According to the calendar site Happy Days 365, Red Planet Day “honors the launch of the spacecraft Mariner 4, a robotic interplanetary probe on 28th November 1964 by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). In the eight months it was on its journey, the Mariner 4 became the 1st spacecraft to fly by Mars successfully. It also gave the world the first close-up pictures of Mars.”
Of course, these days Mars is on the minds of a lot of people, now that NASA has taken the first steps toward having astronauts return to the Moon with the launch this month of the Artemis unmanned spacecraft that’s currently orbiting our rocky satellite. Because what’s the next goal for humanity venturing back into space? Exploring Mars, of course! Hey, if Matt Damon can do it with a bunch of pooptatoes and an Abba playlist, why not?
So how can you celebrate this special day? Well, we recommend reading a book about the red planet!
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. 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 a century’s worth of SF works, including Flash Gordon, Star Wars, and James Cameron’s Avatar (whose second installment is about to hit theaters).
The StarWarp Concepts edition—available in both print and digital formats—features six incredible illustrations by SWC artist supreme Eliseu Gouveia (Carmilla, Lorelei: Sects and the City), and a special introduction by Mars-fiction expert John Gosling, author of Waging the War of the Worlds. Here’s the back-cover synopsis:
Captain John Carter thought his days as a fighter were over. The South had lost the Civil War, and as a soldier now without a battle to fight or a cause to believe in, he journeyed west in search of a new life.
But not even Carter could have expected that his new life would begin with his death in the Arizona desert, and his inexplicable arrival on the barren plains of the planet Mars. Or that he would find love in the eyes of the beauteous Dejah Thoris, princess of Helium.
A prisoner of the giant, green-skinned warrior race called the Tharks, Dejah Thoris is meant to be used as a pawn in the ongoing war between the Tharks and her people, the red Martians—unless the gentleman from Virginia takes sword in hand to free her…and thus unite a divided world.
Once more, John Carter has a cause to fight for—and this time, a love to win, as well….
A Princess of Mars is available in print and digital formats. Visit its product page for ordering information.
