Documentation Mars SF(Edit)
EARLY SF ON MARS(Edit)
- FRASER Joseph, Melbourne and Mars - My Mysterious Life on Two Planets, 1889
Possibly the civilisation of the planet upon which he lives much of his time, the planet Mars, is much older and much higher than that of the earth. The people appear to have nothing to worry them, no monetary difficulties, no strife nor unhealthy competition, no contending nationalities, no wars, no crimes. Naturally, being introduced, to such people we want to know more of them, their modes of life, their history, how their lives came to be so fully perfected. [...] I commenced life on Mars when about thirty; you were evidently about forty-five. I had lived here ten Martial years before I became fully conscious I had dim perceptions of some life outside, and some ideas came from the lower world, but I did not know of the dual life. [...] Put an earth man on Mars, and the internal pressure of air would explode him, and if he could endure our comparatively rarefied air he would not be able to adapt his muscles to our half pressure gravitation. With our light he could hardly see, and even our summer temperature would starve him. Our temperate zones in winter would remind him of Greenland and Spitzbergen; our frosts would certainly congeal his great watery body. Put a martial man on Earth and the density of the atmosphere would crush his organs together; his muscles would not enable him to drag along; the moist, hot air would suffocate him, the light would blind him, and though a man on Mars he would appear a dwarf amongst the larger and more burly and muscular earth men.
- CROMIE Robert, A Plunge into Space, 1891
A group of scientific adventurers builds a space ship for the purpose of exploring Mars. The motor device is a shield that protects against earth's gravity while being attracted to Mars. (This probably inspired a similar device in H.G. Wells' the First Men on the Moon, 1901.) On the return ship they discover a stowaway — a Martian girl. — The protagonists of A Plunge into Space (1890) travel by Antigravity to Mars, where they discover humans living under Utopian conditions, and a fatal romance ensues; the 1891 edition includes a preface ostensibly by Jules Verne.
- POPE Gustavus, Journey to Mars - the Wonderful World: Its Beauty and Splendor: Its Mighty Races and Kingdoms: Its Final Doom, 1894
Scientific novel — On a voyage to Antarctica, Lt. Frederick Hamilton's ship is wrecked; he and a Māori sailor are cast onto a barren island. Though near the end of his endurance, Hamilton rescues a strange-looking man before he loses consciousness. He awakens three weeks later, aboard a spaceship traveling to Mars. (Hamilton at first does not realize his hosts are Martians; he suspects they might have come from within the Hollow Earth through a polar opening, as per John Symmes's theory.
- WELLS H.G., The Crystal Egg, 1897
The story tells of a shop owner, named Mr. Cave, who finds a strange crystal egg that serves as a window into the planet Mars.
- FLOURNOY Théodore - Des Indes à la Planète Mars - 1900
Étude sur un cas de somnambulisme avec glossolalie — J'appellerai de même cycle martien le troisième roman, dans lequel Mlle Smith, grâce aux facultés médianimiques qui sont l'apanage et la consolation de sa vie présente, a pu entrer en relation avec les gens et les choses de la planète Mars et nous en dévoiler les mystères. C'est surtout dans ce somnambulisme astronomique que se sont produits les phénomènes de glossolalie, de fabrication et d'emploi d'une langue inédite, qui sont l'un des principaux objets de cette étude; on verra cependant que des faits analogues se sont également présentés dans le cycle hindou. [...]
Car, pour le spiritisme, les barrières de l'Espace ne comptent pas plus que celles du Temps. Les « portes de la distance» sont grandes ouvertes devant lui. La question des moyens est ici chose secondaire on n'a que l'embarras du choix. Que ce soit par intuition, par clairvoyance, par télépathie, par dédoublement permettant à "l'âme entourée de son périsprit de quitter momentanément sa guenille terrestre pour faire en un rien de temps le voyage du bout du monde aller et retour; ou encore par vision dans l'Astral, par réincarnation de désincarnés omniscients, par les « fluides » ou par tel autre procédé enfin que vous voudrez il n'importe. Le point essentiel, c'est qu'aucune objection sérieuse ne saurait être opposée à la possibilité de cette communication.
