Imagining Mars: A Literary History

From the Publisher

"Robert Crossley's magnificent survey 'Imagining Mars: A Literary History' reminds us why the Red Planet has been the dominant orb, after Earth itself, in the science-fiction imagination."--Tom Shippey, The Wall Street Journal

"Robert Crossley examines the interplay between speculative fiction and scientific knowledge about Mars throughout history, from the age of the earliest telescopes to NASA's recent orbiters and rovers."--George M. Eberhart, College and Research Library News

"...this is the definitive literary history of a planet that has long been prospected by the human imagination, whatever the possibilities of actual settlement there."--Patrick Parinder, The British Society for Literature and Science Web Reviews

"Imagining Mars is nothing less than a magnum opus of literary criticism on the subject. It will resonate primarily with readers and scholars of sf and popular science, but it is written in accessible language and will appeal to anybody interested in the cultural history of the west. ...Crossley clearly cares about this material on a personal and professional level, and it shows in the writing. Over ten years in the making, the book is a fitting climax to a long career of impeccable scholarship."--D. Harlan Wilson, Extrapolation

Publishers Weekly

"The difference between a planet and a world is imagination," says Crossley (Olaf Stapledon: Speaking for the Future) in this entertaining new work. The 1877 discovery of Mars' moons and surface lines sparked a century of fascination that inspired scientific discovery and literature, despite the 1941 determination that the planet had too little oxygen or water for life. Crossley is equally comfortable discussing the scientific efforts of Percival Lowell and the stories of H.G. Wells, Robert Heinlein, Kim Stanley Robinson, and other sci-fi scribes. Crossley reviews Mars in history and literature, from "a dying world that served as a grim and cautionary text" to "the canvas on which writers could depict their wildest fantasies, their darkest fears" to "a laboratory and a playground of the mind." He draws substantial excerpts from texts to illustrate his thesis and chronologically explores the literature about Mars alongside the history of discovery, from those first "canali" to the "Bush agenda for a grand mission to Mars by 2020." Scholarly but accessible, with a generous number of illustrations and photographs, Imagining Mars is a fun and interesting read for sci-fi fans and armchair astronomers. (Jan.)

Library Journal

Crossley (English, emeritus, Univ. of Massachusetts, Boston) has written previously primarily on sf writer Olaf Stapledon. Here, he delivers to his readers a thorough history of how writers, scientific and literary, have reacted to and imagined the red planet from the 17th century onward, focusing especially on the period from 1877 to the present. Crossley writes for the most part about literary reactions to the scientific study of Mars, mainly exploring novels, although there is some mention of short stories and poetry. He has included some brief literary criticism, but he is chiefly conveying literary history, at which he is brilliantly successful. His comprehensive analysis of the effects of scientific discovery and understanding on literature concerning Mars is strong.Verdict This work, at once a literary survey and a history of scientific understanding, exceeds expectations. Sf buffs, literary scholars, and fans of popular science will very much appreciate it. The inclusion of illustrations and photographs provides even further value.—Jennifer Harris, Mercyhurst Coll. Lib., Erie, PA