![]() ![]() Among the others: a perennial drought, the probable absence of oxygen, solar flares, cosmic radiation and fierce dust storms blown by winds of hurricane force. Thus, the inquisitive spacecraft has spotted still another hazard to life, as we recognize it, on the red planet. America’s Mariner-4 spacecraft has discovered that the Mars atmospheric blanket is a mere whisp of gas eight times thinner than some scientists had predicted. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Wernher Von Braun, all the way up to present science fiction authors such as Andy Weir, Kameron Hurley, and Bob Goddard. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy beckoned many other artists to the table, such as Greg Bear, Philip K. It wouldn’t be long before new residents to the author community would arrive to feed the public appetite. In the midst of this bonanza of science-fiction literature, Warner Brothers created the Bugs Bunny antagonist Marvin the Martian and an onslaught of pulp films rushed to the cinemascape to appease the masses craving more from this enigmatic world shrouded in mystery. Heinlein took us to the Moon, Mars and the spaces between the stars. Ray Bradbury introduced The Martian Chronicles Edgar Rice Burroughs’ took us on harrowing adventures in his Barsoom series Robert A. Humanity’s premiere science fiction writers and filmmakers of the 1930’s through the 1960’s elevated the existing mythologies surrounding Mars to new dimensions. Science fiction authors of today have much more information to wield and integrate into their works than ever before, with data being collected from orbiting spacecraft, robotic landers, mobile rovers, Earth-orbiting space stations, ground-based/space telescopes, simulation research laboratories, and experimental outposts which parallel atmospheric conditions on Mars. Wells’ radio broadcast which plunged a small New Jersey town into a frenzy of paranoia with claims of a hostile Martian takeover, ‘Mars fever’ has been a thing for well over a century. Since the antiquity of astronomy, the Red Planet has been the focal point for supernatural and extraterrestrial mythos from Schiaparelli’s “canali” observations and Percival Lowell’s literary works suggesting Mars was an arid world (the cause of its gradual demise due to ancient civilizations purging the planet with their irrigation technology), to H.G. Sure, we’re all familiar with the childhood tales of the face, female head, rabbit, or boy collecting sticks on the Moon. At left are the three Tharsis Montes and to the south is ancient, heavily impacted terrain. Note the channels running up (north) from the central and eastern portions of Valles Marineris to the area at upper right, Chryse Planitia. At center is Valles Marineris, over 3000 km long and up to 8 km deep. The images are projected into point perspective, representing what a viewer would see from a spacecraft at an altitude of 2,500 km. Global mosaic of 102 Viking 1 Orbiter images of Mars taken on orbit 1,334, 22 February 1980.
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