Sunday, 9 April 2017

Martians

When I said here that Poul Anderson's works include two extraterrestrial counterparts of Sherlock Holmes, a Martian and a Hoka, that reminded me of a previous occasion when I said that there were two extraterrestrials, one of them Martian. I traced it to here: the founding members of the Justice League of America included two extraterrestrial exiles, a Martian and a Kryptonian.

The Martians are a much maligned set of speculative species. How many different versions of Mars and Martians are presented respectively by HG Wells, Robert Heinlein and Poul Anderson? Each has several. Some answers might be found earlier on the blog.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Oops! My comment in "Cosmic Crises" should have been deposited here.

Sean

David Birr said...

Paul:
One of Arthur C. Clarke's humorous short stories in *Tales from the "White Hart"* includes the remark that in light of how often our fiction features an attack from Mars ("I suppose that man Wells started it."), if Earth ever makes contact with REAL Martians, "we may have a big interplanetary libel action on our hands — unless we can prove that the Martians have been equally rude about US."

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, David!

Ha, ha!!! Amusingly put! And I do have a copy of Clarke's TALES FROM THE WHITE HART.

Sean