MARS: The Lure of the Red Planet

The authors, both contributing editors to Sky & Telescope magazine, note that "On the eve of a new wave of space missions designed to search for water on Mars, it remains possible that even now 'the Mars we are trying to explore does not exist,' " t hereby encapsulating what may be the book's fatal flaw. Mars chronicles humanity's long fascination with the eponymous planet, from the Australian Aborigines' Dreamtime, an element of their culture that has been passed down for more than 40,000 years through Ptolemy and Copernicus, Kepler and Brahe, to the mapping of Mars via telescope and probes, Percival Lowell's canal theories and their subsequent dismantling by fact, and the great search for water and life. The problem is, Mars can't live up to its myth. The more we learn, the more there is for us to learn; we also discover that Mars is nothing like the planet of Burroughs, Bradbury and War of the Worlds (to which the authors devote a chapter), tinging our discoveries with disappointment. Two of the many pictures the authors include reinforce this. As affecting as the shot taken from the planet's rocky surface by Sojourner is, it's difficult not to be disillusioned by the shot of Carl Sagan standing next to a lander in the desert on Earth—the two landscapes are so similar. The authors try to keep hope alive by discussing the possibility of life on Mars, but simple bacteria, even if they did exist there, can't compare to little green men. So here is Mars as it is, but not as you may want it. (Apr.)