{"id":11827,"date":"2012-08-07T03:13:15","date_gmt":"2012-08-07T02:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=11827"},"modified":"2012-08-15T02:39:25","modified_gmt":"2012-08-15T01:39:25","slug":"a-trip-to-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2012\/08\/07\/a-trip-to-mars\/","title":{"rendered":"A Trip to Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mars3.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A floating Martian city from Letters from the Planets (1890) by WS Lach-Szyrma. Illustration by Paul Handy.<\/em><\/p>\n

In honour of the remarkable landing on Mars of the Curiosity Rover, a handful of random illustrations from the vast stock of imagery generated by the Red Planet over the past century-and-a-half. When it comes to Mars I’m afraid you can keep your terraforming and geodesic domes, I prefer the more fanciful scenarios involving air-boats, cloaks and actual canals. Paul Handy’s illustration above shows what I believe is a Venusian vehicle sailing past a Martian city, Lach-Szyrma’s book concerning a journey through the solar system. I only have small copies of these pictures in a book, so far they don’t seem to have turned up online.<\/p>\n

\"mars2.jpg\"<\/p>\n

A Trip to Mars (1909) by Fenton Ash. Illustrations by WHC Groome.<\/em><\/p>\n

Fenton Ash was the nom de plume<\/em> of British author Francis Henry Atkins. A Trip to Mars<\/em> concerns another exploratory journey taken this time by a pair of Edwardian schoolboys.<\/p>\n

\"mars1.jpg\"<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"mars4.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To Mars via the Moon<\/a> (1911) by Mark Wicks. “View from the Air-ship, over the Canals and the City of Sirapion.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Mark Wicks’ book was illustrated by the author in a style that seems surprisingly naive for the time. Lack of confidence may explain why he didn’t show more of the Martians’ architecture.<\/p>\n

\"mars5.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Planet Stories, March 1951. Cover painting by Allen Anderson.<\/em><\/p>\n

Leigh Brackett wrote some great swashbuckling science fiction (she was also a very adept screenwriter), and this cover is a perfect depiction of her oeuvre, with its Rita Hayworth Amazon cutting a swathe through a nest of grasping tentacles.<\/p>\n

\"mars6.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Martian Canal by Virgil Finlay from The Complete Book of Space Travel by Albro Gaul (1956).<\/em><\/p>\n

Last but never least, there’s Virgil Finlay. Some of these pictures can be found at the Mars in Science Fiction<\/a> Flickr collection. To bring things back to the present, I recommend this animation<\/a> showing how NASA’s engineers managed to successfully land a vehicle the size of a car on the surface of Mars.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/strong> Roland Kovac and his Orchester have made the perfect soundtrack for browsing those Flickr pages: Trip To The Mars<\/em><\/a>. (Thanks Jonathan!)<\/p>\n

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The illustrators archive<\/a><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Signals from Mars<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A floating Martian city from Letters from the Planets (1890) by WS Lach-Szyrma. Illustration by Paul Handy. In honour of the remarkable landing on Mars of the Curiosity Rover, a handful of random illustrations from the vast stock of imagery generated by the Red Planet over the past century-and-a-half. When it comes to Mars I’m … Continue reading “A Trip to Mars”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,2,42,48,43,20,13],"tags":[3942,3940,3943,3936,3938,3941,3939,3935,597,1895,3937,3934],"class_list":["post-11827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-art","category-books","category-illustrators","category-magazines","category-science-fiction","category-science","tag-albro-gaul","tag-allen-anderson","tag-curiosity-rover","tag-fenton-ash","tag-francis-henry-atkins","tag-leigh-brackett","tag-mark-wicks","tag-paul-handy","tag-rita-hayworth","tag-virgil-finlay","tag-whc-groome","tag-ws-lach-szyrma"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-34L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}