Who Are The Real Martians?

"Martian" can mean whatever an sf writer makes it mean. ERB's Martians are martial - and are called Barsoomians. Wells's are:

"...intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic..."

-HG Wells, The War Of The Worlds (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1974), BOOK ONE, 1, p. 9.

 

However, CS Lewis, a character within his own novel, refers to:

 

"...Mr Wells's Martians (very unlike the real Malacandrians, by the bye)..."

-CS Lewis, Perelandra IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 145-348 AT 1, p. 151.

Poul Anderson does many things with Mars. In "The Nest," Captain Olga Borisovna Rakitin of the Martian Soviet, who swears by Lenin, says:

 

"'...the odds are ridiculous... And as a Martian, I am Dostoyevskian enough to enjoy the fact a trifle.'" (p. 98)

 

OK. On the authority of one character in one short story, we accept, for the time being, that Martians are Dostoyevskian.

(In seeking out the references for this post, I discovered an odd literary parallel. The War Of The Worlds, about Martians coming to Earth, is dedicated "To my brother, FRANK WELLS, this rendering of his idea," whereas CS Lewis's Out Of The Silent Planet, about Earthmen going to Mars, is dedicated "TO MY BROTHER  W.H.L. A lifelong critic of the space-and-time story.")