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Before the orphaned Lord Greystoke was renamed Tarzan (white-skin) by his adoptive mother Kala the ape in darkest Africa, cavalry officer John Carter ran for his life from vengeful Apaches who had just killed his fellow officer and were bent on making it a pair. Holed up in an Arizona cave, no chance for getting out, things get weird.
I opened my eyes upon a strange and weird landscape. I knew that I was on Mars; not once did I question either my sanity or my wakefulness.
His first encounter on Mars, Barsoom, the planet of war, is with the most warlike race on it, the Tharks. Green but not so little, standing up to 15 feet tall with four arms and ivory tusks jutting up to their bulging eyes. John Carter is taken in by them, instead of shot to death with radium rifles, for his astounding Earth-given ability to jump in the lesser gravity of Barsoom.
Carnivorous four-legged great white apes, clans in eternal war on the waterless plains around the crumbling cities of ancient abandoned empires, levitating airships, sword duels beyond compare, false gods overturned, damned journeys, friendship, betrayal, love, danger, and the most beautiful Princess on two worlds, Deja Thoris.
Burroughs' genius for fixing a fantastic place firmly in the setting of the mind was cemented with his Martian Tales (not to be confused with Bradbury's Martian Chronicles). Though he took us to Venus, the Moon, the distant dystopian future of Earth, and even Jupiter ("Skeleton Men of Jupiter," one of the Martian Tales), and his Tarzan perhaps the most popular pulp fiction character in all of literature, the Mars books have a special place for his readers and despite some uneven places in the series, they are his best.
A Princess of Mars is the first of what is generally assembled into 11 books. It's a cliff hanger so be prepared to dangle till you pick up the next two books as well. The Gods of Mars and The Warlord of Mars round out an epic picture of a dying planet and set the stage for other characters to have their own adventures. Now that the special effects technology supports it, these books will be a movie, or a series of movies, soon. Read them and imagine them for yourself before they make it to the silver screen as someone else's vision.
