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A Princess of Mars is widely considered to be the archetypal novel of the sword and planet genre. The novel also shares a number of elements of Westerns , such as desert settings, women taken captive, and a climactic life-or-death confrontation with the antagonist.
- Edgar Rice Burroughs
- 1912
A Princess of Mars is the first of eleven thrilling novels that comprise Edgar Rice Burroughs' most exciting saga, known as The Martian Series.
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is the first novel in Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian series, originally published under the pseudonym Norman Bean. Presented as a book of memoirs by protagonist John Carter, it relates the story of how he arrived on Mars, became a hero to its people, and won the heart of the beautiful Princess Dejah Thoris of Helium. It was originally published as a...
The story starts with John Carter as a successful gold prospector in Arizona. One day in 1866 he sends his business partner James K. Powell into town to pick up new equipment. As the day wears on, however, he begins to have a terrible feeling that Powell has met with some bad luck, and goes out to search for him. He finds Powell dead, having been killed by a hostile tribe of Apaches who chase after Carter. He seeks refuge in a cave and shortly thereafter falls asleep. When he wakes up he is unable to move and becomes aware that he's not alone in the cave. He desperately tries to break his paralysis and suddenly finds himself naked and looking down at his own body, still lying immobile on the floor of the cave. Panicked, he runs outside and sees Mars in the night sky. He reaches out his arms to the distant planet and suddenly feels himself pulled through space.
He ends up on Mars, called "Barsoom" by its inhabitants. Carter finds that he has great strength and superhuman agility in this new environment as a result of its lesser gravity. He soon falls in with a nomadic tribe of Green Martians, or Tharks, as the planet's warlike, six-limbed, green-skinned inhabitants are known. Thanks to his strength and martial prowess, Carter rises to a high position in the tribe and earns the respect and eventually the friendship of Tars Tarkas, one of the Thark chiefs.
The Tharks subsequently capture Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, a member of the humanoid Red Martian race. The Red Martians inhabit a loose network of city-states and control the desert planet's canals, along which its agriculture is concentrated. Carter rescues Dejah Thoris from the Green men in a bid to return her to her people.
Subsequently Carter becomes embroiled in the political affairs of both the Red and Green Martians in his efforts to safeguard Dejah Thoris. During his adventures he is captured by another Green Martian tribe known as the Warhoons, finds the Atmosphere Factory, and eventually leads a horde of Tharks against the city-state of Zodanga, the historic enemy of Helium. Winning Dejah Thoris' hand, he becomes a Prince of Helium, and the two live happily together for nine years. However, the sudden breakdown of the Atmosphere Factory that sustains the planet's waning air supply endangers all life on Barsoom. In a desperate attempt to save the planet's inhabitants, Carter uses a secret telepathic code that he learned during his previous visit to the factory to enter the building, bringing an engineer along who can restore its functionality. Carter then succumbs to asphyxiation, only to awaken back on Earth, left to wonder what has become of Barsoom and his beloved.
A Princess of Mars (2009)
was the first live-action adaptation of A Princess of Mars (1917). It was a straight-to-video film and was made by Asylum Films to capitalize on the success of James Cameron's Avatar (2009).
John Carter (2012)
is the second live-action adaptation of A Princess of Mars (1917). While this adaptation was closer to the original source material than A Princess of Mars (2009), it was the biggest box office bomb in history due to poor advertising and/or that the source material had been used highly in other science-fiction works.
A Princess of Mars reads more like a fantasy/fairy tale than science fiction, and the characters are pulpy in the extreme. There are hissable villains, noble warriors, a beautiful princess who needs saving, good and bad monsters, and the like.
Suddenly projected to Mars, Captain John Carter of the Confederate Army finds himself captive of the savage green men of Thark. With him is Dejah Thoris, lovely Princess of Helium. And between them and rescue lies a thousand miles of deadly enemies and unknown dangers.
As Carter struggles to win his freedom—and the affections of fellow captive Dejah Thoris, princess of the rival clan of Helium—the fate of the entire planet hangs in the balance: warring Martian tribes collide and the beleaguered Atmosphere Factory grinds to a suffocating halt.
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A Princess of Mars tells the story of John Carter, a Civil War veteran who inexplicably finds himself held prisoner on the planet Mars by the Green Men of Thark. With Dejah Thoris, the princess of another clan on Mars, John Carter must fight for their freedom and save the entire planet from destruction as the life-sustaining Atmosphere Factory ...
