Description
Book SynopsisAnalyzes scientific, literary, and popular works of the last century to offer a cross-disciplinary reading of Mars as both an object of scientific study and as a site on which humankind has projected its fears of ecological devastation
Trade Review“
Dying Planet is a work of meticulous scholarship documenting the scientific controversies and literary representations of Mars from the early Renaissance to the present. Its comprehensiveness will make it a valuable resource for literary scholars, cultural critics, and scientists interested in the cultural history of this fascinating world.”—N. Katherine Hayles, author of
My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts“This is both a complete literary history and an exemplary exercise in modern science studies, tracing how a particular science works over the generations to incorporate new technologies, create paradigm shifts, and understand the universe a little more accurately. By combining these in one study, Robert Markley clarifies a great deal about the poorly understood but very important relationships between science, literature, culture, and reality. He also gives us all the latest news from Mars, which keeps getting more interesting. It’s a fascinating story, and Markley is the first to tell it.”—Kim Stanley Robinson, author of
Red Mars,
Green Mars, and
Blue Mars“
Dying Planet is an excellent and detailed book. For anyone seeking to understand the fascinating intertwined histories of science and science fiction, and how a ball of rock, just six thousand seven hundred kilometres in diameter and several tens of millions of kilometres away, has exerted such an astonishing influence on our imaginations, it will be well worth reading.” -- Charles S. Cockell * Interdisciplinary Science Reviews *
“
Dying Planet is an impressive study of Mars in the cultural imagination, especially in science and science fiction. . . . Thoroughly captivating and meticulously researched,
Dying Planet supplies readers with a generous bibliography of science fiction writing about Mars.” -- Kent A. Ono * American Literature *
"[A] wonderfully nuanced reading of the red planet's cultural history. . . . [T]his is a masterly exploration of the 'interplanetary sublime.'" -- P.D. Smith * The Guardian *
"Markley writes about Mars as a knowledgeable outsider, weaving in cultural history and science fiction. . . . [T]here are many historical, literary, political, and cultural nuggets. . . ." -- David Grinspoon * Scientific American *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments 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
