Dying Planet

Mars in Science and the Imagination

Robert Markley

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9780822387275
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Astronomy & Astrophysics

For more than a century, Mars has been at the center of debates about humanity's place in the cosmos. Focusing on perceptions of the red planet in scientific works and science fiction, Dying Planet analyzes the ways Mars has served as a screen onto which humankind has projected both its hopes for the future and its fears of ecological devastation on Earth. Robert Markley draws on planetary astronomy, the history and cultural study of science, science fiction, literary and cultural criticism, ecology, and astrobiology to offer a cross-disciplinary investigation of the cultural and scientific dynamics that have kept Mars on front pages since the 1800s.

Markley interweaves chapters on science and science fiction, enabling him to illuminate each arena and to explore the ways their concerns overlap and influence one another. He tracks all the major scientific developments, from observations through primitive telescopes in the seventeenth century to data returned by the rovers that landed on Mars in 2004. Markley describes how major science fiction writers—H. G. Wells, Kim Stanley Robinson, Philip K. Dick, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and Judith Merril—responded to new theories and new controversies. He also considers representations of Mars in film, on the radio, and in the popular press. In its comprehensive study of both science and science fiction, Dying Planet reveals how changing conceptions of Mars have had crucial consequences for understanding ecology on Earth.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• ‘‘A Situation in Many Respects Similar to OurOwn’’: Mars and the Limits of Analogy
• Lowell and the Canal Controversy: Marsat the Limits of Vision
• "Different Beyond the Most Bizarre Omaginings of Nightmare":Mars in Science Fiction, 1880-1913
• Lichens on Mars: Planetary Science and theLimits of Knowledge
• Mars at the Limits of Imagination: The DyingPlanet from Burroughs to Dick
• The Missions to Mars: Mariner, Viking, andthe Reinvention of a World
• Transforming Mars, Transforming ‘‘Man’’:Science Fiction in the Space Age
• Mars at the Turn of a New Century
• Falling into Theory: Terraformation and Eco-Economicsin Kim Stanley Robinson’s Martian Trilogy
• Epilogue: 2005
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index