Mars in Popular Culture

In 1898, just three years after Percival Lowell popularized the vision of a Mars threaded by canals and peopled by ancient beings, the first great Martian science fiction book was published. The War of the Worlds, written by H. G. Wells, is hailed as the greatest alien invasion story in history. The book began with a Martian assault just outside of London. While the Martians at first seemed helpless in the heavy Earth gravity, they quickly exposed their advanced technology in the form of huge death machines that began destroying the surrounding countryside, forcing the evacuation of London. The saving grace for the badly overmatched humans turned out to be common bacteria that the Martians had no immune system to fight off. In 1938, the book was famously adapted for radio by Orson Welles. The retelling of the story, portrayed as a news program about a Martian landing in rural New Jersey, was so believable that millions of Americans actually thought that Earth was being invaded.[20]

Starting in 1917, author Edgar Rice Burroughs began a highly popular series about Mars exploration with the publication of A Princess of Mars. In subsequent years, he wrote ten more books tracking the adventures of Captain John Carter on Mars. The series was first published as a longer sequence of serials printed in All – Story Magazine, which represented a common strategy for the publication of science fiction novels during that period. The Carter books were considered to be more fantasy than hard science fiction, which was exhibited by the lack of detail regard­ing how Carter actually got to the red planet—he was magically taken there in the book.[21]

During the Great Depression and the Second World War, there was a conspic­uous absence of popular books regarding Mars exploration. The lull was broken when author Robert Heinlein wrote Red Planet. Published in 1949, the book fol­lowed teenager Jim Marlowe, his friend Frank, and his Martian “roundhead” pet Willis on their travels across the planet to warn a human colony that was the target of a conspiracy by the Martians.[22] A year later, Ray Bradbury authored his famous book entitled The Martian Chronicles. The book was actually a compilation of relatively unrelated short stories about an ancient, dying Martian race. Along with Heinleins Red Planet, the book borrowed heavily from the observations and theories of both Schiaparelli and Lowell—planetary canals were a central accomplishment of the Martian civilizations in both books. These were early examples of how scientific research pushed science fiction novels.[23] In 1956, Robert Heinlein wrote Double Star, the most critically acclaimed Martian novel during this time period. The book, which won the Hugo Award,[24] centered on the emotional predicament of an out of work actor, Lorenzo Smythe, who was asked to stand in for an important politician who had been kidnapped. His trouble began when he was forced to take part in an important ceremony on Mars despite the fact that he hated Martians. The book was an interesting rendering of the civil rights struggle going on in the United States at the time.[25]

During this same period, a large number of popular films featured adventures involving the red planet. In 1938, Flash Gordon: Mars Attacks the World premiered as a feature-length film. In the movie, Flash Gordon blasts off for Mars to destroy a mysterious force sucking the nitrogen from Earths atmosphere and foil a plot by Ming the Merciless to conquer the universe. This was followed in the post-War period with the 1950 film Rocketship X-M, the story of five astronauts that set off to explore the moon but due to a malfunction ended up on Mars—where they find evidence of an advanced civilization nearly destroyed by an atomic holocaust. The next year, Flight to Mars chronicled the adventures of a team of scientists and a newspaper reporter that fly to Mars and thwart a plan by the Martians (who look identical to humans) to conquer Earth. In 1953, Invaders from Mars told the tale of small town where all the adults begin acting strangely shortly after young David MacLean sees strange lights settling behind a hill near his home. That same year, Gene Barry starred in a film adaptation of War of the Worlds. Finally, in 1959, The Angry Red Planet followed a group of astronauts that land on Mars and battle aliens, a giant amoeba, and the dreaded “Rat-Bat-Spider thing.” By the late-1950s, the combination of these best selling books and feature-length films had fixed human exploration of the Mars (and the likely inhabitants of that planet) in the popular culture of the nation.