The Barsoomian Menace: Carter and the Tharks

[Jedi Master Spock]

I happened to see this thread recently. I thought there was something missing.

With all the attention paid to giant superhumans, including the 7-8 foot tall Space Marines of WH40K (and similarly sized Orks), the 8-9 foot tall Elementals of BT, the 10 foot tall Na'vi of Avatar, trolls, giants, and what-not, you'd think that the Barsoomians would be a staple of comparison. It's an old enough series that the relevant evidence is easy to look up.

Edgar Rice Burroughs's Martians come in several colors. The big scary ones are green.

They're sneaky:

Had not the rifle of the leader of the party swung from its fastenings beside his saddle in such a way as to strike against the butt of his great metal-shod spear I should have snuffed out without ever knowing that death was near me. But the little sound caused me to turn, and there upon me, not ten feet from my breast, was the point of that huge spear, a spear forty feet long, tipped with gleaming metal, and held low at the side of a mounted replica of the little devils I had been watching.

Note the forty foot long spear that this warrior wields adeptly. Even entire armies of them, in fact, are quite sneaky:

We made a most imposing and awe-inspiring spectacle as we strung out across the yellow landscape; the two hundred and fifty ornate and brightly colored chariots, preceded by an advance guard of some two hundred mounted warriors and chieftains riding five abreast and one hundred yards apart, and followed by a like number in the same formation, with a score or more of flankers on either side; the fifty extra mastodons, or heavy draught animals, known as zitidars, and the five or six hundred extra thoats of the warriors running loose within the hollow square formed by the surrounding warriors.

...

The enormous broad tires of the chariots and the padded feet of the animals brought forth no sound from the moss-covered sea bottom; and so we moved in utter silence, like some huge phantasmagoria, except when the stillness was broken by the guttural growling of a goaded zitidar, or the squealing of fighting thoats. The green Martians converse but little, and then usually in monosyllables, low and like the faint rumbling of distant thunder. We traversed a trackless waste of moss which, bending to the pressure of broad tire or padded foot, rose up again behind us, leaving no sign that we had passed. We might indeed have been the wraiths of the departed dead upon the dead sea of that dying planet for all the sound or sign we made in passing.

They're also big:

The man himself, for such I may call him, was fully fifteen feet in height and, on Earth, would have weighed some four hundred pounds. He sat his mount as we sit a horse, grasping the animal's barrel with his lower limbs, while the hands of his two right arms held his immense spear low at the side of his mount; his two left arms were outstretched laterally to help preserve his balance, the thing he rode having neither bridle or reins of any description for guidance.

Tars Tarkas: 4.5m tall, looming quite a bit taller than a Na'vi (if even thinner). If you like, you can discuss the strength that's required to manipulate with two right hands a forty foot spear with the agility that the green Martians can manage.

The adult females ranged in height from ten to twelve feet.

Green Martian women: 3-3.6m tall.

Scarcely had his hideous laugh rang out but once, when I was upon him. The brute was twelve feet in height and armed to the teeth, but I believe that I could have accounted for the whole roomful in the terrific intensity of my rage.

Young male, 3.6m.

Kantos Kan had fought several times during the day and like myself had always proven victorious, but occasionally by the smallest of margins, especially when pitted against the green warriors. I had little hope that he could best his giant adversary who had mowed down all before him during the day. The fellow towered nearly sixteen feet in height, while Kantos Kan was some inches under six feet.

Unknown green warrior, 4.8m.

Now, we do have one issue: John Carter can KO a green Martian with one punch:

As he banged me down upon my feet his face was bent close to mine and I did the only thing a gentleman might do under the circumstances of brutality, boorishness, and lack of consideration for a stranger's rights; I swung my fist squarely to his jaw and he went down like a felled ox. As he sunk to the floor I wheeled around with my back toward the nearest desk, expecting to be overwhelmed by the vengeance of his fellows, but determined to give them as good a battle as the unequal odds would permit before I gave up my life.

