Martian

Mars Attacks!'by Saunders

A Martian is the alleged or fictional native inhabitant of the planet Mars.

Description

In The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells describes the Martians as octopus-like creatures; the "body" consists of only a head with eyes, v-shaped lipless mouth, and two brunches with a total of 16 tentacles. They have no male or female differences; a Martian is born by "budding" off its parent. The Martians also consist of just a brain, lungs, heart and blood vessels; they had no organs for digestion. The ear, located in the back of the head, was believed to have been useless in our atmosphere.

Wells also mentions that, apparently, there were two distinct species of Martians. One is the species that attacks Earth and the second (briefly described) appears to have existed only as a source of nutrition for the superior race (much like the relation between the Eloi and Morlocks in Wells' novel The Time Machine). Skeletons of the subordinate race were recovered in the Martians' transport cylinders. This species was bipedal and similar to humans. Since the Martians had no digestive track, they were able to sustain themselves by injecting blood from this sub-race directly into their veins. Two or three of these creatures were brought by the Martians and were killed before they landed. This explains why the Martians seemed to prefer the blood of humans.

In Mars Attacks, Martians have skull heads with over-sized brains.

Theories

Historically, life on Mars has often been hypothesized, although there is currently no solid evidence of life there at present. Some scientists have theorized that there is evidence of fossilized microbes in the meteorite ALH84001.

History of contacts

In the 19th and 20th centuries, astronomers and biologists debated the possible existence of Martians. This controversy continued until around 1960, when growing scientific knowledge snuffed out any remaining hope for intelligent life on that cold and inhospitable world. All along, however, a number of individuals firmly insisted that the question was settled: there were Martians. They knew because they had communicated with them. Some went further: they had actually met them.

Most such claims from the 1800s were associated with the Spiritualist craze that swept the world in those years, and the contacts were effected through mediumship or astral travel.

Among the 19th-century American Spiritualists who reported Martian visions were father and son William and Sherman Denton. The elder Denton (1823–83), a Boston-based geologist, believed he had been blessed with the gift of psychometry, which enabled him to discern the nature and history of objects he either held in his hand or, when that was impossible, focused his concentration upon. The younger Denton believed he had the same paranormal talent. In the latter 1860s the Dentons looked to neighboring planets Mars and Venus as landscapes for psychic exploration. Eventually, Sherman journeyed to Mars in his astral or spirit body. He found that it harbored a thriving population of humanlike inhabitants with a technology based on aluminum. “They soar above traffic on their individual fly-cycles,” he reported. “They seem particularly fond of air travel. As many as 30 people occupy some of the large flying conveyances.” This may be the first printed reference to Martian flying machines, though Sherman did not assert that they were traveling to earth.

The most famous case of interaction with Martians concerned an amateur medium named Catherine Elise Müller (1861–1929), who was studied by the University of Geneva psychologist Théodore Flournoy. Flournoy recorded the episode in a classic work of anomalistic psychology published in English as From India to the Planet Mars (1899). Assigned the pseudonym “Hélène Smith” in the book, Müller grew up in a mystically inclined family and herself had strange experiences. Eventually, as the principal figure in a Spiritualist circle, she channeled messages first from prominent dead persons before graduating to more fully formed, dramatic visions of the Martian landscape. Müller often found herself on the planet itself. Mars became so vivid to Müller that, as Flournoy observed, she appeared in some sense to be living her Martian life each moment of her day, switching easily, in various states of consciousness, from earthbound consensus reality to her imaginative one on another world. In today’s clinical language, she possessed a fantasy-prone personality. Müller befriended Martians and even produced over time what purported to be a Martian language. In Flournoy’s words, it was “an infantile travesty of French.”

