Welcome to my website! My name is Jeff Easterling and I am a student at DePauw University. Within here we will explore humanity's perception of Mars through science fiction. If you are new to Mars Fiction and the history of areology, I recommend you read in the order dictated on the menu bar to avoid confusion, or just follow the suggest links at the end of each article.

If you see strange characters, or if words overlap the pictures change your character encoding to UNI under view on the menu bar.

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Foward

They say that a long time ago stars were much closer together then they are now, and apart from lightning, there was no electricity to emanate light pollution. How brightly the stars must have shone when our ancestors first observed them with wonder! Humans being humans, they began to try to make sense of the heavens. Few celestial bodies caused as much speculation as Mars did back then. Being the second closest planet to Earth and having a fiery glow, Mars was, and still is, a distinct part of the night sky. The red tint reminded the ancients of blood, and became associated with war and violence.
Mars became a source of myth. The Egyptians named Mars Har dècher,“The Red One” while the Babylonians called it Nergal or the Star of Death.The planet inspired the worship and tales of the gods Ares and Mars in Greek and Roman mythology respectively. With the exception of the martial Spartan city state, Ares was often portrayed in a negative light. Ares is portrayed as a bloodthirsty in myths involving both him and Athena. Contrastingly, the Romans favored Mars, their equivalent of Ares, much more than the Greeks. The Romans held him in such high esteem, that they placed him above all, save Jupiter. This difference in opinion between Rome and the majority of Greeks was attributed to their history and cultures. With the notable exception of Sparta, most Greek city states placed intellect over bravery. Rome and Sparta's foundations were much more martial. Warfare was embedded into early Romans, who found themselves constantly under attack from Latin, Samnite, Etrurian, and Gallic neighbors.  However, the old Roman state religion would wane with the spread of Christianity, and its establishment as the new state religion by Emperor Constantine in the fourth century A.D. Thus, the cult of Mars would fall out of favor and was extinguished. Despite this, some people maintained curiosity in the cosmos. Claudius Ptolemy depicted Mars as a symbol, an embodiment of aggressiveness in his zodiac. It was a vestigial leftover of western classical mythology.
However it was only an embodiment of a personality type. Gone were days of myth and tales inspired by the planet. For most people who lived in the 4th century AD to the 17th century, Mars was reduced to a spot in the sky. It was not until the numerous innovations made upon the telescope that astronomers such as Huygens began to speculate of the possibility of life on Mars. The interest and fascination with Mars was rekindled. The hostile appearance of Mars would once again be reflected in most, albeit not all, works of Mars fiction. When astronomy revived in the Renaissance of Europe, it was only a matter of time before the intrigue in Mars became an art.