Well before the 20th century, Mars found its way into
the human imagination through fiction. In Gulliver's Travels,
Jonathan Swift's fictitious astronomers study the moons of Mars more than one hundred years before
an American astronomer actually discovered them. In a more sinister view of the Red Planet, H.G.
Wells painted a picture of horror when Martians invade Earth in The War of
the Worlds.
In the last century, the allure of our solar neighbor took greater
hold. Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote a series of novels, known as the Martian Tales, whose hero is
transported to Mars and adapts to Martian culture. In The Martian
Chronicles, Ray Bradbury depicts the dark side of human nature when explorers from
Earth land on Mars. In the 1960s, author Robert Heinlein told the story of a man who was the sole
survivor of the first human mission to Mars. After being raised by Martians, the hero of
Stranger in a Strange Land returns to Earth and adapts to
human ways.
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