself as a dimension that we move along. Clearer thinking is needed. If you sit under a clock in a waiting room from 9:00 AM until 10:00 AM, then you are fully and equally present at 9:00 AM and at 10:00 AM and at every intermediate moment. You do not in any sense move from 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM. There is a 9:00 AM with you in it but there is no subsequent 9:00 AM with you not in it because you have moved away from it. Nor can you accelerate and arrive at 10:00 AM before me. We both arrive (if that is the right word) at 10:00 AM at 10:00 AM. 

Wells

The Time Traveller tells his dinner guests that our bodies extend along the Fourth Dimension whereas our immaterial mental existences move along it.

Blish

"'...the consciousness of Robin Weinbaum is moving along that entity in that invisible direction.'"

-James Blish, The Quincunx Of Time (New York, 1973), p. 116.

("...that entity..." is Weinbaum's body extending in four dimensions.)

Simak

In City, VII, on pp. 196-197, there is a passage that I will try to summarize rather than to quote in full. It is claimed that we had thought that we were passing through time whereas really we were moving along with it. Seconds did not pass. Instead, a single second moved along and we moved with it! What does that mean? He stays with the idea of motion through time but then tries to differentiate between two kinds of temporal motion. If something moves along through time, then the time that is moved through is measurable in units including seconds. Therefore, the moving entity is not itself one of those seconds.

Anderson

There is none of this in Anderson. In his Time Patrol series and in his There Will Be Time, our bodies extend along the fourth dimension - as in Wells and Blish although not in Simak - but there is no suggestion that any immaterial entities move along those bodies from their births to their deaths. Every moment is the present moment for any organism that is conscious in that moment. There is no moving present.

A Myth

In CS Lewis' The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, a Faun has a book entitled Is Man A Myth? In Clifford Simak's City, a Dog has written a book entitled The Myth Of Man: a parallel worth recording. Fantastic fictions can show us ourselves from fantastic perspectives. In Poul Anderson's The Rebel Worlds, the tripartite Didonians with their inherited but dwindling memories struggle to recall their brief encounter with human beings:

"(Blurred, two legs, faceless...no, had they beaks?)"

-Poul Anderson, The Rebel Worlds IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, January 2010), pp. 367-520 AT p. 369.

"Be not afraid of the strangers with single bodies... Rather pity that race, who are not beasts but can think, and thus know that they will never know oneness." (p. 520)

On Dido, we are becoming a myth - although they understand us.

Anderson And Simak

individual flying vehicles replacing road vehicles

robots

Martians

enhanced animals

mutants

telepathy

exploration of Jupiter

an interstellar space drive

parallel worlds

suspended animation

I am trying to list ideas which:

have become standard in sf;

are in Poul Anderson's works;

are also in Clifford Simak's City which I am still rereading.

Anderson: enhanced seals;

Simak: enhanced dogs and ants;

Anderson: mutant time travelers and immortals;

Simak: a hyperintelligent mutant. 

There might be more. But some of Simak's ideas are impossible, even cartoonish, like an anthill with chimneys as the ants, with no increase in brain size, smelt ore.

(Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles is another sf work that takes some standard ideas, like telepathy, robots and time travel, and then does something more with them.)

Simak's descriptions of wind and sunsets recall Anderson's:

"The wind talked harshly in the crouching trees and ripped the long grass in sudden gusts. The last rays of the sun struck fire from the distant peaks."

-City, II, p. 46.

"The sun sank in a lake of crimson, hushed finally to the glow of a fire burned low."

-ibid., p. 48.

"They sat for long minutes in silence broken only by the crackling of the fire, by the ghostly whisper of an autumn wind in the trees outside."

-ibid., III, p. 71.

(As in Anderson's works, natural sounds do not interrupt but underline conversational silence.)

"...in the west the green-tinged glow that marked the passing of the sun was fading into night."

-ibid., p. 81.

Somewhere in there, a couple of sounds become one with the wind. I will quote those passages if I can re-find them but right now other activities call.

The Masterworks

At the back of my copy of Clifford Simak's City, there is a two-page list of eighty nine (or thereabouts) titles in this SF Masterworks series. Only one, Tau Zero, is by Poul Anderson.

