Editing Mars in fiction (section)

== Moons ==
[[File:Laputa - Grandville.jpg|alt=An illustration of the floating island Laputa in Gulliver's Travels|thumb|The [[Floating cities and islands in fiction|flying island]] of [[Laputa]] in ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]''. The mention that its astronomers have discovered two [[Martian moons]] is their earliest appearance in fiction.]]
[[Moons of Mars|Mars has two small moons]], [[Phobos (moon)|Phobos]] and [[Deimos (moon)|Deimos]], which were both discovered by [[Asaph Hall]] in 1877.<ref name="StablefordMars" /> The first appearance of the moons of Mars in fiction predates their discovery by a century and a half; the satirical 1726 novel ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]'' by [[Jonathan Swift]] includes a mention that the advanced astronomers of [[Laputa]] have discovered two Martian moons.{{Efn|See {{section link|Moons of Mars|Jonathan Swift}} for further details.}}<ref name="JennerDeathStars" /><ref name="SheehanMars">{{Cite book |last=Sheehan |first=William |title=The Planet Mars: A History of Observation & Discovery |date=1996 |publisher=University of Arizona Press |isbn=978-0-8165-1641-4 |pages=204–205 |language=en |chapter=The Hurtling Moons of Mars |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qSy6Hhbpjw4C&pg=PA204}}</ref> The 1752 work ''[[Micromégas]]''<!-- No English title --> by [[Voltaire]] likewise mentions two moons of Mars; [[History of astronomy|astronomy historian]] {{Interlanguage link|William Sheehan (astronomer)|lt=William Sheehan|qid=Q111504276}} surmises that Voltaire was inspired by Swift.<ref name="SheehanMars" /> German astronomer {{Interlanguage link|Eberhard Christian Kindermann|de}}, mistakenly believing that he had discovered a Martian moon, described a fictional voyage to it in the 1744 story "[[Die Geschwinde Reise]]"<!-- Ashley mistakenly gives the title as "Der Geschwinde Reise". --> ("The Speedy Journey").<ref name="AshleyLostMars" />

The moons' small sizes have made them unpopular settings in science fiction,{{Efn|In the catalogue of [[early science fiction]] works compiled by [[E. F. Bleiler]] and [[Richard Bleiler]] in the [[reference work]]s ''[[Science-Fiction: The Early Years]]'' from 1990 and ''[[Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years]]'' from 1998, the Martian moons only appear in 8<!-- listed together --> (out of 2,475) and 11<!-- 5 for Deimos and 7 for Phobos, with 1 in common --> (out of 1,835) works respectively,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bleiler |first=Everett Franklin |title=[[Science-Fiction: The Early Years|Science-fiction, the Early Years: A Full Description of More Than 3,000 Science-fiction Stories from Earliest Times to the Appearance of the Genre Magazines in 1930: with Author, Title, and Motif Indexes]] |date=1990 |publisher=Kent State University Press |others=With the assistance of [[Richard Bleiler|Richard J. Bleiler]] |isbn=978-0-87338-416-2 |pages=907 |language=en |chapter=Motif and Theme Index |author-link=E. F. Bleiler |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KEZxhkG5eikC&pg=PA907}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Bleiler |first1=Everett Franklin |title=[[Science-fiction: The Gernsback Years : a Complete Coverage of the Genre Magazines ... from 1926 Through 1936]] |last2=Bleiler |first2=Richard |date=1998 |publisher=Kent State University Press |isbn=978-0-87338-604-3 |pages=632, 674 |language=en |chapter=Motif and Theme Index |author-link=E. F. Bleiler |author-link2=Richard Bleiler |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PbMdeizaCNcC&pg=PA632}}</ref> compared to 194 for Mars itself and 131 for Venus in ''The Gernsback Years'' alone.<ref name="Westfahl2022Venus" />}} with some exceptions such as the 1955 novel ''[[Phobos, the Robot Planet]]'' by [[Paul Capon]] and the 2001 short story "[[Romance with Phobic Variations]]" by [[Tom Purdom]] in the case of Phobos, and the 1936 short story "Crystals of Madness" by [[D. L. James]] in the case of Deimos.<ref name="StablefordMars" /> Phobos is turned into a small [[star]] to provide heat and light to Mars in the 1951 novel ''The Sands of Mars'' by Arthur C. Clarke.<ref name="HotakainenMarsFiction" /> The moons are revealed to be alien spacecraft in the 1955 [[juvenile novel]] ''[[The Secret of the Martian Moons]]'' by [[Donald A. Wollheim]].<ref name="MarkleyLimitsOfImagination" />