Writing in 1959, Nandor Fodor, a psychoanalyst interested in psychic phenomena, remarked, “Since Emanuel Swedenborg…at least a dozen well-known mediums have been involved with the planet Mars.” One of them, the British clergyman and Theosophist Charles Webster Leadbeater (1847–1934), reported visiting the planet in an astral state on several occasions. Leadbeater’s Martian surface borrows generally from Prof. Lowell’s theories, with great canals (built by previous colonists from the earth’s moon) that support vegetation along their banks. The dwindling civilized population lives along the equator, where the daily temperature averages 70 degrees Fahrenheit. These beings resemble earthlings, but are shorter, barely reaching five feet in height, and have broader chests to encase larger lungs, since the air is thinner. Scattered bands of “savages” live elsewhere, in less hospitable regions of the planet. Most educated Martians, wrote Leadbeater, “have yellow hair and blue or violet eyes, somewhat Norwegian in appearance.” They dress colorfully and have a particular fondness for flower gardens. Mechanical devices and trained animals do most of the work, allowing Martians to live long, disease-free lives of leisure under an autocratic monarchy and a communistic social order. Sexual infidelity is assumed, and the state raises the children who are its by-product. Martians, or the bulk of them, adhere to a strictly materialist philosophy.

Art/Fiction

Martians in literature

• The War of the Worlds (1898) by H. G. Wells. The Martians are an ancient, advanced race with a tentacled, cephalopod-like appearance, who are invading Earth as their own planet is cooling down. They are slower in Earth's gravity. They cultivate a "red weed", which is what was giving Mars its red color and destroys Earth plant life. They invade Earth with huge tripedal "fighting machines" armed with "heat rays" and "black smoke" (a kind of poison gas), against which human armies of the time are helpless. They conquer London and much of England (and possibly other countries as well), use human beings as a source of nourishment, but are ultimately overcome by terrestrial microbes. At the end it is implied they then travelled to Venus.
• There were many "additions" to the Wells novel, for example Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds which describes the adventures of Holmes and Watson in Martian-occupied London. Kevin Anderson edited the anthology "War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches" which describes the events of the Martian invasion as experienced in France, Italy, Russia, India, China, Texas, Alaska, Equatorial Africa and other locations.
• Aelita (1923): Aelita, Queen of Mars, novel, written by Russian writer Alexey Tolstoy. The Martians live in class based society; their workers rise up against the ruling class but the revolution fails.
• Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote a series of books depicting his character John Carter on Mars. In his novels, he refers to Mars as Barsoom.
• Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men, a vast future history published in 1930 and spanning billions of years, includes a long and carefully worked-out account of several Martian invasions of Earth over a period of tens of thousands of years. Stapledon's Martians - sentient cloudlets composed of countless microscopic particles and capable of drifting across interplanetary space - are completely different from Wells', yet the book shows his influence and follows the general scheme of a drying and dying Mars and of Martians seeking the warmer and wetter Earth. Much later in the book, the humans themselves flee the dying Earth, invade and colonise Venus and exterminate its native intelligent species.
• C. S. Lewis wrote, in Out of the Silent Planet, about three humans visiting Mars, and there meeting three different kinds of native intelligent creatures (sorns, (or séroni), hrossa, and pfifltriggi),[4] as well as hunting hnakra and meeting the Oyarsa, or eldil in charge of this planet, called Malacandra in the Old Solar language. These Martians are dying out , but resign themselves to their fate. Unlike Earth, their planet is not corrupted and they live in harmony with each other, ruled by an Osarya, a being like an Angel, who bears similarities to the God Mars.
