Poul Anderson's Martians: Owlies, Hordes And Conquerors

Searching the blog for physical descriptions of Poul Anderson's Martians, I found this post that compares two of Anderson's Martian races. I remarked somewhere that, like ERB's green Martians, the Martians of the Technic History have social units called "hordes." However, I cannot find that post now so let me merely repeat the remark here.

That leaves only the Martians of The War Of Two Worlds, the most humanoid of Anderson's Martian races. Again, I am sure that I would have listed their physical characteristics in an earlier post but cannot easily find it so:

long straight legs;
lean waist and arms;
very broad chest and shoulders;
hairless brown skin;
high cheekbones;
domed forehead;
narrow chin;
long pointed ears;
small flat nose;
mobile, human-like mouth;
large slanted golden eyes;
small antennae.

An sf cliche? Sounding more like a man adapted to Mars than an independently evolved organism? Nevertheless, these particular Martians serve their purpose in this early novel.

Poul Anderson's Martians: The Full List?

I am due to go out shortly but let's reflect for a moment. Reading SM Stirling's Martian novel has prompted discussion of fictional Martians in general and of Poul Anderson's various Martians in particular. By checking back, I am learning how many Martian races Anderson imagined and what they look like. I have even found a picture of Kreega in "Duel on Syrtis." (See image.)

Provisional conclusion - Anderson imagined at least six native Martian races:

hibernating natives in the Psychotechnic History;

Martians resisting Terrestrial rule in "Duel on Syrtis" and "War-Maid of Mars";

avian Martians in "The Martian Crown Jewels;"

small tentacled Martians in The Makeshift Rocket/"A Bicycle Built For Brew" and "Captive of the Centaurianess;"

 
Martians who conquer Earth in The War Of Two Worlds;

powerful, undescribed Martians in Shield -

- and two different groups that become "Martians" by colonizing Mars. There is always more to say but later.

Poul Anderson's Martians: The Martian Crown Jewels And Shield

OK. I am trying to track down physical descriptions of Poul Anderson's half dozen or so Martian races but this is no easy matter and will take a while. I think that I am right to say, and have said before, that "A Bicycle Built For Brew" and "Captive of the Centaurianess" share a race of Martians even though these two stories are not otherwise connected, i.e., do not fit into the same continuity?

But my first task is to describe the Martians of "The Martian Crown Jewels." I have posted about this story but not included any description of its Martians so I must return to Anderson's text: a seven-foot, stork-like biped with a large, lean, crested head, red beak, deep yellow eyes, sinuous neck, white feathers, blue-plumed tail, thin red arms, four-fingered hands and erect posture, using phrases like "'...my tear chab...'" and "'Elementary, my dear fellow.'" (Call Me Joe, pp. 429, 430)

Unbelievable. The speech patterns on top of that physical description. Another problem I have is that, if such a description is offered just once early in the story without, e.g., any accompanying cover illustration, then I cannot remember the details while reading. Instead, I retain just an impression of a long thin body, nothing more. Later, I misremember it by, e.g., adding insectile features which are simply not there. I had forgotten that the creature was avian. But can this be a serious description of a possible Martian organism? Maybe not. If, as seems to be the case, the story is tongue-in-cheek, then its description of an alien body becomes a bit of a joke as well - although not one that appeals to me very much. Humor is a matter of taste. In fact, I would feel very uneasy around a large, beaked, bird-like being whether or not he was calling me a dear chap.

I am now searching the blog for posts about Shield and am finding some references to its Martians but, again, not a physical description as yet. See here and here. This topic will require more than one post.

Eleven Future Historians

A future history can be about human beings interacting with each other, with alien intelligences or with artificial intelligences and always with their cosmic environment. Poul Anderson's nine future histories address all these options. They, together with his time travel narratives and cosmological sf, complete a substantial literary tradition. (My opinion, of course.)

In HG Wells's The Shape Of Things To Come, mankind remakes itself with science in the twenty first and twenty second centuries whereas, in CS Lewis's That Hideous Strength, the project of mankind remaking itself through science is revealed to be literally diabolical.

Olaf Stapledon's Last And First Men recounts the entire future history of mankind, including interactions with Martians and Venerians.

