Mars in fiction

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Fictional representations of Mars have been popular for over a century. Interest in Mars has been stimulated by the planet's dramatic red color, by early scientific speculations that its surface conditions might be capable of supporting life, and by the possibility that Mars could be colonized by humans in the future.

Contents

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Novels and short stories

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Pre-Mariner Mars fiction

Before the Mariner spacecraft arrived at Mars and dispelled some of the more exotic theories about the planet, the conventional image of Mars was shaped by the observations of the astronomers Giovanni Schiaparelli and Percival Lowell. Schiaparelli observed what he took to be linear features on the face of Mars, which he thought might be water channels. However, since the Italian for channels is canali, English translations tended to render the word as "canals", a word that implies artificial construction. Lowell's books on Mars expanded on this notion of Martian canals, and a standard model of Mars as a drying, cooling, dying world was established. It was frequently speculated that ancient Martian civilizations had constructed irrigation works that spanned the planet in an attempt at saving their dying world. This concept originated a large number of science fiction scenarios.

Some science fiction of this era concerned the attempts by the Martian race(s) to conquer the desirable warmer, wetter world of Earth:

  • The War of the Worlds (1898) by H. G. Wells. The Martians are an ancient, advanced race with a tentacled, squid-like appearance. They produce a "red weed", which is what was giving Mars its red color. They invade Earth, in huge tripedal "fighting machines" armed with "heat rays" and "black smoke" (a kind of poison gas), against which human armies of the time are helpless, conquer London and much of England (and possibly other countries as well), use human beings as food, but are overcome by terrestrial microbes.
  • There were many "additions" to the Wells novel, for example Garrett P. Serviss' Edison's Conquest of Mars (an Edisonade) and Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds which describes the adventures of Holmes and Watson in Martian-ocupied London. Kevin Anderson edited the anthology "War of the Worlds: Global Dispaches" which describes the events of the Martian invasion as experienced in France, Italy, Russia, India, China, Texas, Alaska, Equatorial Africa and other locations.
  • Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men, a vast future history published in 1930 and spanning millions and billions of years, includes a long and carefully worked-out account of several Martian invasions of Earth over a period of tens of thousands of years. Stapledon's Martians - sentient cloudlets composed of countless microscopic particles and capable of drifting across interplanetary space - are completely different from Wells', yet the book shows his influence and follows the general scheme of a drying and dying Mars and of Martians seeking the warmer and wetter Earth. Much later in the book, the humans themselves flee the dying Earth, invade and colonise Venus and exterminate its native intelligent species.
  • Raymond Z. Gallun's Seeds of the Dusk, published in 1938, shows the influence of both Wells and Stapledon, but with a special original twist. In the far future, Earth is invaded by sentient plants from Mars, whose specialty is to make use of planets in their "dusk" - i.e., still liveable but nearing their end. (These plants had actually originated on Ganymede, in the distant past, went on to Mars, after long aeons to Earth, and would continue on to Venus when Earth had died too). In this case the invasion is successful and it is the Itorloo, distant desendants of Mankind, who are exterminated by a plague microbe artifically produced by the invaders. But the Itorloo had been an arrogant race, extremely cruel to sentient bird and rodent races which shared the Earth of their time, while the new plant dominant species leaves these alone - so that the reader is left to conclude that in the balance the change might be to the better.
  • Out of the Silent Planet, by C.S. Lewis, also published in 1938, was written as a conscious answer and antithesis to both Wells and Stapledon. The first book of Lewis's Space Trilogy, a rare example of theological science fiction, it features a philologist named Ransom who arrives by accident on Mars (called Malacandra by the natives). At first fearful of being killed in a barbaric rite by the monstrous Martians which he imagines, Ransom eventually discovers three highly sympathetic intelligent Martian species, completely different from each other but living in harmony, complemeting each other and extremely hospitable and generous to their human guest. Like in the other books, Lewis' Mars is a dying world; in fact, large parts of it are already dead, and various species - such as an intelligent winged species - have become extinct. At the end of the book it is disclosed that the Martians' ancestors had possessed the technology to build spaceships and invade Earth, but the righteous Martians voluntarily renounced that possibility and stoically resigned themseveles to eventually dying out with their drying and cooling native planet.
  • Eric Frank Russell had a completely different antidote to the malevolent Martian stereotype. In four stories published in the early 1940s and collected in the classic Men Martians and Machines, humans together with very likable Martians are shipmates who go out togehter into interstellar space, and guard each other's back while encountering various other aliens. Not accidentally, Russel's humans included blacks as well as whites - quite unusual for the time. The book can be credited with starting the SF sub-genre of spaceships with a mixed human and non-human crew, which was to reach great popularity with Star Trek.
  • Martians, Go Home (1955) by Fredric Brown. A spoof of Wells' Martian invasion concept.
  • Many "invasion of Earth" stories owe much to Wells, even when their invaders come from elsewhere in the cosmos. The derivation is especially clear in John Christopher's trilogy The Tripods (1967-1968), depicting boys born on an alien-occupied Earth and dedicating themselves to overthrowing the cruel invaders - who, like Wells' Martians, move about in huge three-legged machines, towering high above the countryside.

