Escape from the humdrum Earth with The Swordsman of Mars as Harry Thorne, American, pits himself against the best duellists and the most devilish monsters of the Red Planet in this action-packed book of adventure, romance, and derring-do on a fantastic world.

Edgar Rice Burroughs was, without a doubt, the most famous author of fantasy-adventure. Though his imitators were legion, only one man was able to compete successfully with Burroughs. He was Otis Adelbert Kline.

Though they wrote for the same publishers, and were filmed by the same movie studios, Kline never meant to compete with Burroughs. He admired the author, and it was his enthusiasm for that type of story that inspired him to create his own universe of planets in peril, peopled by swashbuckling planeteers and stimulating sirens.

En garde! You have in hand The Swordsman of Mars. This is not the science-fiction of computers and analogs. There will be no roar of rockets. This is for the reader who wants a free-fall flight in fantastic adventure with star-flung heroes fighting furiously for honor on worlds without it, and beautiful maidens who know there is a fate worse than death! This is for the reader who likes his thrills unique, and his fiction spellbinding from first page to last.

About Vintage Science Fiction Pulps:

A new revolution was underway at the start of the 1940s in America--a paperback revolution that would change the way publishers would produce and distribute books and the reading public would consume them. In 1939 a new publishing company--Pocket Books--stormed onto the scene with the publication of its first paperbound book. Unlike hardback books, these pulp paperbacks were available in drugstores, newsstands, bus and train stations, and cigar shops. The American public could not get enough of them. The popular pulp genres reflected the tastes of Americans during World War II--mysteries, "sleaze", thrillers, and "hardboiled detective" stories were all the rage.

In the early 1950s new pulp fiction subgenres emerged--science fiction, lesbian fiction, juvenile delinquent and "sleaze", for instance--that would tantalize readers with gritty, realistic and lurid stories never seen before. Publishers had come to realize that sex sells. In a competitive frenzy for readers, they tossed away their staid and straightforward cover images for alluring covers that frequently featured a sexy woman in some form of undress, along with a suggestive tag line that promised stories of sex and violence within the covers. Before long, vintage pulps with sensational covers had completely taken over the paperback racks and cash registers. To this day, the pulp cover art of these vintage paperback books are just as sought after as the books themselves were sixty years ago.

We are excited to make these wonderful pulp fiction stories available in ebook format to new generations of readers, as a new revolution--the ebook revolution--is in full swing. We hope you will enjoy this nostalgic look back at a period in American history when dames were dangerous, tough-guys were deadly, dolls were delicious and spacemen were downright daring!

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