A Princess of Mars | |||||||
Edgar Rice Burroughs | |||||||
Narrated by John Bolen, unabridged | |||||||
Tantor Media, 6 hours 46 minutes | |||||||
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A review by Ivy Reisner
What he wrote, in his 11-book John Carter of Mars series (sometimes called the Barsoom
series), and in many of his other novels, are transplanted westerns. Indeed, this holds for much of the history of
American science fiction. The underlying idea of a western runs something like this; you have the East, settled,
civilized, and somewhat locked in. Then you have the West; wild, new, and unformed. A man could go west to
redefine himself and make his fortune. Carter starts his adventure in Arizona, down on his luck, needing to
start anew. There isn't much further west he can go. So instead, he goes to Mars.
It's a strange transit. The planet simply pulls him through the dark of space, dropping him down in the bed of
a dried up ocean. There, he bounces around on Mars, in a way that modern readers might find reminiscent of Neil
Armstrong and his crew bouncing around on the moon, though that wouldn't happen until almost 60 years later.
The western structure typically has a man with eastern sensibilities and western skills. We get an in-group that
we recognize as western, a caravan of settlers perhaps, and an out-group that threatens the in-group. The hero
has the ideals of the in-group and the skills of the outsiders, and so becomes the champion of the
in-group. John Carter identifies with the red men of Mars, whom he likens several times to the pioneers of
his own lineage. The stronger fighters on Mars are the enormous green men, whom
he compares to the Apache he fought earlier in the novel. John Carter fights for the red men with the
strength of the green.
Burroughs twists the pattern by having John Carter claim his victories as often by his words as by his
weapons, and in so doing has created a novel that speaks to the sensibilities and tastes of a modern audience
as well as it did to the first fans who devoured it in issue after issue of All-Story. John
Bolen reads the work with a fine southern accent, and the Martian accent he creates for the red planet characters
is highly entertaining.
Watch for the Pixar Motion Picture, John Carter of Mars, based on this novel, and directed by Andrew
Stanton, to be released in 2012.
Ivy Reisner is a writer, an obsessive knitter, and a podcaster. Find her at IvyReisner.com. |
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