Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation
Cover of first edition
|
|
| Author | Edwin Lester Arnold |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fantasy novel, Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | S.C. Brown, Langham & Co. |
|
Publication date
|
1905 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 301 pp |
Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation is the last novel by Edwin Lester Arnold, combining elements of both fantasy and science fiction, first published in 1905. Its lukewarm reception led him to stop writing fiction. It has since become his best known work, and is considered important in the development of 20th century science fiction in that it is a precursor and likely inspiration to Edgar Rice Burroughs's classic A Princess of Mars (1917), which spawned the sword and planet genre. Ace Books reprinted Arnold's novel in paperback in 1964, retitling it Gulliver [sic] of Mars. A more recent Bison Books edition (2003) was issued as Gullivar of Mars, adapting the Ace title to Arnold's spelling.
The concept of a military man going to Mars, exploring strange civilizations and falling in love with a princess had been explored as far back as Across the Zodiac (1880), but the connections between Gullivar and John Carter, the protagonist of Burroughs' Barsoom novels, are more numerous and stronger. Burroughs' novels bears a number of striking similarities to Arnolds'. Both Carter and Gullivar are military men – Carter serving in the Confederate Army; Jones in the US Navy – who arrive on Mars by apparently magical means (astral projection in the case of the former, magic carpet in the case of the latter) and have numerous adventures there, including falling in love with Martian princesses. Gullivar is a more hapless character, however, paling beside the heroic and accomplished Carter; he stumbles in and out of trouble and never quite succeeds in mastering it. The fact that Gullivar does not quite defeat his enemies or get the girl in the end helps explain why Arnold's Martian saga was not as popular as Burroughs', which eventually extended to eleven volumes.
Richard A. Lupoff, the first critic to argue for the connection of the two works, has suggested that while Burroughs' Mars was inspired by Arnold's, his hero may harken back to an earlier Arnold creation, the ancient warrior Phra from his first novel, The Wonderful Adventures of Phra the Phoenician (1890).
...
Wikipedia