If you're anticipating a blog about Tarzan of the Apes, you'll have to look elsewhere. This commentary will explore the once popular serial by Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars (titled in the 2012 movie John Carter) the first book in Burroughs' Barsoom Series. Why is the popular American author and his fiction relevant? Because Burroughs' associates, scientists of his time, predicted that Mars has water.
A Princess of Mars, set in the 1870s, depicts the red planet dying after once being covered by oceans. The remaining water has receded and disappeared to a point where rival societies fight over water rights. And, an American, John Carter, is accidentally transported to Mars to become a respected hero in this strange, new world. (Wikipedia)Burroughs learned that lauded astronomer Percival Lowell, discoverer of Pluto, believed that Mars had once been alive with living organisms millions of years ago and had become a dying planet with only water remaining at the polar ice caps. Lowell wrote Mars in 1895. Edgar Rice Burroughs read the publication but didn't directly borrow the scientist's detailed theories, though the author did adopt Lowell's basic premises.
If you skipped Disney's John Carter, I recommend going back and watching it or reading Burroughs' A Princess of Mars (the first book in the Barsoom Series). You will be astonished at Burroughs's depiction of a place not unlike our southwest--where the story begins--and what Mars could have been, fantasy elements aside, in its ability to sustain life.
To conclude, the recent discovery of "water" on Mars by NASA scientists could be the keystone to unlocking secrets long hidden by the cold red soil of a planet once considered dead by real-life scientists but never by Percival Lowell or his sci-fi interpreter Edgar Rice Burroughs.
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