Martian Martian A Martian is a native inhabitant of the planet Mars. Although the search for evidence of life on Mars continues, many science fiction writers have imagined what extraterrestrial life on Mars might be like. Some writers also use the word "Martian" to describe a human colonist on Mars. The earliest known instances of the word "Martian", used as a noun instead of an adjective, were printed in late 1877. They appeared nearly simultaneously in England and the United States, in magazine articles detailing Asaph Hall's discovery of the moons of Mars in August of that year. The next event
A Princess of Mars the planetary romance had become very popular in the emerging science fiction pulp magazines. The novel can also be classified as the closely related genre sword and planet, which consists of what are essentially sword and sorcery stories that take place on another planet. "A Princess of Mars" is widely considered to be the archetypal novel of the sword and planet genre. The novel also shares a number of elements of Westerns, such as desert settings, women taken captive, and a climactic life-or-death confrontation with the antagonist. Burroughs employs a literary device for "A Princess of Mars" to which he