A Princess of Mars

Surprisingly readable -- can definitely see why it's the poster-child for its era.

Kindle highlights:

It was now morning, and, with the customary lack of dawn which is a startling characteristic of Arizona, it had become daylight almost without warning.



The Indians had by this time discovered that I was alone and I was pursued with imprecations, arrows, and rifle balls. The fact that it is difficult to aim anything but imprecations accurately by moonlight...



Fear is a relative term and so I can only measure my feelings at that time by what I had experienced in previous positions of danger and by those that I have passed through since; but I can say without shame that if the sensations I endured during the next few minutes were fear, then may God help the coward, for cowardice is of a surety its own punishment.



...the sight of him, now roaring as he perceived his lifeless fellow stretched upon the floor, and frothing at the mouth, in the extremity of his rage, filled me, I must confess, with dire forebodings.

I am ever willing to stand and fight when the odds are not too overwhelmingly against me, but in this instance I perceived neither glory nor profit in pitting my relatively puny strength against the iron muscles and brutal ferocity of this enraged denizen of an unknown world; in fact, the only outcome of such an encounter, so far as I might be concerned, seemed sudden death.



Slowly she drifted to the southeast, rising higher and higher as the flames ate away her wooden parts and diminished the weight upon her. Ascending to the roof of the building I watched her for hours, until finally she was lost in the dim vistas of the distance. The sight was awe-inspiring in the extreme as one contemplated this mighty floating funeral pyre, drifting unguided and unmanned through the lonely wastes of the Martian heavens; a derelict of death and destruction, typifying the life story of these strange and ferocious creatures into whose unfriendly hands fate had carried it.

Much depressed, and, to me, unaccountably so, I slowly descended to the street.



...but why should I trouble my poor head with such a problem, when my heart tells me that I believe because I wish to believe!" It was good logic, good, earthly, feminine logic, and if it satisfied her I certainly could pick no flaws in it. As a matter of fact it was about the only kind of logic that could be brought to bear upon my problem.

After seeing the film John Carter, which is based on this book, I decided to read the book again. It’s been quite a long time and many books ago so I was curious. After the first number of chapters already I was aware that ‘based on’ in this case should be taken very lightly. Yes, there is a John Carter and yes, he goes to Mars or Barsoom. Most of the characters are there, like Dejah Thoris, Sola and Tars Tarkas. Most of the adventures and locations however were changed or entirely discarded. This is quite a lot for a 140 page book.

Again I found the book to be better than the film. So far this has never been different (only with Lord of the Rings I can say that the films equal the books in many places but still there the books are the best).

Edgar Rice Burroughs did an outstanding job in creating the people and conditions on Mars, considering he wrote the book in 1917. With the knowledge of the red planet from those days he had a lot of things quite right, which is why I give it that 5th star. Of course now we have the Curiosity Rover, but that does not take anything away from the brilliance of this book. I can highly recommend it.

I'm rereading this series because of the movie coming out this week, and I'm being a bit generous with a 4 star rating just because of the age of the book; published in 1912 it's among the earliest speculative fiction and is a classic I grew up with. Really there's very little plot at all; the story centers around civil war hero John Carter, mysteriously transported to Mars (aka Barsoom) where he happily finds himself in possession of near-superhuman strength due to the weaker gravity of Mars. He moves from one battle or crisis to another, winning friends with his fighting skills, and there really isn't much to the plot beyond that; just John Carter valiantly and usually single-handedly fighting various villains of Mars in various different locations with a sketchy plot to explain his presence. The men are all strong, chivalrous, and brave; the women are all beautiful, virtuous, and loyal; and the villains are all black-hearted, shifty-eyed, and vicious. No surprises here, and throughout the series Burroughs is frequently inconsistent within his own universe which can be annoying (for example remembering that the Mars year is twice the length of the Earth year only when convenient; or having John Carter waste a day or more failing to choose which is the correct path to take to follow the princess, despite having his martian hound Woola by his side who could presumably have smelled the correct path in seconds, etc etc). Nonetheless it's one of the earliest written novels set on another planet, and a remarkable imagination considering the time it was written. Pulp fiction it is, but classic pulp fiction and sometimes charming in its archaic style.