<h2>Modern Mars novels</h2>
First, here are some SF books about Mars that are consistent with mid-1990s
knowledge of the planet.
<p>
I've read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books -
Red Mars
,
Green Mars
,
and
Blue Mars
(having done computer graphics, I appreciate the RGB sequence
of the titles), and I can see why they're so popular. Buy them if you like epics.
They're socially oriented; they focus on the characters and communities and their
relationship to the new world, and gloss over the science and technology in the
background. On the other hand, they do dwell on the geology and biology,
at times sounding almost like
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
.
<p>
Greg Bear's
Moving Mars
is enjoyable, with the added bonus of a nice portrayal of artificial intelligence personalities in the Thinkers
<p>
Ben Bova's
Mars
is good too, and focuses more on scientific exploration
than any other Mars novel I can recall reading.
<h2>Bradbury</h2>
Ray Bradbury's
The Martian Chronicles
are a classic. They focus on human
society, not the planet, and they posit a civilization on Mars, but an exctinct one.
<h2>Burroughs</h2>
Edgar Rice Burroughs' famous romantic adventure books about Mars, written
in the early twentieth century, made a permanent impression on the minds of
two generations of people, including scientists. Those of us who grew up
after Mariner 9's disappointingly revealing images have a fundamentally
different view of Mars. Several of the books are still in print at the end of the
century:
A Princess of Mars
,
The Gods of Mars
,
Warlord of Mars
,
John Carter of Mars
, and
The Chessmen of Mars
.
and a collection called
Edgar Rice Burroughs Science Fiction Classics
.
There's even a hardcover encyclopedia called
The Burroughs Cyclopaedia
.
<h2>Filk songs about Mars</h2>
There are surprisingly few filk songs that use Mars as anything other
than a rhyme for "stars". I wrote a few myself:
two serious ones, "The Dark Side of Mars", and "Ancient Stone",
and some parts of "Give Me a Martian Rover".
Until Leslie Fish's "Second Home", "It Never Rains on Mars" was about
the only other one that I'm aware of, in the filk community.