There are:

1 title by Robert Heinlein

1 by Larry Niven

1 by Frank Herbert

1 by Clifford Simak

2 by James Blish

2 by Greg Bear

2 by Michael Moorcock

2 by Kurt Vonnegut

2 by Ursula le Guin

2 by Richard Matheson

3 by Robert Silverberg

3 by Samuel R. Delaney

3 by Brian Aldiss

3 by Olaf Stapledon

3 by Frederik Pohl + 1 by Pohl & Cyril Kornbluth

5 by HG Wells

5 by Arthur C. Clarke

14 by Philip K. Dick

- and thirty other authors are represented by only a single title. (This includes two titles with two authors.) If anyone else has a copy of this edition, please check my numbers. I don't always get the same total when I re-count.

(Blish's two titles are his Tetralogy in a single volume and Volume III of his Trilogy, Volumes I and II being historical fiction and fantasy, respectively.)

Needless to say, I disagree with any scale of values that gives Anderson one volume and Dick fourteen.

Another Problem And The Fate Of Cities

Orbit Unlimited, part three.

This is yet another story built around:

a seemingly insurmountable technical problem;

what I have come to call an Andersonian moment of realization - in this case, one character leaps up, startling another, when he suddenly realizes what the solution must be;

a later disclosure of the solution to the readers;

meanwhile, a human problem that must also be recognized and overcome before the technical solution can be implemented.

However, since, in this case, both the technical problem and its solution are even more complicated than usual, I will not attempt to summarize them here but instead will advise blog readers to read or reread the story - which I always do anyway.

Meanwhile, in parallel reading, in the "FIRST TALE" in Clifford Simak's City, rapid transportation for commuting, replacement of agriculture by hydroponics and new easy building techniques enable populations to move to the countryside, making cities redundant. In Poul Anderson's The Peregrine, a similar situation is described as making the entire Earth a single city.

(If City continues to display such parallels, then I might continue to reread it.)

Who Represents SF?

My copy of Clifford Simak's City (SF Masterworks, Gollancz, London, 2010) has arrived and I am honestly uncertain as to whether I will summon up the motivation to reread it from cover to cover whereas, decades ago, I had rated it highly. I ordered City via eBay because recently on this blog I compared four stories set on Jupiter:

"Call Me Joe" by Poul Anderson

"Bridge" by James Blish

"Desertion" by Clifford Simak

"Skeleton Men of Jupiter" by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Of these stories, "Call Me Joe" is alone in not being part of a series - although three different Andersonian series do include Jupiter-related stories. "Bridge" was incorporated into Blish's They Shall Have Stars which I have recently reread with interest. "Desertion," which I was able to reread online, was incorporated into City, hence this purchase. 

The cover quotes Robert Heinlein as saying, "To read science fiction is to read Simak." What? I can think of several more significant names and would substitute Anderson for Simak. Heinlein himself - early Heinlein - is surely more important? Inside, Anthony Boucher, Isaac Asimov and James Gunn write highly of Simak. Asimov tried to imitate his style.

By contrast with this, James Blish, whom I rank with Anderson, did not respect Simak's works.

The Introduction by Gwyneth Jones quotes Heinlein:

"The reader who does not like Simak stories, does not like science fiction at all." (p. v)

Clearly untrue!

Jones informs us that Simak was:

"Never remotely interested in 'technology', or in factual 'science'..." (p. vii)

But science fiction is about the relationship of human beings not only to each other but also to the universe revealed by science including the potentialities of technology. Sf began with Frankenstein: can a scientist create life?

Simak himself is quoted as saying that, disillusioned by World War II and the Atomic Bomb, he wrote the City stories only to create a momentary refuge. When Jones expands on this, I find it difficult to paraphrase and therefore will have to quote at greater length than I would have preferred:

"For a moment, in these tales, a Man sits in his armchair, his loving Dog at his knee, a glass of whisky at his elbow; pondering the lives of small creatures in the quiet woods around his homestead. Asking nothing, demanding no reward or second chance for the failed experiment of human civilization; inventing nothing that isn't already held in this moment, he spins a dream of blameless wonderland." (ibid.)

Inventing nothing? That is not sf! Just before the passage quoted, Jones describes the City stories as having:

"...only the most perfunctory futuristic trappings." (ibid.)

That human civilization will fail, will even destroy itself, is one of the possibilities that has to be faced and is faced by sf writers, including Poul Anderson. Retreat to a homestead in the quiet woods in the present moment and not in any future endeavour is one possible response to this...

