Editing Mars in fiction (section)

=== Evil ===
There is a long tradition of portraying Martians as warlike, perhaps inspired by the planet's association with the [[Mars (mythology)|Roman god of war]].<ref name="Westfahl2022Venus">{{Cite book |last=Westfahl |first=Gary |title=The Stuff of Science Fiction: Hardware, Settings, Characters |date=2022 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-1-4766-8659-2 |pages=165–166, 169 |language=en |chapter=Venus—Venus of Dreams ... and Nightmares: Changing Images of Earth's Sister Planet |author-link=Gary Westfahl |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=q7WREAAAQBAJ&pg=PA166}}</ref><ref name="CrossleyAlternativeVisions" /> The seminal depiction of Martians as evil creatures was the 1897 novel ''The War of the Worlds'' by H. G. Wells, wherein the Martians attack Earth.<ref name="SFEMars" /><ref name="WestfahlMars" /><ref name="StablefordMars" /> This characterization dominated the [[pulp era of science fiction]], appearing in works such as the 1928 short story "[[The Menace of Mars]]" by [[Clare Winger Harris]], the 1931 short story "[[Monsters of Mars]]" by [[Edmond Hamilton]], and the 1935 short story "Mars Colonizes" by [[Miles J. Breuer]].<ref name="SFEMars" /><ref name="WestfahlMars" /><ref name="ReadingMars">{{multiref2|{{cite magazine |last=Westfahl |first=Gary |author-link=Gary Westfahl |date=December 2000 |title=Reading Mars: Changing Images of Mars in Twentieth-Century Science Fiction |magazine=[[The New York Review of Science Fiction]] |issue=148 |pages=1, 8–13 |issn=1052-9438}}|{{Cite book |last=Westfahl |first=Gary |title=The Stuff of Science Fiction: Hardware, Settings, Characters |date=2022 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-1-4766-8659-2 |pages=146–163 |language=en |chapter=Mars—Reading Mars: Changing Images of the Red Planet |author-link=Gary Westfahl |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=q7WREAAAQBAJ&pg=PA146}}}}</ref> It quickly became regarded as a [[cliché]] and inspired a kind of [[countermovement]] that portrayed Martians as meek in works like the 1933 short story "[[The Forgotten Man of Space]]" by [[P. Schuyler Miller]] and the 1934 short story "[[Old Faithful (short story)|Old Faithful]]" by [[Raymond Z. Gallun]].<ref name="SFEMars" /><ref name="StablefordMars" /> The 1946 novel ''[[The Man from Mars]]'' by [[Polish science fiction]] writer [[Stanisław Lem]] likewise depicts a Martian mistreated by humans.<ref name="MarsAntologiaPolskiejFantastyki" /><ref>{{Cite book |last=Booker |first=M. Keith |title=Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction in Literature |date=2014 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-0-8108-7884-6 |pages=160 |language=en |chapter=Lem, Stanisław (1921–2006) |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WRi7BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA160}}</ref>

Outside of the pulps, the [[alien invasion]] theme pioneered by Wells appeared in [[Olaf Stapledon]]'s 1930 novel ''[[Last and First Men]]''—with the twist that the invading Martians are cloud-borne and microscopic, and neither aliens nor humans recognize the other as a sentient species.<ref name="WestfahlMars" /><ref name="CrossleyBestTradition" /><ref name="GreenwoodMars" /><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Huntington |first1=John W. |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=82 |language=en |chapter=The (In)Significance of Mars in the 1930s |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=PA82}}</ref> In film, this theme gained popularity in 1953 with the releases of ''[[The War of the Worlds (1953 film)|The War of the Worlds]]'' and ''[[Invaders from Mars (1953 film)|Invaders from Mars]]''; later films about Martian invasions of Earth include the 1954 film ''[[Devil Girl from Mars]]'', the 1962 film ''[[The Day Mars Invaded Earth]]'', a [[Invaders from Mars (1986 film)|1986 remake]] of ''Invaders from Mars'' and [[List of works based on The War of the Worlds#Adaptations|three different adaptations of ''The War of the Worlds'']] in 2005.<ref name="SFEMars" /><ref name="HotakainenMarsFiction" /><ref name="MarkleyLimitsOfImagination" /><ref name="GreenwoodMars" /> Martians attacking humans who come to Mars appear in the 1948 short story "[[Mars Is Heaven!]]" by Ray Bradbury (later revised and included in ''The Martian Chronicles'' as "The Third Expedition"), where they use [[Telepathy|telepathic]] abilities to impersonate the humans' deceased loved ones before killing them.<ref name="AshgateExtraterrestrial" /><ref name="JennerDeathStars" /><ref name="Rabkin">{{Cite book |last1=Rabkin |first1=Eric S. |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=95, 98, 102–103 |language=en |chapter=Is Mars Heaven? ''The Martian Chronicles'', ''Fahrenheit 451'' and Ray Bradbury's Landscape of Longing |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=PA95}}</ref> Comical portrayals of evil Martians appear in the 1954 novel ''[[Martians, Go Home]]'' by [[Fredric Brown]], where they are [[little green men]] who wreak havoc by exposing secrets and lies;<ref name="CrossleyThreshold" /> in the form of the cartoon character [[Marvin the Martian]] introduced in the 1948 short film "[[Haredevil Hare]]", who seeks to destroy Earth to get a better view of Venus;<ref name="SFEMars" /><ref name="HotakainenMarsFiction" /><ref name="JennerMarvin">{{Cite book |last=Jenner |first=Nicky |title=4th Rock from the Sun: The Story of Mars |date=2017 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |isbn=978-1-4729-2251-9 |pages=45–62 |language=en |chapter=Marvin and the Spiders |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=od7oDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT52}}</ref><ref name="HartzmanMarsInvadesPopCulture" /> and in the 1996 film ''[[Mars Attacks!]]'', a pastiche of [[History of science fiction films#Post-War and 1950s|1950s alien invasion films]].<ref name="SFEMars" /><ref name="GreenwoodMars" /><ref>{{Cite book |last=Mann |first=George |title=The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction |date=2001 |publisher=Carroll & Graf Publishers |isbn=978-0-7867-0887-1 |pages=390 |language=en |chapter=Mars Attacks! |author-link=George Mann (writer) |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/mammothencyclope00mann/page/390/mode/2up}}</ref>