Edwin Lester Arnold 3 hr 51 min read

A prosaic lieutenant is whisked by a magic carpet to Mars, where his love for a pale, ghostly princess leads him ransacking a whole planet, and back through its destruction.

Edwin Lester Arnold's 1905 novel is a pioneering interplanetary romance, a clear forerunner of Burroughs's Barsoom, full of exotic Martian wonders and adventure. Colorful, imaginative, historically important. Read it for a foundational sword-and-planet tale that helped pave the way for a whole genre of Martian romance.

In its time

Published in 1905, during the 1900s, the scientific romance.

Reading it

3 hr 51 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).