The City Outside the World, a 1977 novel written by Lin Carter

The City Outside the World (1977), a novel by Lin Carter

Pictured: Paperback original (New York: Berkley Publishing, 1977), a Berkley Medallion book, 215 p., $1.50. “For Jack Williamson, the Old Master.” Here’s a description from the back cover:

Mars: The skull of a planet picked clean by the wind of time. North. Beyond the desert of Meroe, past the ancient cliffs of the dust-locked continents, past the dry wharfs of a city thay was old when Earth was new, the caravan crept into the unmapped waste called Umbra. It was into this shadowed land that the lost nation of the People had ridden -- and vanished -- in a time beyond memory. It was here that the outworlder Ryker followed the golden-eyed Valarda and found the Child-of-Stars.

The City Outside the World is the third book Lin Carter’s "Mysteries of Mars" series. The other novels are The Man Who Loved Mars (1973), The Valley Where Time Stood Still (1974) and Down to a Sunless Sea (1984).