*******BARSOOM-SIZED SPOILERS AHEAD!!******* Michael Whelan’s illustrations for a more recent edition of 1912’s “A Princess of Mars.” The 2012 movie adaptation of “John Carter” sees this cover art come to life. Kelly assured me that Burroughs’ “John Carters of Mars” books ( and his “Venus” series) had many of the familiar elements I enjoyed in latter-day space operas. Burroughs was an author I’d associated more with the jungle heroics of Tarzan than with sci-fi, but Mr.
Le Guin, and Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950). I then furthered my exploration of Bradbury, as well as Robert Heinlen, Arthur C. Through those sci-fi classics, I discovered the origins of so many concepts I’d loved in movies and TV shows ( time travel, faster-than-light spaceships, moon bases, etc). Kelly, who encouraged me to pursue literary sci-fi as well. Growing up on a steady diet of “Star Trek,” “Star Wars,” and even the 1979 TV revamp of “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century,” I was fortunate to have a likeminded eighth grade English teacher, Mr. Unlike John Carter, Buck is displaced in time, not space. Buster Crabbe in the 1939 serials of “Buck Rogers” a man out of time fighting in a far-off future alongside Buddy Wade (Jackie Moran) and Wilma Deering (Constance Moore). Those books would also inspire my favorite author, Ray Bradbury (“The Martian Chronicles”), as well as the “Buck Rogers” and “Flash Gordon” comic strips, which began in 19, respectively.
However, Sagan’s passion to study the real Mars began with those books, the first of which ( “Princess of Mars”) was written 22 years before Sagan’s birth in 1934. The young Sagan used to stand in an open field, spreading his arms wide, and imploring what he believed to be the planet Mars to transport him there. I was born about a half-century too late to have been among the first generation to read Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “John Carter of Mars” books, but my own first inklings of them came via Carl Sagan’s landmark 1980 PBS TV series, “COSMOS.” The late pop scientist reminisced about how his own passion for Mars largely sprang from reading the “John Carter” novels as a kid. Before Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and Luke Skywalker…
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