Mars



Mars is the main setting in A Princess of Mars by Burroughs and The Marian Chronicles by Bradbury. The ability to spot the red planet without a telescope, all the while unable to visit, makes this exotic. Is Mars life like ours? Do aliens have the same hopes and dreams? Through storytelling, Bradbury and Burroughs solidify these musings. Carl Sagan famously stated, "Mars has become a kind of mythic arena onto which we have projected our Earthly hopes and fears.” 
 Burroughs’s book paints a rugged, barbaric picture. His martins are inhuman; both in appearance (some are green and have 4 arms) and personality (the beings are cold, cruel, and unloving). Even the technology presented is rudimentary. This Mars is an archaic, ignorant society which hyperbole mirrors Burroughs fears for Earth. Without further evolution and inventions, civilization won’t rise to its potential.    
Mars, in The Martian Chronicles, is similar to Earth. Some of the areas actually look like suburban Illinois down to the “white house and red brick ones, and tall elm trees... and tall maples and horse chestnuts. And church steeples with golden bells” (Bradbury 50).  These humanoid beings have friends, jobs, and families. There are even modern Earthly conveniences. They’re civilized. Bradbury’s Mars shows a planet at its best – technology and humanity working in tandem. 
Like humans, Bradbury’s enlightened aliens are protective. To guard Mars from being overrun and destroyed by Earthlings, Martians often resort to drastic, heinous measures to rid possible invaders. In “The Earth Men” the aliens place the humans in an insane asylum and euthanize them. “The Third Expedition” Martians transform and mimic the astronauts dead relatives in able to kill the Earthlings.

Space is the final frontier. It’s a dangerous unknown fascinating and terrifying people, much like the West fascinated east coast settlers. So, is it a wonder science fiction novelist explores the ‘what ifs’ of Mars?

Works Cited

Boucher, G. (2012, August 8). Our favorite Martians: The red planet, a pop culture history. Retrieved March 26, 2013, from Los Angels Times: http://herocomplex.latimes.com/books/our-favorite-martians-the-red-planet-a-pop-culture-history/#/0
Bradbury, R. (1958). The Martian Chronicles. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc. .
Burroughs, E. R. (n.d.). Project Gutenberg. Retrieved March 18, 2013, from A Princess of Mars: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/62/62-h/62-h.htm


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