Saturday 11 May 2013

More On Mars

Someone could compile an encyclopedia just about all the fictitious Martian races, maybe starting with the major writers -

British: Wells, Stapledon, Lewis;
American: Burroughs, Heinlein, Bradbury;
also: Blish, Anderson, Niven, Weinbaum;
ERB-related: Arnold, Kline, Moorcock;
screen: Quatermass and the Pit, Doctor Who's Ice Warriors, Mars Attacks!;
comics: DC Comics' Martian Manhunter.

And many others. Some of these writers have more than one version of Mars and its inhabitants and some of the Martians exist only in the imaginations or speculations of the fictitious characters.

Here is a question for Anderson fans: how many Martian races does Anderson have? (And should we include extra-solar colonists of Mars who come to be called "Martians"?)

Fictitious Martians are either serious scientific speculation about hypothetical Martian life or exercises in imagination about possible other life forms. Anderson's Shield contains both. He mentions something like gnarled trees with long branches, an idea about conceivable Martian vegetation. But the Martians themselves have a different language for each sense, vocal, tactile etc. Further, each language articulates a different aspect of experience so that they are not mutually translatable but between them build up a completer view. Here, Anderson has gone beyond talking about Mars and is instead speculating about alternative modes of consciousness.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

Besides the example of SHIELD, and the non human extra Solar colonists who settled Mars in the Technic History series, I can think of one more story of Anderson speculating about an inhabited Mars. That is "The Martian Crown Jewels," which is also an affectionate pastiche on the Sherlock Holmes stories.

To your list of writers setting stories on Mars I would include S.M. Stirling's IN THE COURTS OF THE CRIMSON KINGS. If you haven't read it, I should probably say nothing more about the book, but I do recommend it.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Anderson has at least one other short story about Martians set on Mars. "Duel in Syrtis"? Unpleasant: an Earthman goes hunting a Martian...

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

Drat! I forgot about "Duel on Syrtis." that story is set o Mars. And it was the MARTIAN who won the duel, btw.

Sean