#22 A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

In 1912 Burroughs wrote this fantastic science fiction book. I cannot fathom the imagination that is needed to do science fiction in this era. In a time when there were no accolades for this kind of thing. This year saw two novels that were released, A Princess of Mars and Tarzan of the apes.

Give some thought to that. Science fiction 110 years ago. The hero is a confederate officer in 1876 that has left to go into the wild west to hunt for gold. He finds it but the Apaches are after him, so he hides in a cave the Apaches consider sacred.

The next thing he knows, he is on Mars, and is found by the green four armed martians of the planet. There is less gravity, and the thinner atmosphere means he has superhuman strength there. He gains the respect of the tribe and its leader and lives with them

Eventually and save a woman, Dejah Thoris who is the Princess of Helium a red martian, (humans are red). He rescues her to return her to her people. They are a collection of cities that have more technology than the greens, and if I recall they control the canals of Mars, and the food.

There was a movie, it was not horrible, but I feel it killed the story. Think of this like a steampunk series. That is the feel. If I am remembering sequels, the flying machines are dirigibles, and there is a lot of swashbuckling going on. This was before WW1, so the wars were on horseback and a saber was the gentlemans way to fight. So that is how it is here. I remember scenes that were like sky pirates.

This book was in my library in school, one of the few science fiction books, and it fascinated me, I was reading it in the 70s, and that was 60 years after it was written. I thought it was cool and short tale that captivated my mind before I moved onto more complex stories.