Other writers preferred to explore an exotic Mars, peopled by less threatening alien peoples:

  • A Princess of Mars and another 10 Mars stories (1912-1943) by Edgar Rice Burroughs. These stories feature earthman John Carter and other protagonists on a Mars (called Barsoom by the Martians) that is stocked with princesses, exotic animals, energy weapons and swords. Burroughs has had many imitators (starting with Otis Adelbert Kline) and inspired many nostalgic references.
  • Aelita (1922) by A.N. Tolstoy. One of the first Soviet science fiction novels. It describes a Soviet expedition to Mars headed by the engineer Los. On Mars, Los falls in love with the beautiful Aelita, daughter of the Martian Supreme Ruler, while Los' companion is trying to organise a communist revolution which is supposed to bring happiness and progress to the ancient and stagnating civilisation. Source for the 1924 movie Aelita. Image:Aelita.jpg
  • The Northwest Smith stories (1933-1936) by C. L. Moore. Most of these stories take place on a Mars populated by intelligent, humanoid Martians - and other things.
  • A Martian Odyssey (1934) by Stanley G. Weinbaum. Martians are alien intelligent beings who do not think or act like humans (a rare feature for pulp science fiction of the time).
  • Vulthoom (1935) by Clark Ashton Smith. A Cthulhu Mythos story, in which Mars is the home of the Aihai people and Yog-Sothoth's son Vulthoom dwells in the Martian cavern of Ravornos.
  • The Secret of Sinharat, People of the Talisman and another eleven stories published between 1940 and 1964 by Leigh Brackett. These planetary romances describe a desert Mars populated by barbarian warriors and citizens of decadent city-states, coming into explosive contact with Terran civilization. Brackett's The Sword of Rhiannon (1953) shows an oceanic Mars of the distant past, and comes close to pure fantasy.
  • Robert A. Heinlein repeatedly used Mars as a setting for his novels and short stories, including:
    • The Green Hills of Earth (1947). The space poet Rhysling cries out against fellow-humans who had torn down "the slender, fairy-like towers" of the native Martians and replaced them with ugly factories which pollute the Martian canals.
    • Red Planet (1949). Young adult novel. Includes some very intelligent Martians similar to those mentioned in Stranger in a Strange Land (see below), who help human colonists get free of tyrannicial Earth authorities.
    • The Rolling Stones (1952). Mars has a major role in the rather amusing and carefree adventures of a space-roving family.
    • Double Star (1956). The issue of giving Martians the vote becomes a cenral issue in Earth politics, and the hero eventually overcomes both his own deep-rooted anti-Martian prejudice and the entrenched political power of the bigots, and helps enfranchise the downtrodden Martians (publication of this book coincided with the early Civil Rights Movement of the Blacks in the US South).
    • Stranger in a Strange Land (1961). An Earthman raised on Mars returning to Earth and creates chaos. Concerned with philosophical and religious subjects.
    • Podkayne of Mars (1963). Takes place in space and on Venus, but the main characters all originate from a Mars that has been thoroughly colonized by humans and is an important player in Solar System diplomacy.
  • The Martian Chronicles (1950) by Ray Bradbury. Features human-like Martians with copper-colored skin, human emotions, and telepathic abilities. They are a dying race with an advanced culture. Bradbury wrote many other short stories set on Mars.
  • A World's Revival (Hebrew: Tevel Be-Thiatah) (1955) by Tzvi Livneh[1]. Takes place some 500 years in the future. This story describes an expedition from a Utopian Socialist Earth arriving at a Mars which is divided between two opressive, warring empires. The Earth people eventually succeed in fomenting a Martian revolution and overthrowing both empires. The Earth expedition is headed by an Israeli scientist while a leading role among the revolutionaries is played by the "Yunodins", members of a dispersed and persecuted minority explicitly described as "The Jews of Mars". Livneh may have been influenced by Aelita; his story also involves interplanetary love.
  • Omnilingual (1957) by H. Beam Piper. Short story. Archaeologists excavating the remains of a humanoid Martian civilization find an entire library, but lack a Rosetta Stone.
  • A Rose for Ecclesiastes (1963) by Roger Zelazny. One of the last stories of this type, describing an Earth poet's study of Martian language and literature. The story is deliberately written as an elegiac farewell to the old conception of Mars, complete with canals and an ancient, dying Martian race, as "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth" (1965) was his farewell to the Venus of earlier science fiction.
  • John Wyndham dealt with Martians in two short stories: Time to Rest and Dumb Martian.

