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A flying carpet transports an ordinary man to Mars and wild adventure in Gulliver of Mars by Edwin Lester Arnold. Regarded as an influence on the Martian adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs the novel plunges its bold hero into a race through alien, dangerous and monster-ridden terrain to rescue a Martian princess.
About the author
Edwin Lester Arnold (1857-1935) was a British author and journalist whose father, Edwin Arnold, was one of the first popularizers of Eastern thought in the UK. The author is best known for his novels, Phra the Phoenician and especially Gulliver of Mars which is often held as the first true planetary romance and a likely influence on the Mars novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Summary
Action, romance, fantastic creatures and a bit of satire distinguish this groundbreaking novel of adventure fantasy.
By incredible accident Gulliver Jones finds himself on Mars, interacting with strange beings and stranger societies and embarked on a quest to save a beautiful princess from a cruel tyrant. First published in England in 1905 under the title
Lt. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation, the book was re-titled
Gulliver of Mars when first published in the USA in 1964. The novel can be seen as an example of both early science fiction and the genre of Planetary Romance made popular by Edgar Rice Burroughs and later carried on by C.S. Lewis, Michael Moorcock, Jack Vance, Anne McCaffrey and others. The author shows the influence of H.G. Wells and supplies a bit of satire in the vein of Jonathan Swift, as might be suspected from the title. Gulliver Jones is a unique character, brave but slightly out of his depth in a new world, and his adventures among the crumbling cities, dense jungles and strange beasts of Mars are distinctively his own. Although no sequels to
Gulliver of Mars were written, the character has lived on in several comic books.
With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of
Gulliver of Mars is both modern and readable.