Well, sometimes. The twelve foot unnamed youth is a little more resistant than the first green Martian he fights:

Springing upward, I struck him full in the face as he turned at my warning cry and then as he drew his short-sword I drew mine and sprang up again upon his breast, hooking one leg over the butt of his pistol and grasping one of his huge tusks with my left hand while I delivered blow after blow upon his enormous chest.

But what exactly is John Carter? He's an immortal soldier who has mysteriously travelled in spirit to Mars. Upon arriving there, however, he's capable of immense feats of strength:

I saw what they were after, and gathering myself together I "sakked" with such marvelous success that I cleared a good hundred and fifty feet; nor did I this time, lose my equilibrium, but landed squarely upon my feet without falling.

John Carter performs a long jump of one hundred fifty feet. Let me clarify that. John Carter crouches down and leaps. He makes a standing long jump of one hundred fifty feet. On Earth, this would be equivalent to a seventeen meter long jump. The world record for a running long jump is less than nine meters. The world record for a standing long jump is about 3.7 meters. John Carter's form being unlikely to be better than an Olympic athlete's, we're left with the unfortunate conclusion that whoever and whatever John Carter is, the immortal interplanetary soldier finds himself >4.6 times stronger than normal human olympic athletes while on Mars. He regularly jumps fifty feet without meaning to - ten times as much as he should.

At least, his fast-twitch muscles are, and he's trained as a fighter, not an athlete. No wonder he can knock a Martian out with one punch. Dude probably hits about ten times as hard as Mike Tyson. How the heck does a green Martian youth, barely reached his adult height (only 12 feet tall!) take that to the face and keep fighting? We've gone from "oh, weak!" to "wow, tough!" in one step.

If we are to take the traditional VS approach to this matter, we confront this sudden shift: John Carter doesn't seem like a superman because the Martians are terribly weak. Instead, John Carter seems like a superman because following his spirit-journey to Mars, he is in fact incredibly powerfully strong.

And yet, how strong are the Martians? Back to the nameless twelve-foot tall warrior:

He could not use his short-sword to advantage because I was too close to him, nor could he draw his pistol, which he attempted to do in direct opposition to Martian custom which says that you may not fight a fellow warrior in private combat with any other than the weapon with which you are attacked. In fact he could do nothing but make a wild and futile attempt to dislodge me. With all his immense bulk he was little if any stronger than I, and it was but the matter of a moment or two before he sank, bleeding and lifeless, to the floor.

Carter does hammer the life out of him, but note the interesting point: The green Martian youth is not described as weaker than John Carter, who we just established is, in fact, practically superhuman; instead, he's "little if any stronger," implying the two are actually quite close in total strength. Carter is just faster and in a position to punch the guts out of the other guy, who's trying to get at his weapons rather than fighting back in kind.

Later, however, he fights a muscular green man, named Zad:

Zad first attempted to rush me down as a bull might a wolf, but I was much too quick for him, and each time I side-stepped his rushes he would go lunging past me, only to receive a nick from my sword upon his arm or back. He was soon streaming blood from a half dozen minor wounds, but I could not obtain an opening to deliver an effective thrust. Then he changed his tactics, and fighting warily and with extreme dexterity, he tried to do by science what he was unable to do by brute strength. I must admit that he was a magnificent swordsman, and had it not been for my greater endurance and the remarkable agility the lesser gravitation of Mars lent me I might not have been able to put up the creditable fight I did against him.

There's no indication that Carter has any advantage in strength over the green Martians. They are amazed to see someone so small match their strength, but they themselves are quite mighty.

And we've seen from Carter's incredible leaping that he is, in fact, possessed of something along the lines of ten times the strength of an ordinary human - and so, therefore, are green Martians. Seeing as they would weigh in at around four hundred pounds on Earth, a little over twice the weight of an ordinary human, that means that high Earth gravity might make them tired quickly, but won't actually stop them.

