Eric John Stark

After his parents died in a cave-in caused by a quake, Stark was adopted by a tribe of Mercurian aborigines who are described as hairy and possessing snouts.

Because of his background, Stark is keenly aware of the injustices visited on the planetary "primitives" by the colonialist Earth, and tends to side with them against official bodies.

At the opening of the story in which he first appears, Stark is evading a twenty-year sentence placed on him for running guns to a Venusian native group that has been resisting Terran colonizers.

These were: "Queen of the Martian Catacombs" (Summer 1949); "Enchantress of Venus" (Fall 1949), once published as "City of the Lost Ones"; and "Black Amazon of Mars" (March 1951).

The first and last stories were expanded into short novels: "Queen of the Martian Catacombs" as The Secret of Sinharat and "Black Amazon of Mars" as People of the Talisman.

These stories are science fantasies set on a distant but primitive extrasolar planet, since Stark's original Solar System venue had become unacceptable to publishers.