Dying planet : Mars in science and the imagination

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

Dying planet : Mars in science and the imagination

Robert Markley

Duke University Press, 2005

  • cloth : alk. paper
  • pbk. : alk. paper

Available at  / 2 libraries

Search this Book/Journal

Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [405]-435) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

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

Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. "A Situation in Many Respects Similar to Our Own": Mars and the Limits of Analogy 31 2. Lowell and the Canal Controversy: Mars at the Limits of Vision 61 3. "Different Beyond the Most Bizarre Imaginings of Nightmare": Mars in Science Fiction, 1880-1912 115 4. Lichens on Mars: Planetary Science and the Limits of Knowledge 150 5. Mars at the Limits of Imagination: The Dying Planet from Burroughs to Dick 182 6. The Missions to Mars: Mariner, Viking, and the Reinvention of a World 230 7. Transforming Mars, Transforming "Man": Science Fiction in the Space Age 269 8. Mars at the Turn of a New Century 303 9. Falling into Theory: Terraformation and Eco-Economics in Kim Stanley Robinson's Martian Trilogy 355 Epilogue: 2005 385 Notes 389 Works Cited 405 Index 435

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

Page Top