She didn't watch the dead ancient bone chest city slide under
or the old canals filled with emptyness and dreams
past, dry rivers and dry lakes they flew like the shadow of the moon
like a torch burning
One of the most persistent and enduring images
in science-fiction is that of the long
slow waters of the canals of Mars
Science fiction writers were writing stories about the canal building civlizations of Mars
right up to the 1960's
when NASA launched the Mariner missions
and finally flew a spacecraft over Mars
showing everybody once and for all that guys there really really aren't canals on Mars
But how do we get this idea to begin with ?
Where did it come from ?
The story is actually pretty great
because it involves a particular quirk of
early astronomy and mistranslation and optometry of all things
in the 19th century when we really start to be able to
observe Mars through telescopes
the telescopes we were looking at with weren't very great
and the places we were looking at it from weren't very well situated
astronomers would have to wait hours
just to get a decent glimpse of the planet
through and its atmosphere,
what they didn't realised tho is how much the earth atmosphere was messing with them
even if it wasn't visible to the naked eye
turbulences in the atmosphere can totally change what we see through a telescope
It can smear the image
and it's even what causes stars to appear to twinkle
then there's albedo
the idea that certain parts of the planet
reflect light at different degrees
on earth for example, a desert or the polarized caps reflect a lot more light the say a forest
which can make areas of a planet
look darker than another
and when you takes those darker spots and smears them out they kinda look like lakes
or oasis, then throw into the human teandance to see patterns and stuff related
and voilà
geological features
became a system of canals
the idea existed before
a uy named Giovanni Schiaparelli
pushed it to the stream
he released detailed maps of Mars
filled with what he thought seas
there was canals on Mars
but the italian word for
and thus
his beautiful maps of the canal
were brought into the mainstream
there were the great of age of building canals on earth
the Suez canal has just been completed
and work on the Panama canal began
it was the most advanced technology at the time
canals were a marvel of engineering
so of course an advanced civilization will build canals
possibility of an intelligence on Mars
Percival Lowell
an american entrepreneur
adventurer and writer, Japan
he traveled extensively
this idead of canals on Mars fascinated him
and they jibbed with their own observations
as an amateur astronomer
he decided to dedicate himself to astronomy
using his own wealth
he built the first observeratory ever intentionally placed away from cities at a high elevation
in order to get a better view of worlds beyond their own
he stared for hours through his telescope
for 15 years he slaved away writing and making detailed observations of what he saw
and he saw canals
Have you ever looked drirectly into a light for a while and start to seeing some squikling lines
those squikling lines you see are actually the veins in your eyeball
and Mars is an awfully bright object especially seen through huge telescopes at the end of night
so yes
was in fact the inside of is own eyeball
and drawing his veins in as part of the topographical observations
and since the veins in your eyeballs don't tend to move around very much
they actually were pretty consistent over his years of observations
this led him to declare
that Mars is inhabited by beings of some sort of other we may consider as certain as it is
he would write a number of books
and the civilization that built them
his conjecture last desparated attempt of an advanced civilization to get water from the ice caps of their dying planet
which might be a little bit familiar to you if you read the opening pages of H.G. Wells'
the war of the worlds
that exact dying scenario made aliens to invade earth
its the emmphasis of the entire book
we see this idea again in Edgar Rice Burroughs
which stories set in space
when it does the reference
to talk about
its distribution through the canals
dying atmosphere through technology
and if we jump
where did the kids go to school in Heinlein red planet
freaking loyal academy
shortly after that decay of the Martian civilization
still dying
still building canals
Heinlein even maintains this conception of Mars all the way through Stranger in a strange land
just 3 years prior the Mariner 4's launch
and why all this ?
because it's compelling
better stories telling than Mars being a dusty rock
and perhaps more importantly
cause Mars civization as mirror of ourselves
these authors were smart people
many of them read in science
and many of these writers had to know that
they use just bad science to their stories because it was an intriguing idea
the science was less important to the questions