THE MARTIANS

Entertaining account of the Mars madness that saturated popular culture at the turn of the 20th century.

Every year or two for a couple of centuries, a new book or movie or bit of news comes along to suggest that Mars once hosted life forms—and may yet do so, hidden under red rocks and sand dunes. As science journalist Baron records, that long trend traces back to the late 19th century, with numerous protagonists. In France, Camille Flammarion, a budding scientist, wrote novels in his spare time in which he supposed “other planets to be populated by the souls of dead humans,” with one pair of doomed lovers reincarnated on Mars. So popular was Flammarion that an admirer gave him an imposing château outside Paris that he converted into his own observatory. In the U.S., Baron continues, came “the Mars boom of 1892,” promulgated by, among others, future news magnate Joseph Pulitzer, whose papers breathlessly reported “three bright spots, like powerful searchlights,” beaming down from Martian mountains. Italian scientist Giovanni Schiaparelli speculated that the regular lines that he could see through his telescope were ancient canals, a theme picked up by American astronomy buff and patron Percival Lowell, who in turn was sure that ancient civilizations once flourished on Mars. On that note, Baron turns to the liveliest part of his story, namely the influence of all this tentative, often flawed science on popular culture. He writes, “Lowell’s influence leapfrogged to a whole new generation when the creator of another craze—­the Tarzan novels—­wrote a string of adventure books set on a fictional Mars known by its inhabitants as Barsoom.” That author, Edgar Rice Burroughs, in turn inspired Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, and many other sci-fi writers who gave us shelves of books by which to “pass Lowell’s imaginative torch on to yet another generation.”

Are there Martians out there? Baron has evident good fun looking into the origins of an ongoing craze.