by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875)
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Imagine the red dust of an alien desert swirling around you as you leap twenty feet into the air, your earthly muscles granting godlike prowess on a world with scant gravity. That’s the jolt that hits you in the opening pages of A Princess of Mars, when Civil War veteran John Carter finds himself mysteriously hurled from an Arizona cave onto the dying planet Barsoom—Mars to us earthbound dreamers. Twin moons hang low, monstrous four-armed Tharks charge with radium rifles barking, and suddenly you’re not reading; you’re fighting for your life alongside a man who vaults over thoats and wrestles calots in a frenzy of survival.
From there, Burroughs unleashes a whirlwind you can’t escape. John Carter allies with the noble green warrior Tars Tarkas and his outcast daughter Sola, plunging into Helium’s soaring airships and the intrigue of red Martian city-states. Picture the siege of Zodanga, where Carter storms the throne room to rescue the radiant Dejah Thoris, her skin like burnished copper, her eyes fierce with royal fire. He duels the monstrous Sarkoja, races radium-powered fliers through canyons, and uncovers the ancient canals of a world gasping its last. Every chapter pulses with invention: radium pistols that stun like lightning, massive arenas where beasts devour the unworthy, a romance forged in the heat of battle that feels as inevitable as gravity itself.
What grips you hardest is the sheer, unfiltered rush—the way dread coils in your gut during Thark ambushes, wonder explodes at the sight of Barsoom’s colossal ruins, and triumph surges when Carter claims his place among warriors. This isn’t brooding space opera or intricate politics; it’s lightning-fast pulp adventure, where heroes act first and explain later, where imagination erupts without apology. Burroughs strips away subtlety for volcanic thrills, making every page feel like a cliffhanger from a lost golden age.
You feel its DNA in Leigh Brackett’s Martian yarns or even the swagger of Han Solo, but A Princess of Mars burns brighter because it birthed the blueprint—no prior map, just raw vision. If you loved the swashbuckling pulse of Dune’s Fremen raids but crave zero philosophy and all-out heroism, or if Star Wars left you hungry for its untamed grandfather, this is your rocket fuel.
Grab it tonight, and by dawn you’ll be leaping across your own red plains, sword in hand.
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