Mars: a Tour of the Human Imagination
by Eric Rabkin
Summary
From ancient times to the present, the planet Mars has reflected mankind’s hopes and fears. The Red Planet has been a candidate for exploration and exploitation both in fiction and in fact. Eric S. Rabkin weaves a chronological tale of many threads, including mythology, astrology, astronomy, literary criticism, and cultural studies. With over 100 illustrations, this unique examination of humanity’s most storied companion serves as a resource for the study of ourselves.
Excerpt
What is Mars? From the ancients to the present, we have imagined Mars repeatedly and studied it longingly. As our scientific knowledge of Mars has changed, our cultural imagination of Mars also has changed. The earth-centered beginnings of astronomy connected the bloody planet with the God of War. The Copernican Revolution and a later, simple mistranslation from Italian supported fantastic visions of distant Mars as the abode of life variously bizarre, ideal, or malignant. In the work of H.G.Wells and Orson Welles, Mars reflected not only eternal hopes and fears but then-current political realities.
In recent years, NASAfication has brought Mars home again, imagining the Red Planet almost as an eighth continent of Earth, a candidate for exploration and exploitation both in fiction and in fact. What is Mars really, what has it been, and what may it become?
From before the ancestors of humanity lifted their eyes to the sky, the red light looked down on the Earth watching, waiting, unique. On a clear night, far from the lights of human habitation, you can find that light. Gaze at it and, if you have very good eyesight and the heating and cooling of the Earth and atmosphere does not cause too much wavering, this is what you would see: a faint, pale red, impossibly distant pinprick that grows somewhat blurry as you stare. What is it?
If you do this night after night, you will see it move, move even among the other lights, the white lights. There is something special about this light, unique in color, perhaps unique in its bold trespass of the fixed order of the heavens.
What should we make of it?....
On August 27, 2003, Mars came closer to the Earth (34,646 million miles) than it had been in 59,619 years and closer than it would be again until August 28, 2287. NASA trained its Hubble Space Telescope on the planet and produced the best pictures we’re likely to get without actually going there. Of course, we were going there, on the wings of [explorers] Spirit and Opportunity. After imagining the Red One since the dawn of human history, as we approached it, according to NASA, the images suggest what we would have seen if only we could have gone along truly, instead of vicariously, for the ride: this is a landscape both ancient and modern, already known and appropriated by humanity in and with the names of its dreamers and explorers.
Will Americans in fact become as exploitative as [Ray] Bradbury’s early colonists were in fiction, or will the millenia of imagination serve as prelude to a future of real glory?
Reviews
"Vivid and fascinating!"--Publishers Weekly
a mine of interesting information, deftly written"--Chicago Sun
"Our intertwined history with Mars--superb"--Kansas City Star
Author's Biography
Eric S. Rabkin teaches in the Department of English at the University of Michigan. He is the author and editor of more than 30 books on science fiction and writing.