• Raymond Z. Gallun's Seeds of the Dusk, published in 1938, shows the influence of both Wells and Stapledon, but with a special original twist. In the far future, Earth is invaded by sentient plants from Mars, whose specialty is to make use of planets in their "dusk" - i.e. still liveable but nearing their end. (These plants had originated on Ganymede, in the distant past, went on to Mars, continued after long aeons to Earth, and would continue on to Venus when Earth had died too). In this case the invasion is successful and it is the Itorloo, distant descendants of Mankind, who are exterminated by a plague microbe artificially produced by the invaders. But the Itorloo had been an arrogant race, extremely cruel to sentient bird and rodent races which shared the Earth of their time, while the new plant dominant species leaves these alone - so that the reader is left to conclude that, on balance, the change might be for the better.
• In four stories by Eric Frank Russell published in the early 1940s and collected in the classic Men, Martians and Machines, humans together with very likable Martians are shipmates who go out together into interstellar space, and guard each other's back while encountering various other aliens. Not accidentally, Russell's humans included blacks as well as whites - quite unusual for the time. The book can be credited with starting the SF sub-genre of spaceships with a mixed human and non-human crew, which was to reach great popularity with Star Trek. Russell's Martians are chess-loving octopoids, with tentacles extending down and out from a central head with large eyes. They can survive in Earth-normal air, but prefer to don low-pressure helmets for comfort. Read today, their description is amusingly similar to that of Kang & Kodos in The Simpsons.
• Ray Bradbury's novel The Martian Chronicles depicts Martians as a refined and artistic race of golden-skinned beings who closely resemble humans. They are almost completely wiped out by the diseases brought to Mars by human invaders. On the other hand, Bradbury's short story The Concrete Mixer (1949) inverts the idea of a Martian invasion: the invaders are welcomed with open arms, and fall victim to a not overtly hostile but nonetheless deadly alien culture—that of Earth.
• John Wyndham dealt with Martians in two short stories, Time to Rest (1949) and Dumb Martian (1952).
• Fredric Brown wrote Martians, Go Home (1955), a spoof of Wells' Martian invasion concept.
• Many "invasion of Earth" stories owe much to Wells, even when their invaders come from elsewhere in the cosmos. The derivation is especially clear in John Christopher's trilogy The Tripods (1967–1968), depicting boys born on an alien-occupied Earth and dedicating themselves to overthrowing the cruel invaders - who, like Wells' Martians, move about in huge three-legged machines, towering high above the countryside.
• Larry Niven featured humanoid Martians with a primitive material culture inhabiting an environment of red dust and salpetric acid, most notably in Protector (novel) (1973), which also includes their genocide (by impacting an ice asteroid into their habitat). A copy of the Mars ecology is found on the Ringworld surface.
• Robert A. Heinlein repeatedly used Martians (usually, human beings born and bred on Mars) as characters in his novels and short stories, including:
  • Red Planet (novel) (1949). Humans have colonized the planet Mars along the model of the British East India Company; two prep-school students discover a Company plot to suppress the colonists, and enlist the native Martians' help. This novel shows one of the last and most detailed visions of the pre-spaceflight Mars of 1880-1950.
  • 'Double Star (1956). The issue of giving Martians the vote becomes a central issue in Earth politics, and the hero eventually overcomes both his own deep-rooted anti-Martian prejudice and the entrenched political power of the bigots, and helps enfranchise the downtrodden Martians (publication of this book coincided with the early Civil Rights Movement of the Blacks in the US South).
  • Stranger in a Strange Land (1961). An Earthman raised on Mars returns to Earth and creates chaos. Concerned with philosophical and religious subjects.
  • Podkayne of Mars (1963). Takes place in space and on Venus, but the main characters originate from a Mars that has been colonized by humans and is an important player in Solar System diplomacy.
• In D. F. Jones's 1977 novel Colossus and the Crab, Martian life predated life on Earth, but faced a process of devolution as conditions on the planet worsened. The surviving life is two vast intellects who are the moons Phobos and Deimos.

