杏吧原创

Mars: The lure of the Red planet by William Sheehan and Stephen James
O鈥橫eara, Prometheus Books, $27, ISBN 157392900X

A BOOK divided neatly into parts risks losing its readers鈥� interest, but this
one is in no danger of doing that. This is a book about Mars, and you can pick
out the plums. Authors William Sheehan and Stephen O鈥橫eara鈥檚 description of
telescopic observations is original and absolutely splendid.

Here you鈥檒l find a full account of the controversy and the correspondence
between Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli, Percival Lowell and Edward Emerson
Barnard on the notorious Martian 鈥渃anali鈥� at the beginning of the 20th century.
And the remarkable and prophetic observations at the Meudon observatory near
Paris by Eug猫ne Michael Antoniadi, a man with the hand-to-eye
coordination of an artist and the patience of an astronomer, are described
better here than anywhere else I know.

So much for telescopic Mars. The sections on pre-telescopic Mars, Mars in
fiction and space-age Mars are not quite as striking. The discussion of how Mars
was perceived before the invention of the telescope contains a good deal of
material on ancient astronomy and sets the scene for Mars in the modern Solar
System. It鈥檚 interesting stuff, but contains nothing that cannot be found
elsewhere.

Fictional Mars is still less successful. The authors鈥� knowledge seems to dry
up after 1950. They do not, for example, mention Kim Stanley Robinson鈥檚
monumental trilogy Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars,
or any of half a dozen other excellent novels of the 1990s.

But Mars achieves excellence again in its discussion of the planet
as seen by our probes. If the authors鈥� assessment of Mars鈥檚 potential for human
habitation is more glowing than the facts would suggest, that is perhaps
inevitable. Sheehan and O鈥橫eara are in love with Mars, and it is unreasonable to
expect a lover to recognise blemishes on his beloved.