FOR LOVE TO MARS: The Human History of the Red Planet, Matthew Shindell

When we trace its etymological origin, the planet is literally a wanderer – a point of light that has gone astray. It usually moves in the same direction as the stars, but sometimes it stops and changes course. This retrograde movement, which occurs when the Earth overtakes a planet in its orbit, is difficult to reconcile with the geocentric model of the universe, but it was of great importance to cultures that looked to the heavens for messages. The systems of knowledge that gradually developed into natural sciences arose from the study of omens, which are abundantly provided by the planets.

Apart from the Earth, no planet has attracted more attention than Mars, where this apparent wandering is most pronounced. However, as Matthew Shindell points out in “For the Love of Mars”, this was not always the case. For most of history, Mars—a less impressive object in the sky than Venus—was rarely singled out for special consideration, and we only learned to love it after the invention of the telescope. The observations of European astronomers, which coincided with printed accounts of the New World, prompted people to see Mars for the first time as a place to visit one day.

Shindell, curator at the National Air and Space Museum, describes his book as “a history of human understanding of Mars,” and he thoughtfully traces its tortuous path through religion, literature, and pop culture. In the prologue, he explains that he originally intended the project to be just one chapter in the overall exploration of Mars, and he sometimes tries to justify the expansion. The first chapter deals with the societies, including ancient Babylon and the Han Dynasty, that were are interested in Mars as one cog in a “space state” that seeks the approval of the ruling class in the sky.

History is gaining momentum in the scientific revolution. Shindell casts a glance, perhaps too cursory, at Johannes Kepler, the first scientist to make a major discovery—the elliptical orbits of the planets—by ad hoc analysis of Mars. In the 19th century, astronomers identified networks of lines on its surface, which many took as evidence of the existence of an alien civilization.

Shindell writes that the Martian “channels” have been debunked as an optical illusion, but misses the opportunity to talk about one of the most fascinating experiments in the history of science. When the students were told to copy the model of Mars that hung in the classroom, the students in the front row made accurate drawings, while those in the back connected real features with imaginary lines.

Despite the abundance of material at his disposal, Shindell makes several unexpected omissions. In his discussion of Mars in the literature, he never mentioned that Jonathan Swift described a pair of Martian moons in Gulliver’s Travels, the relative accuracy of which caused a general stir after the discovery of two real moons, Phobos and Deimos, in 1877. Swift’s periods and distances to moons are within orders of magnitude of the true values, which seems to have been a lucky guess based on the astronomy of the time.) Instead, Shindell settles on more obscure authors such as Swift’s contemporary Myles Wilson, a native of Yorkshire. a priest who published a mystical account of travels in the solar system, including Mars, in which the angelic guide points, according to Shindell, to “nine million red, sexless sentient beings growing like trees.”

A more familiar journey occurs in the 1880 novel Across the Zodiac, which tells of a spaceship called the Astronaut, most likely the first mention of the word in the English language. Mars is commonly featured in early science fiction as the home of sentient life forms, sometimes advanced enough to challenge the British Empire, as in The War of the Worlds, or as the backdrop for the planetary novels that Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote for John Carter.

As for later stories, Shindell spends more than three pages on Total Recall, but only casually mentions Kim Stanley Robinson’s ambitious Mars trilogy and omits The Greening of Mars, in which James Lovelock — best known for the Gaia hypothesis — and Michael Allaby outlined an emergency program to terraform the red planet on a tight budget.

When Homer Simpson was told that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, he replied, “Oh sure, give me the one with all the monsters.” In fact, as Elton John sang, Mars turned out to be clearly inimical to life.

Instead of astronauts, research has been left to robots, which attract their passionate admirers. The latest transmission from the Opportunity rover, which science journalist Jacob Margolis loosely paraphrased as “My battery is dead, and it’s getting dark,” sparked an outburst of emotion. This tendency to anthropomorphize the rovers makes it easy to forget that their every move is determined by humans, like puppets on an invisible thread millions of miles away.

While Shindell acknowledges the “magic” of Mars in securing support for the US space program, he spends less time appealing to authoritarians who thrive on big but empty promises. Donald J. Trump’s sporadic fascination with the Mars mission “of which the Moon is a part,” as he once haltingly tweeted, might not be worth mentioning, but it seems odd that Shindell dedicates just a few lines to Elon Musk, who has benefited enormously from the realization , correct or not, that he represents our best chance in a Martian expedition. As Shindell points out, a trip to Mars “always feels two or three decades ahead,” allowing politics to be justified or forgiven indefinitely in the present.

To his credit, Shindell convincingly argues that Mars is most instructive when it sheds light on how we see ourselves. Proposals for Martian colonies are often intertwined with the language of capitalism and privilege, viewing the planet as an escape hatch that minimizes the need to resolve problems on Earth. Today it fulfills the same imaginary role that America once played for Europe, highlighting the danger of exporting old assumptions to an unknown country.

“If Mars belongs to humans, then it belongs to all humans,” Shindell concludes. “Discussions about what to do with Mars should involve as many voices as possible.” It might be hard to imagine on Mars, but it’s no harder than what sometimes feels a lot closer to home.

Alec Nevala-Lee is the author of Future Inventor: The Dreamy Life of Buckminster Fuller.

FOR LOVE TO MARS: The Human History of the Red Planet | Matthew Shindell | 238 pages | University of Chicago Press | $27.50