Stapledon's Star Maker recounts cosmic and creational history, summarizing Last And First Men in a single sentence.

In Brian Aldiss's Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand, evolution in our galaxy ends with man and, in the next galaxy, starts with man. (Non-Darwinian evolution, obviously.)

In A Short History Of The Future by RC Churchill, Orwell's, Huxley's, Bradbury's, Vonnegut's etc dystopias are shoehorned into a single narrative. (Huxley: Ape And Essence, not Brave New World.)

In Robert Heinlein's Future History, technological progress is accompanied by social regression although there is an eventual advance toward the first mature civilization. Martians, Venerians and other Solar races are present but peripheral even though the possibility of contact with non-human intelligences had been one of the Man Who Sold The Moon's many selling points.

Isaac Asimov connected his Robots series, about human-AI interactions, with his Foundation series, about a predictive science of society.

In James Blish's Cities In Flight, cities fly with anti-gravity while human beings live indefinitely with antiagathics but cannot survive the end of the universe.

In Blish's The Seedling Stars, as in Last And First Men, human beings are adapted to extraterrestrial environments.

In Blish's The Quincunx Of Time, messages from the future help to bring about an intergalactic utopia.

In Larry Niven's Known Space future history, human beings turn out to be mutated Pak breeder colonists of a former Slaver food planet and eventually become genetically lucky while meanwhile interacting with kzinti, Puppeteers etc. (Thus, we are not who we thought we were and we become someone else in any case.)

In Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium future history, mankind exports war and imperialism to the galaxy and encounters one alien race.

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History is about whether mankind can remake itself with a science of the psyche and society. There are some human-alien interactions.

Anderson's Technic History is both about the cycles of human civilizations and about many human-alien interactions.

Anderson's Maurai future history is about whether mankind can survive after nearly destroying its environment.

Anderson's Kith and Flying Mountains future histories are about mankind in space. In Starfarers, the Kith novel, time dilated space travelers interact with aliens while civilizations rise and fall on Earth.

In Anderson's Rustum future history, ideological conflict on Earth leads to extra-solar exile and colonization.

In Anderson's Directorate future history, as in his Rustum history, human beings colonize extra-solar planets despite traveling between planetary systems at only sub-light speeds.

Anderson's Harvest Of Stars future history and Genesis are about human-AI interactions.

I was reminded of Anderson's first, Psychotechnic, future history when, while rereading Harvest Of Stars, Volume II, I came across:

"...purely human politics, short-sighted, ignorant, superstitious, animally impassioned, forever repeated the same ghastly mistakes."

-The Stars Are Also Fire, 21, p. 277.

 

The revolt of the primitive against the unnatural state of civilization is the "protean enemy," opposed by psychotechnicians. 

Poul Anderson's Martians: Shield And Un-Man

Albeit without rereading Poul Anderson's Shield (New York, 1970) from cover to cover, I now think that I cannot find a physical description of the Martians in this novel because there is no such description. The entire action of the novel is on Earth. On p. 11, Koskinen, who has just returned from Mars, reminisces...

The Martian, Elkor, has a "huge form" and communicates with Koskinen with coded vibrations transmitted through a "palp" laid from behind on the Earthman's neck. That is all - and it is enough. As I said in the previous post, I usually forget details of a description of an alien form given once early in a text but, on rereading, these enigmatic hints about Elkor are preferable to the graphic stork-like bipedal form of "The Martian Crown Jewels."

(To touch base with SM Stirling's In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings, which is being read meanwhile, in "The Martian Crown Jewels," the Martian Syaloch's apartment is illuminated by "...glowsnakes..." (Call Me Joe, p. 429). Thus, these two races of Martians use biotech. ...Crimson Kings also features the very high tech of the Lords of Creation. This tech, concealed underground but glowing and affecting brains and minds when approached, reminds me of the Kryptonian tech in the Smallville TV series.)

Rereading part of Chapter III of "Un-Man" (New York, 1962) confirms that there are a few surviving native Martians, "...shy and secretive..." (p. 19), in Anderson's Psychotechnic History. Again, I do not think that there is any description. They are mentioned because it has been discovered that they can sleep through the winter or a drought. Although their blood freezes:

the freezing point is much lower than for human blood;

when freezing does occur, released enzymes prevent cell rupturing;

a process comparable to ion exchange circulates oxygen and nutrients even through the ice;

returning heat revives the organism.

