Vampires of Mars

"For the unhappy exile from Earth, everything increased the horror of this apparition: the dirty yellow color of the membranous wings; the face, similar in every respect to that of a man, which expressed cunning and ferocity; the protruding blood-red lips; and, most of all, the blinking eyes, scarlet-rimmed like those of an albino, set in a bloodless face with a short, upturned snout like that of a bulldog." Sandwiched between Arnould Galopin's "Doctor Omega" (1906) and Edgar Rice Burroughs' "A Princess of Mars" (1912), Gustave Le Rouge's masterpiece, "The Vampires of Mars" (1908-09), is a Martian Odyssey in which young engineer Robert Darvel is dispatched to Mars by the psychic powers of Hindu Brahmins. On the Red Planet, Darvel runs afoul of bat-winged, blood-sucking natives, a once-powerful civilization now ruled by the Great Brain. The entity eventually sends Darvel back to Earth, with some of the vampires... Le Rouge's Mars is elaborately described, with its fauna, flora and various races of inhabitants, à la C. S. Lewis' "Out of the Silent Planet" (1938). Planetary romance blends with cosmic horror as the characters switch from swashbuckling he-men to helpless bundles of gibbering terror.