This week’s book recommendation is The Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. He was best known for creating Tarzan, but this book (the first of eleven) has influenced many of today’s popular science fiction stories, including Star Wars. First written in 1912, this story follows a civil war captain named John Carter who gets transported to Mars. A movie by the name John Carter was made in 2012 by Disney, and despite its poor reception in theaters I thought it was pretty good. Without the movie, I wouldn’t have found the books.

I think this book reads fairly modern because all of the “future technologies” (that usually date science fiction stories) are actually machines from Mars and were not based on anything really plausible or predicted to happen on Earth. I recommend this book to anyone who likes science fiction and/or the history of science fiction. If you read this book, you may find things that seem familiar but from a different, modern story. Just remember that this book was written over 100 years ago and therefore would be the precursor to many of today’s shows and books. You may even learn something about your favorite science fiction stories after reading this.

Happy Reading.