Indeed, even the ability of red Martian swordsmen makes them no mean opponents, since they are somehow able to hold off this superhumanly strong fellow in swordfighting sometimes. Red Martians are clearly as deadly as ordinary humans. Perhaps they are weaker than an ordinary human, in spite of their ability to hold off the superhuman Carter, but even then, the comparison is not good:

We traveled entirely by night, timing our marches so that we camped during the day at deserted cities where, even to the beasts, we were all kept indoors during the daylight hours. On the march Tars Tarkas, through his remarkable ability and statesmanship, enlisted fifty thousand more warriors from various hordes, so that, ten days after we set out we halted at midnight outside the great walled city of Zodanga, one hundred and fifty thousand strong.

The fighting strength and efficiency of this horde of ferocious green monsters was equivalent to ten times their number of red men. Never in the history of Barsoom, Tars Tarkas told me, had such a force of green warriors marched to battle together. It was a monstrous task to keep even a semblance of harmony among them, and it was a marvel to me that he got them to the city without a mighty battle among themselves.

Of course, green Martians are ten times as deadly as red Martians.

This is not hyperbole, the green Martian army goes on to completely mop the floor with the city of Zodanga, its airship navy, and then its army. Tars Tarkas, in fact, accounts for his ten red Martian soldiers in close combat quite quickly:

With one swing of his mighty longsword he laid a dozen corpses at his feet, and so he hewed a pathway before him until in another moment he stood upon the platform beside me, dealing death and destruction right and left.

This might be hyperbole, but bear in mind for a moment that these are very long and very slender swords, more like rapiers than big choppy sword. (Check out the cover illustrations if you doubt me.) John Carter survived getting run through with one in his fight with Zad:

"We rushed each other furiously time after time, 'til suddenly, feeling the sharp point of his sword at my breast in a thrust I could neither parry nor escape, I threw myself upon him with outstretched sword and with all the weight of my body, determined that I would not die alone if I could prevent it. I felt the steel tear into my chest, all went black before me, my head whirled in dizziness, and I felt my knees giving beneath me.

...

Bleeding and weak I reached my women, who, accustomed to such happenings, dressed my wounds, applying the wonderful healing and remedial agents which make only the most instantaneous of death blows fatal. Give a Martian woman a chance and death must take a back seat. They soon had me patched up so that, except for weakness from loss of blood and a little soreness around the wound, I suffered no great distress from this thrust which, under earthly treatment, undoubtedly would have put me flat on my back for days.

Imagine for a moment the physical strength required to cut one person in half with a skinny rapier-like sword. Multiply that by twelve. That's what Tars Tarkas was supposed to have done right there, if we're to take the description literally (as traditionally done in VS scenarios).

Now, though, physical strength isn't everything. It's not even the most important thing, in warfare. These are people that shoot:

These rifles were of a white metal stocked with wood, which I learned later was a very light and intensely hard growth much prized on Mars, and entirely unknown to us denizens of Earth. The metal of the barrel is an alloy composed principally of aluminum and steel which they have learned to temper to a hardness far exceeding that of the steel with which we are familiar. The weight of these rifles is comparatively little, and with the small caliber, explosive, radium projectiles which they use, and the great length of the barrel, they are deadly in the extreme and at ranges which would be unthinkable on Earth. The theoretic effective radius of this rifle is three hundred miles, but the best they can do in actual service when equipped with their wireless finders and sighters is but a trifle over two hundred miles.

Accurate, lightweight, and they fire explosive "radium" rounds. And by "radium," an in-universe loophole is left:

[I have used the word radium in describing this powder because in the light of recent discoveries on Earth I believe it to be a mixture of which radium is the base. In Captain Carter's manuscript it is mentioned always by the name used in the written language of Helium and is spelled in hieroglyphics which it would be difficult and useless to reproduce.]

But let's see them in action:

I could see figures crowding the forward decks and upper works of the air craft. Whether they had discovered us or simply were looking at the deserted city I could not say, but in any event they received a rude reception, for suddenly and without warning the green Martian warriors fired a terrific volley from the windows of the buildings facing the little valley across which the great ships were so peacefully advancing.

