(i) the story was written so long ago that such an atmosphere was still considered possible (Edgar Rice Burroughs);
(ii) the story was written in an intermediate period when scientific knowledge had advanced but the literary convention of breathable atmospheres on Solar planets persisted (some short stories in The Early Asimov);
(iii) the author was unconcerned about scientific accuracy (Ray Bradbury, CS Lewis);
(iv) the story is set in a remote past before Mars lost its atmosphere (Michael Moorcock);
(v) the story is set in a future when colonists from Earth have made a breathable atmosphere (Kim Stanley Robinson, also Poul Anderson in "The Corkscrew of Space," which I am currently reading).
(This is another of those lists that grew in the writing.)
(ii) and (iii) overlap. Lewis commented that, when he wrote Out Of The Silent Planet, he probably knew that the Martian "canals" were not real but included them as part of the mythology.
This post is occasioned by reading the Anderson story which will have to be discussed in a subsequent post and, since today is my granddaughter's twenty first birthday, that next post might be delayed for a while.
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