a princess of mars by edgar rice burroughs

What’s often left out of that anecdote is that Flash Gordon was created by a syndication company to compete with Buck Rogers. So, instead, he created what was originally a thin veneer on the property and called it Star Wars. I don’t know that George Lucas was inspired by the former when he created the latter, but there appears to be a similarity there.įamously, George Lucas wanted to make a film adaptation of the old Flash Gordon serials he loved as a kid, but he couldn’t obtain the rights. There’s also a term for a lower ranking officer (“padwar”) which reminded me a lot of “padawan” from Star Wars. The term “jedi” traces it’s roots to “jedda” or “jeddak”, which was a term for a leader among Martian humans. Both Superman and John Carter represent celestial bodies: the sun and Mars, respectively.īut no discussion of the legacy of the Barsoom series is complete without drawing attention to the connection to Star Wars. He is also the inverse of John Carter, in that Kal-el left a ravaged planet to find super powers on Earth, while John Carter left Earth for the ravaged planet of Mars (where he found super powers). John Carter was hopping around on Mars decades before Superman was doing the same in Metropolis. Clarke, James Cameron, and Michael Crichton have all referenced the impact these books had on them, or otherwise paid homage to these books within their own works. Ray Bradbury, HP Lovecraft, Carl Sagan, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. The impact that A Princess of Mars had on the world of speculative fiction is hard to over state. That creation reportedly garnered him the biggest paydays from Hollywood of any author of the time. Shortly thereafter, he would go on to create Tarzan – one of the most seminal characters in early 20th century fiction (both in print and on screen).

Recalling in 1929 that, “if people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those magazines, that I could write stories just as rotten.” So, in 1911, he started writing what would go on to become A Princess of Mars, the first book in his Barsoom series. Born in 1875, Edgar Rice Burroughs worked a number of odd jobs until, at the age of 35, he decided to pick up writing.

A princess of mars by edgar rice burroughs