The Valley Where Time Stood Still, a novel by Linwood Vrooman Carter

The Valley Where Time Stood Still (1974), a novel by Lin Carter

At left: Paperback (New York: Popular Library, 1976), 222 p., $1.25. Cover art by Carlos Ochagavia. Here’s the blurb from the back cover:

“Together M'Cord and the others descended the great stone steps carved out of the rock incalculable aeons ago. It was only as they approached the valley floor that they saw that the desert seen from above was an illusion created by the thick mist masking what lay below. Ahead of M'Cord, the wolf-like Martian outlaw who had brought the expedition this far hesitated a moment. Then he plunged through the mist and disappeared. Now it was M'Cord's turn to follow ... to discover and master the ultimate secret of Mars and the universe ... or else be destroyed by the dark forces that ruled -- The Valley Where Time Stood Still.”

Extracts from three books precede Chapter 1 of the novel: The Bible (King James version, Philadelphia, 1947), The Book of the Dead (Wallis Budge version, London, 1923), and The Book (Martinez-Schuster translation, Syrtis, 2031).

The Valley Where Time Stood Still is part of Lin Carter’s Mysteries of Mars series. The novel is considered the first book in the chronology of the series, even though it was the second book published. The other books are The City Outside the World (1977), Down to a Sunless Sea (1984), and The Man Who Loved Mars (1973).