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Maybe you’ve heard of Percival Lowell, he was an astronomer famous for drawing pictures of the canals he seen on Mars and dreaming up a whole civilization around them.
After countless late night hours in the observatory where it was just him, a telescope, and mars he started to create stories in his mind about what he was seeing and over time it evolved into an epic tale about a world locked into a struggle for survival.
He saw Mars as a planet in decline, with water running out and most of the world fast becoming uninhabitable. The Martians despite having very advanced technology had no choice but to undertake a desperate canal digging project to take water from the polar ice caps and move it to the rest of the planet, or else perish.
He wrote books and articles about the Martian’s epic struggles and his stories and drawings soon captured the imagination of the public. People found it so strange and fascinating that living beings could be living on another planet and be so advanced, yet facing such dramatic struggles to survive.
However, the majority of astronomers were very skeptical of Lowell’s theories. This was mostly because well, they couldn’t actually see the canals on the Martian surface that he did. Many suspected that he was letting his imagination run away with him.
And in fact there are no canals on Mars. As the decades went by most people came to realize this not so exciting reality but it was finally proven with 100% certainty by NASA’s Mariner 4 spacecraft in 1965 which sent back pictures of a Mars that had no canals or civilization.
Lowell’s Mars visions have had strong influences on many science fiction writers, including a direct one on H.G. Well’s ‘War Of The Worlds’. I was going to say here that Lowell missed his calling as a science fiction writer, but actually he did write great science fiction that captivated the public and gained much popularity. The only problem was he didn’t realize he was writing fiction instead of fact.
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But we can never take the fact that we have 9 different planets.. and we can never say that we are the only race in the whole universe.. hmm,.
Hi Kent,
Not sure where you’re going with that (maybe you can clarify) but thanks for reading and commenting :).