"Once upon a time, before men set foot on Mars, the twin moons were the occasion of much romancing." (p. 153)
"Once upon a time..." It is as if Anderson is about to recount some of that earlier romancing.
"...before men set foot on Mars..." But this story is set in our future.
"...much romancing..." You can say that again. Not for the first time, I must ask blog readers whether they know of any relevant short stories by Anderson himself. But there was plenty of romancing by other authors.
(i) On ERB's Barsoom (Mars), the twin moons hurtled through the sky. Barsoomians wrongly believed that the Black Pirates flew down from the lower moon. When Carter flew to one of the moons, the spaceship and all its occupants shrank so that, when they reached the moon, it was as big to them as Barsoom had been and it was, of course, inhabited by appropriately small people. (Sf as we know it asks whether a particular heavenly body can possibly be inhabited whereas some earlier sf automatically assumed that every such body was inhabited.)
(ii) In The Sands Of Mars by Arthur C. Clarke, Mars is colonized and Phobos is ignited, becoming a miniature sun to help with the terraforming of Mars.
(iii) In Mission To The Heart Stars by James Blish, an interstellar federation hollowed out Phobos to observe the Martians and watched them die.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Hmmm, I can think of at least two stories by Poul Anderson in which he did some "romancing" about Mars: "The Martian Crown Jewels" and THE WAR OF TWO WORLDS. Both of them presume a Mars terrestroid enough to have life, including intelligent life, of its own. I think both were written before 1960, after which serious science fiction writers gave up the last lingering hopes of Mars still having life.
S.M. Stirling, in THE COURTS OF THE CRIMSON KINGS has a Mars which was terraformed by mysterious aliens LONG ago and seeded with life from Earth, including hominins.
Sean
Sean,
But I meant romancing about the moons of Mars.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Oops! Well, PARTS of "Martian Crown Jewels" are set on one of the Martian moons.
Sean
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