The Master Mind of Mars

The Master Mind of Mars is a science fantasy novel by the American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the sixth book of his Barsoom series.

It is the second time Burroughs changed the series' hero, and this time he moved a long way from John Carter: Paxton is a new arrival on Mars, ignorant of its languages and customs, and his education in them is the book's subject. Ras Thavas runs a business transplanting the brains of rich old Martians into young bodies bought for the purpose, and he trains Paxton as an assistant on the understanding that the same operation will eventually be performed for him. Paxton agrees because he has fallen in love with Valla Dia, one of the scientist's victims, whose body has been taken for Xaxa, the empress of Phundahl, and who can only be restored if Ras Thavas is made to keep his word. The hunting and travelling that follow are the familiar business of the series, but the novel is unusual in the Barsoom books for keeping its interest fixed on a medical horror rather than a war. Burroughs' working titles were A Weird Adventure on Mars and Vad Varo of Barsoom; he could not place the story with his usual magazines, and it was Hugo Gernsback who took it for Amazing Stories Annual in 1927 and chose the title the book still carries. The first edition was published by A. C. McClurg in 1928.