John Carter's staggered away from his crash-landing. Time to stagger through the mess of Barsoomian geopolitics.

SYNOPSIS:

John Carter is not so much down on his luck, picking up odd contracts in his broken-down freighter as he limps from system to system, as firmly settled into a rut. When his navigation systems finally give up the ghost, and he makes a controlled crash onto the planet of Barsoom, he's got nowhere to go but up.

This works better than John has any right to expect, even with quick entanglement in the geopolitical tensions in the capital city of Tharsis. Zodanga, Helium, and the Equatorial Federation are all bickering. Like an elephant in a china shop, he swings around, solving some problems and exacerbating others, while he picks up allies—and enemies.

War is brewing, and John may have made the connections to stave it off. (He might not like half the Federation's folks in town calling him 'sir', but it's handy.) John can play the 'convenient foreigner', as his friend Tars Tarkas and semi-girlfriend Dejah Thoris work behind the scenes to untangle the schemes they've all uncovered.

Substantial reinterpretation of much of Burroughs' work is necessary, for a different medium and different audience. The core of it remains: John Carter is clever, honest, and brave, falling in love and helping to save the day. There is a larger galaxy at play here, and he is not permanently stranded on Barsoom; repair parts and skilled labor, plus any aid that might be attracted by his distress beacon, prevent a sense of inevitability. John is on Barsoom because he crashed, but his actions after arrival are due to his choices and sense of self.