by Michael Moorcock, with an introduction by Samuel R. Delany

Barbarians of Mars!

Once an American physicist whose experiments in matter transmission catapulted him across space and time, Michael Kane has grown comfortable in his new role as a prince of ancient Mars. Yet now a new peril threatens his adopted homeland—a plague called the Green Death, spread by zealots who are more machines than men. In order to find a cure, Kane and his Blue Giant comrade Hool Haji will need to cross oceans, battle hideous mutants and barbarians, and perhaps even sacrifice his adopted kingdom. But can all the swords and airships in the world prevail against an enemy that cannot be killed?

The creator of Elric of Melniboné, Michael Moorcock remains one of the most honored science fiction and fantasy authors of all time. With Kane of Old Mars, Moorcock’s Eternal Champion returns with interplanetary adventure in the best Edgar Rice Burroughs tradition.

“Michael Moorcock [was] the most influential editor of science fiction in the English-speaking world... one of the important writers not just to cross the barrier between science fiction and literature but to melt it—as with a blowtorch! No one had a greater impact on the field than Moorcock.” —Samuel R. Delany, Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning author of Dhalgren

Though Masters of the Pit reads as a thrilling self-contained novel, its characters and locales are also featured in City of the Beast and Lord of the Spiders, both previously released under the Planet Stories line.

160-page softcover trade paperback
ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-104-6

About the Author

Michael Moorcock (1939– ) has been recognized since the 1960s as one of the most important speculative fiction writers alive. Born in London, Moorcock began editing the magazine Tarzan Adventures at the age of 15, and quickly gained notoriety for his character Elric of Melniboné, an anti-hero written as a deliberate reversal of recurring themes he saw in the writings of authors like J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard. Many of his works, including both the Elric books and those of his popular androgynous secret agent Jerry Cornelius, are tied together around the concept of the Eternal Champion, a warrior whose many incarnations battle to maintain the balance between Law and Chaos in the multiverse, a term popularized by Moorcock referring to many overlapping dimensions or realities. In addition, Moorcock has also been recognized for his non-genre literary work, and his influence today extends into music, film, and popular culture. His writing has won numerous critical accolades, including the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement award, and in 2002 he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.