A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
I'm definitely on a bit of a sci-fi kick at the moment.
A Princess of Mars is another all-time classic that I recently read for the first time. In fact, this was my first experience of reading any Edgar Rice Burroughs. I know that there are a number of Burroughs fans in the forum, so I've been wanting to check out some of his work for a long time.
I chose
A Princess of Mars mainly because I'm a fan of Marvel's late '70s
John Carter: Warlord of Mars comic series, which is set between paragraphs three and four of chapter 27 of the book (a period during which nine years elapse). Because of that, I already knew all of the main characters; so, in a way, this was like reading a prequel to the Marvel comic series, although that's a rather "horse before the cart" way to come to the book, obviously. Nonetheless, I'm not ashamed to say that I purposely sought out the Penguin Classics paperback, which features cover artwork taken from
John Carter: Warlord of Mars #11 and drawn by Dave Cockrum. What can I tell ya, I'm a comics fan to the end!
The first thing that struck me about this book is that it's not really sci-fi at all, and neither is it really space opera. It's much more like the space fantasy that I associate with
Star Wars, which is no surprise, of course, given that the book was a big influence on that particular franchise. But there's also more than a hint of sword and sorcery to it too, almost like barbarian fantasy in space.
The novel is framed as being a manuscript left behind by John Carter and relayed to the reader by Burroughs himself. This seems like an unusual literary device, but it also strikes me as being a very late 19th/early 20th century one. Burroughs uses the conceit of recalling his "Uncle Jack" and relaying his memoirs to the reader as a way of setting up the mythology of John Carter, before ploughing headlong into the story.
Carter himself is a Confederate veteran and we first meet him while he's out prospecting for gold in Arizona. He runs afoul of marauding Apaches and while hiding from his pursuers in a cave, he is overcome by a mysterious force and falls unconscious. He then finds himself standing over his own prone body – in a manner reminiscent of an "out of body" experience. From there, Carter is transported to the planet Mars, with little in the way of any explanation.
I have to say that the transition from the cave to the plains of Mars was problematic for me. Maybe it's a symptom of our modern world, in which so much is scientifically known and explainable, but I needed to know exactly how Carter got to Mars. What is the science behind it? I suspect that earlier generations of readers were probably much more willing to just ascribe it all to "magic" and let it go, but I felt like I needed more explanation than I got.
Also, while he's in the cave, our hero hears something shambling behind him, just before unconsciousness takes him – something that is horrific enough to frighten off the pursuing Apaches, when they appear at the cave mouth. But what's lurking behind Carter is never explained. Later in the book we're told that Carter finds a mummified old woman and skeletons hanging on ropes at the back of the cave, but again, Burroughs never adequately explains what this macabre sight is or how it got there.
Anyway, whatever the mechanics of his transportation, Carter finds himself on Mars (or Barsoom, as it's know to its native inhabitants). The planet that Burroughs imagines is a dying world, with a harsh desert environment, peopled by savage four-armed Green Martians, giant Great White Apes, and the human-like "red men" of Mars.
Barsoom's low gravity and thin atmosphere grant Carter extraordinary strength and agility, enabling him to leap great distances. What this natural advantage means, in terms of the book's narrative, is that he is a match for even the most ferocious of creatures that he encounters on the red planet. This raises the question of whether John Carter is overpowered? There's seemingly little that Carter cannot do on Barsoom: he has incredible strength, great agility, high physical attractiveness, a superior intellect, and a seemingly endless run of luck. He also quickly masters both the Martian language and the ability to use Martian telepathy, with minimal effort. In modern parlance, John Carter is a Marty Stu (i.e. a male version of a "Mary Sue" character).
Rather predictably, he wins the hand of the only human-like female that we meet in the book, Dejah Thoris, who is the "princess" of the book's title. She's more or less the Martian version of Helen of Troy, in terms of her being the world's most beautiful woman. I had been lead to believe over the years that Dejah was permanently nude in the Barsoom books, with the armour that she is often depicted as wearing – in the Marvel series and elsewhere – being something that was necessary in order to keep the stories appropriate for younger readers. However, this is not the case at all: right from the first time we see her, Dejah is wearing clothes. She's scantily clad, yes, but she is clothed.
In some ways, Dejah is the most intriguing character in the book. In an era when women in pulp stories were usually depicted as two-dimensional damsels in distress, the Princess of the city of Helium is feisty, proud, and far from helpless. Yes, she does spend most of the novel as a prisoner of various villains, but she demonstrates that she's a brave, principled woman, and every bit as honourable as Carter is.
As an aside, something that occurred to me while reading
A Princess of Mars is how wonderful it must've been to have read this book back in the days when our knowledge of Mars was informed only by earthbound observations of the planet thorough a telescope. If you'd read this book at any time between 1912 and the mid-1960s, you could legitimately imagine that this version of Mars was the real thing. The flybys of the
Mariner probes in the late '60s and early '70s put paid to that, of course. Still, I can suspend disbelief enough to enjoy the story for what it is, but I can't help feeling jealous of those earlier readers who could speculate and dream of intelligent life and alien civilisations on Mars.
Summing up, I was a little disappointed by this book. It was an entertaining enough story, but bits of it felt a little hard to get through, and I found my interest waning on a couple of occasions. I'm sure this is gonna sound like sacrilege to some, but I found Burroughs' writing to be quite mediocre and rather dry in places. Certainly, it was a noticeable step down from the eloquence of Arthur C. Clarke or Ray Bradbury, who I had read just prior to Burroughs.
Still, Burroughs is clearly a hugely influential writer, so what do I know? There's a wonderful sense of invention on display here in the alien cultures, swashbuckling action and political workings of Barsoom. Not to mention all those fantastic character names, such as Tars Tarkas, Sarkoja, Dejah Thoris, Sola, etc. It's just a shame that the book is rather woodenly narrated.
However, I do think it's clever how
A Princess of Mars ends on a cliff-hanger, which certainly achieves its goal of encouraging you to read the next book. Having said that, it really didn't blow me away, so I'm not sure that I'll ever get around to reading
The Gods of Mars. It was an enjoyable enough story, for sure, but it was rather hard work to get through at times and didn't grip me quite enough to make me investigate the sequel.