Lost on Venus [Paperback]

Originally published as a serial in "Argosy Weekly" in 1933, this pulp fiction adventure is communicated to ERB by Napier himself, using telepathy (I liked the Gridley from the Barsoom books better). Carson is held captive and is put in a room where there are seven doors: one leads to escape, the rest to horrible deaths. This is a fairly interesting start to the story and ERB has some fun coming up with a way for his hero to get out of this predicament. Carson, who is given the name Albargan ("No-Hair-Man") by the natives, catches up with Duare, who keeps insisting that he is too low to speak to her since she is a janjong and he is a nobody. There are some interesting science fiction notions, as when Carson considers the Amtorian theory of the cosmos, which is totally wrong since the planet's constant cloud cover keeps them from seeing anything else in the solar system.

Even though you find all of the standard Burroughs elements from the romantic adventure formula that made him famous as Carson pursues Duare, "Lost on Venus" really is more of a political polemic than his standard stories. This book continues the political satire of the series with the Thorists clearly intended to represent the Communists and it is hard not to see the scientifically advanced city of Havatoo as representing an Aryan wonderland in the Nazi tradition (later on in the series ERB clearly takes aim at Mussolini's brand of fascism as well). "Pirates of Venus" is not really considered a dystopian novel, but in terms of predicting the political evils that would lead to World War II, Burroughs was fairly accurate. This was the last of the major series that ERB created and during the 1930s it really represented his best work, which would seem to indicate that his political passions in the Venus books worked to his advantage.