John Carter of the Cosmos!

I'll have up my review of the second issue of Warlord of Mars tomorrow but here's something to tide you over. In 1980 famed astronomer and novelist Carl Sagan hosted Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, a documentary series on PBS about the universe and for the fifth episode, titled "Blues for a Red Planet" Sagan talked about how the John Carter of Mars books fired his 8 year old imagination and influenced his later fascination with both Mars and the universe. Well thanks to the miracle of Youtube, here's the section from the episode http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p02Aaq_BaXI, with discussion of astronomer Percival Lowell-whose work influenced Edgar Rice Burroughs on the Barsoom series-and the cool cover artwork by Michael Whelan from the paperbacks. Enjoy the show! (And in case you're curious, the artwork above was a piece of concept art from the earlier Paramount version of John Carter that I've never seen before.)