2012 Book 131: A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs (9/8/2012)

Reason for Reading: Coursera Science Fiction and Fantasy course. 🙂 

Review
In the post-Civil War era, John Carter enters an Arizona cave and is unexpectedly whisked away to Mars. There, he witnesses the depravity of a “highly developed” race of people who, because medicine helps them to live long lives, they perform population control by warring with each other. In some ways, though, they’re happier than people on Earth, because they have no lawyers. John Carter takes Mars (and a Princess’s heart) by storm. I’m not a huge fan of pulp fiction, so I expected very little out of this book. Because of that, I was impressed at how “not bad” it was. Actually, it was sort of interesting in a history-of-science-fiction sort of way. It did have some rather racist comments about Native Americans (an artifact of when it was written), and the Princess was a weak annoying little thing whose only virtues were rare beauty and a penchant for getting into trouble so that we could witness the excitement of her rescue (this is an artifact of being pulp). Overall, not too shabby. But not literature, either. I DID wonder whether John Carter was meant to be some sort of pulpy Christ figure. He was very good at saving people. And he had the right initials. 😉