this time making his hero Gahan of Gathol, a Martian noble, with the heroine this time Tara of Helium, the younger sister of Carthoris. Again, not mere action and adventure, but wondrous creations of imagination mark the book. The outstanding creations of CHESSMEN may well be the rykors and the kaldanes, inhabitants of the city of Bantoom.

Strange symbiotes, these two races, the rykors resemble headless humans, while the kaldanes are little more than animated heads, provided by evolution with chelae with which they attach themselves to rykors and control the bodies. A kaldane might change bodies any time he felt like it, even "being" a man one day and a woman the next!

THE MASTER MIND OF MARS, next in the series, appeared in the AMAZING STORIES ANNUAL for 1927, and introduces a marvelous new hero in the person of Ulysses S. Paxton, a U.S. Army captain apparently killed in the trenches in World War I, but whisked miraculously, instead, to Mars. Here he experiences a strange adventure with Ras Thavas, a brilliant Martian surgeon who has perfected the surgical transfer of the brain from one human to another. Valla Dia, a lovely Martian girl, is victimized by Ras Thavas, being forced into an exchange of bodies with the hideous Queen Xaxa. The action which ensues leads ultimately to the regaining by Valla Dia of her rightful body, and her marriage to Paxton (who has been dubbed with the Barsoomian appellation of Vad Varo).

The seventh book of the series, A FIGHTING MAN OF MARS, is reported to Earth via a sort of super radio called the Gridley Wave. The narration is somewhat

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