The first science fiction to be set on Mars may be Across the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked Record, by Percy Greg, published in 1880. An 1897 novel by Kurd Lasswitz, Auf Zwei Planeten, dealt with benevolent Martians arriving on Earth, but as it was not translated until 1971 it is unlikely that Burroughs knew of it.[32]
H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds (1898) was influenced, as was Burroughs' novel, by the ideas of Percival Lowell starting with publication of the book Mars (1895). It depicted Mars as an ancient world, nearing the end of its life, home to a superior civilization capable of advanced feats of science and engineering.[25][33] Burroughs, however, claimed never to have read any of H. G. Wells' books.[34]
It is possible, as Richard A. Lupoff argues in the book Master of Adventure: The Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs, that Burroughs took some inspiration from the 1905 novel Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation, by Edwin Lester Arnold, which also featured an American military man transported to Mars. Lupoff also suggested John Carter has strong similarities to Phra, hero of Arnold's The Wonderful Adventures of Phra the Phoenician (1890), who is also a master swordsman who appears to be immortal.[35]
