A Princess of Mars

I remember being twelve, lying in bed and reading this into the wee hours of the night, dimly aware of the train whistle from the other side of town.

The magic of the story – the wonder of the aliens and their world – transported me and wrapped me up and made me want to go rescue alien princesses and liberate oppressed alien peoples. Nothing about this book makes sense scientifically (what else do you expect from the author of Tarzan?), but somehow it still made me want to go to be an astronaut and explore new worlds. 

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John Carter finds himself mysteriously transported to another world where he fights for the new friends he finds there. I’ve picked this book from the beginning of the last century because, as a teenager, it helped form my appreciation for the adventure of discovery and to shape my sense of courage and honor.

Honor in a book this old can sometimes feel strained in modern times when we understand that one’s rightness isn’t determined by being white and male. However, the female protagonist in A Princess of Mars is strong and capable, not merely a damsel to be rescued, and… show more.

In college, I had the good fortune of working at the University theater (A coveted job). There were these two guys, older than me by about twenty years – one that worked there, one that just hung around, but both so well versed in books and film they made my professors look like children playing at educators. These two probably influenced me far more than any film classes I took. They would offer suggestion after suggestion, but there was one they’d continue to bring up. Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Carter. “Star Wars basically stole everything from those books!” They’d… show more.

This is the book that got me interested in sci-fi/fantasy. If you like classical strong heroes and beautiful heroines, the Martian Chronicles is the series for you. John Carter, the honorable gentleman from Virginia and civil war veteran is transported to mars where he meets a warlike band of green martians and their red martian captive, the beautiful Princess Dejah Thoris. Carter, with his faithful martian hound Woola, have to figure out how to rescue the princess and defend her country of Helium.

I wish the movie adaptation had been more faithful to Burroughs’ original story. Growing up I always wondered what it would be like to travel to Mars and the other planets. Burroughs must have wondered the same as he created this civilization of strange beings and humanoids for John Carter to encounter. Carter is the kind of hero that really stands out in Superversive storytelling. 

Edgar Rice Burroughs was one of the old masters of science fiction. I started reading his books at a young age. I would go back and forth from fantasy to sci-fi. This book, later made into a movie, follows yet another underdog hero mysteriously sent to Mars during the American Civil War to find himself in the middle of another kind of battle, this time with superhuman strength and the ability to leap great distances due to the light gravity of Mars. This book is character building at its best by one of the grandfathers of science fiction. 

Written by the author perhaps better known for Tarzan, the series takes place on a Mars very different to the one we know and follows the adventures of John Carter who is mysteriously transported to Barsoom - where he finds himself a stranger on a very hostile planet. Of course, being an Earthman, Carter is stronger than the native Martians and soon becomes a powerful warlord with a winsome female partner.

When written, this was science fiction combined with sword and sorcery at the very dawn of the genre, it is perhaps gung-ho by today’s standards but as a callow… show more.