For other authors, Mars became a place for daring and resourceful men, beautiful princesses and heroic quests. Lester Arnold flew his hero to Mars on a flying carpet in Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation (1905), where he fights for the American way and claims a large chunk of the planet in his nations name. In contrast to the dying world proposed by Lowell, Arnold's Mars was a verdant and plentiful land, but one author who did take Lowell to heart created the greatest of all the Martian adventurers, though Gullivar Jones was surely an influence.

John Carter Of Mars was the creation of Tarzan's Edgar Rice Burroughs. Like Arnold, Burroughs had little interest in the physical plausibility of his hero's translation to Mars. Arnold flew him by magic carpet, Burroughs has his hero fall asleep and travel by astral projection. What he finds on Mars in the first novel, A Princess Of Mars (1912) and the adventures that followed in later books, is a Mars of stark contrasts. Breathtaking beauty and ugliness go side by side in a society of glamorous princesses, hulking monsters and dying civilisations, all competing for the dwindling lifeblood of a planet. The John Carter novels are purest high adventure, with a literal superhero (Carter has massive strength thanks to the low gravity of Mars) facing fantastic odds to win the hand of the beautiful Martian princess.

But by the early 1930's the fantastic Mars of Burroughs and Arnold was under increasing threat, both from the vociferous scientific debate on the likelihood of life on Mars, and from a new breed of science fiction writer who placed greater emphasis on the realism of their stories. One of the first such stories was A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum. Published in the July 1934 issue of the pulp magazine Wonder Stories, this is a wonderful short story about an astronaut encountering a bewildering variety of indigenous Martian life forms. Also of great influence was John W Campbell Jr, the editor of the primary marketplace for science fiction writers at the time, the magazine Astounding Science Fiction. Campbell strongly encouraged greater realism from his writers, giving rise to stories such as P. Schuyler Miller's 1944 offering The Cave, a grim little tale that puts a human presence on Mars firmly in its place. We may know how to get there says the story, but in our arrogance, we certainly won't know how to coexist with the local life forms.

But not everyone was willing to let science get in the way of a good story, and In 1938, C.S. Lewis, the creator of Narnia wrote the first of three novels in his Cosmic Trilogy, painting a far less heroic picture of Mars than was envisaged by Burroughs or Arnold. Out Of The Silent Planet is, like his Narnia books, concerned with promulgating a deeply religious Christian message, but no matter your feelings about this, he paints a vivid picture of Mars. Lowell has little place in the creation of this Mars and nor does any other scientific idea (right or wrong), but viewed purely as an imaginative vision of an alien world, it is a triumph.

It was also in 1938 that the original The War Of The Worlds was thrust back into the public limelight, after what might be described as the only successful alien invasion in human history. On the Halloween night of October 30th, the multi-talented playwright, director and actor Orson Welles presented as usual his regular weekly radio drama. The Mercury Theatre On The Air had never created much of a stir before, but this night was to be very different, and by the next morning, the whole world was waking up to the news that upwards of a million Americans had believed to one degree or another that they had been listening to a real invasion from Mars, rather than a simple adaptation of the story. Welles was catapulted into overnight fame and stardom, but for psychologists, the broadcast was a heaven sent opportunity to study first hand the effects of a mass panic on a modern population. The task of documenting this extraordinary event fell to a Princeton University professor named Hadley Cantril, the authoritative study he oversaw becoming the basis for his 1940 book, Invasion From Mars.

Arthur C Clarke was one of the novelists of the 1950's who saw Mars as a potential colony for the Earth. His 1951 novel The Sands Of Mars is a well realised if somewhat dated attempt to spell out the difficulties that a colony would encounter, not only the practical considerations of daily life, but the political and economic implications for a colony dependent on the mother world for supplies, a theme that many other writers would take up in years to come.

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Reviews

1940 Invasion From Mars by Hadley Cantril. Written just after the 1938 broadcast by Orson Welles, this is an indepth scientific investigation.	1898 The War Of The Worlds by H.G. Wells. The ultimate novel of alien invasion as Martians crash to Earth in Victorian England.
1970 The Panic Broadcast by Howard Koch. An account of the 1938 broadcast by the scriptwriter.	1898 Fighters From Mars. Published only months after the release of Well's War Of The Worlds, this unofficial version of the novel is set in and around Boston.
2001 Complete War Of The Worlds. Contains the novel, Mercury Theatre script and articles on the War Of The Worlds.	1898 Edison's Conquest Of Mars by Garrett P Serviss. The unofficial 1898 sequel to The War Of The Worlds that sends the inventer Thomas Edison to Mars.
2002 Mapping Mars by Oliver Morton. Telling the history of attempts to map the surface of Mars. The book includes detail on fictional Mars.	1905 Gullivar Jones: His Vacation by Edwin Lester Arnold. A sailor is whisked to Mars on a flying carpet and encounters a strange society.
2004 Panic Attacks by Robert E. Bartholomew and Hillary Evans. Mass panics and their causes. Includes the War Of The Worlds broadcast.	1912 A Princess Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. A former American soldier is transported to Mars and finds himself caught up in war and adventure.
2005 The War Of The Worlds: Fresh Perspectives. A collection of intriguing essays by some of the best science fiction authors in the world.	1938 Out Of The Silent Planet by C S Lewis. A proffessor is kidnapped to a Mars of breathtaking beauty and deeply spiritual importance.
2005 Dying Planet by Robert Markley. A detailed and in-depth exploration of the planet Mars in both fact and fiction, and how the two have become intertwined.	1950 The Matian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. A bitter sweet history of Mars as seen and experienced by both Human and Martians.
2005 War Of The Worlds: Shooting Script. The final draft script to the Spielberg blockbuster is in places quite a bit different to the finished film.	1961 Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. A human raised by Martians returns to Earth.