MARS

   For a long time Mars seemed to be the most likely abode for life outside the Earth, and for that reason it has always been of cardinal importance in sf. Its surface, unlike that of VENUS, exhibits markings visible (albeit unclearly) with the aid of optical telescopes, and has a distinctred Colour.

   Blue-green tracts interrupting the red were thought to be oceans or vegetation. The polar caps, seen to wax and wane with the seasons, were generally held to be of snow and ice. In 1877 Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835-1910) reported an intricate network of canali(channels), a word widely interpreted as "canals". The US astronomer Percival Lowell (1855-1916), in Mars (1896), built up an image of a cool, arid world with great red deserts and a few areas of arable land, but perfectly capable of sustaining life. The landing of the Viking probes in 1976, however, revealed that Mars is extremely cold and has virtually noatmosphere; although there really are gigantic channels, possibly caused by water in the distant past, the intricate network reported by Schiaparelli does not exist, and nor do the tracts of vegetation.Mars wasvisited by the usual interplanetary tourists - Athanasius KIRCHER, Emanuel SWEDENBORG, W.S. LACH-SZYRMA, George GRIFFITH et al. - but it becameimportant in the late 19th century as a major target for specific cosmic voyages because the MOON, known to be lifeless, seemed a relatively uninteresting destination. It is the home of an advanced civilization in Percy GREG's Across the Zodiac (1880) and a setting for lost-race-typeadventures in Mr Stranger's Sealed Packet (1889) by Hugh MACCOLL. Robert CROMIE's A Plunge into Space (1890) is an interplanetary love story andsociological tract, as is Gustavus W. POPE's A Journey to Mars (1894). Kurd LASSWITZ's Auf Zwei Planeten (1897; cut trans as Two Planets 1971)provides another elaborate description of an advanced civilization and discusses the politics of interplanetary relations. H.G. WELLS published a brief vision of Mars in "The Crystal Egg" (1897) and followed up with the archetypal alien- INVASION story, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1898), which cast a long shadow over the sf of the 20th century. Wells's Martians, having exhausted the resources of their dying world, come as predatory Darwinian competitors to stake their claim to Earth. This novel firmly implanted in the popular imagination the image of Martians as MONSTERS, and brought a new sensationalism into interplanetary fiction; when Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre dramatized the novel for US RADIO in 1938 it precipitateda panic, whose seeds had been sown 40 years before and fed ever since by a lurid stream of pulp fiction (WAR OF THE WORLDS). Garrett P. SERVISS's "sequel", Edison's Conquest of Mars (1898; 1947), which reassuringlydescribes the obliteration of the decadent Martian civilization, made no impact. Nor was there much imaginative power in romances of Martian REINCARNATION like Camille FLAMMARION's Urania (1889; trans 1891) or LouisPope GRATACAP's The Certainty of a Future Life on Mars (1903). The only other image which did take hold was something much closer to Lowell's enthusiastic prospectus for exotic Martian life and landscape: an uninhibitedly romantic Mars pioneered by Edwin Lester ARNOLD's Lt Gullivar Jones - His Vacation (1905; vt Gulliver of Mars) and permanently enshrinedin modern mythology by the much imitated novels of Edgar Rice BURROUGHS, whose Barsoom series, begun with A PRINCESS OF MARS (1912; 1917), was extended to 11 volumes over the next 30 years. Burroughs's John Carter and his kin battle for beautiful, egg-laying princesses against assorted villains and monsters, armed with swords but borne aloft by flying gondolas. Burroughs was co-opted into GENRE SF when The Mastermind of Mars (1928) appeared as the lead story in the 1927 AMAZING STORIES ANNUAL, andhis influence within the genre has been as powerful as that of Wells. His principal imitator, Otis Adelbert KLINE, began by setting his works on Venus, but eventually began a Martian series with The Swordsman of Mars(1933; 