Today’s romance market offers a lot in the way of otherworldly love. From vampires and werewolves, to fairies and even other worlds entirely, readers thrill to the unknown and the unexplored.
But to me there will only be one true into interplanetary romance, and that will be John Carter’s love for Dejah Thoris in A Princess of Mars. I first read that novel when I was 13 or 14, a very impressionable age. Even then, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s first novel was 60 years old. Now it’s 97, but interest remains in the story because Disney is going to release a movie based on the novel in 2012.
I read a lot to my son, but we’ve been reading the YA fantasy novels featuring young protagonists that don’t usually mix too much violence into the story. I’ve noticed that his interest in television and movies have acquired a more grown up taste regarding physical combat. So I thought I would try to introduce him to John Carter and the dying planet of Mars.
It was interesting reading the book as an adult while remembering it so vividly from my childhood. When I first read the book, the archaic language sounded cool and courtly. Reading it now, I realize that Burroughs was – at times – incredibly verbose. In fact, some of the sentences required a second breath to finish.
As I read through the first chapter, I was certain I was going to lose my son’s patient attention. Instead, I needn’t have worried. As soon as John Carter reached Mars and Burroughs’ natural storytelling ability kicked in, my son was captured, adrift on the dying seas of the red planet.
The story seems relatively plain and unadorned by today’s standards, but it still had the raw power to draw my son’s imagination and wish for adventure into an iconic event. There simply nothing quite like being an adventuring Earthman braving the swords and spears of the malicious Tharks across deserts and saving the life of a beautiful princess. Especially when she doesn’t think you’re good enough to clean the teeth of her grandmother’s cat!
Article comments
1 - Bill Sherman
I was an avid Burroughs reader as a young teen, too. I generally enjoyed his Mars books more than I did his Tarzans, but they all made for rousing reads. Good to see the man's still being read . . .