I never knew that.

Martians

In "Holmgang," Bo Jonsson describes Martians as stiff and correct. In "Cold Victory," a Martian professor wears his academic gown even in a bar because Martians are like that.

Does that sound like Martians to you? Surely they are martial/warlike, or invaders of Earth or extinct by now or hidden underground where we cannot detect them? They are all these things and more. They are whatever an sf writer thinks that they are. CS Lewis tells us that HG Wells' Martians are very different from the real Martians - but he tells us this in a work of fiction!

And, of course, the point that I have glided over until now is that Poul Anderson's stiff, correct, academic "Martians" are human beings that have colonized Mars, not natives. There were native Martians earlier in the Psychotechnic History so what has become of them? An obvious answer springs to mind.

The Martians in Anderson's Technic History are extra-Solar colonists of Mars. Sf, and particularly Poul Anderson, covers every option.

Visions Of Mars

"The Structure Of A Series: John Carter" on www.sfappreciation.blogspot.co.uk is my attempt at a succinct summary of Edgar Rice Burroughs' four interconnected interplanetary series which are mostly Martian:

eleven volumes for Mars, with excursions to a Martian moon and Jupiter;
four for Venus;
one each for the Moon and an extrasolar planet.

(ERB's three Moon stories are two volumes in paperback and one in hardback so here I count them as one volume.)

In fact, I probably make these series sound better than they are. ERB's plots and characterisation do not fulfill the promise of his colourful, imaginative, exotic settings. In any case, his Mars is literary, not scientific. It has canals and is not only inhabited but humanly habitable. In the real universe, hard work will be needed to make Mars habitable.

Several chapters of Poul Anderson's The Fleet Of Stars describe a colonised, though not yet terraformed, Mars, like a more realistic counterpart of Frank Herbert's Dune. We see the economic, political and cultural life of the colonists and even something that is more common in an ERBian universe, military conflict.

Anderson's "Martians" perform midsummer rites around the Dreamers' Craters and three "Dreamers" are named: Wells, Weinbaum and Heinlein. (I usually say that the three main British writers about Martians are Wells, Stapledon and Lewis and the three main Americans are Burroughs, Heinlein and Bradbury but, of course, there are many others and which are the main ones is debatable.) Would Anderson's Martians have included Burroughs among their "Dreamers"? Maybe, but, judging from the names mentioned, they seem to prefer a harder sf list.

Tharks, Treens, Martians, Merseians, Vulcanians, Chereionites And Ferrans

I said three posts back (here) that hostile green aliens were a Golden Age sf cliche and, in fact, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Green Martians of the Thark, Warhoon and lesser hordes are both green-skinned and warlike. (The one good thing about the John Carter film is its accurate depiction of ERBian Green Martians. Computer-aided graphics get that much right.) Further, Dan Dare's Venus-based Treens were also green and warlike. Thus, Poul Anderson's green, warlike, extra-solar Merseians are part of a grand tradition.

Anderson's The Rebel Worlds parallels other sf works. When Dominic Flandry commands the escort destroyer, HMS Asieneuve, his executive officer is a Ferran who does not share human morality just as, when James T Kirk commands the starship, USS Enterprise, his exec is a Vulcan who does not share human emotions. However, Rovian of Ferra is fanged, has four arms of which the lower pair can double as legs and goes naked except for weapons and insignia. In all of this, he resembles the ERBian Greens although his black fur and tail differentiate him from them. Tharks etc are bald.

Kirk's friend, a Vulcan, has pointed ears and can telepathically "mind-meld." Flandry's opponent, a Chereionite, has pointed ears and is a universal telepath. But lastly, of course, Poul Anderson's sf is of a far higher imaginative and literary quality than that of ERB, Dan Dare or Star Trek.

Wells, Stapledon And Anderson

See the previous post and comment. I overlooked Poul Anderson's own Martian invasion novel (see here) with its overtly Wellsian title and its plot twist of extrasolar aliens covertly controlling both Martians and Terrestrials. Thus, the list of Wells-Stapledon-Anderson parallels becomes:

time travel;
future history;
past history;
interplanetary invasions in general;
Martian invasions of Earth in particular.

