Mars: The Home Front
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| "Mars: The Home Front" | |
|---|---|
| Short story by George Alec Effinger | |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Publication | |
| Published in | War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches |
| Publication type | Book |
| Publisher | Bantam Spectra |
| Media type | Print (Anthology) |
| Publication date | June, 1996 |
"Mars: The Home Front" is a short story by American writer
Plot summary
The story is narrated first-person, in the style of Burroughs' writing, by an unnamed man who has just returned to his
For half a (Martian) day they fly over an unrecognized portion of Barsoom, finally coming to rest above a complex built around a massive pit. There, they are captured by a band of
The narration again assumes Carter's nephew, who explains that he must wait to tell the rest of the story, but gives a brief overview in which Bas-ok betrayed Carter to the sarmaks and was killed for it; and John Carter, after a battle in the sarmaks' feeding chamber, rescued Dejah Thoris and destroyed the cylinder-launching cannon after the tenth blast (explaining why only ten cylinders landed on Earth in The War of the Worlds), and finally led "the navy of Helium...the combined forces of the green men of Thark and Warhoon, the black First Born, and red men from many cities and nations" against the sarmaks. The narration concludes with assurance of Carter's victory.
Significance
"Mars: The Home Front" is one of the few sources to give a name to the Martians of The War of the Worlds (the 1988 TV show called them the Mor-Taxans). The name "sarmak" reappears in the Wold Newton Universe as well as a number of articles in ERBzine, the official Edgar Rice Burroughs fanzine.[1][original research?]
The character of Bas-ok draws comparisons between the sarmaks and the kaldanes, another Martian race of Barsoom; in the Wold Newton Universe, the kaldanes are mutated sarmaks, with both possibly descended from Cthulhuoids.[2]
A number of comparisons have also been drawn to Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic series. The first issue of the second volume had Carter, along with Gullivar Jones, leading an alliance of Martians (including those from Barsoom) in the final assault against the launching cannon of Wells' Martians. In it, a conversation between Carter and Jones indicates that something has happened to Dejah Thoris during the war; Jess Nevins' semi-official annotations for the series suggest that Moore was referencing her abduction in "The Home Front".[3] Others have noted that "It's tempting, my god but it's tempting, to try and read Effinger's short story and Alan Moore's comic together. Effinger's is the beginning, and Moore gives us the end, leaving only a detailed middle for us to imagine".[4]
The concept of the Martians of Wells and Burroughs coexisting (and fighting) on the same fictional Mars was also used in
In 2017, Stephen Baxter published his own sequel to The War of the Worlds, The Massacre of Mankind. Baxter read Global Dispatches before writing his novel; in Baxter's work, the Martian invasion occurred in 1907, and by the 1920s Edgar Rice Burroughs is known for his "sagas of human heroes biffling the Martians on their own home soil".[5]