OOC: Victorian Views on Mars

[astronomerroyal]

One of the places in which Stent's and Airy's careers notably don't overlap is Stent's interest in Mars, and (unfortunately for him) the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life. However, even outside of H.G. Wells and War of the Worlds, Victorians were interested in the possibility of Martians (or should that be Marsians?) creating a civilization and traveling to Earth.


1877: Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli publishes a map of Mars featuring line formations on the surface (now proven to be optical illusions), which he believes to be channels. Although Schiaparelli apparently considered these a natural phenomenon, a mistranslation into English as "canals" leads many to claim that this provided proof of an intelligent civilization on Mars.

1892: French astronomer Camille Flammarion publishes La planète Mars et ses conditions d'habitabilité, wherein he proposes that Schiaparelli's "channels" resembled irrigation canals on Earth, and could be remnants of an extinct, yet once-advanced, Martian society.

1893: American authors Alice Ilgenpritz Jones and Ella Marchant (writing as "two women of the West") publish Unveiling a Parallel, an early feminist science fiction novel in which a male adventurer from Earth encounters the utopian "Marsian" (sic) society.

1895-1908: American astronomer Percival Lowell publishes three books on the "canals of Mars." While well-received by the general public, most scientists remain skeptical, noting that observations of the canals are inconsistent. Lowell continues to speak and publish for the popular media, despite Alfred Russel Wallace's book Is Mars Habitable?, which pointed out numerous errors in Lowell's claims regarding Mars's atmospheric pressure.

1897: Publication of "The Crystal Egg" and serialization of War of the Worlds.

Late 1890s-early 1900s: Following the popularity of War of the Worlds, dime-store adventure novels with "scientific" themes (later dubbed "Edisonades" begin to feature travel to Mars and encounters with extraterrestrial life. Unusually, the real-life scientists Edison and Tesla were used as characters in at least two "conquest of Mars" books: Edison's Conquest of Mars (Garrett P. Serviss, 1898) and To Mars with Tesla (Weldon J. Cobb, 1901).

Sources:

Everett F. Bleiler. Science Fiction: The Early Years. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1990.

Percival Lowell. Mars. 1895. Reprint. 1995. http://www.wanderer.org/references/lowell/Mars/ (accessed 12 January 2012).

Dave Snyder. "An Observational History of Mars." Reflections. (April and May 2001) http://www.umich.edu/~lowbrows/reflections/2001/dsnyder.7.html (accessed 12 January 2012).

Nancy Zaroulis. "The Man Who Invented Mars." Boston Globe Sunday Magazine. April 27, 2008. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2008/04/27/the_man_who_invented_mars/?page=full (accessed 12 January 2012).