The hero is off in Arizona digging for gold, when he runs from Apaches, and next thing you know it, he is surrounded by some Martians on the red planet. Luckily, with lower gravity, he can do some great jumping and impresses his captors. The martians are warsome buglike creatures. However, there is another slightly more civilized race of martians that they battle. One they capture just happens to look like human woman, and of course he falls in love.
The hero then has all sorts of adventures where he uses his strength, cunning, and "powers" to defeat plenty of enemies, unite warring groups, save the princess, and possible even save all life on the planet.
It's pure escapism, though it feels more in the vein of Gulliver's Travels than Tarzan. Mars is portrayed as an ecological basket case that is barely limping along due to intervention of some of the residents. The "science" part is based on the theories of its time, though it still seems fairly plausible today. It is however, still a mystery as to how he got to mars and how he returned. In the end it is about entertainment; unfortunately, I didn't find it as entertaining as some of Burroughs other work.
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