A Princess of Mars
1912
In 1912, a one-armed Confederate veteran named John Carter dies in an Arizona cave and wakes up on Mars. What follows is pure, reckless imagination: a dying world of ancient cities and airships, where six-limbed green giants wage endless war and red-skinned princesses rule over floating kingdoms. Carter finds his Earth muscles give him godlike strength in Mars's lower gravity, and his Victorian code of honor makes him an unstoppable force in a society that runs on swordplay and bold declarations. He battles Apache raiders in the desert, is captured by the Tharks, falls impossibly in love with Dejah Thoris of Helium, and must rescue her from a fate worse than death. Burroughs wrote this with zero scientific training, drawing on Percival Lowell's maps of Martian canals, and created the blueprint for every planetary romance that followed. This is pulp fiction that invented a universe, the book that made Carl Sagan believe in space exploration and inspired half the science fiction canon. It moves fast, it hits hard, and it never stops believing that a gentleman with a sword can save the galaxy.
