A Princess of Mars

In my Doc Savage review last month I erroneously stated that I'd never read a pulp action novel cover-to-cover before, completely forgetting that several of my favourite authors had their works first serialised in the early 20th Century pulp magazines (e.g. Robert E Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs).

I guess because these works - along with the short story excellence of HP Lovecraft - is of a much more polished quality than Doc's disposable outings they were filed away in my psyche as "proper novels".

I place the blame for this memory lapse squarely at the feet of my memory issues of the last couple of years; a "senior moment" as Terry Wogan would say.

Anyway, a strange trail of events - including an advert for Dateline Jasoom on David Drage's excellent Dial P For Pulp podcast and a discussion with Nick about finding an old RPG system that needed reviving and relaunching (as Mongoose is doing with Traveller next year)... we settled on Space 1889, by the way - led to me listening this week to an unabridged audio book of A Princess of Mars, the first of Burrough's John Carter, Warlord of Mars series.

Read by Dennis McKee, this is the story of an ex-American Civil War solider (John Carter) who finds himself unexpectedly projected to Mars and drawn into the almost constant state of warfare there between the various tribes of green and red Martians. Strange creatures, weird science, flying ships and romance are the order of the day.

The love affair between Carter and Martian Princess Dejah Thoris is strikingly reminiscent in structure to that of David Innes and Dian the Beautiful in Burrough's later At The Earth's Core and while the "ten years later" Apocalyptic climax feels slightly contrived (Carter always had the key to save the planet and didn't need to wait to the last second), it still works and remains very powerful and poignant.

McKee's reading is solid and engaging, although his stilted tones for dialogue spoken in the Martian tongue takes a moment to get used to.

I read this book many years ago, but had forgotten much of the finer detail, and had been thinking of skipping straight to the second book in the series - The Gods of Mars. I'm glad I started the series at the beginning though as I'm sure this reminder will inform my enjoyment of the later volumes.