Martian Series

Innumerable works of science fiction feature Mars, Martians or both but how many Martian series are there? If a series comprises a minimum of two installments, then Poul Anderson has a Martian series. See here.

I ask this question because I had wrongly described Old Mars as presenting fifteen original versions of Mars. In fact:

SM Stirling's "Swords of Zar-tu-Kan" is a prequel to the same author's Mars novel;

Matthew Hughes' "The Ugly Duckling" is a sequel to Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, which is itself a series;

there might be similar surprises in store in the remaining contents of the anthology.

Edwin Arnold's Lieut. Gulliver Jones, a possible source for ERB's A Princess Of Mars, ends, like Wells' The First Men In The Moon, in a way that rules out a sequel. The magic rug returns Jones to Earth, then disappears forever. However, A Princess... became a series that inspired further, imitative, series by both Otis Adelbert Kline and Michael Moorcock.

So we have identified Martian series by Anderson, Stirling, Bradbury, Burroughs, Kline and Moorcock. There are other such series on the periphery of my awareness. Poul Anderson is much better known for his many other kinds of writing but it is good to see that, with just two short stories, he does make it onto the list of authors of Martian series.

Marses II

We might as well discuss fictional versions of Mars and Martians in general but that is an enormous topic. This blog has already, in diverse posts, addressed Poul Anderson's several Martian races which seem to be sui generis, except that Anderson borrowed Wells' title with just a slight variation. See here.

I think that the main writers about fictional Martians are:

British
Wells
Stapledon
Lewis

American
Burroughs
Heinlein
Bradbury

The Brits form a perfect triad:

Wells writes separately both a future history and a novel about a Martian invasion of Earth;
Stapledon describes Martian invasions of Earth among many other events in a future history text book;
Lewis, disagreeing with Wellsian and Stapledonian visions of the future, locates evil only on Earth and tells us that Wells' Martians are very unlike the real Martians!

However, there are many other writers about Mars:

relevant to Burroughs
Edwin Arnold
Otis Adelbert Kline
Michael Moorcock

authors of composite Marses
Larry Niven
Alan Moore

James Blish incorporated Mars into his Haertel histories by putting the seminal character, Adolph Haertel, on Mars. Professor Quatermass thought that one group of alien invaders had come from Mars and Quatermass' successor on British television, Doctor Who, has his version of Martians, the Ice Warriors.

And that is as comprehensive as I feel like getting at present.