According to the National Day Calendar, National Science Fiction Day was launched in 2011 and was meant to correspond with this being the birth date of legendary sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov—author of the Foundation Trilogy (now the basis for the Apple TV+ streaming series), I, Robot (the short-story collection, not the Will Smith movie) and the guiding spirit behind Isaac Asimov’s Robot Mysteries (a quadrilogy of original novels by Mark W. Tiedemann and Alex Irvine that I edited in the early 2000s)—who was born in 1920. It’s a celebration, the NDC says, that “encourages reading or watching science fiction.”
Well, if you’re looking for some quality sci-fi to read on this special day, might we suggest an SWC Illustrated Classic?
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 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 #1), 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.