Wells' Martians attack Earth, then Venus. Stapledon's Terrestrials invade Venus, then Neptune. 

Also:

ERB's Moon Men conquer Earth and his Jovians plan to invade Mars;

Heinlein and the collaborative team of Niven and Pournelle each have a novel about an alien invasion of Earth.

Can anything more be said about this idea? We might think not until an sf writer proves us wrong.

When I said that Wells, Stapledon and Anderson wrote about the past, I mentioned Anderson's Time Patrol series but not his other historical fiction. It might be thought inappropriate to classify Wells' The Outline Of History alongside works of fiction. However, to write history and to write historical fiction are two ways to address history. Anderson's several volumes of historical fiction impart knowledge and analysis of periods and events. When I read about the Scipios at the Battle of Ticinus in a Latin text at school, I had already read about this event in Poul Anderson's "Delenda Est."

More Martians

Reading SM Stirling's Lords Of Creation series made me consider writing a post about Mars and Martians in works of sf, including, of course, those of Poul Anderson, but that is a big subject and maybe we have done it before? Consequently, I searched the blog specifically for the phrase "composite Mars" because I had remembered that two authors, Larry Niven and Alan Moore, had each constructed a Mars inhabited by a small number of the Martian races already created by other authors. (Moore has Gulliver Jones and John Carter watching the Wellsian Martians departing to invade Earth etc.) The search result was beyond my imaginings and makes me want to regard the matter as having been adequately addressed at least for the time being!

In fact, see also the blog search result for:

Poul Anderson's Martians

Frans Hals And Martians

(The Laughing Cavalier.)

"Kraachnach of the Martian Transport Company was glowing his yellow eyes at a Frans Hals on the wall."
-"Margin of Profit,"  p. 122, p. 148.

See also Hiroshige And Mozart.

"Kraaknach...ran a clawlike hand through his gray feathers and lit a rinn tube." (p. 113)

"Kraaknach...ran a clawed hand across gray feathers, stuck a rinn tube through the intake sphincter on his helmet, and lit it." (p. 150)

I cannot buy Martians with feathers although they appear elsewhere in Anderson's works. See:

Poul Anderson's Martians: The Full List?
Strangers

Every time I reread Anderson's works, I have no idea what will come up to post about. 

Time Lords, Time Patrol And Time Machine

Copied from The Logic Of Time Travel blog here.

I am conceptualizing a composite time travel scenario that would incorporate:

HG Wells' The Time Machine;
Poul Anderson's Time Patrol;
an adaptation of Doctor Who;
a few other works.

I think that three popular sf series would benefit from some revision:

in Superman, there should be some explanation of why Kryptonians exactly resemble white North Americans (see here);

in Star Trek, Vulcans should be descendants of human colonials, not aliens;

in Doctor Who, the Time Lords should be future humanity, not aliens.

There are two versions of Doctor Who: one TV series and two feature films. In the latter:

the Doctor, played by Peter Cushing, not by any of his TV actors, is not an alien Time Lord but an English inventor, like Wells' Time Traveler;

his surname really is "Who."

In my third version, the Doctor would be an absconding Time Lord as on TV but the Time Lords would be future Terrestrials identical with Anderson's Danellians. I thought of this merely because either Katherine Kurtz or Poul Anderson used the phrase "Time Lords" when discussing the Danellians in an Introduction to Anderson's Time Patrol story, "Death And The Knight," in Tales Of The Knights Templar.

I would like to consult my copy of this anthology but it is back home in Lancaster while I will be in Norfolk until Saturday. If I had a time machine, would I be able to travel forward to Saturday when I will be back home? Not exactly. If the time machine were only able to move through time and not also through space, then I would arrive in Norfolk, not in Lancaster, on Saturday whereas, if the machine were able to move through space, then I would be able to arrive home now and would have no reason to delay my arrival until Saturday.

