New Mars

On the 100th anniversary of The War of the Worlds, Ryder W. Miller explores the literary heritage of the red planet and how the prevailing science fiction of the past can be used as an indicator for our attitudes and perceptions of the future.

A frontier and literary history of Mars

“No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable … Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those blof the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.”

This quote from the opening paragraph of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, 100 years old this year, captures the old fears we had of Mars and sometimes still have of the distant, vast wilderness of space. The Red Planet, on the wild frontier of space, was a source of fear and mystery. Reflecting the public’s beliefs about Mars at the time, The War of the Worlds told the story of a possible Martian invasion of the water-rich Earth. Our understanding and perspective of Mars has changed over the last century. It is no longer a fearful unknown. It has become a frontier, for the moment still out of reach, but perhaps still vulnerable to our predispositions.

Headlines generated by possible microfossils discovered within Mars meteorite ALH 84001, the success of NASA’s Mars Pathfinder and Global Surveyor, and the upcoming launch of the Mars Climate Orbiter and Polar Lander continue to keep Mars in the public mind. We’ve been exploring Mars for more than 30 years, and we now know a great deal about the planet: we have photographed its sky, sampled its soil, and mapped its terrain. What was once a fearful unknown, a wilderness in space, has revealed itself to be a territory open to exploration and vulnerable to exploitation.

But we have already explored many possible Martian territories in our imaginations. There has been a popular history of imaginative science fiction writing about the Red Planet. This literary work has included Martian invasions of Earth, human explorations of Mars, and now terraforming-the environmental design of a planet-which, second to nuclear war, is probably the most destructive environmental act imaginable. This literary work, as much as it has been about the Red Planet has also been about who we are and where we have been. From this work one can glean a frontier or environmental history of Mars, an imaginary history that echoes what we have experienced here on Earth. The literary history of Mars provides a good metaphor of what our experiences on Earth have been and worthwhile speculation about what our experiences on other planets may be like.

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Changing Perceptions and Conceptions

A changing environmental consciousness can be seen when examining the imaginative writing about Mars, especially classics such as The War of the Worlds, The Martian Chronicles, and the recent award-winning works Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars…

Spacefaring environmentalists, even if only spacefaring imaginatively, should think about what will happen once we journey to Mars or other planets. The environmental issues that space explorers will have to tackle on other planets are similar to issues we have faced in the past and present. To those unaccustomed to the wilderness or those used to other habitats, wild areas could seem very otherworldly, and discussions relating to how to manage these areas will not be very different from discussions concerning how to manage “wild” places on other planets. We can also learn about environmental problems by thinking about what we will do when we go to other planets.

Much of this astroenvironmental intellectual territory can be gleaned from the science fiction writing about Mars. A changing environmental consciousness can be seen when examining the imaginative writing about Mars, especially classics such as The War of the Worlds, The Martian Chronicles, and the recent award-winning works Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. Comparing recent science fiction to older science fiction can also show the pattern of human encroachment upon the wilderness.

At the turn of the century, Mars was mistakenly believed to be the home of intelligent life. Because of a mistranslation of the Italian word canali (meaning channels or grooves) used in an 1877 paper about Mars by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, the story emerged that constructed canals were seen on Mars. American businessman-turned-astronomer Percival Lowell, mixing science with speculation, described Mars as a water-thirsty world, with dead sea bottoms, dying civilizations, and a worldwide canal system. Lowell reasoned that advanced life existed on Mars because it had evolved on dry land and without mountains. Lowell wrote in Mars As the Abode of Life:

“What absence of seas would thus entail, absence of mountains would further. These two obstacles to distribution removed, life there would tend the quicker to reach a highly organized stage. Thus Martian conditions themselves make for intelligence.”

The giant canals were believed to be the engineering of a more advanced alien civilization, striving to stave off a worldwide drought.

“…they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutnize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water…” H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds

Adding to its fearful mystique was the very name of the planet. Mars is the namesake of the Roman god of war and rides the night sky accompanied by its moons Deimos (Panic) and Phobos (Fear). The possibility of attack from an alien civilization on this nearby planet would indeed bring fear and panic to a turn of the century world with no defense or preparation for such an attack.

