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Mars
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| • Overview • Themes and Motifs • Key Works and Figures • Sources • | |
| Overview | |
As the closest planet to Earth, Mars has long been an object of speculation. Many novels and stories are set on Mars. |
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| Themes and Motifs | |
Early Mars stories often focused on Martians, what they were like and whether or not they were friendly. Once scientists began to study Mars more closely, most science fiction takes actual knowledge of Mars into account. |
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| Key Works and Figures | |
| Martians | |
The alien invaders in The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells came from Mars. Valentine Michael Smith, the protagonist of Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein, is a human raised on Mars who returns to Earth with powers beyond those of ordinary men. |
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| Expeditions to Mars | |
Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series takes place on Mars. Stanley G. Weinbaum's short story "A Martian Odyssey" imagines a variety of indigenous lifeforms on Mars. Later Ray Bradbury famously chronicled expeditions to Mars and encounters with Martians in The Martian Chronicles. |
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| Colonization of Mars | |
| Kim Stanley Robinson wrote a series of three award-winning hard science fiction novels--Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars--that describe the terraforming of Mars over several centuries. | |
For more titles, see |
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| Sources | |
| Stableford, Brian. "Mars." The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. ed. John Clute and Peter Nicholls. New York: St. Martins Griffin, 1993. | |
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