In my proposed composite scenario, there are four kinds of time machines:

a Time Lord/Danellian time machine or TARDIS encloses its passengers, is disguised as some appropriate historical structure like a British police telephone box, is bigger inside than outside thanks to extra dimensions and travels through the Time Vortex instead of directly from one set of spatiotemporal coordinates to another;

Time Patrolmen use timecycles as described in Anderson's series;

civilian time travelers use shuttles that are boxes enclosing their passengers, in this respect similar to TARDIS's;

a single nineteenth century inventor constructs the Time Machine which resembles a timecycle in that the traveler sits on it although it takes time to traverse time instead of disappearing and reappearing without any subjective time lapse.

The Doctor steals a TARDIS and embarks on adventures through space and time. The Time Lords realize that he resolves several crises and therefore do not prevent his excursions. However, he must be prevented from changing events and thus coming into conflict with the Time Lords' human agents in the Time Patrol.

The invention of the Time Machine is an extremely improbable event that does not really fit into the Time Lord/Danellian timeline. Because it is so improbable, when the Time Traveler sets off into the future, he passes through a quantum fluctuation and arrives in the 802,701 AD of a timeline where mankind does not evolve into Danellians but devolves into Morlocks and Eloi as a long-term consequence of Victorian social divisions. However, his return journey reverses the quantum fluctuation so that he returns to the main timeline just when Manse Everard and Charlie Whitcomb are visiting the Patrol London office. Where/when did the Time Traveler go after that? Other quantum fluctuations could have taken him to 1984 or 2001. In 1984, the Party claims that the past exists only in memories and records but a Time Traveler from 1895 would disprove this.

Meanwhile, what happens elsewhere in the Solar System?

HG Wells' The War Of The Worlds has Martians invading Earth;

a film about Orson Welles' radio adaptation of The War Of The Worlds has Martians as a fiction within the fiction;

George Orwell's oppressors of humanity are entirely human;

Doctor Who has Ice Warriors on Mars;

Poul Anderson has several Martian races (see here), including one that invades Earth (see here), but does not tell us which, if any, exist in his Time Patrol universe.

(Wells, Orson Welles and Orwell!)

Addendum: For an earlier proposed sequel to The Time Machine, see here.

Merseians And Martians

My mind has been elsewhere for most of today as my body will be elsewhere on Friday this week with a day trip to York. 

Meanwhile, we cannot really compare Merseians with Martians because there is only one fictional race of Merseians whereas there are no one knows how many fictional races of Martians. Poul Anderson's Merseians, at least those of the Roidhunate, like HG Wells' Martians, want to conquer Earth whereas Ray Bradbury's Martians are almost entirely wiped out by chicken pox brought from Earth - just as Wells' Martian invaders are killed by Terrestrial microbes - while at the same (in a different timeline) CS Lewis' Martians are protected from Terrestrial evil by superior beings in the Solar System. What could be more different? And those are just three of the most prominent examples.

The comparison that I have in mind here is with SM Stirling's Martians. Merseians are multicultural. See information about Cnif hu Vanden here and particularly here. By contrast, Stirling's Martians have been monocultural throughout a very long history and this makes it hard to tell how much of their psychology is genetic as opposed to cultural. Is a monocultural species easier to write about or must the author work harder to keep it consistent? As a mere reader, I can only guess.

Thank you all for so many page views for a day when this is the first post.

The Solar System In Context

We are physically involved with the cosmos even while remaining on the Earth's surface. The Solar System rotates around the center of one member of a group of galaxies and Terrestrial life is composed of elements fused inside other stars. Science fiction writers have different ways of communicating our cosmic involvement apart from the obvious concept of interstellar travel:

in Larry Niven's Known Space future history, human beings are mutated Pak breeder colonists of a former Slaver food planet;

in Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud, an intelligent gas cloud in radio contact with other such clouds passes through the Solar System whereas, in Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle's Fifth Planet, another star with its planetary system passes through;

in Poul Anderson's Brain Wave, human life is transformed when the Solar System passes out of an intelligence-inhibiting radiation zone;

in Anderson's The Byworlder, a space-traveling intelligent being with an entirely different biology and psychology enters the Solar System and establishes communication whereas, in Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, different extrasolar species are allowed to colonize Mars and Jupiter, respectively.