1960).The early sf pulps were resonant with echoes of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. The first issue of AMAZING STORIES reprinted Austin HALL's "The Man who Saved the Earth" (1923); another early example was Edmond HAMILTON's "Monsters of Mars" (1931). It was not long, however, before a reaction against the CLICHE became manifest. P. Schuyler MILLER's "The Forgotten Man of Space" (1933) features meek, mistreated Martians, andRaymond Z. GALLUN's "Old Faithful" (1934) is an ideological reply to Wells's Darwinian assumptions. Other notable depictions of life on Mars include Laurence MANNING's "The Wreck of the Asteroid" (1932-3), Stanley G. WEINBAUM's "A Martian Odyssey" (1934), Clark Ashton SMITH's "The Vaultsof Yoh-Vombis" (1932), C.L. MOORE's "Shambleau" (1933), P. Schuyler Miller's "The Titan" (1st part 1936; 1952) and Clifford D. SIMAK's "TheHermit of Mars" (1939). Outside the pulps one work stands out from all others as a key contribution to the mythology of Mars: C.S. LEWIS's fantasy OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET (1938), in which Mars is a world whose life-system is organized according to Christian ethical principles rather than the logic of Darwinian natural selection. John W. CAMPBELL Jr's editorial insistence on more careful speculative logic suppressed the "traditional" image of Mars in the pulps' primary sf market, ASTOUNDINGSCIENCE-FICTION. Its exotic qualities were played down and replaced by the kind of "realism" encapsulated by P. Schuyler Miller's "The Cave" (1944), an ironic story in which Martian lifeforms kill an Earthman who violates the truce which they all must observe in order to survive the long Martian night. Martian exotica flourished nevertheless, particularly in the work of Leigh BRACKETT, whose "Martian Quest" (1940) was in ASF but who went on to do the bulk of her work for PLANET STORIES. Her gaudy version of the red planet, where decadent alien cultures face the threat of plundering Earthmen, is featured in Shadow over Mars (1944; 1951; vt The Nemesis fromTerra 1961 dos), The Sword of Rhiannon (1949 as "Sea-Kings of Mars"; 1953), The Secret of Sinharat (1949 as "Queen of the Martian Catacombs"; exp 1964), The People of the Talisman (1950 as "Black Amazon of Mars"; exp 1964) and "The Last Days of Shandakor" (1952). Ray BRADBURY subsequentlybrought the romantic image of Mars to a kind of impressionistic perfection in THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES (1946-50; coll 1950; vt The Silver Locusts 1951 UK; the latter and many subsequent edns have variant contents). In thesestories Mars is dead but still haunted by the ghosts of an extinct civilization, visited by Earthmen who become doubly haunted by virtue of the echoes of their own Earthly past which follow them. The stories are heavy with nostalgia and extraordinarily seductive. A few other writers have had some success in capturing a similar atmosphere, notably Simak in "Seven Came Back" (1950) and J.G. BALLARD in "The Time-Tombs" (1963).Inthe 1950s the romance of exotic Mars was mostly left behind as the dominant theme became the problems of COLONIZATION of a planet with barely enough water and barely enough oxygen. Notable stories in this newly realistic vein were The Sands of Mars (1951) by Arthur C. CLARKE, Outpost Mars (1952; rev vt Sin in Space 1961) by Cyril Judd (C.M. KORNBLUTH andJudith MERRIL), "Crucifixus Etiam" (1953) by Walter M. MILLER, Alien Dust (fixup 1955) by E.C. TUBB and Police Your Planet (1956 as by Erik van Lhin) by Lester DEL REY. Among the many juvenile novels of the same species were Red Planet (1949) by Robert A. HEINLEIN and a series by Patrick MOORE begun with Mission to Mars (1955). Martian ROBINSONADES ofthe same ilk include del Rey's Marooned on Mars (1952), Rex GORDON's No Man Friday (1956; vt First on Mars 1957) and James BLISH's Welcome to Mars(1967). Indigenous lifeforms are frequently featured in these novels, but few are hostile; an exception is in Kenneth F. GANTZ's Not in Solitude (1959). An uninhabited Mars becomes a grim prison colony in Farewell,Earth's Bliss (1966; rev 1971) by D.G. COMPTON. Other memorable stories