H.G. Wells, incorporating elements of Lowell’s speculative writing about Mars, went on to acknowledge that we could be invaded from another planet, especially our closest neighbor Mars. In The War of the Worlds (1898) the almost unstoppable Martians invade the Earth. The opening paragraph captures the paranoia and makes a relevant point:

“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water …”

As the story continues, England is overrun with invincible invaders from space. The Earth almost becomes a colony to the alien invaders, and the reader is disturbed and humbled in the process. Mars remained a source of fear in science fiction literature for decades. In Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars series (1917-1943), Mars was an adventure land, with four-armed giant swordsmen, wild monsters, canals, flying ships, and princesses. The hero John Carter, a Southern gentleman, arrives on Mars alone and becomes an adventurer and warlord fighting a wild bestiary of alien creatures. Influential science fiction stories in the 1930s had the titles “The Human Pets of Mars” and “The Brain Stealers of Mars.” In 1938, Orson Welles’ realistic radio presentation of The War of the Worlds sent people running to the hills trying to escape the invading Martians.

“…they came with stars and badges and rules and regulations, bringing some of the red tape that had crawled across Earth like an alien weed, and letting it grow on Mars wherever it could take root.” Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles

The horrors of World War I proved humankind to be the god of war’s true children. Famous science fiction works about the planet Mars emerging in the 1930s viewed humankind critically. Now we were on Mars and we were the invaders. Environmentalism had not made it into this literature, and the characters were concerned with matters of war, survival, and expansionism. The Martian Odyssey (1934) by Stanley Weinbaum was an expedition on Mars among the alien bestiary of the planet, and we were the off-worlders. In Out of the Silent Planet (1938) by C. S. Lewis, we see unmasked in symbolic form those who would harm and exploit Mars: Weston (representing Western Society), who is primarily loyal to his own human species, and Devine (representing the Devil), who plans to profit from the trip to Mars. In Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles (1950), Mars was inhabited by an ancient secretive society, vulnerable to exploitation. The Martians, like the Native Americans, die due to the importation of human diseases. Most of the colonists return to Earth to fight a world war, leaving the ancient Martian cities and human settlements almost deserted.

We see at work in this literature a change in worldview or paradigm, a change from the Dominant Social Paradigm, which argues for the positive effects of progress, believes in unlimited resources, and argues for growth and technology as a cure-all, to the New Environmental Paradigm, which sees the Earth as a spaceship, ourselves as stewards on a fragile planet with limited resources, and argues for limits to growth. These paradigms have been studied by researchers (Riley E. Dunlap and Kent D. Van Liere, among others) in the field of environmental education for at least twenty years as a means to help environmental educators change the public’s perspective from the Dominant Social Paradigm to the New Environmental Paradigm - from being exploiters to stewards.

The early works justify the Dominant Social Paradigm, with humankind being the underdog against the wild, whether it is Wells’ invading Martians, the “Brain Stealers,” or the wild creatures of Barsoom. Progress, technology, and growth were seen as a positive and predictable response to a dangerous universe. We see an argument against the Dominant Social Paradigm in Lewis’ and Bradbury’s work. The Martian Chronicles is probably the most useful at illustrating the need for humanism, conservation, and planetary stewardship. We see humankind at its worst in this scenario, a humankind that would haphazardly destroy the Martians through the importation of a disease, and then go on to destroy the Earth. In affecting prose Bradbury summarizes what happens to Mars:

“They came to the strange blue lands and put their names upon the lands. Here was Hinkston Creek and Lustig Corners and Black River and Driscoll Forest and Peregrine Mountain and Wilder Town, all the names of people and things that people did … and each of the other places where the rocket men had set down their fiery caldrons to burn the land the names were left like cinders…

The old Martian names were names of water and air and hills. They were the names of snows that emptied south in stone canals to fill the empty seas. And the names of sealed and buried sorcerers and towers and obelisks. And the rockets struck at the names like hammers, breaking away the marble into shale, shattering the crockery millstones that named the old towns, in the rubble of which great pylons were plunged with new names: IRON TOWN, STEEL TOWN, ALUMINUM CITY, TRIC VILLAGE, CORN TOWN, GRAIN VILLA, DETROIT II, all the mechanical names and the metal names from Earth.