Making the Martians of the Technic History extrasolar colonists rather than natives was a stroke of genius, showing that the author questioned all of his own premises. We can see that Mars is unlikely to bear life, let alone intelligence, yet a lot of sf, including an already written Nicholas van Rijn story, involves our old friends, the Martians. Thus, "Margin of Profit" was incorporated into Anderson's main future history not by editing out the Martians but by revising their history.

Solar Races

The link to Tommy Tomorrow here highlighted the early sf assumption that other solar planets are inhabited. This assumption continued as a literary convention even when no longer scientifically viable. Robert Heinlein's Future History describes Martians and Venerians and mentions several other races.

Poul Anderson's works include "Sister Planet," about Venerians, "Life Cycle," about Mercurians, and several stories featuring different versions of Martians.

There are Martians in Anderson's first future history series and also in his first Nicholas van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit." However, when "Margin of Profit" was revised for inclusion in Anderson's second future history, its "Martians" became colonists from outside the Solar System. Also, in the Technic History, Jupiter is inhabited not by native Jovians but by colonists from Ymir.

The same process occurs on a vaster scale as the future histories continue. The galaxy is full of intelligent species in the Technic History but almost empty of life in the Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy and Genesis.

Brian Aldiss wrote that, just as non-human intelligences have been banished first from the Terrestrial environment, then from the Solar System, he expects them also to be banished from the rest of the universe.

Human Martians

Most fictional Martians are not human beings. Indeed, how could they be? In fact, there are three exceptions. Poul Anderson's six or more Martian races are of course all aliens but Anderson's sf was preceded by, among others, the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

The first Martians encountered by ERB's John Carter - green, twelve foot, hairless, tusked, six limbed and egg-laying - sound more like giant insects. However, in any ERBian universe, the hero has to marry a Martian princess. Therefore, without any explanation or rationale, Carter soon encounters humanoid Martians. He not only marries the Princess of Helium but even gets her pregnant even though her metabolism is so different that, instead of giving live birth, she lays a large egg that will hatch their son. ERB's Mars, with its canals and thin but breathable atmosphere, was based on contemporary astronomical observations but his ideas about Martian life were off the wall.

Michael Moorcock pastiched ERB and rationalized human beings on Mars. His hero, Michael Kane, accessed Mars not by ERBian astral projection but by time travel into the far past. Thus, his Mars still had oceans, an atmosphere and a human race that had not yet migrated to Earth.

Thirdly, in SM Stirling's In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings (New York, 2008), mysterious beings with a higher technology have terraformed Mars and seeded (?) it with humanity originating on Earth. Thus, these tall, thin, dry humanoids are not products of extraterrestrial evolution but are related to us. I have started Chapter Two. So far, I am finding the text less accessible than that of the previous volume, The Sky People, because several passages are presented from the point of view of an unsympathetic Martian character whose historical and political context have not yet been fully explained.

A book on imagining extraterrestrials made the point that we have to imagine an organism that has originated and evolved elsewhere. Thus, a tall, thin, large-chested humanoid is not a Martian but a Terrestrial adapted to Mars. However, that is precisely what Stirling describes:

"...Highlanders even more eerily elongated than the standard Martians and barrel-chested..." (p. 53).

Mars And Martians

(I have maligned CS Lewis but first let us follow through the logic of the current post.)

Wells, Lewis and Anderson: what a trio of different imaginative authors!

Mars and Martians can be detachable items. Thus, HG Wells' The War Of The Worlds and Poul Anderson's The War Of Two Worlds are about Martians but are set on Earth - because, in both cases, the Martians have invaded Earth, obviously. Anderson never set an entire novel on the surface of Mars although there are scenes on the planet in a few of his works. Readers are invited to remember which. 

When Heinlein or Anderson wrote about Martians, it must still have been scientifically possible that Martians existed? - although Isaac Asimov acknowledged in The Early Asimov that Martians, Venerians and inhabitants of other Solar planets remained a convention in sf after they had ceased to be feasible. So much has been learned so recently with probes. 

Lewis, writing Out Of The Silent Planet before World War II - thus, in a very different era - does a very good job of explaining why Mars, which had been fertile a long time ago, appears inhospitable when observed by Terrestrial astronomers although air, water and life still persist within deep crevasses - the canali. Similarly, Lewis' oceanic Venus was no more counterfactual at the time of writing than versions of the planet written by Heinlein or Anderson.

