John Carter, best known as John Carter of Mars, is a man of unknown origins, possibly immortal, who (subsequent to fighting for the Confederacy in the American Civil War) through an extraordinary set of circumstances was transported to Mars or, as the natives termed their homeworld, Barsoom. There he won great renown and married a noblewoman named Dejah Thoris after a planet-wide war, first against evil royals, then against the false gods of Barsoom. His exploits were chronicled by his nephew, and published under the name of the author Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Philip José Farmer posited that earlier in his extended lifetime, long before visiting Barsoom or America, John Carter had been Norman of Torn. In Tarzan Alive Farmer noted that Norman was an ancestor of Tarzan.
Later, Peter Coogan, has suggested that John Carter is identifiable Phra the Phoenician. This character appears in The Wonderful Adventures of Phra the Phoenician (1890) edited by Edwin L. Arnold. Dr. Coogan has expanded upon these theories in conjunction with Dennis Power, in doing so identifying evidence that Carter's "nephew" could not have been Edgar Rice Burroughs himself, and was in fact Carter's own son - Matthew Nicholas Carter.
External Links[]
- Wikipedia article on John Carter of Mars
- The Tarzan/John Carter/Pellucidar/Caspak/Moon/Carson of Venus Chronology
- John Carter is Phra the Phoenician! by Peter Coogan
- John Carter, Torn from Phoenician Dreams (part one) by Dennis E. Power and Peter Coogan
- John Carter, Torn from Phoenician Dreams (part two) by Dennis E. Power and Peter Coogan
- The Carters of Virginia (This article posits that John Carter is also related to detective Nick Carter and occult investigator Randolph Carter as well as others)
- The Life of Matthew Nicholas Carter
- Excerpt from THE ARMS OF TARZAN (on Norman of Torn and John Carter of Mars) by Philip José Farmer