Princess of Mars and its sequels are the best known, and they were a dominant influence on subsequent authors. Initially published in magazines with general readership, by the 1930s the planetary romance had become very popular in the emerging science fiction pulp magazines. The novel can also be classified as the closely related genre sword and planet, which consists of what are essentially sword and sorcery stories that take place on another planet. A Princess of Mars is widely considered to be the archetypal novel of the sword and planet genre. The novel also shares a number of elements of Westerns, such as desert settings, women taken captive, and a climactic life-or-death confrontation with the antagonist. Introduction Burroughs employs a literary device for A Princess of Mars to which he returned in several sequels—introducing the novel as though it were a factual account passed on to him personally. In this case he frames John Carter as an avuncular figure known to his family who has given him the manuscript earlier, and instructed him not to publish it for 21 years. Burroughs used the same device in the sequels, The Gods of Mars, The Chessmen of Mars and Swords of Mars. In The Chessmen of Mars, Burroughs even includes a reference to the chess games he played with his real life assistant, John Shea, while writing the novel. Style A Princess of Mars is similar to many of Burroughs' tales. Characterized by copious violent action, it is basically a travelogue, a tale of a journey and various encounters on that journey, which does not necessarily have a defined plot. It is also a captivity narrative, involving a civilized hero being captured by an uncivilized culture and being forced to adapt to the primitive nature of the captors to survive. As is the case with the majority of the Barsoom novels to follow, it portrays a hero facing impossible odds and forced to fight a range of lurid creatures in order to win the love of the heroine. Burroughs' Barsoom is also morally unambiguous; there is no sense of moral relativity and characters are either good or evil. The tale portrays a hero with a sense of honor transcending race and politics. Compassion, loyalty and bravery are celebrated, and callousness, deception, and cowardice are frowned upon. Setting The novel's vision of Mars was inspired by astronomical speculations of the time, especially those