So I was wrong to put Lewis in the same category as Bradbury.

Alternative Mars

Fictitiously, Earth exists in alternative pasts and presents and therefore by extension also in alternative futures, as SM Stirling shows with his Draka timeline. Similarly, Mars exists in alternative futures, therefore also by extension in alternative presents and pasts. In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, native Martians are mentioned although not encountered whereas, in Anderson's Technic History, Mars was uninhabited but will be colonized by an extrasolar race. Thus, these are two of many Marses.

Alan Moore and Larry Niven each wrote a composite Mars inhabited by several races from different sf works. However, apart from these two exceptions, each Martian race - or set of races, e.g., ERB's greens, reds etc - exists in an alternative timeline. CS Lewis has one Mars (Malacandra) in a novel and another in a short story. "Ministering Angels" could have fitted into the Ransom Trilogy timeline if it had been set in a space station or Lunar base instead of on Mars. However, the Ransom narrative incorporates an alternative Earth in "The Dark Tower" so why not also an alternative Mars?

On reflection, the Old Phoenix seems like a very Terrocentric inter-cosmic inn even though the Taverner on one occasion speaks to shadowy sparkling beings. Could there be a Martian equivalent called, e.g., the Old Egg or the Original Egg since ERB's Martians hatch from eggs? If the Taverner was an Erbian green, then maybe another green could fight him to the death to run the inn? Anderson's colonists of Mars would be able to meet several alternative native Martians and learn the histories of the planet.

Mars And Martians

Mars and Martians are a big subject. In fact, they need not even be a single subject. Mars can be uninhabited. Alternatively, if Martians are imagined to exist, then they can be encountered elsewhere, e.g., on Earth in Wells' The War Of The Worlds. Heinlein's Red Planet is set on an inhabited Mars whereas his A Stranger In A Strange Land features a Martian-raised man back on Earth.

When recently I listed Larry Niven as an author of a composite Mars, I forgot to mention that Martians also appear in his Known Space future history where water poisons them - and they continue to exist in the Map of Mars on the Ringworld long after a human protector has exterminated them in the Solar System.

I have mentioned Poul Anderson's several races of Martians but Anderson also presents a Mars that was uninhabited until colonized by human beings. See:

"Martians"
AI, Desert Planets And Jihads
Visions Of Mars
Inrai

A desert planet where water is precious and where human bodies must be entirely covered to protect them from the environment - SM Stirling's Mars sounds like Herbert's Dune, except that Dune is hot whereas Mars is cold.

The Milky Way Seen From Earth

Some things are taken so much for granted that usually we do not reflect on them. For instance, Sun, Moon, stars and Milky Way are perennial parts of our environment as perceived from the Terrestrial surface where we and all our ancestors have always lived. Therefore, they are often mentioned in passing in works of literature and fiction. In fact, their creation is even described in Genesis. These heavenly bodies adopt a completely different significance in science fiction where the human environment extends outwards so that people can now inhabit bases on the Moon or Mars or even travel between the stars etc. 

It is of no interest or concern to most authors that the Moon or Mars might be inhabited. Their conceptual universe does not include anything like:

Wells' Selenities or Martians;

ERB's Moon Men or Martians;

Robert Heinlein's or Poul Anderson's several races of Martians;

many others, of course.

(Mars is the most populated planet in fiction.)

Nor do non-sf authors ask us to willingly suspend our disbelief in future dwellers on the Moon, like Anderson's Lunarians and Selenarchs. This is self-evident because any author who did treat such ideas as if they were realities would thereby become an sf author.

These observations are occasioned by finding the Milky Way in a James Bond novel:

"The Milky Way soared overhead. How many stars? Bond tried counting a finger's length and was soon past the hundred. The stars lit the sea into a faint grey road and then arched away over the tip of the mast towards the black silhouette of Jamaica."

-Ian Fleming, Dr No (London, 1958), VII, p. 63.

Of course, Bond's, and our, attention must re-descend to Earth, to the sufficiently exotic setting of Jamaica. On the following page, Bond steers by the North Star.

Poul Anderson often describes the Milky Way as seen from space or from the surface of some other planet. Bond's perception of the soaring Milky Way gives him a remote kinship with sf characters.