If you were to ask Edgar Rice Burroughs what genre The Princess of Mars was, he would probably
have answered science fiction. After all, it takes place on a real planet in
our solar system and was written an era where fantasy was something you wrote
for children. But compared to even other science fiction writers of his time
such as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, the John Carter series is far more fantastical
than sci-fi.
This first book begins with John Carter, a civil war
veteran, in the desert of Arizona. When he and a unit of Calvary are attacked
by Apache he holds up in a cave with the captain. He goes out to stare at the
stars and magically appears on Mars. We don't know how he ends up on Mars. He
just does. There he meets two groups of the people the huge green Tharks, a
warrior race that at first don't know what to make of this strange man who
looks like the red men of Mars (or Barsoon as the characters call it). The
other group is the "red men" who look a lot like people of Earth. John
actually meets and falls in love with the beautiful Dejah Thoris, the titular
Princess of Mars. The book is rather stilted in its writing, but it is still a
great story.
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