Where does the time go? It seems like only early last century readers were first transported to the planet Mars via the adventures of a visiting Earthman who learns that dangerous forms of life exist there, and now here it is over 100 years later and that spectacular story is still in print!
A Princess of Mars, originally published in 1912, is the first in the “John Carter of Mars” ten-novel series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, best known as the creator of the pulp-fiction jungle lord, Tarzan. Unlike Tarzan’s African adventures, Princess is the story of a post–Civil War era American who suddenly finds himself transported to the Red Planet, where he must constantly fight to stay alive against all sorts of alien threats—and where he falls in love with Dejah Thoris, the titular Martian princess.
Princess first appeared as a serialized story that ran in the pages of The All-Story magazine, starting with the February 1912 issue but with a couple of major differences: its title then was “Under the Moons of Mars”—Burroughs’s original title was “Dejah Thoris, Martian Princess,” but managing editor Thomas Newell Metcalf changed it; and Burroughs wrote it under the pseudonym Normal Bean (“a pun to stress that he was in his right mind, as he feared ridicule for writing such a fantastic story,” according to Wikipedia), but the typesetter messed up and credited it to “Norman Bean.” However, when the serialized chapters were collected and expanded upon to form the novel, both author and title became what they are best known by.
It served as the basis for Disney’s 2012 film adaptation, John Carter—a movie that didn’t deserve the poor treatment it got from the studio and is definitely worth checking out, if you’ve never seen it—and inspired works like Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, George Lucas’s Star Wars, and James Cameron’s Avatar.
The StarWarp Concepts edition of A Princess of Mars features six incredible illustrations by SWC artist supreme Eliseu Gouveia (Carmilla, Lorelei: Sects and the City, The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual), and a special introduction by Mars-fiction expert John Gosling, author of Waging the War of the Worlds.
A Princess of Mars is available in print and digital formats. Visit its product page for ordering information.
