Fandom Pulse interviews The Legend Chuck Dixon about his new book, GUNS OF MARS:
Fandom Pulse (FP): You just released a new book, Guns of Mars, what is it about?
Chuck Dixon: It’s set on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars series, set a thousand years after the last book.
Kal Keddiq is a thark on the run from his own tribe. A nameless bounty hunter is pursuing over the dying planet. But Kal’s not going back to face Warhoon justice without a fight. Think of the Mars series retold as an Italian western.
FP: What made you want to tell a story set on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom?
Chuck: I ate those books up as a kid. I spent a summer reading the entire Mars series and Lord of the Rings. After each Tolkien book I’d take a break and read a few of the John Carters before digging back into Middle-earth.
The idea for Guns of Mars occurred to me years ago, always in the back of my head. I finally had to write it just to get it out of my system. And it was intimidating. Burroughs was one hell of a writer and I wanted to try and match his skill at writing action and that wonderful sense of discovery that was such a feature of his work.
FP: How connected is this book to Burroughs’ Barsoom series?
Chuck: John Carter, Dejah Thoris, Tars Tarkas and the rest are long gone. The dying plant that ERB presented is now a millennium further along the doom spiral. There’s really very little to connect this to the series other than the setting, place names, flora and fauna.
FP: Do you have plans to do more stories set on Barsoom?
Chuck: I think this is it. A one-off.
Read the rest of the interview at Fandom Pulse.