when first explored;
as inhabited by Martians;
as colonized by human beings.
The second and third kinds can be combined, e.g.:
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury;
Red Planet by Robert Heinlein.
The Fleet Of Stars, 5, describes Mars when it has been colonized for centuries by two human species:
Terrans, who evolved on Earth;
Lunarians, who had been adapted to live in Lunar gravity although not on the Lunar surface so that their entire lives have to be spent inside enclosed habitats, spaceships or spacesuits.
Both species can breed in Martian gravity which is greater than Lunar but less than Terrestrial. Earthlings stride, Lunarians bound, Martians of either species lope.
This might be one of the most carefully contrived accounts of life on Mars as that planet might really be like. It is many years since my single reading of Red Planet and I have not read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy which, I now learn, covers the period 2026-2212.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Your blog posts have helped to encourage me to reread many of Anderson's stories. That careful depiction of what life on a colonized Mars makes me wonder, again, if Elon Musk has also read THE FLEET OF STARS. Also, in THE CASE FOR MARS Robert Zubrin gives plenty of hard-headed nuts-and-bolts advice on how to both get to Barsoom and to live there. Another book Musk might have read.
Ad astra! Sean
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