Even as he sat in the Tucson sun, Lucas was reading all he could now, soaking up themes, tropes, and plot devices. There was Edgar Rice Burroughs’s novel A Princess of Mars, whose hero, John Carter, rescues the spunky princess of the title, and E. E. “Doc� Smith’s series of Lensman novels, about superpowered space cops, a variation on Lucas’s beloved Tommy Tomorrow comic books. Lucas also devoured anything written by Harry Harrison—his 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room! had recently been adapted to film as Soylent Green—and Lucas particularly loved his rambunctious sci-fi comic novels like The
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Star Wars inspiration...