Instantly the scene changed as by magic; the foremost vessel swung broadside toward us, and bringing her guns into play returned our fire, at the same time moving parallel to our front for a short distance and then turning back with the evident intention of completing a great circle which would bring her up to position once more opposite our firing line; the other vessels followed in her wake, each one opening upon us as she swung into position. Our own fire never diminished, and I doubt if twenty-five per cent of our shots went wild. It had never been given me to see such deadly accuracy of aim, and it seemed as though a little figure on one of the craft dropped at the explosion of each bullet, while the banners and upper works dissolved in spurts of flame as the irresistible projectiles of our warriors mowed through them.

The fire from the vessels was most ineffectual, owing, as I afterward learned, to the unexpected suddenness of the first volley, which caught the ship's crews entirely unprepared and the sighting apparatus of the guns unprotected from the deadly aim of our warriors.

This passage is particularly interesting. Here we learn exactly how deadly the green Martian is with the rifle - so capable that they're capable of shooting the sights off of the guns of airships flying high above. At this distance, John Carter is not yet able to distinguish that the red Martians on the airship are, in fact, quite human-sized, human-shaped, and human-looking, unlike the green Martians; to have 75% accuracy on human-sized targets on moving airships flying high above, while taking return fire, is quite impressive. The use of these rifles against aircraft helps explain the preposterous effective range Carter claims they have.

It seems that each green warrior has certain objective points for his fire under relatively identical circumstances of warfare. For example, a proportion of them, always the best marksmen, direct their fire entirely upon the wireless finding and sighting apparatus of the big guns of an attacking naval force; another detail attends to the smaller guns in the same way; others pick off the gunners; still others the officers; while certain other quotas concentrate their attention upon the other members of the crew, upon the upper works, and upon the steering gear and propellers.

Emphasized. Yes, the green Martians target enemy gun scopes as a matter of strategy, and with the excellent scopes of their rifles, have no trouble recognizing and picking off officers and gunners, at what is presumably several kilometers' range.

The banners of Helium had been strung from stem to stern of each of our mighty craft, but the Zodangans did not need this sign to realize that we were enemies, for our green Martian warriors had opened fire upon them almost as they left the ground. With their uncanny marksmanship they raked the on-coming fleet with volley after volley.

The twin cities of Helium, perceiving that we were friends, sent out hundreds of vessels to aid us, and then began the first real air battle I had ever witnessed.

The vessels carrying our green warriors were kept circling above the contending fleets of Helium and Zodanga, since their batteries were useless in the hands of the Tharks who, having no navy, have no skill in naval gunnery. Their small-arm fire, however, was most effective, and the final outcome of the engagement was strongly influenced, if not wholly determined, by their presence.

How deadly are green Martians? Deadly enough that the fact that they have rifles more than makes up for the fact that they don't know how to use the guns actually mounted on the airship.

This is like hijacking the HMS Bounty and then taking on the rest of the Royal Navy not using the cannon carried on board, but muskets.

And winning. Actually:

It is this ray which has enabled them to so perfect aviation that battle ships far outweighing anything known upon Earth sail as gracefully and lightly through the thin air of Barsoom as a toy balloon in the heavy atmosphere of Earth.

During the early years of the discovery of this ray many strange accidents occurred before the Martians learned to measure and control the wonderful power they had found. In one instance, some nine hundred years before, the first great battle ship to be built with eighth ray reservoirs was stored with too great a quantity of the rays and she had sailed up from Helium with five hundred officers and men, never to return.

... perhaps a more appropriate comparison is the HMS Dreadnought rather than HMS Bounty. These aren't exactly Age of Sail-sized ships.

After a close examination of the evidence, I can only come to one conclusion:

Tharks? Can kick the tails of a lot of the other super-human "big guys" we talk about here on a more regular basis. They can easily compete on strength and stealth with Na'vi - if not better them - if we look carefully at the evidence in the VS tradition. They're fully telepathic, instead of just touch telepaths. They're capable with swords and spears, both long and short - "capable" meaning "trained from birth."

Unlike the Na'vi, they have guns with explosive bullets, which they use with range and accuracy that a Tau would envy and that few Space Marines dream of. And those guns are powerful enough to take apart flying battleships.