Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

I’m currently reading “Princess of Mars”, by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

What’s interesting about reading vintage science fiction is how the conception of the future has changed in the last 100 years. In “Princess of Mars”, the various races of Martians have a variety of high technology – hovercraft, terraforming, powerful medicine, and so forth. Yet we 21st century humans have computing machines vastly more powerful than anything the Martians possess. We literally have computers of the scale and power that Captain Kirk regularly tricked into self-destructing on “Star Trek.”

Of course, Captain Kirk’s technological adversaries ruled over dystopian alien worlds.  21st century computers merely want to sell us Ugg boots and discount pharmaceuticals via spam messages.

-JM