John Carter of Mars
John Carter of Mars is the eleventh and final book in the Barsoom series by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs. It is not a novel, but rather a collection of two John Carter of Mars stories.
Stats for nerds
3recommend
7mentions
7people
2014–2026years
43% recommend57% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- In no particular order:
Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe. (Highly recommended)
A Fire Upon the Deep (Either you like the Tines or the Skroderiders)
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Jorge Borges (Is reality imbued with our ideas?)
Conan the Barbarian by Robert E. Howard (Not unlike "the Greeks" of modern fic)
John Carter of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (perhaps the first true modern fic)
Understand by Ted Chiang (Most of his short stories are good, or provoking)
Xeethra and the Zothique Cycle by Clark Ashton Smith
The Dying Earth by Jack Vance
- I would reach for John Carter of Mars (Burroughs, 1912) to make the same point.
Especially given how some of the "science fiction" elements of it read 100+ years later.
- The John Carter of Mars books have traveled remarkably well through time.
- This is what's keeping me from working on my own "John Carter of Mars" game. The books (at least the first 5-6) are public domain, but Edgar Rice Burroughs, inc has John Carter, Dejah Thoris, etc., all trademarked, and can continue that indefinitely. I don't think it would be a slam dunk legal case, but it's enough to discourage me from trying (I've heard they are litigious).
- My fear with any Snowcrash adaptation is that it will feel like John Carter of Mars (or Warhammer Online [1]). John Carter was a groundbreaking novel, but its ideas became so adapted and universally understood that revisiting them in a movie felt ironically like derivative work.
If I have to endure years of my non-cyberpunk friends talking about how Snowcrash feels like a rip-off of Ready Player One, then I will flip tables.
[1] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/10/i-hope-you-lik...
- In a little over a month, I read the entire 11 volumes (12? I forget) of the John Carter of Mars series when I was in 6th grade.
When I finished the last book, 12-year-old me cried. This epic whirlwind of a journey was over forever. And no one else in the world around me even acknowledged it had existed.