However, Jones goes further:

"Perhaps all of science fiction secretly lives in Simak's moment, and is made of the same stuff as City - a paradoxical hybrid of nihilism and wish-fulfilment; tempered by a stoic acceptance of the cold equations." (p. viii)

No, it does not. Acceptance yes but not either nihilism or wish-fulfilment. Poul Anderson takes us to the further reaches of space and time both in mythical worlds and in the physical universe insofar as it was understood at the time of writing.

Meanwhile here and now: for me, today has become very indulgent, staying in a dressing gown and adding to the blog instead of stirring out of the house. The next few days will have to involve a lot of physical exercise and much less computer time.

How Must-Read Writers Change

In my teens, I read everything that I could find that had been written by:

Isaac Asimov

James Blish

Robert Heinlein

Clifford Simak

CS Lewis (not just sf)

I think that that was the complete list.

Observations 

(i) I knew of Poul Anderson but he was not yet on the list. 

(ii) I knew of Ray Bradbury but he was not hard sf and was not on the list.

(iii) Larry Niven and SM Stirling were not around yet.

(iv) Heinlein had not gone down the tubes yet.

(v) I caught up with Simak with The Goblin Reservation (1968) and then stopped reading his novels as they were published, also feeling that he had become repetitive and self-parodying.

(vi) Now Poul Anderson is to be not only read but also endlessly reread.

There has been delay in me acquiring a copy of Simak's City. A friend who read contemporary fiction and no sf read at least some parts of City and wondered why I thought that it was any good. Rereading it now, I might agree with him.

The best sf is very good but. (I know that it is grammatically wrong to end a sentence with "...but." instead of with "but..." but occasionally it feels appropriate.)

Jupiter And Longevity

For the reason why James Blish's characters, unlike Poul Anderson's and Clifford Simak's, do not adapt human beings to live on Jupiter, see On Jupiter. And to reiterate:

"'We've sense enough - or humility enough, if you like that better - to know that we can't adapt men to a planet like Jupiter...'"

-James Blish, "Surface Tension" IN Blish, The Seedling Stars (London, 1972), pp. 107-180 AT p. 109.

However, in the stories in question, Anderson and Simak had still been thinking of Jupiter merely as a bigger planet with a solid surface whereas Blish was working with the updated idea of a "gas giant," a large planet with a turbulent atmosphere merely densening but never solidifying all the way down to the eventual planetary core.

Sf writers discuss the same questions but give different answers:

Heinlein's Howard Families breed for longevity; 

Blish's characters say that this is impossible but develop antiagathic drugs;

Anderson has antisenescence in the Technic History, anti-aging treatment in the Time Patrol and three different kinds of immortality in other works.

The Centrality Of Poul Anderson

Sometimes we focus on specific details in a single work by Poul Anderson, e.g., When They Sit Up. At other times, we seem not to focus on Anderson himself because we instead discuss, e.g., future histories in general, as in Narrators And Historians. However, from the perspective of this blog, Anderson is always at the centre. As a future historian, he is:

post-Wellsian and post-Stapledonian;

the fourth Campbell future historian, after Heinlein, Asimov and Blish.

But he also significantly extends all these traditions. Clifford Simak has been mentioned because his Jupiter story, "Desertion," bears some comparison with Jupiter stories by Blish and Anderson and because his City counts as a single-volume future history.

When discussing the future histories of Wells, Stapledon or Heinlein, Anderson is always important as not only succeeding but also surpassing all three! Mary Shelley initiated modern science fiction in 1818 with the question, "Would it be right to create a human being?" in her novel, Frankenstein, and Anderson both updated and re-presented this question in 2001 with his single-volume future history, Genesis. We discuss other authors, on this blog, in terms of their relationships to Anderson.

Following up on Narrators And Historians, a historiographer directly addresses his readers whereas an author who presents a fictionalized third person account of historical events steps aside to make way for the omniscient narrator (ON). Both of these literary processes occur in Anderson's Technic History.

Narrators And Historians

My copy of Clifford Simak's City ordered via eBay has yet to arrive by post although I have meanwhile reread the relevant story, "Desertion," on line. However, City bears another point of interest to which I will return. 

Who writes a future history series? - I mean apart from the author named on the cover. Do we imagine an historian or narrator living in a further future some time after the events recounted in the concluding instalment of the series? - someone who would be more specific than the omniscient narrator (ON) that:

is invisibly present in every third person narrative;

exists at no time or place;

expresses no opinions;

draws no attention to ON-self (there is no appropriate pronoun);

objectively recounts events, including experiences and thoughts of a viewpoint character;

is not to be identified with any character, not even with a hypothetical future historian whose name and other details remain unknown.

