“[Edgar Rice Burroughs created] an entire world with a history and variety of cultures on a scale that would not be repeated until J. R. R. Tolkien created Middle-earth.’
—Mike Ashley
Interplanetary perils and swashbuckling adventures on the Red Planet await you in John Carter of Mars, a thrilling trio of science fantasy novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs . Written during the heyday of the pulp fiction era, these bestselling, epic blends of derring-do and dazzling romance permanently remapped the terrain of fantasy and science fiction.
A Princess of Mars (1912) introduces officer John Carter, transported magically from Earth to Mars and plunged immediately into intrigues embroiling the Martian races. In The Gods of Mars (1918) and The Warlord of Mars (1919), Burroughs elaborates his colorful vision of Mars as a home to fantastic fauna, airborne pirates, and battling tribes of nomadic, four-armed green Martian giants and city-dwelling red Martians.
Already a seasoned swordsman, Carter becomes an even fiercer warrior, unfettered by the planet’s lesser gravity. Thrust into one deadly battle after another as he seeks to woo the beautiful Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, John Carter of Mars magnificently meets his destiny as science fiction’s first larger-than-life hero.
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Born in Chicago, Illinois, on September 1, 1875, into a well-to-do family, Edgar Rice Burroughs was given an aristocratic private education. But though he tried his hand at several business ventures, he was drawn more to an itinerant life of adventure than to a life in the boardroom.
In 1912, after many failed business ventures, the thirty-five-year-old Burroughs published his first story, “Under the Moons of Mars, ” in the pulp magazine All-Story. It was so successful that he turned soon thereafter to writing full-time. He would write nearly 70 novels and numerous short stories before his death in 1950. Although best-known for his immensely popular Tarzan series—he later bought an estate near where the films were shot in Southern California that he named Tarzana—Burroughs didn’t confine himself to a single genre, also writing medieval romances, westerns, and mainstream novels.Among his many science-fiction works, Burroughs wrote eleven novels in the John Carter of Mars series, the titular final installment of which was published fourteen years after his death in 1950.