… they came with stars and badges and rules and regulations, bringing some of the red tape that had crawled across Earth like an alien weed, and letting it grow on Mars wherever it could take root.”

The Martian Chronicles ends with the story “The Million-Year Picnic,” about a family outing on a deserted Mars. Humankind has all but destroyed itself and a few survivors remain on Mars. The father, disillusioned about the Earth government, has promised to show the children Martians so he takes them to the edge of a canal. When they look into the rippling water expecting to see Martians, what they see is their own reflections. We have destroyed the original Martians and replaced them. But weren’t we the real children of the god of war all along?

By the time of The Martian Chronicles, our perception of the unknown or the frontier had changed. No longer seen as dangerous and uncontrollable, the frontier was now viewed as vulnerable. This new view suggests that it is ourselves who should be feared and illustrates the need for a humanistic and environmental consciousness.

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Engineering a Future

Though these literary works can be flippantly argued to be only entertainment, they have in fact been more. They have been reflective of the times in which they were written.

Though Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, Mars by Ben Bova and Moving Mars by Greg Bear are important science fiction works, it is more important to contrast the works of Wells and Bradbury with the recently trumpeted and award-winning works about the terraforming of Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson - Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars. These works mark the switch from a view of Mars (the frontier or the unknown) as dangerous, to one that sees Mars as vulnerable to humankind, and finally to one where we ourselves can design the wild places. We see this last stage in reality on Earth with the emergence of restoration ecology.

In Robinson’s work, the Martian colonizers have left Earth for the Red Planet in 2026. There are no alien societies or easily noticeable life on Mars, and the colonists are planning to terraform the barren world. They will use black dust and giant mirrors to melt the frozen water at the poles. They will drill deep holes in the surface to let heat escape from the core of the planet. Plants will be used to create a breathable atmosphere.

In Red Mars the decision is made early to disregard preserving the pristine habitat of Mars in order to terraform. Two groups represent different views on the issues involved. The “reds” want to preserve the barren landscape, while the “greens” want to create a livable habitat on Mars. Some “greens” even believe that through terraforming they are bringing nature with them. Nature, however, is inherently out of humanity’s control, and what they are producing is a huge garden.

At a meeting with the colonists, the lead geologist of the expedition argues for slowing down the terraforming process before it begins:

“… an entire world sits outside your door. A world where the landforms are a hundred times larger than their equivalents on Earth, and a thousand times older, with evidence concerning the beginning of the solar system scattered all over, as well as the whole history of a planet, scarcely changed in the last billion years. And you’re going to wreck it all. And without ever honestly admitting what you’re doing, either. Because we could live here and study the planet without changing it - we could do that with very little harm or even inconvenience to ourselves.”

After losing the vote, she reminds her opposition that they haven’t even seen Mars, but she has fallen in love with it, as will many of her followers. There is no thorough search for life on the planet before the terraforming begins, which the discovery of Martian microfossils later calls into question. But some of the terraforming projects are sabotaged. Later there is revolution.

In the sequel, Green Mars, the ‘reds’ arise again to oppose the planet’s terraforming. They wish to preserve its harsh and beautiful natural features. Our struggle with ourselves is a focus here, and again it is we who are the children of the god of war. In Blue Mars the planet has oceans and genetically engineered life, and the “life bringers” who brought life to Mars travel on to other planets.

We see in the progression of these works - Wells to Bradbury to Robinson - as we have seen in human history that people are originally fearful of the frontier, whether it is Mars or some unknown.

Robinson’s work hugs the Martian world - its mountains, plains, and craters - as the world is changed from a barren, crater-filled, red-rocked wilderness to a planet filled with ants, genetically engineered animals and plants, bodies of water, and beaches for public recreation. Throughout, protagonists debate and battle over how best to manage and use the landscape, but the environmentalists have lost the big battles.

