The second Venus book is little better than the first. Burroughs eschews plot and focuses on action alone. It was serialized, so naturally each chapter ends on a cliffhanger. For example:
Suddenly the expression on her face changed, and she seized my arm with a little cry of alarm. "Look, Carson! What is that?"That's the end of chapter 12! Be sure to pick up next week's issue of Argosy.
As in the previous book, Carson Napier spends the whole book jaunting around Amtor (Venus) meeting new people and new beasts, and killing them. He saves Duare, the daughter of the jong of Vepaja. He and Duare are taken prisoner by Skor, an evil scientist who commands an army of the undead. Carson escapes with the help of Nalte, another prisoner. Carson wants to rescue Duare, and Nalte assents, but it becomes increasingly clear that Duare must certainly be dead.
Carson and Nalte find their way to Havatoo, an idyllic city whose citizens have used eugenics to improve themselves. Burroughs was writing in 1933, before the effects of eugenics and Nazism were unleashed upon the world, but it's disturbing nonetheless. The inhabitants of Havatoo acknowledge that their current state was only achieved through brutality and bloodshed, and they speak highly of the leader who started the eugenics program. They call him Mankar the Bloody, or Mankar the Savior:
He encouraged the raising of children by people whom these scientists passed as fit to raise children, and he forbade all others to bear children. He saw to it that the physically, morally, or mentally defective were rendered incapable of bringing their like into the world; and no defective infant was allowed to live.Carson and Nalte are judged by a panel of scientists to determine if they are fit to live. Nalte is judged marginal but acceptable; Carson is sentenced to death until his knowledge of astronomy and stellar mechanics wins him a reprieve.
Despite the cruelty of their justice, Burroughs portrays Havatoo positively. The citizens like their system; they laugh at Carson's "weak sentimentalism" and prefer the harsh policy that "it is better to do an injustice to a single individual than to risk the safety and welfare of many." It is disturbing to see eugenics portrayed so positively.
Lost on Venus is out of copyright in Australia but not the United States. You can read it online at Project Gutenberg of Australia.
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