Other writers wrote about human colonization of Mars without referring to alien life.

  • The Martian Way (1952) by Isaac Asimov. Arrogant Earth people look down their nose at the Mars colonists, who barely survive by engaging in salvage of "space junk", yet this way of life is what fits the Marsmen for further space exploration, getting first to Saturn and eventually (Asimov implies) to the stars.
  • In Seetee Ship(1949) and Seetee Shock (1950) by Jack Williamson, Mars is colonised by European Fascists and Neo-Nazis, and its main holiday is Hitler Day", celebration of which often entails bloody riots. The Fascist Mars is one of the main powers contending for control of the mineral wealth of the Asteroid Belt.
  • Similarly, in the dystopian Draka alternate history of S. M. Stirling, Mars is colonised by the harsh Draka who create on it a slave society. To control their slaves there they breed a special kind of artifical horrendous beast, the ghouloon, out of baboons.
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Post-Mariner Mars fiction

Beginning in 1965, the Mariner and Viking space probes revealed that the canals were an illusion, and that the Martian environment is extremely hostile to life. The canals and ancient civilizations had to be abandoned.

Authors soon began writing stories based on the new Mars (frequently treating it as a desert planet). Most of these works feature humans struggling to tame the planet, and some of them refer to terraforming (using technology to transform a planet's environment).

