Editing Mars in fiction (section)

=== Canals ===
{{Further|Martian canals}}
{{Quote box|quote=A [[Mercury in fiction#Tidal locking|clement twilight zone on a synchronously rotating Mercury]], a [[Venus in fiction#Jungle and swamp|swamp-and-jungle Venus]], and a canal-infested Mars, while all classic science-fiction devices, are all, in fact, based upon earlier misapprehensions by planetary scientists. |author=[[Carl Sagan]], 1978<ref>{{Cite news |last=Sagan |first=Carl |author-link=Carl Sagan |date=1978-05-28 |title=Growing up with Science Fiction |language=en-US |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1978/05/28/archives/growing-up-with.html |url-status=live |access-date=2022-07-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220712161346/https://www.nytimes.com/1978/05/28/archives/growing-up-with.html |archive-date=2022-07-12 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> |width=400px}}
During the [[Opposition (astronomy)|opposition]] of Mars [[History of Mars observation#Martian canals|in 1877]], Italian astronomer [[Giovanni Schiaparelli]] announced the discovery of linear structures he dubbed {{lang|it|canali}} (literally ''[[Channel (geography)|channels]]'', but widely translated as ''[[canal]]s'') on the Martian surface.<ref name="SFEMars" /><ref name="CrossleyInventingANewMars" /> These were generally interpreted—by those who accepted their disputed existence—as waterways,<ref name="HotakainenCanals" /> and they made their earliest appearance in fiction in the anonymously published 1883 novel ''[[Politics and Life in Mars]]''<!-- Some sources give the title as "Politics and Life on Mars". This would appear to be an error, see https://books.google.com/books?id=dwtEAQAAMAAJ -->, where the Martians live in the water.<ref name="CrossleyUtopia">{{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=90–109 |language=en |chapter=Mars and Utopia |quote=In some cases, however, the method of passage to Mars is ignored altogether. |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v3TDEDfEPdEC&pg=PA90}}</ref> Schiaparelli's observations, and perhaps the translation of {{lang|it|canali}} as "canals" rather than "channels", inspired [[Percival Lowell]] to speculate that these were artificial constructs and write a series of non-fiction books—''Mars'' in 1895, ''Mars and Its Canals'' in 1906, and ''Mars as the Abode of Life'' in 1908—popularizing the idea.<ref name="StablefordMars" /><ref name="ReadingMars" /><ref name="SFELowell" /><ref name="OldMars" /> Lowell posited that Mars was home to an ancient and advanced but dying or already dead Martian civilization who had constructed these vast canals for irrigation to survive on an increasingly arid planet,<ref name="SFEMars" /><ref name="StablefordMars" /><ref name="SFELowell" /> and this became an enduring vision of Mars that influenced writers across several decades.<ref name="SFEMars" /><ref name="ReadingMars" /><ref name="SFELowell" /><ref name="TheNewMartianNovel" /> [[Science fiction scholar]] [[Gary Westfahl]], drawing from the catalogue of [[early science fiction]] works compiled by [[E. F. Bleiler]] and [[Richard Bleiler]] in the reference works ''[[Science-Fiction: The Early Years]]'' from 1990 and ''[[Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years]]'' from 1998, concludes that Lowell thus "effectively set the boundaries for subsequent narratives about an inhabited Mars".<ref name="ReadingMars" />

Canals became a feature of romantic portrayals of Mars such as Burroughs's ''Barsoom'' series.<ref name="SFEMars" /><ref name="TheNewMartianNovel">{{Cite book |last=Crossley |first=Robert |title=Histories of the Future: Studies in Fact, Fantasy and Science Fiction |date=2000 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-1-4039-1929-8 |editor-last=Sandison |editor-first=Alan |pages=152–167 |language=en |chapter=Sign, Symbol, Power: The New Martian Novel |quote=The three books [of Kim Stanley Robinson's ''Mars'' trilogy] indeed enact a forward-moving history, a utopia-in-progress, rather than an achieved ideal state. |editor-last2=Dingley |editor-first2=Robert |editor-link2=<!-- No article at present (June 2022); Senior Lecturer in English at the University of New England, NSW --> |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0p0YDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA152}}</ref><ref name="MillerMars">{{Cite book |last1=Miller |first1=Joseph D. |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=17–19, 26–27 |language=en |chapter=Mars of Science, Mars of Dreams |author-link=<!-- No article at present (March 2022); Ph.D. in 1979 from the University of Texas and associate professor in the Department of Cell and Neurobiology at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California --> |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=PA17}}</ref> Early works that did not depict any waterways on Mars typically explained the appearance of straight lines on the surface in some other way, such as [[simoom]]s or large tracts of vegetation.<ref name="CrossleyInventingANewMars" /> Although they quickly fell out of favour as a serious scientific theory, largely as a result of higher-quality telescopic observations by astronomers such as [[E. M. Antoniadi]] failing to detect them,<ref name="HotakainenCanals" /><ref name="TheNewMartianNovel" /><ref name="MillerMars" /> canals continued to make sporadic appearances in fiction for a while in works such as the 1936 novel ''[[Planet Plane]]'' by [[John Wyndham]], the 1938 novel ''Out of the Silent Planet'' by C. S. Lewis, and the 1949 novel ''[[Red Planet (novel)|Red Planet]]'' by [[Robert A. Heinlein]].<ref name="SFEMars" /><ref name="StablefordMars" /><ref name="CrossleyBestTradition" /><ref name="TheNewMartianNovel" /> Said Lewis in response to criticism from biologist [[J. B. S. Haldane]], "The canals in Mars are there not because I believe in them but because they are part of the popular tradition."<ref name="CrossleyBestTradition" /><ref name="TheNewMartianNovel" /> Eventually, the [[Mars flyby|flyby of Mars]] by [[Mariner 4]] in 1965 conclusively determined that the canals were mere [[optical illusion]]s.<ref name="SFEMars" /><ref name="StablefordMars" /><ref name="SFELowell">{{Cite encyclopedia |year=2022 |title=Lowell, Percival |encyclopedia=[[The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction]] |url=https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/lowell_percival |access-date=2023-07-14 |edition=4th |author1-last=Westfahl |author1-first=Gary |author1-link=Gary Westfahl |editor1-last=Clute |editor1-first=John |editor1-link=John Clute |editor2-last=Langford |editor2-first=David |editor2-link=David Langford |editor3-last=Sleight |editor3-first=Graham |editor3-link=Graham Sleight}}</ref>