- GRATACAP Louis Pope, The certainty of a future life in Mars, 1903
Being the Posthumous Papers of Bradford Torrey Dodds — At the conclusion of a life spent rather diligently in study, and in association especially with astronomical practice and physical experiments, I have, in view of certain hitherto unpublished facts, decided to make public almost incontrovertible evidence that in the planet Mars the continuation of our present life, in some instances, has been discovered by myself.
- ARNOLD Edwin Lester, Lt Gulliver Jones - His Vacation, 1905
Oh, I wish I were anywhere but here, anywhere out of this redtape-ridden world of ours! I WISH I WERE IN THE PLANET MARS!” How can I describe what followed those luckless words? Even as I spoke the magic carpet quivered responsively under my feet, and an undulation went all round the fringe as though a sudden wind were shaking it.
- WELLS H.G., The Things That Live on Mars, 1908
What sort of inhabitants may Mars possess ? To this question I gave a certain amount of attention some years go when I was preparing a story, called "The War of the Worlds," in which the Martians are supposed to attack the earth ; but since that time much valuable work has been done upon that planet, and one comes to this question again with an ampler equipment of information, and prepared to consider it from new points of view.
- ASH Fenton, A Trip to Mars, 1909
Fenton Ash was the nom de plume of British author Francis Henry Atkins. A Trip to Mars concerns another exploratory journey taken this time by a pair of Edwardian schoolboys.
- CALMADENKER A. - The mania of the nations on the planet Mars, and its terrific consequences - a combination of fun and wisdom, 1915
Many millions of centuries ago, when the celestial globe on which we live and struggle started to emerge from the hot-air habit and commenced to cool down and come to its senses, a huge mass of syrup-like material sagged down toward the lower end of the cooling ball and, upon further cooling, formed a high promontory at what we to-day call the South Pole. As a consequence we now find there a plateau of an elevation far exceeding in height the highest mountains found elsewhere on our venerable globe. [...] Professor Fansee, moreover, was an expert in astronomy, chemistry and electricity. With a smile of derision he had watched for years the futile efforts on the part of certain scientists to communicate with the planet Mars. Long ago an idea had ripened in his fertile brain that he knew would ultimately lead to the desired end.
- MCLEOD WINSOR, Station X, 1919
Those responsible for our naval strategy regarded the invention of long-distance wireless telephony as of the utmost importance. The advantage of a sufficient number of suitably placed stations to bring our scattered units of Empire within speaking distance was obvious. Stations for this purpose required a system of wiring so extensive as to preclude its employment afloat. At one station, known as Station X, the wiring covered a considerable area. There was the advantage that the etheric waves produced could not be interfered with or detected by any shipboard equipment. [...] The only other place where life had now advanced to the higher plane was the much smaller planet, Mars. At the time when the dominating race on Mars had arrived approximately at your present mental status, the Lunarians were vastly in advance of them. [...] Could Mars be reached ? There was a way : so horrible in its selfishness, so fiendish in its unspeakable wickedness, that the mind shrinks from thought contact with it, even after the lapse of a million years. But it is now my painful duty to tell you the terrible narrative. [...] —" That's it," he said to himself ; " the whole thing is clear ! Clear as possible ! That voice was from Mars !"
- STAPLEDON Olaf, Last and First Men - a story of the near and far future, 1930
This is a work of fiction. I have tried to invent a story which may seem a possible, or at least not wholly impossible, account of the future of man; and I have tried to make that story relevant to the change that is taking place today in man's outlook. [...] Our concern is with humanity, and with the Martians only in relation to men. But in order to understand the tragic intercourse of the two planets, it is necessary to glance at conditions on Mars, and conceive something of those fantastically different yet fundamentally similar beings, who were now seeking to possess man's home. To describe the biology, psychology and history of a whole world in a few pages is as difficult as it would be to give the Martians themselves in the same compass a true idea ofman. Encyclopaedias, libraries, would be needed in either case.
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- STAPLEDON Olaf, Star Maker, 1937
Star Maker is a poetic and deeply philosophical work. The story details the mental journey of an unnamed narrator who is transported not only to other worlds but also other galaxies and parallel universes, until he eventually becomes part of the "cosmic mind." First published in 1937, Olaf Stapledon's descriptions of alien life are a political commentary on human life in the turbulent inter-war years.
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- HAMILTON Edmond, Lost Treasure of Mars, In Amazing Stories (august 1940)