Tarzan, used to the dangers of darkest Africa, heeded the call to Pellucidar, where all his skill in the jungle, all his talents with beasts and primitive men, would be put to the extreme test. For in that land at the Earth's core, under the eternal day of the Central Sun, his terrific talents were needed just to stay alive--let alone to fulfill the mission that had called him there! Edgar Rice Burroughs is renowned for his many novels of fantastic adventure. Unquestionably his best known creation is that of the jungle hero, Tarzan the Ape Man, but almost as well known are his stories of other planets and of Pellucidar beneath the Earth's crust. Born in Chicago in 1875, he tried his hand at many businesses without notable success, until at the age of thirty-five, he turned to writing. With the publication of _Tarzan of the Apes_ and _A Princess of Mars_, his career was assured. The gratitude of a multitude of readers who found in his imagination exactly the kind of escape reading they loved assured him of a well-earned fortune. By the time of his death, in 1950, at his home in a town bearing the name of his brain child, Tarzana, California, his name was a byword in literature. Over 40,000,000 copies of his books have appeared in 58 different languages.