Mars Links
Fridays at 8 pm, OBU Planetarium (while school is in session).
Sites include information on Mars as well as other planets.
- The
Nine Planets: Mars. Start here for a great introduction to the
planetary features of Mars. Maintained by Bill Arnett. Also
includes science fiction links and current finder charts.
- Mars
Introduction. More detailed overview of Mars' planetary
features. Maintained by Calvin Hamilton. Excellent site.
- Planet
Mars Links: Every topic.
NASA and JPL sites
Select instructional resources
Mars classic science fiction
- Mars
in Fiction. Humans have been going to Mars for years! Many
classic texts, predating Star Trek, are available online (*),
along with study guides and other information.
- Percival
Lowell, Mars* (1895). Astronomer who scientifically
advocated the existence of a technologically-advanced but dying
civilization on Mars.
- H.G. Wells, War of the Worlds* (1897).
Immensely successful portrait of aliens as monstrous invaders. The
1953 film version vastly alters the setting, placing it in 1950's
California instead of Victorian England.
- Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan,
took Lowell's ideas and transformed them into a series of science
fiction novels which later inspired the likes of Carl Sagan,
Arthur Clarke, and Ray Bradbury. Burroughs' ten-volume Mars series
was the action-adventure Star Wars diversion of his generation,
featuring the exploits of one John Carter. This "space opera"
series includes Gods of Mars* (1912), Warlord of Mars* (1913),
Thuvia, Maid of Mars* (1916), A Princess of Mars* (1917), Monster
Men*, Chessmen of Mars (1922), Mastermind of Mars (1927), Fighting
Man of Mars (1930), Swords of Mars (1934), and Synthetic Men of
Mars (1938). Arthur Clarke commented that if one is no longer a
teenager, it may be too late to read Burroughs, but his influence
in situating Mars as a theater for popular imagination is
unquestioned.
- Stanley G. Weinbaum, A Martian Odyssey
(1934). Weinbaum's Martians were neither monsters nor invaders,
but aliens with their own psychology and unique physiology.
- Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men (1930). A
Martian invasion forms a prelude to this two-billion-year panorama
of human history, largely inspired by the geneticist J. B. S.
Haldane's "Possible Worlds" and "Last Judgment." The theme of
Stapledon's cosmic evolutionary perspective is the smallness and
insignificance of a human person.
- C. S. Lewis' best-selling space trilogy
begins with a trip to Mars in Out of the Silent
Planet (1938). Lewis wrote his trilogy as an antidote to
the views of Stapledon and Haldane. For an analysis of Lewis'
trilogy which recognizes Lewis' appropriation of medieval
mythology see David Downing, Planets in Peril: A Critical
Study of C. S. Lewis' Ransom Trilogy (Amherst: The
University of Massachusetts Press, 1992).
- Robert Heinlein, Red Planet* (1949).
- Ray Bradbury, Martian Chronicles* (1950). A
sustained reflection on terrestrial life in the twentieth century,
with some pessimism regarding science and technology in our
society.
- We are the martians!
Mars books
- MARS OBSERVED
- William Graves Hoyt, Lowell and Mars.
Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1976; rpt. 1996.
- William Sheehan, The Planet Mars: A History of
Observation and Discovery. Tucson: The University of
Arizona Press, 1996.
- See the web links noted below for more recent discoveries.
- MARS IN MYTH
- Ancient: Gene Ammarell, Mars in Mythology,
1981.
- Medieval and Renaissance: See the chapter on "The Heavens"
in C. S. Lewis' The Discarded Image. Cambridge
University Press, 1964 (recently reprinted as a Canto
paperback).
- IS THERE LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS?
Mars has sometimes occupied center stage, but the question is one
of great interest and broad appeal. Three scholarly books offer a
historical survey of thinking on these issues and one short
article provides an excellent brief overview:
- Steven J. Dick, Plurality of Worlds: The Origins of
the Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to
Kant. Cambridge University Press, 1982.
- Michael J. Crowe, The Extraterrestrial Life Debate,
1750-1900: The Idea of a Plurality of Worlds from Kant to
Lowell. Cambridge University Press, 1986.
- Steven J. Dick, The Biological Universe: The
Twentieth-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits
of Science. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
- Michael J. Crowe, "A History of the
Extraterrestrial Life Debate." Zygon 1997, 32:
147-162.
- MARS IN THE FUTURE
- American Astronautical Society, The Case for
Mars, Vols. 57 and 62, 1984-1985, San Diego, CA. Also
available online.
