I am a very old man; how old I do not know. Possibly I am a hundred, possibly more; but I cannot tell because I have never aged as other men, nor do I remember any childhood. So far as I can recollect I have always been a man, a man of about thirty. I appear today as I did forty years and more ago, and yet I feel that I cannot go on living forever; that some day I shall die the real death from which there is no resurrection. I do not know why I should fear death, I who have died twice and am still alive; but yet I have the same horror of it as you who have never died, and it is because of this terror of death, I believe, that I am so convinced of my mortality.And because of this conviction I have determined to write down the story of the interesting periods of my life and of my death. I cannot explain the phenomena; I can only set down here in the words of an ordinary soldier of fortune a chronicle of the strange events that befell me during the ten years that my dead body lay undiscovered in an Arizona cave.I have never told this story, nor shall mortal man see this manuscript until after I have passed over for eternity. I know that the average human mind will not believe what it cannot grasp, and so I do not purpose being pilloried by the public, the pulpit, and the press, and held up as a colossal liar when I am but telling the simple truths which some day science will substantiate. Possibly the suggestions which I gained upon Mars, and the knowledge which I can set down in this chronicle, will aid in an earlier understanding of the mysteries of our sister planet; mysteries to you, but no longer mysteries to me.

バローズが描く火星は、騎士道と野性が結晶化した究極の幻想郷です。不死の男ジョン・カーターが異星を疾走する姿は、己の存在を懸けた魂の彷徨そのもの。科学を超えたロマンティシズムと、極限で試される高潔な精神こそが本作の本質であり、読者の心を震わせる最大の魅力です。 映像版は圧巻の視覚効果で異文明を再現しましたが、原作の醍醐味は一人称が紡ぐ内省的な深みにあります。映画が外的な躍動を伝える一方、書籍は未知への畏怖や孤独を脳内へ鮮烈に刻みます。映像の刺激とテキストの情緒が響き合う時、火星の神秘は真の完成を迎えるのです。