Dr. Abner Perry has invented a high-calibration digging machine affectionately called 'The Iron Mole'. While testing his invention with his financial backer and former student David Innes, the machine malfunctions and the pair end up burrowing deep into the earth to emerge in Pellucidar, a lush underground cavern filled with giant prehistoric creatures. While fleeing one such creature, Dr. Perry and David are captured by strange inhuman soldiers, called Sagoths, and placed with other human slaves, where they meet Ghak and the beautiful Princess Dia. Dia is kidnapped by another human named Hoojah the Sly One, while Dr. Perry, David and the slaves are taken to the city of the Majars, large telepathic bird-like creatures that rule the underground world. While David is sent to repair the walls that protect the city from the molten lava, Dr. Perry is sent to transcribe books in the Majar's library. David is able to escape his captors and finds a secret passage out of the Majar city. Outside, David meets Ra, the chief of a human tribe. David suggests that Ra organize the tribes to defeat the Majar but Ra shows David the Majar's true power by taking him to the Majar's grotto where he witnesses one of the Majars hypnotize a female slave before swooping down and carrying her off in its powerful talons. While sneaking back into the city, David and Ra are captured and forced to battle a huge monster but they prevail, killing a Majar in the process. Seeing that the Majar are not invincible, the slaves revolt, allowing David and Ra to escape with Ghak and Dr. Perry. Along the way, Dr. Perry shows David the 'secret of the Majar', a nursery where all the Majar are born. David vows to destroy the Majars but first, he must rescue Dia from Jubal the Ugly One. With the aid of Ra and Ghak, David unites the human tribes and arms them with primitive weapons but the telepathic Majar are prepared for their attack. At first, the battle doesn't go well, with Dia and Dr. Perry being captured but Ra is able to destroy the nursery by unleashing the lava at the cost of his own life. Hypnotized by a Majar, Dia is about to be killed when David and the other humans arrive to save her and Dr. Perry. As the humans flee the city, it is consumed by lava, killing all the Majar. Returning to the surface, David asks Dia to come with him but she says she cannot and the two sadly part company.
WE MUST HAVE TRAVELED SEVERAL MILES THROUGH the dark and dismal wood when we came suddenly upon a dense village built high among the branches of the trees. As we approached it my escort broke into wild shouting which was immediately answered from within, and a moment later a swarm of creatures of the same strange race as those who had captured me poured out to meet us. Again I was the center of a wildly chattering horde. I was pulled this way and that. Pinched, pounded, and thumped until I was black and blue, yet I do not think that their treatment was dictated by either cruelty or malice--I was a curiosity, a freak, a new plaything, and their childish minds required the added evidence of all their senses to back up the testimony of their eyes.
Presently they dragged me within the village, which consisted of several hundred rude shelters of boughs and leaves supported upon the branches of the trees.
Between the huts, which sometimes formed crooked streets, were dead branches and the trunks of small trees which connected the huts upon one tree to those within adjoining trees; the whole network of huts and pathways forming an almost solid flooring a good fifty feet above the ground.
Synopsis
Dr. Abner Perry has invented a high-calibration digging machine affectionately called 'The Iron Mole'. While testing his invention with his financial backer and former student David Innes, the machine malfunctions and the pair end up burrowing deep into the earth to emerge in Pellucidar, a lush underground cavern filled with giant prehistoric creatures. While fleeing one such creature, Dr. Perry and David are captured by strange inhuman soldiers, called Sagoths, and placed with other human slaves, where they meet Ghak and the beautiful Princess Dia. Dia is kidnapped by another human named Hoojah the Sly One, while Dr. Perry, David and the slaves are taken to the city of the Majars, large telepathic bird-like creatures that rule the underground world.
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE 2
Chapter I -- TOWARD THE ETERNAL FIRES 3
Chapter II -- A STRANGE WORLD 9
Chapter III -- A CHANGE OF MASTERS 16
Chapter IV -- DIAN THE BEAUTIFUL 21
Chapter V -- SLAVES 27
Chapter VI -- THE BEGINNING OF HORROR 33
Chapter VII -- FREEDOM 37
Chapter VIII -- THE MAHAR TEMPLE 41
Chapter IX -- THE FACE OF DEATH 49
Chapter X -- PHUTRA AGAIN 54
Chapter XI -- FOUR DEAD MAHARS 62
Chapter XII -- PURSUIT 66
Chapter XIII -- THE SLY ONE 69
Chapter XIV -- THE GARDEN OF EDEN 72
Chapter XV -- BACK TO EARTH 84
About the Author
Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) was born in Chicago, Illinois, into a prosperous family. His father, George Tyler Burroughs, was a Civil War veteran. To glamourize his own origins, Burroughs has claimed that he was born in Peking at the time that his father was military advicer to the Empress of China, and lived there, in the Forbidden City, until Burroughs was ten years old. Burroughs attended several private schools, including the Michigan Military Academy, Orchar Lake (1892-95), where he was instructor and assistant commandant (1895-96). He served in the 7th Cavalry in the Arizona Territory (1896-97) and Illinois Reserve Militia (1918-19). During this period he met and heard stories of men who had fought Sioux and Apache. After military career Burroughs was owner of a stationery store in Pocatello, Idaho (1898), and associated with American Battery Company, Chicago (1899-03). In 1900 he married Emma Centennia Hulbert (divorced in 1934); they had two sons and one daughter).
The next ten years the family lived near poverty. Burroughs was associated with Sweetser-Burroughs Mining Company in Idaho (1903-04), a railroad policeman in Salt Lake, Utah (1904), a manager of stenographic department at Sears, Roebuck and Company in Chicago (1906-08), a partner of an advertising agency (1908-09), an office manager (1909), a partner of a sales firm (1910-11). In 1910-11 Burroughs worked for Champlain Yardley Company, and from 1912 to 1913 he was manager of System Service Bureau.
Before Tarzan Burroughs led a life full of failures. The turning point came when he started to write for pulps at the age of 35 - firmly convinced that he could write as rotten stuff as published in pulp fiction magazines. His first professional sale was 'Under the Moons of Mars', serialized in 1912. It introduced the popular invincible hero John Carter. He is transported to Mars apparently by astral projection, following a battle with Apaches in Arizona. Carter's adventures were published in book form under the title A PRINCESS OF MARS in 1917. The 'Martian' series eventually reached eleven books. Other popular series from Burroughs's pen were The Carson of Venus books, blending romance and comedy, the Pellucidar tales, located inside the Earth, and The Land That Time Forgot trilogy - totally some 68 titles.
