The Gods of Mars
Widely rated the best Barsoom novel, and a startlingly savage satire of organised religion for 1913 pulp fiction.
Book Entry · Science Fiction
A Princess of Mars
by Edgar Rice Burroughs · 1912 · Barsoom, book 1
What is A Princess of Mars about?
Confederate veteran John Carter, hiding from Apaches in an Arizona cave, is mysteriously projected to Mars — Barsoom to its inhabitants — where the lower gravity makes him a superman among the towering Green Martians. He rises through the warrior society of the Tharks, falls for the red-skinned, egg-laying and resolutely humanoid princess Dejah Thoris of Helium, and saves a dying planet whose atmosphere runs on a single failing factory. First serialised in 1912 as 'Under the Moons of Mars', it set the pulps alight.
Why it matters
The founding text of planetary romance. A century of admirers from Carl Sagan to George Lucas; Disney's 2012 John Carter film flopped financially but adapted it with some affection.
Where does it sit in the series?
Burroughs's dying Mars of dead sea bottoms, four-armed green warriors and incomparable princesses — eleven volumes of swashbuckling planetary romance that taught the twentieth century to dream of the red planet.
In the Guide from Barsoom:
- A Princess of Mars (1912)
- The Gods of Mars (1913)
Read next
The Dragon Masters
Hugo winner for short fiction (1963), and a perfect single-sitting introduction to Vance's mirrored-civilisations mode.
Dragonflight
Built from the Hugo-winning 'Weyr Search' (the first fiction Hugo awarded a woman) and the Nebula-winning 'Dragonrider'; the founding novel of one of SF's best-loved series and the modern dragon-bond tradition entire.