The usage is incidental; it occurs when Aleriel, the novel's protagonist, lands on Mars in a spacecraft called an "ether-car" (an allusion to aether, which was once postulated as a gaseous medium in outer space). Aleriel buries the car in snow "so that it might not be disturbed by any Martian who might come across it." Fifteen years after Aleriel, H. G. Wells' landmark novel "The War of the Worlds" (1898) was published by William Heinemann, Ltd., then a relatively new publishing house. The novel was revised numerous times, and has since been translated into many languages. In the story, the Martians are a technologically advanced race of octopus-like extraterrestrials who invade Earth because Mars is becoming too cold to sustain them.
Martians in fiction
Martian
Martian | Martians in fiction
W. S. Lach-Szyrma's novel "Aleriel, or A Voyage to Other Worlds" is the first published work to apply the word "Martian" as a noun. W. S. Lach-Szyrma's novel "Aleriel, or A Voyage to Other Worlds" (1883) was previously reputed to be the first published work to apply the word "Martian" as a noun. Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context. H. G. Wells' landmark novel "The War of the Worlds” mentions them.
what is the location of mars in the solar system
user
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun
assistant
is it known by any other names?
user
Yes, "Red Planet" in English
assistant
are there any volcanoes there?
user
Yes, Olympus Mons
assistant
who named it?
user
Named after observations made by Mariner 9
assistant
what was that?
user
From Nix Olympica; a volcano. Astronomers adopted the name "Olympus Mons" for the albedo feature known as Nix Olympica
assistant
was that a spaceship that made the observations?
user
It was a robotic space probe
assistant
have any other space probes landed on the planet discussed above?
user
Yes, "Mariner 4", "Viking 1", etc
assistant
did the first one land on the planet or was it just a fly by?
user
A flyby mode
assistant
how did it meet its end?
user
The gas supply in the attitude control system was exhausted, and between December 10 and 11, a total of 83 micrometeoroid hits perturbation of the spacecraft's attitude and degradation of the signal strength
assistant
what is found at the polar regions of the planet?
user
The caps at both poles consist primarily (70%) of water ice; frozen carbon dioxide layer is in northern cap and south cap has a permanent dry ice cover
assistant
are there any features resulting from impacts?
user
Yes, impact craters
assistant
are they named?
user
Yes, Hellas impact basin
assistant
is there any discussion about the intelligent lifeform on the planet?
user
Yes, fashionable idea of intelligent Martians
assistant
how are they portrayed in fiction?
user
The Martian is a favorite character of classical science fiction; he was frequently found away from his home planet, often invading Earth, but sometimes simply a lonely character representing alienness from his surroundings. Martians, other than human beings transplanted to Mars, became rare in fiction after Mariner, except in exercises of deliberate nostalgia – more frequently in some genres, such as comics and animation, than in written literature.
Mars in fiction | Martians in fiction
Such is the detail of their power of imagination that the bowmen even appear to die in combat, and the Green Martians are killed by their arrows. A Lotharian, Jav, explains to the protagonist, Carthoris, that the illusion is only maintained by the belief of the Green Martians. If they knew the truth it would not be effective. The Lotharians also maintain the illusion of a functioning, normal Barsoomian society through powerful telepathic projections. They have formed two factions, which appear to portray the excesses of pointless intellectual debate - one faction, the realists, believes in imagining meals to provide sustenance, another, the , believes in surviving without eating.
Thuvia, Maid of Mars | Themes
In the following works of fiction, the Martian setting is of secondary importance to the work as a whole.
Mars in fiction | In film and television
There they find a humanoid race of Martians who are the offspring of both an elder Martian species and of humans from Atlantis. The Martians live in a class society; the workers rise up against the ruling class, but the revolution fails. All the while, Mars is entering a phase of climate change that threatens disaster for the population. "Red Planet" (1932), a play cowritten by John L. Balderston and John Hoare, also deals with radical environmental change on Mars, except in this case it occurs through terraforming. Balderston was one of the few playwrights of the 20th century to adopt Mars or Martians as a subject for the stage.
Martian | Martians as civilized humanoids
After millions of people revolt against their governments, it seems the Martian communiques may have been a hoax.
Martian | Martians as civilized humanoids
The Martians' undoing is a fatal vulnerability to Earth bacteria.
Martian | Martians in fiction
Fredric Brown reprises the popular image of Martians as little green men, who measure around 75 cm, have small torsos; long, frayed limbs; and spherical, bald heads. They have six fingers on each hand, and wear boots and trousers. They consider the human race inferior and are both interested and amused by human behaviour. Unlike most fictional Martian invaders, the Martians that Brown writes of don't intend to invade Earth by violence; instead, they spend their wakeful hours calling everyone 'Mack' or 'Toots' (or some regional variation thereof), revealing embarrassing secrets, heckling theatre productions, lampooning political speeches, even providing cynical colour commentary to honeymooners' frustrated attempts at consummating their marriage.