of the period include Theodore STURGEON's poignant vignette about a dying astronaut, "The Man who Lost the Sea" (1959), and Philip Jose FARMER's pioneering exploration of the possibilities of alien sexuality, "Open to Me, My Sister" (1960; vt "My Sister's Brother"). The mythology of Marsmoved into a new phase in the early 1960s as the scenarios of the 1950s began to reappear in a somewhat surrealized form. Heinlein's STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND (1961) features a human raised by Martians who returns toEarth to build a religious philosophy out of the elements of their cultural heritage. Roger ZELAZNY's "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" (1963) reverses the idea, introducing to a Brackettesque Mars a poet who becomes a preacher and leads the decadent Martians to a cultural revival. Philip K. DICK's Martian Time-Slip (1964) and THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMERELDRITCH (1964) use colony scenarios as backgrounds for reality-shifting plots - the arid, depleted environment was ideal for Dick's psychological landscaping. A more elaborate but equally enigmatic fantasy is Algis BUDRYS's The Amsirs and the Iron Thorn (1967; vt The Iron Thorn 1968). Thereal possibility that Mars might harbour life was by now on the brink of extinction, and The Earth is Near (1970; trans 1974) by Ludek PESEK provides a vivid requiem in which the myth-driven members of the first Martian expedition undertake an obsessive search for life in anenvironment which cannot sustain it.In more recent times Lin CARTER has written pastiches of Brackett - The Man who Loved Mars (1973) and The Valley where Time Stood Still (1974) - but they are blatant fakes;Brackett herself had moved on to new worlds beyond the Solar System. Christopher PRIEST went back to a more remote image in his Wellsian romp, The Space Machine (1975), but other writers remained determined to do what they had to in order to sustain the planet's future viability as a potential home for life. Frederik POHL's MAN PLUS (1976) is a grimly realistic account of the making of a CYBORG colonist, while Ian WATSON's The Martian Inca (1976) and John VARLEY's "In the Hall of the MartianKings" (1977) stubbornly credit the seemingly unpromising Martian soil with miraculous adaptive qualities. Some sf writers cling to the conviction that, no matter how arid Mars might be, near-future colonization remains a viable project, as in Lewis SHINER's stubbornly realistic Frontera (1984); frontier Mars is featured also in Sterling LANIER's Menace under Marswood (1983). Other writers have taken new heartfrom the idea that it might be a promising world for TERRAFORMING. The possibility that terraforming might help resuscitate, at least for a brief while, a neo-romantic Mars is eloquently expressed in Ian MCDONALD's fabulous Desolation Road (1988). In Green Mars (1985 IASFM; 1988 chap dos) Kim Stanley ROBINSON looks forward ironically to the days whenconservationists are champions of the old red world against the nascent fertile version; a version of their case provides one of several strands of argument about terraforming in the ambitions Red Mars (1992 UK), which begins a projected trilogy on the planet, with Green Mars (no connection to the novella) and Blue Mars to follow. This project promises to be a key work in the realistic school. (Robert L. FORWARD) Robert L. FORWARD's Martian Rainbow (1991) and Jack WILLIAMSON's Beachhead (1992) are otherrecent additions to this school. Invasions from Mars now seem completely obsolete, but the idea still has a certain satirical mileage, as revealed in Frederik Pohl's The Day the Martians Came (fixup 1988); the epic journey to Mars receives similar satirical treatment in Terry BISSON's Voyage to the Red Planet (1990). Magical echoes of romantic Mars stillinsinuate themselves into all these works, as they will undoubtedly do when and if the first manned mission to Mars takes place.A theme anthology is Mars, We Love You (anth 1971; vt The Book of Mars 1976 UK) ed Willis E. MCNELLY with Jane Hipolito.

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   See also: SCIENTIFIC ERRORS.