Two novels of unparalleled adventure in one superbly illustrated volume - created especially for the Science Fiction Book Club!

“In the center of the room was a huge tank about four feet high from which were emerging hideous monstrosities almost beyond the powers of the human imagination . . . one was only a great mass of living flesh with an eye somewhere and a single hand. Another had developed with its arms and legs transposed ...!”
Edgar Rice Burroughs was gifted with a limitless imagination. With it he created an entire culture for a vast planet - many races, many peoples, strange plants and stranger creatures, an entire history stretching back through eons of time, and extending itself into the far future ... with scientific inventions that are only dreamed of in our own time.
In SWORDS OF MARS, the first of the two complete novels included in this selection, John Carter, determined to stamp out the practice of assassination on Mars, travels to the city where the dreaded assassins’ guild has its headquarters. There he encounters the brilliant and evil inventor Fal Sivas, who has created a ship which for the first time can leave the planet to visit the moons of Mars. And there John Carter learns that Ur Jan, the insidious leader of the assassins, has abducted the incomparable princess Dejah Thoris ...
In SYNTHETIC MEN OF MARS, John Carter sets out to find Ras Thavas, the only man on the planet able to heal the broken body of his beloved wife. In his way stand miles of peril-ous terrain, an army of sword-wield-ing zombies, and a horde of giant birds protecting the doctor’s hidden kingdom. Carter braves all these dan-gers before he finally finds Ras Thavas - only to discover that the scientist is trapped by a horror he himself cre¬ated: a growing, indestructible tissue which threatens to engulf the secret city and eventually the entire planet.