Added A Princess of Mars

I’ve just added A Princess of Mars to the free public-domain books available to read here, and it may well have you scratching your heads. You might be wondering how I go from Jane Austen to Sherlock Holmes to the red planet, and the answer is simple. Edgar Rice Burroughs is another of my particular friends.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I think A Princess of Mars (or The Land that Time Forgot) is the first adult book I remember reading. I think I went straight from The Pokey Little Puppy to the stories of John Carter of Mars. I’m sure there must have been something inbetween, but I don’t remember it.

I have joked that all I need to know I learned from Star Trek, but that’s not quite true. From my father, I learned, without it ever being a lesson, that all people are equal. I grew up knowing that my father worked for a black man and that the man was my father’s friend. He ate dinner with us often enough and we called each other buddies. But my real knowledge of ethics, duty and loyalty I learned from Star Trek and the heroes of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Of course, in these politically sensitive times, it’s a little scary to call attention to A Princess of Mars. After all, it’s hero, John Carter, is a fighting man of Virginia, a Confederate captain and I always cringe when I read this line: “our slaves fairly worshipped the ground he trod.”

But displaced to Mars, Carter leaves behind his prejudices. He is enslaved several times. He frees slaves. And yes, as a prince of Helium, he owns slaves, although on Mars slavery is similar to that of ancient Rome. Anyone can be a slave. If you’re captured in battle, you can be a slave. If you fight in the arena you may win your freedom. If you escape, you leave your status as slave behind. In other words, slavery is the luck of the draw and not based on class or birth. And John Carter has fast friends among all the races of Mars, red, green, black and white.

Leaving behind the troubling issue of slavery, John Carter, and all Burrough’s heroes, will stand by a friend to the death. He will spare his enemies. He enjoys combat but fights for peace. He’s also thick as a brick at times because those enemies he spares always — always — come back to stab him in the back. He also never understands when a woman loves him and never knows how to express his love. He is proud and not a little like Darcy. He takes offense and when he does he withdraws. But in the end, he and the incomparable Dejah Thoris will exchanges the lines, “My princess. My chieftain.”

 

PS Edgar Rice Burroughs is doubtless the reason for much of my sexual confusion. After all, my first introduction to human reproduction involved woman laying eggs in warm pools (The Land that Time Forgot series), or burying them in incubators in the Martian desert.