Such a historian would have a name, personal characteristics and opinions even if we never found out what they were whereas ON is an omnipresent, completely transparent, fictional device usually unnoticed because the reader's attention is entirely focused on what ON recounts.

So, apart from ON, is there a historical, spatiotemporally specific, narrator of a future history? Sometimes. yes. Sometimes, not. Sandra Miesel provides such a historian for Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History. Hloch of Stormgate Choth compiles and edits The Earth Book Of Stormgate but not the rest of Anderson's Technic History. But there are other historians in that series.

Philip Raven dreams Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come. One of the Last Men telepathically communicates Last And First Men to Olaf Stapledon although Stapledon thinks that he is writing speculative fiction.

The stories in City have individual introductions that bind them together and are written as from a later perspective which it will be interesting to reread so that is all for now, folks.

References

Our parallel rereadings of four works set on Jupiter has carried us to some strange places. First, the four works in question are:

a non-series story by Poul Anderson;

one of the two opening instalments of James Blish's Cities In Flight;

an instalment of Clifford Simak's City;

ERB's last John Carter story.

Secondly, however, we have also referred to:

the opening story of Anderson's Technic History;

the closing story of his Psychotechnic History;

the opening and closing stories of Blish's The Seedling Stars;

CS Lewis' "Forms of Things Unknown";

SM Stirling's Lords Of Creation Trilogy;

ERB's The Land That Time Forgot;

Anderson's The Devil's Game, Murder Bound and Mirkheim.

I think that that is the full list. In any case, it is all that I have time for tonight. Tomorrow, gym.

Clifford Simak's Jupiter, Part II

(Today, we have just seen a partial solar eclipse which seemed to me an anticlimax.)

We have reread to the end of Clifford Simak's "Desertion." Thus, of the four Jupiter narratives that were to be discussed, only those by Poul Anderson and James Blish remain to be reread to the end.

Like Anderson and Blish, Simak describes the Jovian environment as a perpetual maelstrom where the prevalent liquid is not water but ammonia. Like Anderson, Simak concludes his narrative with human minds in Jovian bodies happy to live on Jupiter. Unlike Anderson and Blish, Simak proposes not ice as a construction material but metal with increased electronic tension enclosed in tough quartz to protect it from the ammonia rain. 

Simak's characters possess  a technology that enables them to "convert" a human body into an organism able to live on another planet, then to re-convert that body back into human form! - so why are human explorers confined inside domes on the Jovian surface when they sound as if they are already Lords of Creation? Well, their conquest of Jupiter is delayed by the fact that those who are converted and released find their new existence so paradisal that they do not want to  return and do not even communicate this information to anyone else so that it seems to those back in the dome that the "converted" have been sent to their deaths. (In CS Lewis' "Forms of Things Unknown," several men in succession are sent to the Moon and do not return but, in that case, the reason is deadly.)

Anderson's character on Jupiter has to struggle to survive. He does not find himself in a paradise. But Anderson and Simak are a hard and a soft sf writer, respectively. (Lewis also "soft.")

Blish And Anderson On Jupiter V

Poul Anderson, Call Me Joe; James Blish, They Shall Have Stars. (Both here.)

Blish: Helmuth controls machines on Jupiter by waldos.

Anderson: Anglesey controls an organic body by psionics.

Blish: Helmuth works for the US which is still in the Cold War with the USSR.

Anderson: Anglesey works for the Psionics Corporation which is contracted by the Federation Science Authority.

Anderson's team on Jupiter V is all male.

Blish's Helmuth has an uneasy interaction with a woman colleague and is also in ham radio contact with men on other Jovian moons.

No doubt there is more but, here in Lancaster on Earth, the sun and other responsibilities beckon.

We will catch up with Clifford Simak's Jupiter later. (Too many texts to juggle at once.) (Simak's characters work for the Jovian Survey Commission.)

Clifford Simak's Jupiter

Four men, two by two, had gone into the howling maelstrom that was Jupiter and had not returned. They had walked into the keening gale—or rather, they had loped, bellies low against the ground, wet sides gleaming in the rain. 

For they did not go in the shape of men. 

Now the fifth man stood before the desk of Kent Fowler, head of Dome No. 3. Jovian Survey Commission. 