  • In Philip K. Dick's fiction, Mars is an almost empty, dry land, with isolated communities and individuals, most of whom do not want to be there. (The Days of Perky Pat, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Martian Time Slip). The characters in these stories could be in small communities in the Arizona desert, but placing them on Mars emphasises their isolation, both from one another and from Earth.
  • In Man Plus by Frederik Pohl, an astronaut is cyborged into a form capable of living on Mars.
  • Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) is concerned with a centuries-long program of terraforming the planet. His Icehenge also features a Mars in process of terraforming.
  • Desolation Road by Ian McDonald is a magic-realist science fiction novel set on a planet that's never explicitly named (though the name "Ares" makes frequent appearances in various contexts) but is clearly meant to be a terraformed Mars. The length of the Martian year is whimsically implied through characters' ages (for example, young people come of age at 10), and a 24-month year is implied using month names such as "Julaugust" and "Novodecember."
  • Red Dust by Paul J. McAuley is the story of a failed attempt at terraforming Mars.
  • In Larry Niven's harsh Known Space universe, Mars is a backwater bypassed by humans in their rush to the mineral wealth of the Asteroid Belt. A single attempt to colonise Mars ended disastrously, due to the combination of violent conflict between the would-be colonists and a confrontation with the native Martians - a shadowy race spending most of their time swimming under the surface of the Martian dust, and to whom water is a deadly poison. They are neither able not interested in going into space, and humans are not really interested in Mars, so there seems no reason for conflict. Still, in the book Protector the Martians are brutally externminated via a large water asteroid deliberately hurled at the planet, raising the water content in the atmosphere to a degree deadly to them. The perpetrator was Brennan, a human who had turned into a Pak Protector - a creature completely devoted to protecting his descendants, or somethimes his entire species, and is unreasonably racist and xenophobic towards anybody else. This act of interplanetray genocide in effect ties Niven's Mars with the older Wells/Stpeldon tradition.
  • Moving Mars by Greg Bear depicts a bleak Mars.
  • Mars Underground by William K. Hartmann
  • Mars Crossing by Geoffrey A. Landis, about a stranded expedition.
  • Red Genesis by S.C. Sykes, about a rebellion by human colonists.
  • First Landing by Robert Zubrin
  • The Martian Race by Gregory Benford

A common theme, particularly among American writers, is that of a Martian colony fighting for independence from Earth. It appeared already in the aforementioned Red Planet of Heinlein and is a major plot element in Greg Bear's Moving Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, and S.C. Sykes' books. It is also part of the plot of the movie Total Recall and the television series Babylon 5. Many video games also use this concept, such as the Red Faction and Zone of the Enders series.

Some recent Martian fiction retains the ideas of the older phase.

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Pre-Mariner nostalgia

Several post-Mariner works are homages to the older phase of Mars fiction.

  • Philip Jose Farmer's World of Tiers contains a nostalgic and ironic reminder of the Barsoom myth. Kickaha, the series' adventurer protagonist, asks his friend The Creator of Universes to create for him a Barsoom. The latter agrees only to make an empty world, since "It would go too far for me to create all these fabulous creatures only for you to amuse yourself by running your sword through them". Kickaha visits from time to time the empty Barsoom, complete with beautiful palaces in which nobody ever lived, but goes away frustrated.
  • Some Sword and planet series, such as Michael Moorcock's Kane of Old Mars trilogy (1965) and Lin Carter's Mysteries of Mars (1973-1984) are deliberately anachronistic homages to earlier visions of Mars, particularly Burroughs'.
  • In one of Robert A. Heinlein's last novels, The Number of the Beast (1980), the heroes flee Earth in a car capable of flight in six dimensions and find several parallel versions of Mars, one which had been colonised by the British and another which is an improbable combination of Burroughs' fabulous Barsoom with the home planet of the vicious Martians whose invasion of Earth was described by Wells.
  • The title Larry Niven's Rainbow Mars alludes to Robinson's three-colored Mars trilogy, and the plot concerns a time machine that is used to visit ancient Mars. The only problem is that time travel is impossible, and the machine actually travels back to a fictitious Mars. The protagonist meets a wide variety of different Martians, including most of those from the pre-Mariner novels listed above.
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Other stories

