Intermediate Versions Of Mars
(i) Whereas ERB's John Carter had astrally projected himself to present-day Mars, Michael Moorcock's Carter-pastiche character, Michael Kane, time travels to Mars at a time before the human race had emigrated to Earth.
(ii) In James Blish's They Shall Have Stars, Martians are extinct because they wasted resources spreading the Diagram of Power over the whole planetary surface.
(iii) Poul Anderson put Martians in the first Nicholas van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit," but then changed these Martians into extra-solar colonists.
(iv) In Anderson's The Fleet Of Stars, "Martians" are Terran and Lunarian colonists of Mars.
(v) SM Stirling wrote retro-sf with an inhabited Mars but this is set in an alternative history where a superior technology had terraformed Mars and Venus and imported Terrestrial organisms.
There are no doubt other examples.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And your point "iv" might become an actuality by 2030!
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
I should have mentioned as well Anderson's THE WAR OF TWO WORLDS, in which non-human Martians defeated Earth in a war. And the story has other intriguing plot twists, as you know!
I would suggest that THE WAR OF TWO WORLDS is Anderson's reply to Wells' THE WAR OF THE WORLDS.
Ad astra! Sean
They were non-human, but very -humanoid- in that story of Poul's.
BTW, it illustrates that knowledge Mars is uninhabited is surprisingly recent.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Well, I believe the "humanoid" body plan is a very practical one. So, I would not be surprised if many non human races have one head, two arms, and two legs.
And I think there was hope of intelligent life existing on Mars down to the late 1950's.
Ad astra! Sean
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