Read more
What is Mars? From the ancients to the present, we have imagined Mars repeatedly and studied it longingly. As scientific knowledge of Mars has changed, so has the cultural imagination of this celestial neighbors. The earth-centered beginnings of astronomy connected the blood-red planet with the God of War. The Copernican Revolution and a later, simple mistranslation from Italian supported fantastic visions of distant Mars as the abode of life variously bizarre, ideal, or malignant. In the work of H. G. Wells and Orson Welles, in books, films, radio, and television, Mars reflected not only eternal hopes and fears but then-current political realities. In recent years, NASA-fication has brought Mars home, imagining the Red Planet almost as an eighth continent of Earth, a candidate for exploration and exploitation both in fiction and in fact. Rabkin weaves a chronological tale of many threads, including mythology, astrology, astronomy, literary criticism, and cultural studies.
List of contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Red Light in the Black Sky
Starry Night
Ancient Egypt: Har Decher
The Idealized Solar System
What Was A Planet?
Mesopotamia: Negral
Ancient Greece: Ares
Ancient Rome: Mars
The Sunset of Mars
Changes in Venus
Metaphorical Mars
Ptolemy
The Observation of the Planets
Astrological Symbols
Days of the Week
Alchemy
The Mars Symbol
Nicolaus Copernicus: Reorganizing the Universe
Johannes Kepler: Putting Mars in Its Place
Galileo Galilei: Questions of Authority
Evangelista Torricelli: How Space Became Empty
Christian Huygens: Other Earths?
Giovanni Cassini: Very, Very Carefully
Isaac Newton: One Big Universe
Mars on Their Minds
Jonathan Swift: Imaginary Travels
William Herschel: Stars and Mars
The Solar System Today
Asaph Hall: The Sons of Mars
Giovanni Schiaparelli: Gaining in Translation
Camille Flammarion: Astrophile Extraordinaire
Percival Lowell: A Glorious Obsession
Percival Lowell: Mapping Mars and Martians
H.G. Wells: The War of the Worlds
H.G. Wells: Another View From Mars
A World Ready to Believe
Mark Wicks: A Lowellian Utopia
Edgar Rice Burroughs: Mars and America
Mars: The Bar vrom Barsoom
Dead Mars?
Orson Wells: The War of the Worlds Broadcast
Marvin the Martian: Playing sith Aliens
Ray Bradbury: An American Fairyland
George Pal: The War of the Worlds Again
Spacecraft: Us v. Them
Off to Camp
Chemosphere
Robert A. Heinlein: The Martian Savior
Enter NASA
My Favorite Martian
The Age of Aquarius
The Face on Mars
Mars Attacks!
Leaving Earth Behind
Mars Today
Phobos and Deimos Today
Men Are from Mars
The Nasafication of Mars
Mars: The Eighth Continent
Marscape
Terraforming Mars
Red Rover
Water on Mars
Land of Spirit and Opportunity
August, 2003
The Beagle Hasn't Landed
A-Roving We Will Go
About the author
Eric S. Rabkin teaches in the Department of English at the University of Michigan. He is the author (and editor) of more than 30 books on science fiction and writing, including Science Fiction: A Historical Anthology and The Fantastic in Literature, and more than 100 articles in scholarly and mainstream media.
Summary
Rabkin weaves a chronological tale of many threads, including mythology, astrology, astronomy, literary criticism, and cultural studies. More than 60 brief chapters focus on people, events, or phenomena concerning the eternal object of curiosity, Mars.
