AMTOR

The Amtor or Venus series is a science fantasy series consisting of four novels and one novelette written by American author Edgar Rice Burroughs. Most of the stories were first serialized in '' Argosy'', an American pulp magazine. It is sometimes known as the Carson Napier of Venus series, after its main character, Carson Napier. Napier attempted a solo voyage to Mars, but, because of mistaken navigational calculations, he finds himself heading toward the planet Venus instead. The novels, part of the sword and planet subgenre of science fiction, follow earthman Napier's fantastic adventures after he crash-lands on Venus, called Amtor by its human-like inhabitants. Unlike Barsoom, the desert planet of Mars, these stories are set upon a waterworld like Earth. Most of the events of the series take place on the island of Vepaja, the kingdom of Korva on the island of Anlap, and the city-states of Havatoo and Kormor on the tropical continent north of Vepaja.

As is common in Burroughs's works, the hero is bold and daring, and quickly wins the heart of the Vepajan princess (or ''janjong'') Duare, though class prejudices long inhibit her from expressing her love. Napier meets many varied people, including the Vepajans, refugees from an overthrown empire; the Thorists, thinly disguised communists who ran the Vepajans out of what is now the Thoran empire; pirates; the super-scientific eugenicists of Havatoo; the zombies of Kormor; the fascistic Zanis of Korva; and the hideous Cloud People.

In the course of his adventures within the series, Napier becomes a pirate (twice), escapes from the dread Room of the Seven Doors, and is finally made a prince, or ''tanjong'', of Korva after the overthrow of the Zanis. Napier also rescues princesses from incomparable dangers innumerable times.

Amtorian geography

Amtor is a verdant world shielded from the heat of the Sun by a (nearly) perpetual cloud cover. The portion depicted, largely confined to the southern hemisphere's temperate zone (or Trabol, as it is known to its inhabitants), is primarily oceanic, but includes two continents and a number of large islands.

The main continent is Thora, extending also far into the tropical zone of Strabol and the arctic zone of Karbol—possibly as far as the south pole. The Great and Small Circles correspond to the Antarctic Circle and Tropic of Capricorn on Earth (although Burroughs does erroneously state in the second book, ''Lost on Venus,'' that the Small Circle is the equator, and Strabol in the Northern Hemisphere, forgetting that the tropics are on both sides of the equator). Several smaller land masses projecting into Trabol from Karbol appear to be peninsular extensions of Thora; these include Bombaj, Ator, Rovlap, Vodaro, and Vaxlap. Interspersed among these are the great islands of Ganfal, Malpi, Donuk, Movis, Nor, Anlap, Vepaja, Trambol, and Zanbo. The unnamed second continent is a largely tropical landmass north of Vepaja and west of Thora.

Amtorian vegetation, particularly on Vepaja, tends to be gigantic. Vepaja is notable for the enormous forests Napier first encounters upon his arrival, with trees reaching into the inner cloud envelope. Elsewhere, the geography of Amtor is more varied, and he also travels through a dismal pine forest, grassland plains, glacial valleys, and several mountain ranges. Amtorian animals likewise tend to be larger than their Earthly equivalents, and the large species are much more common than they are on Earth, which makes them much more dangerous than Earth fauna and has helped limit exploration of the planet by its natives.

The other impediment to communication, Amtor's quirky cartography, stems from the inhabitants' bizarre cosmology, which at least in the southern hemisphere where Napier lands holds that the world is a flat disc floating on a burning sea of lava, with a rim of ice and a center of fire. As the "rim" is actually the south pole, and the "center" the equator, Amtorians have an extraordinarily distorted, backward view of their planet's surface, and their maps are warped accordingly. Due to the near-perpetual overcast, they have no celestial markers to correct their geographical mismeasurements, let alone on which to base the concepts of a Solar System, other worlds, or the stars. On those rare occasions when the sun does appear through a hole in the clouds, its searing light and heat (twice that on Earth) starts to burn everything; at night, when a hole reveals a few stars, the Amtorians think they are "sparks" from the lava sea supposedly surrounding the planet, and are thus unaware that they are fixed, and have never tried plotting them. All this also means that, unlike Napier, they do not suspect that the northern hemisphere even exists. Napier tries to correct them, but they subscribe to a "theory of relative distance" formulated by one of their scientists, Klufar, and would not accept Napier's correction. The difference between the observed and theoretical versions of geography are reconciled by a pseudo-scientific "Theory of Relativity of Distance", which resolves the problem by multiplying by the square root of minus one. Napier finds it difficult to counter this rationale, noting that "You cannot argue with a man who can multiply by the square root of minus one." Such wry digs are typical of the series. Ironically, Napier finds the simpler Thorans more amenable to his ideas (including believing that he came from another planet) than the more sophisticated Vepajans.

Amtorian culture

Aside from the sophisticated, cultured, and advanced Vepajans that Napier first meets, the human natives of Amtor are generally inhospitable, often trying to murder Napier, kidnap his princess, or both. Their nations are rather loosely connected, partly because the geography is strewn with impassable mountains, impenetrable forests, and unnavigable seas (which Napier nevertheless passes, penetrates, and navigates), and partly because Amtorian maps are inaccurate. In spite of their relative isolation from each other, a worldwide language is current among all people. The level of culture runs the spectrum from savagery to advanced technology; some nations possess a longevity serum, atomic ray guns, and nuclear powered ships. (Burroughs speculated on Element 93 being used for nuclear power, specifically, for RTGs; in reality, certain uranium and plutonium isotopes are used.) Radio is unknown (the ships are reduced to communicating by flags), and there are no native aircraft. In fact, Napier himself designs and builds the first based on Earth technology, which if anything, is an improvement over Earth aircraft in its use of an Amtorian RTG, which enables it to fly silently, hover, and to run almost indefinitely without refueling.

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