Martians in movies

• The October 30, 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds. This broadcast was the cause of much confusion when it was aired, with some people believing an actual Martian invasion was taking place.
• Looney Tunes – Included the cartoon character Marvin the Martian (1948-), a comic foil to Warner Bros. mainstays Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck in several animated shorts. He attempts to blow up the Earth as it 'obscures his view of Venus'. Later he appears as the Martian Commander in Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 century.
• Red Planet Mars (1952) - Scientist Peter Graves contacts Martians by radio, they respond by preaching Christianity and thus Communism is defeated.
• Invaders from Mars (1953) – A film, remade in 1986.
• Phineas and Ferb - Phineas and Ferb build a portal to Mars in which they found, alongside Candace, green aliens that have musical instrumental body parts.
• Quatermass and the Pit (1958–1959) - A British television serial in which a crashed spacecraft is discovered in London, which reveals that humanity on Earth is the result of experiments by a Martian civilisation, now long dead. It was remade as a film in 1967.
• Santa Claus Conquers the Martians - a 1964 film that regularly appears on lists of the worst films ever made.
• My Favorite Martian (1963–1966) – A television comedy series and film.
• Doctor Who - Includes a race native to the planet Mars known as the Ice Warriors, whose planet is dying out. Their ideal atmosphere is one twentieth of Earth's which can be made with martian seed pods, revealed in 'The Seeds of Death.'. Also present on Mars until November 21, 2059 of the Doctor Who canon, was a water-borne virus known as the Flood, which plans to take over the world, which appeared in the 2009 Doctor Who Autumn special titled 'The Waters of Mars'.
• Futurama (1999–2003, 2007-) – A television series set in the 31st century. In the episode Where the Buggalo Roam Martians are depicted as Native Americans, saying their ancestors sold their planet to the Wongs for a single bead, revealed to be a giant diamond. At the end of the episode they leave Mars as their own planet is 'a dump', planning to buy a new planet.
• Invader Zim - In one episode, the main character, Zim, travels to Mars on Cydonia to find out "whatever killed these... marzoids" in order to destroy mankind himself. When he arrives, he makes contact with a holographic interactive instruction manual pre-programmed by the Martians that explained they worked themselves to extinction transforming all Mars into a space vessel, by adding massive engines using similar technology tested on a nearby planet. When Zim asks why would they do all that, the holographic martian simply responds: "Because it's COOL!".
• Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967–1968) – The Martians at war with Earth are the Mysterons — an invisible race of superbeings hell-bent on revenge after an unprovoked attack on their Martian city by Captain Black, a Spectrum agent investigating strange alien signals.
• Spaced Invaders (1990) – A sci-fi comedy in which dim-witted Martians attempt to invade a small Illinois town during a re-broadcast of Orson Welles 1938 "War of the Worlds".
• Total Recall (1990) - A science fiction action film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, where the plot concerns an apparently unsophisticated construction worker who turns out to be a freedom fighter from Mars who has been relocated to Earth. He later learns of an alien artifact proving life had previously existed on Mars.
• Biker Mice from Mars (1993–1996, 2006–present) – A cartoon series about three Martian Mice who crash-land on Earth after their ship is attacked by their enemies, the fish-like Plutarkians. The Mice—leader Throttle, gentle-giant Modo, and wild-mouse Vinnie—decide to remain on Earth to fight the evil Plutarkian Lawerence Limburger, who threatens Chicago. and then the villainous Catationains in the 2006 revival series.
• Mars Attacks! (1996), – A satirical film directed by Tim Burton, based on the equally satirical, unpunctuated Topps trading card series Mars Attacks (1962); see below in other media). Unlike ordinary martians, they have to wear glass-like helmets to breathe on Earth (they take in nitrogen, not oxygen). One of the martians, dressed as an eerily beautiful woman, chews a stick of nitrogen-based chewing gum so it could both survive and deter suspicion in its disguise. During human-martian conflicts, their glass-helmets are revealed to be somewhat bulletproof but when a human character challenges a group of martians to a mano-a-mano boxing match, their glass-helmets easily get fractured and dented under the immense pressure from the impact of pounding bare fists and eventually breaks apart when left unguarded, killing the martian instantly due to the sudden exposure to oxygen.
• Mission to Mars (2000), - Martian(s) are shown as tall, feminine and very peaceful humanoids who abandoned their planet after a large meteor struck. However, one of their ships dispatched life forms onto Earth, which at that time contained no life. So they are shown in the film as ancestors of mankind.
• Ghosts of Mars (2001), Humans battle Martians for life on Mars.
• Martian Child (2007), - A child named Dennis, who is abandoned by his parents, thinks he is a Martian. He is adopted and the man who adopted him goes through the woes of making the child "come back to Earth".