We see in the progression of these works - Wells to Bradbury to Robinson - as we have seen in human history that people are originally fearful of the frontier, whether it is Mars or some unknown. As wild areas become known, they become our stomping grounds, and we notice the damage we have caused. The need for a change from the Dominant Social Paradigm of exploitation to the Environmental Paradigm of stewardship is necessary as our world becomes smaller. Then we learn sophisticated ways to alter the environment to serve our desires, and we believe this is acceptable. We are still, however, faced with ourselves. Late in the story environmentalists begin to appear.

What has happened to the wilderness in the imaginative writing about Mars has taken place on the globe as well. We can see the pattern clearly in the progression from The War of the Worlds to The Martian Chronicles to Robinson’s Mars trilogy. The frontier or the wilderness, after a period of being a fearful unknown becomes overrun. The unknown becomes settled, damaged, managed, and then manipulated. And even though Mars itself has not changed in reality, it has changed in our minds. We projected our fears onto the planet, then grew worried about what we would do to this new planet, and then decided we had the right to do whatever we wanted to do with it.

Though these literary works can be flippantly argued to be only entertainment, they have in fact been more. They have been reflective of the times in which they were written. We were genuinely scared of Mars as one of the territories in the wild areas of space. People panicked in 1938 when they heard Welles’ radio broadcast and thought we were actually being attacked by Martians. After World Wars I and II, it was not a far stretch to imagine we could do horrible things to Mars. We had already done such horrible things to ourselves. Now “think tanks” have developed plans for how to colonize and potentially terraform Mars, and Robert Zubrin has published a book, The Case for Mars, detailing how we can settle Mars in the near future.

We can also learn a lesson about our propensity for paranoia from this science fiction about Mars. But this paranoia is double-edged, preparing us for potential danger but also possibly closing us off from what could potentially be the most important event in human history - the encounter with a civilization from another planet.

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Our Millennial Challenge

The night skies have become dark and menacing again. We may no longer be fearful of Mars, but we are still fearful of the distant wild territories of space.

Mars is important today as it has been for centuries, but now for different reasons. It is no longer a fearful unknown, but rather a challenge and stepping stone into a wilderness of space. The challenge is not just one of space engineering, but also a social and political one. We need to work together as a species so we don’t take our problems on Earth to new worlds. We can instead boldly prepare for a future in space where we are not alone in the universe.

Other planets, like wild territories, are a possible source of danger, but they will also probably be vulnerable to our predispositions. And we need to think about our connection to these distant territories of space. They may be in our future sooner than we know. U.S. President George Bush proposed the year 2019 for a human mission to Mars. Reports released by the International Space University have concluded we can send astronauts to Mars with existing technology. Late-20th-century centenarians have seen humankind go from the horse and buggy to the space ship. Just as the 20th century was the century of air travel, the 21st century may be the century of space travel.

But the night skies have become dark and menacing again. We may no longer be fearful of Mars, but we are still fearful of the distant wild territories of space. Recent science fiction movies focus on terrors from other planets. Popular movies such as Species (I and II), Stargate, The Arrival, Independence Day, and even Star Trek: First Contact suggest that we need to be prepared militarily for encounters with creatures from other planets. Independence Day is remarkably jingoistic with a renewal of a War of the Worlds scenario, but we are much more prepared than we were a century ago. This wonder and fear expresses a concern that is as old as our realization that we are not at the center of the universe, but only one of many planets in the cosmos.

Curiosity and the fear of the unknown, of the wilderness or frontier of space, will propel us, we who have been the real children of the god of war, into a new wilderness that will seem dangerous but may not be. Mars was only really dangerous in our imaginations, and we are now poised to invade it. NASA’s space probes have given us enough information to do so. We will strive as we always have to conquer the source of our fears. But we need to control our destructiveness in order to mitigate a potentially destructive future on Mars, and someday in the further reaches of space.

Filed under: Articles on August 7th, 2001