Martians arriving on Earth, but as it was not translated until 1971 it is unlikely that Burroughs knew of it. H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds (1898) was influenced, as was Burroughs' novel, by the ideas of Percival Lowell starting with publication of the book Mars (1895). It depicted Mars as an ancient world, nearing the end of its life, home to a superior civilization capable of advanced feats of science and engineering. Burroughs, however, claimed never to have read any of H. G. Wells' books. It is possible, as Richard A. Lupoff argues in the book Master of Adventure: The Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs, that Burroughs took some inspiration from the 1905 novel Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation, by Edwin Lester Arnold, which also featured an American military man transported to Mars. Lupoff also suggested John Carter has strong similarities to Phra, hero of Arnold's The Wonderful Adventures of Phra the Phoenician (1890), who is also a master swordsman who appears to be immortal. Legacy This book and its series are noted as early inspiration by many later science fiction authors including Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ray Bradbury. Bradbury admired Burroughs' stimulating romantic tales, and they were an inspiration for his The Martian Chronicles (1950), which used some similar conceptions of a dying Mars. Burroughs' Barsoom novels have also been cited as a model for H. P. Lovecraft's The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Frederik Pohl paid homage to the novel in his 1972 short story, "Sad Solarian Screenwriter Sam," although it is a backhanded compliment: the story so offends the actual Martians, they obliterate the Earth (as the Martians attempt to do in The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells). Others influenced by Burroughs and his John Carter books include James Cameron, who mentioned the influence on his science-fiction epic Avatar in The New Yorker magazine, and George Lucas, whose Star Wars movies were influenced by Flash Gordon, which in turn was influenced by Burroughs. Also, author Michael Crichton named a character on the tv show, ER, after John Carter. John Barnes's novel In the Hall of the Martian King features a Space Shuttle named John Carter. The ninth book in Diane Duane's Young Wizards series was titled A Wizard of Mars as reference to this book. Burroughs' Barsoom series was popular with American readers, helping inspire their support for the