A Princess of Mars

John Carter, a Civil War veteran on the run from the Apache Indians, finds himself supernaturally transported to Mars — not the Mars we observe from here on Earth, but a magical Mars — a Mars that calls itself Barsoom, is populated by all sorts of weird creatures, human, alien — animal and vegetable. It is a Mars made of magic and stranger things. Enslaved by giant, green barbarians who also respect him for his vast strength (remember, folks who grow up in Mars’s weak gravity are, well, weaker than you and me), Carter manages to survive despite overwhelming odds and win the hand of a beautiful princess. A PRINCESS OF MARS was Edgar Rice Burroughs’s first novel — it marks the beginning of one of the most successful, prolific, and, in a strange way, literary, careers ever.