Under Fowler’s desk, old Towser scratched a flea, then settled down to sleep again.

-copied from clifford_d._simak_desertion.pdf

Although we await a copy of Clifford Simak's City ordered via eBay, we find the text online. You may read its opening paragraphs above.

Poul Anderson: "...wind...whooping...driving...ammonia dust..."

James Blish: "A screeching tornado..." (for both, see here)

Simak contributes: "...the howling maelstrom...," "...keening gale...," a ground and rain (above)

We notice:

similar descriptions in different words;

Simak's characters are not on Jupiter V but in a dome on the Jovian surface;

Simak's characters, like Anderson's Anglesey, venture onto the planetary surface "...not...in the shape of men";

Simak's characters include a dog - who will be important.

Is that enough for this evening? I need to do something different. 

Music is audible from somewhere out our back. Good night.

The Jupiter Project

We have been at Windermere for most of today and I will be with Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop for most of tomorrow.

This evening, I have revised and improved Comparing ERB. My new project is to reread and discuss the Jupiter stories by Poul Anderson, Clifford Simak, James Blish and ERB listed in that post. 

"Call Me Joe" by Anderson is the title story of Volume 1 of the NESFA The Collected Short Works Of Poul Anderson series. I have a copy.

"Desertion" by Simak is in his future history volume, City. I shed my copy when downsizing but have ordered a replacement on eBay.

"Bridge" by Blish was incorporated into his Cities In Flight, Volume I, They Shall Have Stars, as the five evenly numbered chapters and the concluding eleventh chapter. I have this novel as a separate volume and in the Cities In Flight omnibus edition.

"Skeleton Men of Jupiter" by ERB is in John Carter Of Mars and I have a copy.

Anderson's and Blish's characters experience Jupiter remotely from Jupiter V. Anderson's and Simak's characters decide to live on Jupiter. Sometimes story ideas in sf overlap.

See also:

On Jupiter And Jupiter V

Three On Jupiter

Comparing ERB

This blog focuses on Poul Anderson and refers to other imaginative sf writers. It contends that:

Anderson succeeds but also surpasses HG Wells, Olaf Stapledon and Robert Heinlein;

Anderson's works should be filmed but only if it can be done very well;

James Blish should be read also;

SM Stirling is a worthy successor of Anderson, particularly in the sub-genre of alternative histories;

a series, such as several by Anderson, can become a single, sometimes more elaborate, story behind the stories (see here).

Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) is comparable in imagination although not in literary quality. He is a persistent presence in popular consciousness if only because of Tarzan and, to a lesser extent, John Carter, just as Lewis Carroll is persistently present because of Alice in Wonderland. (Narnia, if not as widely recognized, is certainly up there.)

We have found a single ERBian allusion in one of Anderson's works whereas Stirling's Lords Of Creation Trilogy is retro-sf explicitly inspired by ERB and other pulp writers.

There could be an anthology of stories set on Jupiter:

"Call Me Joe" by Poul Anderson

"Desertion" by Clifford Simak (from City)

"Bridge" by James Blish (from Cities In Flight)

"Skeleton Men of Jupiter" by ERB (from John Carter Of Mars)

James Blish could not understand why I would include the ERB story. For completeness, for nostalgia and for the absurdity of ERB's scientific explanation of human life on the Jovian surface.

ERB's Martian series is interestingly elaborate:

Volumes

I-III: narrated by Carter.

IV: Carter's son.

V: Carter's daughter.

VI: the second Earthman on Mars, Ulysses Paxton.

VII: a Martian warrior whose story is transmitted to Earth by Paxton on the Gridley Wave which is also used to communicate with Pelucidar which is at the Earth's Core and is visited by Tarzan!

X: a second Martian warrior whose story is transmitted as above.

VIII, IX and XI: narrated by Carter, featuring his granddaughter and trips to a Martian moon and Jupiter.

Also:

four novels and one novelette about Carson Napier who aims for Mars but crash-lands on Venus;

two novelettes about a soldier who travels to the extra-solar planet, Poloda, in the same way that Carter had travelled to Mars;

a future history trilogy in which a spaceship launched from Earth towards Carter's Mars is sabotaged and crash-lands on the Moon, causing a Lunar invasion of Earth;

information, in one Martian book, that there are also Mercurians.

But it all sounds better than it reads, I think.

(We are tired from a day-trip to York and you are lucky to receive this post which I mentally drafted on the return journey!)