He’s also ready to kill you off if you get in his way, whether you’re a nomad or an urbanite. As long as nobody gets between Carter and what he wants, he’s an easy-going fellow, as comfortable living with warrior nomads as with civilized people. But the likeliest answer is hand-waving based on biological ignorance.Ĭarter is a man’s man in early 20 th century style. I could argue for either possibility, based on a few passages in the book. Or it’s possible that Carter is not the father of Dejah Thoris’ egg or that Carter is not human. Now, the odds of an egg-laying humanoid being inter-fertile with a terrestrial human should be slim but … handwaving. That is, Dejah lays an egg which hatches a kid. But the dying world trope explains all the hidden and lost cities the protagonists keep discovering, as well as the desperate conflicts for resources that occupy the survivors.īurroughs’ biology is also outré. The place is one serious industrial mishap from total extinction (which figures into a few Barsoom plots). What a remarkable family the Burroughs must have been! Imagine maintaining a population of slaves a decade and more after Emancipation!īurroughs’ Mars is based on his era’s popular understanding of Mars: a once-great world slowly being choked to death as water and air vanish 1. What makes that passage eye-opening is that ERB was born in Chicago in 1875, twelve years after the Emancipation Proclamation. What I forgot was the framing sequence in which Burroughs, writing as Burroughs, asserts that Carter is a such a fine chap that We all loved him, and our slaves fairly worshipped the ground he trod. I had remembered that Carter fought on the side of pure evil in the Slavers’ Uprising.
Many authors benefited from my habit of reading voraciously regardless of quality. To be honest, I thought the Barsoom books were mostly crap even when I was a teen. When you cannot kill someone yourself, orchestrate a barbarian invasion to level their city in the hope that one of the many thousands of casualties will be your enemy! Of course, Dejah Thoris could do the deed, but the fiancé’s family (or rather, the army they control) would then sack Helium. However, Barsoomian culture forbids marrying the murderer of one’s fiancé or husband. The obvious solution (for Carter) is to kill the presuming fellow. While he survives every near-death experience that follows, by the time he encounters the Princess again, she has been blackmailed into impending marriage to another man! Alas for Carter, he and the Princess are soon separated.
Nothing for it but to rescue the Princess and escape from the savage (although honourable) Tharks. “Stay away!” or perhaps “Tharks are terrible neighbours.” This is some sort of a message to her people. Carter falls in love with her on first sight. Dejah Thoris, princess of the city state of Helium, is not just humanoid: she’s beautiful. Despite being much smaller than the Tharks, he can more than hold his own.Ĭarter discovers other Barsoomians far more like humans in appearance when the Tharks attack a scientific mission unfortunate enough to cross their path. Not only is Carter an hardened veteran, his muscles are adapted to gravity many times that of Barsoom. Although not inclined towards charity or other soft sentiments, the Tharks value combat prowess. Wandering across Barsoom’s desolate expanse, Carter encounters and is adopted by a band of Tharks, green-skinned, six-limbed barbarians. Cornered by a Native American warband, death seems inevitable … but as is the way of portal series, Carter finds himself transported to an entirely unfamiliar world.Ĭarter is on dying Mars, or as its inhabitants call it, Barsoom. Having fought on the losing side of the Slavers’ Uprising, Captain John Carter heads west to see what he can steal from North America’s indigenous population. 1912’s A Princess of Mars is the first book in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ interminable Barsoom series.
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