A Princess of Mars

First serialized in the pulp magazine “All-Story Magazine” between February and July of 1912, “A Princess of Mars” is the first novel in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s classic “Barsoom” series, set on the planet Mars. At the center of the series is the protagonist John Carter, a Confederate Captain of the American Civil War, who finds himself mysteriously transported to the planet Mars. Upon arrival John Carter discovers that the lower gravity of the planet has endowed him a super human strength and agility. This prowess helps him to win the allegiance of the Tharks, a nomadic war-like tribe of green six-limbed aliens. Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars is a desert world, a dying planet which is caught in the conflict between the “Green Martians”, or the Tharks, and the “Red Martians”, a group of humanoids who inhabit a loose network of city-states and control the planet’s canals and agriculture. John Carter soon finds himself embroiled in the political conflict between the two “Red Martian” city states of Zodanga and Helium when he rescues and falls in love with the beautiful Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium. “A Princess of Mars” is both a romantic adventure and a science fiction tale of fantasy which has been an inspiration to countless science fiction writers ever since its first publication. This edition includes a biographical afterword.