Among them were Willy Ley and Wernher von Braun. Young men inspired by the book went on to found a German rocket society, the Verein für Raumschiffahrt. The book is a fun read, and it had a huge impact in its day: Lasswitz clubs sprang up all over Germany. The book’s stiff, 19th-century utopian style takes some getting used to, but the prescient ideas on every page and the powerful vision of a prosperous life created by following the rational ways of science are still very attractive. The Martians live in a technological utopia in which life is enriched by fine food, rapid transit, and flying artworks. In Kurd Lasswitz’s novel, advanced Martians come to Earth and try to help us. Auf zwei Planeten (1897), translated as Two Planets (1971). Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1898) and Edgar Rice Burroughs’s A Princess of Mars (1917) were part of this international response, but my favorites from the Lowell era are by a German and a Russian.ġ. Writers all over the world were inspired to fill in the implications of Lowell’s account, according to their own characters, interests, and national styles. What he said he saw through his powerful telescope in Flagstaff, Ariz.-a planetwide complex of canals-turned out to be science fiction already, but for many years that wasn’t obvious. The first big outpouring of fiction about Mars followed astronomer Percival Lowell’s book Mars, in 1895. My favorites come from all periods and illustrate these changes in what we thought Mars was like.

The best Mars novels have always tried to reflect our current scientific understanding of Mars, which over the years has meant very different planets. He was too modest to include his own books, so we’ll do it here: Robinson’s Mars Trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars ), which describes the colonization and terraforming of Mars by engineers and scientists, is published by Bantam Spectra. We asked Kim Stanley Robinson, the author of several highly regarded Mars novels, to guide us through the incredibly rich body of Mars literature. This is part of IEEE Spectrum’s Special Report: Why Mars? Why Now?

Author the martian