mars

If anything could be called a seminal work, it would be Alfred Bester's "The Stars, My Destination". Published in book form in 1956 and written well before that, it's an intriguing read after all this time. While the flow and logic can be a little stuttered in spots, allowing for the age of the novel, the leaps in imagination are singularly amazing.

Read this before you die :) I would rate this only three stars lower if it had been written today.

John Carter is based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' (of Tarzan fame) 1917 novel, A Princess of Mars. I haven't read the book. However, keeping the age of the story in mind, this movie is highly entertaining, if very Hollywood-sy. The story is a nice blend of sci-fi and fantasy with a decent plot and a nice twist at the end. The action is mostly good, the humour mostly funny and the clichés mostly bearable. But the acting could have been better.