  • Ananke by Stanisław Lem (a story in More Tales of Pirx the Pilot)
  • Outpost Mars by "Cyril Judd" (C.M. Kornbluth and Judith Merril)
  • No Man Friday by Rex Gordon
  • The Sands of Mars (1951) by Arthur C. Clarke involves a reporter who makes the long voyage to a desert Mars to write about the human colonists and along the way discovers there is life on Mars after all.
  • Voyage by Stephen Baxter
  • Birth of Fire by Jerry Pournelle is the story of a troubled youth transported to Mars as a convict laborer who becomes involved with a rebellion by independent farmers and tradesmen who want to terraform Mars and break the stranglehold by the corporations and domed cities sponsored by Earth govenrments.
  • In Police Your Planet by Lester Del Rey a disgraced, embittered Earth cop is exiled to a Mars that has been thoroughly corrupted by domed city life -- he who controls the air machinery makes the rules. The local police and city government are utterly corrupt, Chicago style. At first he tries to fit in, then his contact with other downtrodden outsiders renews his old idealism. More violent Mickey Spillane than noble American Revolution.
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Film and television

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Set on Mars

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Martians on Earth or elsewhere

  • Invaders from Mars (1953) – A film, remade in 1986.
  • My Favorite Martian (1963-1966) – A television comedy series and film.
  • Captain Scarlet (1967-1968) – The Martians at war with Earth are the Mysterons — an invisible race of superbeings hell-bent on revenge after an unprovoked attack on their Martian city by Captain Black, a S.P.E.C.T.R.U.M. agent investigating strange alien signals.
  • Spaced Invaders (1990) – A sci-fi comedy in which dim-witted Martians attempt to invade a small Illinois town during a re-broadcast of Orson Welles 1938 "War of the Worlds".
  • Biker Mice from Mars (1993-1995) – A cartoon series about three Martian Mice who crash-land on Earth after their ship is attacked by their enemies, the fish-like Plutarkians. The Mice --leader Throttle, gentle-giant Modo, and wild-mouse Vinnie-- decide to remain on Earth to fight the Plutarkian Lawerence Limburger, who threatens Chicago.
  • Mars Attacks! (1996), – A satirical film directed by Tim Burton, based on the equally satirical, unpunctuated Topps trading card series Mars Attacks (1962); see below in other media).
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Minor references to Mars in film and television

  • Looney Tunes – Included the cartoon character Marvin the Martian (1948-), a comic foil to Warner Bros. mainstays Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck in several animated shorts.
  • Space Patrol (1962)
    • The Buried Spaceship - 'Operation Ice Cube' is put into action when Marla suggests moving ice through space as a solution to a drought problem on Mars. Galasphere 347 is sent to assist but develops a fault in the Meson Power Unit forcing the craft to land for repairs...
    • The Wandering Asteroid - The Space Patrol crew accept a dangerous mission to destroy an asteroid deflected from its orbit by a cometary collision and heading directly for the Martian capital Wotan.
    • Husky becomes invisible - When Dart is sent to Mars to find the eggs of the Aba bird to help find a cure for a condition known as the "floats", he calls on Professor Zeller who has discovered that his new star-measuring apparatus can make objects disappear.
    • The Forgers - Colonel Raeburn is baffled by a sudden influx of forged currency. Whilst investigating what appears to be a disease killing the vegetation on Mars. Dart and Husky stumble across the source of the forgeries...
  • Doctor Who – Mars is the homeworld of the Ice Warriors, a recurring adversary during the first three Doctors' eras. The Fourth Doctor had the Pyramids of Mars as the last outpost of the Egyptian gods.
  • Star Trek and spinoffs – Some starships are assembled at Utopia Planitia region on Mars, particularly the Galaxy class starships featured in Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the Star Trek: Enterprise episodes Demon and Terra Prime it is revealed that Mars is in the process of being terraformed by use of the Verteron array which redirects comets to crashland on the planet's surface.
  • Super Dimension Fortress Macross (1982-1983), episode "Bye Bye, Mars" – The Macross makes a landing on the planet to resupply. There we learn that Misa Hayase's fiancee, Riber Fruring, was killed during a UN Spacy evacuation of the Mars Base Sara during the Unification Wars. The Macross has to fight its way off of Mars after being trapped there by a Zentradi attack.
  • Genesis Climber Mospeada (1983-1984) (anime series) – The main character, Stick Bernard, is a Martian colonist and a soldier in the Mars Base Military.
  • Exosquad (1993-1995) – Mars was one of the three Homeworlds and the industrial center of the Solar System before the war between Terrans and Neosapiens. During the war, the Neosapiens made it their stronghold.
  • Babylon 5 (1993-1998) – Mars is a human colony seeking independence from the Earth Alliance. Several of the major characters have close links to Mars and, alongside Centauri Prime and the White Star fleet, Mars is the most common setting for action other than the Babylon 5 space station itself.
  • Martian Successor Nadesico (1996) – An anime series and manga by Kia Asamiya.
  • Cowboy Bebop (1998-1999) (Japanese television anime) – Numerous episodes with background depictions of Mars, and the 2001 theatrical movie release Cowboy Bebop : Tengoku No Tobira takes place entirely on Mars during Halloween.
  • Futurama (1999-2003) – By the year 3000, Mars has been completely terraformed to make it inhabitable for humans - the native Martian aliens are forced to live in specially designated areas, in a parody of the treatment of Native Americans. Amy Wong's parents own half of the planet, and it features its own university.
  • Invader Zim (2001-2002) – In one episode, Zim finds that Mars is a giant spaceship and attempts to roll it over Earth in order to wipe out all human life.
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Comics

