tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16621011.post114127737665608346..comments2024-03-04T05:43:21.206-05:00Comments on H. P. Lovecraft And His Legacy: Lovecraft on Mars and a 100 Year UpdateUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16621011.post-1141344376770250312006-03-02T19:06:00.000-05:002006-03-02T19:06:00.000-05:00Lovecraft wasn't the only author influenced by Mar...Lovecraft wasn't the only author influenced by Mars. <BR/><BR/>Poe wrote and essay "AN ESSAY ON THE MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE" It starts: "IT is with humility really unassumed -- it is with a sentiment even of awe -- that I pen the opening sentence of this work: for of all conceivable subjects I approach the reader with the most solemn -- the most comprehensive -- the most difficult -- the most august. What terms shall I find sufficiently simple in their sublimity -- sufficiently sublime in their simplicity -- for the mere enunciation of my theme? <BR/><BR/>I design to speak of the Physical, Metaphysical and Mathematical -- of the Material and Spiritual Universe:- of its Essence, its Origin, its Creation, its Present Condition and its Destiny. I shall be so rash, moreover, as to challenge the conclusions, and thus, in effect, to question the sagacity, of many of the greatest and most justly reverenced of men."<BR/><BR/>Edgar Rice Burroughs started writing his Martian adventures in 1911, and even though science claims there is no life on Mars his stories remain vibrant and timeless tales, because Burroughs knew the appeal and power of the Martian myth. Writers like Ray Bradbury and scientists like Carl Sagan have acknowledged that Burroughs' Martian tales were the wellspring from which their own careers arose. <BR/><BR/>With his opening trilogy - considered one of the landmarks of science fiction - Burroughs created a vast and sweeping epic. Captain John Carter of the Confederate Army is whisked to Mars and discovers a dying world of dry ocean beds where giant four-armed barbarians rule, of crumbling cities home to an advanced but decaying civilization, a world of strange beasts and savage combat, a world where love, honor and loyalty become the stuff of adventure. The world of Barsoom.<BR/><BR/>In eleven books Burroughs takes the reader all around the Red Planet (and even to Jupiter), while the action and excitement never let up.<BR/><BR/>There was a specific event that inspired H.G. Wells. In 1894 Mars was positioned particularly closely to Earth, leading to a great deal of observation and discussion. Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli had reported seeing "canali" on Mars, meaning "channels," but the term was mistranslated as "canals," leading to much speculation about life on the red planet. [Although scientists were able eventually to photograph what seem to be large stream beds on Mars, these are on a much smaller scale than the blobs and blotches which misled Schiaparelli into thinking he had seen channels.] One of the 1894 observers, a M. Javelle of Nice, claimed to have seen a strange light on Mars, which further stimulated speculation about life there. <BR/><BR/>Wells turned Javelle into Lavelle of Java, an island much on people's minds because of the explosion there in 1883 of Mount Krakatoa, which killed 50,000 people and drastically influenced Earth's climate for the next year. <BR/>Wells became famous partly as a prophet. In various writings he predicted tanks, aerial bombing, nuclear war, and--in this novel--gas warfare, laser-like weapons, and industrial robots. It was his tragedy that his most successful predictions were of destructive technologies, and that he lived to experience the opening of the atomic age in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. <BR/><BR/>Wells was to become famous as a socialist and a utopian, but his science fiction novels are almost uniformly pessimistic about human nature and the future. <BR/><BR/>The science of our solar system and others object in space have led horror and science fiction authors write some great stuff. Lovecraft stands tall with them.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com