She Treads Softly: The Martians

Saturday, August 16, 2025

The Martians

The Martians by David Baron
8/26/25; 336 pages
W.W. Norton & Company/Liveright

The Martians by David Baron is a highly recommended entertaining and historical account of the obsession with Mars that occurred at the turn of the 20th century. As science journalist Baron explains in the prologue this fixation on Mars and it's potential canals and intelligent life forms is an example of human imagination and inventiveness but it is also a cautionary tale of mass delusion and battling egos. Ultimately, it is a historical account of people projecting their fantasies, desires, and ambitions onto an alien world.

Involved in the claim of observing and recording of canals on Mars and the contention of intelligent life were primarily Percival Lowell in America, Camille Flammarion in France, and scientist Giovanni Schiaparelli in Italy, who first purported seeing ancient canals. The narrative mainly follows Lowell's obsession with canals and a civilization. He even went on lecture tours and wrote books about Mars. Inventor Nikola Tesla was sure he would be able to invent a way to signal Mars. Also encouraging the obsession were numerous science fiction writers. The text includes many photos and illustrations.

Beginning with the Prologue, the book is then presented in three parts: Century's End - 1876-1900; A New Civilization - 1901-1907; The Earthlings Respond - 1908-1916. This is followed by an Epilogue, Children of Mars, which follows the impact of the Martian mania on popular culture. This is followed by Notes on Sources, an Abbreviations index, Notes, a List of Illustrations, and a Select Bibliography. Baron notes that the research for the book has involved hundreds of books, thousands of newspaper and magazine articles, and tens of thousand of pages in dairies, scrapbooks, logs, and letters form a wide variety of archives.

Anyone who enjoys history and associated pop culture trends will be entertained by The Martians. Thanks to W.W. Norton & Company/Liveright for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.