  • In the DC Comics universe, the Martian Manhunter (J'onn J'onzz) (1955) is a superhero and member of the Justice League. In at least some variations, he is believed to be the last of his race.
  • In the future world of Marvel Comics' Killraven, the Martian Masters who orchestrated the invasion in The War of the Worlds returned to Earth a century later and conquered it; they were overthrown by rebels led by the psychic human Jonathan Raven, alias Killraven.
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Computer and video games

  • The first-person shooter Red Faction tells the story of a Martian mining colony that leads a revolt to take control of the autocratic government.
  • The computer game Elite 2 starts on Mars in one scenario.
  • In the video game Destroy All Humans! (2005), the Martians were wiped out by the Furons.
  • In the 1993 video game Doom, game events took place on military bases on both of Mars's moons, Phobos and Deimos. The 2004 sequel Doom 3 is set on Mars itself.
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Role-playing games and miniature games

  • The role-playing game Space: 1889 features an alternate history in which a heroic Mars, complete with natives, is being colonized by the European empires of the 19th century.
  • In Palladium Games' post-apocalyptic role-playing game Rifts, the Martian canals are mystical ley lines, magical tunnels of energy that create portals through space, time and dimension wherever they cross. In Palladium's After the Bomb Sourcebook 6: Mutants in Orbit, there is a section pertaining to Rifts that also says that there were several points where the ley lines create dimensional pockets (similar to the Bermuda Triangle) in which full-fledged jungles grow within the borders of three nearby Rifts.
  • In the tabletop wargame Warhammer 40,000, Mars is a vast, heavily colonised 'Forge World,' home to the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Tech-Priests of Mars. They are the engineers and technicians of the Imperium, who create most of the Imperium's more advanced weaponry. The planet is almost as well defended as the Holy planet Terra itself and home to those who worship the 'Machine God.'
  • In the role-playing game Transhuman Space, Mars is in the process of being terraformed, while several million people live in colonies. China, the first nation to land on Mars and the leader of the most extensive colonies, has built a space elevator on Mars to speed colonization.
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Other media

  • The 1962 trading card series Mars Attacks (no exclamation point, unlike the 1996 film based on it) depicts an invasion of Earth by hideous, skeletal Martians. The exaggerated, satirical violence of the series made it a cult favorite.
  • The pop song "Life on Mars?" by David Bowie (which isn't really about life on Mars).
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See also

sr:Марсовци

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