Editing Mars in fiction (section)

=== Past and non-humanoid life ===
In some stories where Mars is not inhabited by humanoid lifeforms, it was in the past or is inhabited by other types of life. The ruins of extinct Martian civilizations are depicted in the 1943 short story "[[Lost Art (short story)|Lost Art]]" by [[George O. Smith]] where their [[perpetual motion machine]] is recreated and the 1957 short story "[[Omnilingual]]" by [[H. Beam Piper]] in which scientists attempt to [[Decipherment|decipher]] their fifty-thousand-year-old language;<ref name="MarkleyLimitsOfImagination" /><ref name="GreenwoodMars" /> the 1933 novel ''[[The Outlaws of Mars]]'' by [[Otis Adelbert Kline]] and the 1949 novel ''[[The Sword of Rhiannon]]'' by Leigh Brackett employ [[time travel]] to set stories in the past when Mars was still alive.<ref name="MarkleyLimitsOfImagination" /><ref name="CrossleyThreshold" />

The 1934 short story "[[A Martian Odyssey]]" by [[Stanley G. Weinbaum]] contains what Webster describes as "the first really alien aliens" in science fiction, in contrast to previous depictions of Martians as monsters or essentially human.<ref name="Webster" /> The story broke new ground in portraying an entire Martian [[ecosystem]] wholly unlike that of Earth—inhabited by species that are alien in anatomy and inscrutable in behaviour—and in depicting extraterrestrial life that is non-human and [[Extraterrestrial intelligence|intelligent]] without being hostile.<ref name="D'AmmassaAMartianOdyssey" /><ref name="CriticalStudiesWeinbaum" /><ref>{{Cite book |last=Wolfe |first=Gary K. |title=James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction |date=2018 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-1-68383-590-5 |editor-last=Prince |editor-first=Chris |pages=<!-- the book has no page numbers --> |language=en |chapter=Alien Life |quote=This introduced the idea not only that some aliens might be friendly or helpful or even cute, but also that they might just be really ''different'', neither humanoid nor monstrous—and that some of them might simply be indifferent to us. |author-link=Gary K. Wolfe |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FU1XDwAAQBAJ&pg=RA1-PA1914}}</ref> In particular, one Martian creature called [[Tweel (A Martian Odyssey)|Tweel]] is found to be intelligent but have thought processes that are utterly inhuman.<ref name="CrossleyBestTradition">{{Cite book |last=Crossley |first=Robert |title=[[Imagining Mars: A Literary History]] |date=2011 |publisher=Wesleyan University Press |isbn=978-0-8195-6927-1 |pages=168–194 |language=en |chapter=Quite in the Best Tradition |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v3TDEDfEPdEC&pg=PA178}}</ref><ref name="CriticalStudiesWeinbaum">{{Cite book |last=Stableford |first=Brian |title=Science Fiction Writers: Critical Studies of the Major Authors from the Early Nineteenth Century to the Present Day |date=1999 |publisher=[[Charles Scribner's Sons]] |isbn=0-684-80593-6 |editor-last=Bleiler |editor-first=Richard |editor-link=Richard Bleiler |edition=2nd |pages=883–884 |chapter=Stanley G. Weinbaum |oclc=40460120 |author-link=Brian Stableford |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/sciencefictionwr0000unse/page/883/mode/2up}}</ref> This creates an impenetrable language barrier between the alien and the human it encounters, and they are limited to communicating through the [[universal language]] of [[mathematics]].<ref name="MarkleyLimitsOfImagination" /><ref name="D'AmmassaAMartianOdyssey">{{Cite book |last=D'Ammassa |first=Don |title=Encyclopedia of Science Fiction |date=2005 |publisher=Facts On File |isbn=978-0-8160-5924-9 |pages=246–247 |language=en |chapter="A Martian Odyssey" |author-link=Don D'Ammassa |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofsc0000damm/page/246/mode/2up}}</ref> Asimov would later say that this story met the challenge [[science fiction editor]] [[John W. Campbell]] made to science fiction writers in the 1940s: to write a creature who thinks at least as well as humans, yet not ''like'' humans.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Asimov |first=Isaac |title=Asimov on Science Fiction |date=1981 |publisher=Doubleday |isbn=978-0-385-17443-5 |pages=221–222 |language=en |chapter=The Second Nova |author-link=Isaac Asimov |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/asimovonsciencef0000asim/page/220/mode/2up}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Rudick |first=Nicole |date=2019-07-18 |title=A Universe of One's Own |language=en |work=[[The New York Review of Books]] |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/07/18/universe-of-ones-own-women-science-fiction/ |url-status=live |access-date=2022-06-22 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211111211043/https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/07/18/universe-of-ones-own-women-science-fiction/ |archive-date=2021-11-11 |issn=0028-7504}}</ref>

Three different species of intelligent lifeforms appear on Mars in C. S. Lewis's 1938 novel ''Out of the Silent Planet'', only one of which is humanoid.<ref name="MarkleyLimitsOfImagination" /><ref>{{Cite book |last=Stableford |first=Brian |title=The Dictionary of Science Fiction Places |date=1999 |publisher=Wonderland Press |isbn=978-0-684-84958-4 |pages=189 |chapter=Malacandra |author-link=Brian Stableford |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofscie0000unse/page/189/mode/2up}}</ref> In the 1943 short story "[[The Cave (short story)|The Cave]]" by P. Schuyler Miller, lifeforms endure on Mars long after the civilization that used to exist there has driven itself to [[extinction]] through [[ecological collapse]].<ref name="SFEMars" /><ref name="MarkleyLimitsOfImagination" /> The 1951 novel ''[[The Sands of Mars]]'' by [[Arthur C. Clarke]] features some indigenous life in the form of [[Oxygen production|oxygen-producing]] plants and Martian creatures resembling Earth [[marsupial]]s, but otherwise depicts a mostly desolate environment—reflecting then-emerging data about the scarcity of life-sustaining resources on Mars.<ref name="WestfahlMars" /><ref name="GreenwoodMars" /><ref name="ReadingMars" /><ref name="MarkleyTransformingMars" /> Other novels of the 1950s likewise limited themselves to rudimentary lifeforms such as [[lichen]]s and [[tumbleweed]] that could conceivably exist in the absence of any appreciable atmosphere or quantities of water.<ref name="MartianMusings">{{Cite book |last1=Robinson |first1=Kim Stanley |title=Visions of Mars: Essays on the Red Planet in Fiction and Science |date=2014 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-0-7864-8470-6 |editor-last=Hendrix |editor-first=Howard V. |editor-link=Howard V. Hendrix |pages=146–151 |language=en |chapter=Martian Musings and the Miraculous Conjunction |author-link=Kim Stanley Robinson |editor-last2=Slusser |editor-first2=George |editor-link2=George Slusser |editor-last3=Rabkin |editor-first3=Eric S. |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XjIglebU6CIC&pg=PA146}}</ref>