Martians, Go Home | The Martians
As British scientists try to slow or avert a glacier encroaching on Great Britain, they find an Ice Warrior near their base, frozen in the glacier, and apparently in suspended animation. No one knows the being's identity, but they understand that it is probably from another planet. When the Ice Warrior revives, he attacks Jamie McCrimmon and kidnaps Victoria Waterfield. Other stories set in the future show the Martians eventually become more peaceful and are members of the Galactic Federation, though some want to return to their warlike ways.
Martian | Martians as anthropomorphic animals
The story is lightly plotted, and most of the text is devoted to setting the scene. In the distant future, man has colonized Mars and lives an apparently easy life, supported by efficient and intelligent robots. Intelligent Martians co-exist with the humans on that planet. The trend to suburbanization, first manifest in the mid-20th century, has continued, such that many (most?) humans on Earth live in isolated enclaves. Jerome Webster, the main character, is a human with expertise in Martian physiology, especially that of the brain. Like many other human adults, he suffers from progressive agoraphobia, which becomes extreme after his only son departs to spend time on Mars.
Huddling Place | Plot summary
The Martians themselves bear no physical resemblance to the novel's Martians, who are described as bear-sized, roundish creatures with brown bodies, "merely heads", with quivering beak-like, V-shaped mouths dripping saliva; they have sixteen whip-like tentacles in two groupings of eight arranged on each side of their mouths and two large "luminous, disk-like eyes". Due to budget constraints, their film counterparts are short, reddish-brown creatures with two long, thin arms with three long, thin fingers with suction-cup tips. The Martians' head, if it can be called that, is a broad "face" at the top-front of its broad-shouldered upper torso, the only apparent feature of which is a single large eye with three distinctly colored lenses (red, blue, and green).
The War of the Worlds (1953 film) | Differences from the Wells novel
Authors soon began writing stories based on the new Mars (frequently treating it as a desert planet). Most of these works feature humans struggling to tame the planet, and some of them refer to terraforming (using technology to transform a planet's environment to be Earthlike). A common theme, particularly among American writers, is that of a Martian colony fighting for independence from Earth. It appeared already in Heinlein's "Red Planet" and is a major plot element in Greg Bear's "Moving Mars" and Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars" trilogy. It is also part of the plot of the movie "Total Recall" and the television series "Babylon 5".
Mars in fiction | Novels and short stories
The Martians themselves bear no physical resemblance to the novel's Martians. The novel's aliens are bear-sized, bulky creatures whose bodies are described as "merely heads", with a beak-like mouth, sixteen tentacles and two "luminous, disk-like eyes". Their film counterparts are short, reddish-brown creatures with two long, thin arms with three long suction cup-like fingers. The Martian's "head," if it can be called that, is a broad "face" at the top-front of its broad shouldered upper torso, the only apparent feature of which is a single large eye with three distinctly colored lenses. The Martians' lower extremities, whatever they may be, are never shown.
List of works based on The War of the Worlds | 1953 first film adaptation by George Pal
Writing anonymously, s/he assembled some speculations in an essay titled "The Year of Grace 2081", which enjoyed wide circulation. The Martians enter the story late in the narrative. During a rest from international conflict on Earth, humans begin telecommunicating with Martians. "After a brief period passed in the exchange of polite messages", says the essayist, humans will decide to war with the Martians on some pretence of honor. The war that results is cataclysmic: W. S. Lach-Szyrma's novel "Aleriel, or A Voyage to Other Worlds" (1883) was previously reputed to be the first published work to apply the word "Martian" as a noun.
Martian | Martians in fiction
Little about the Martians is definitive, the story being told by a first-person narrator. The Martians are described as octopus-like creatures: the "body" consisting of a disembodied head nearly across, having two eyes; a V-shaped, beak-like mouth; and two branches each of eight 'almost whip-like' tentacles, grouped around the mouth, referred to as the 'hands'. They reproduce asexually, by "budding" off from a parent. Internally, the Martians consist of a brain, lungs, heart, and blood vessels; they have no organs for digestion, and therefore sustain themselves on Earth by mechanically transfusing blood via pipettes from other animals, notably humans. The ear, a single timpanic membrane located on the back of the head, is believed "useless" in Earth's denser atmosphere.
Martian (The War of the Worlds) | In the novel
The Martians are primitive but intelligent humanoids who lived beneath the sands. Martians burst into flames when brought in contact with water. Martians killed many of the early human explorers on Mars, principally because they concealed their existence, and they weren't suspected. In the novel "Protector", the Martians were wiped out when Jack Brennan caused an ice asteroid to crash into the surface of Mars, raising the average humidity of the atmosphere. Some Martians still exist on the "Map of Mars" on the Ringworld.
List of Known Space characters | Martians
The usage is incidental; it occurs when Aleriel, the novel's protagonist, lands on Mars in a spacecraft called an "ether-car" (an allusion to aether, which was once postulated as a gaseous medium in outer space). Aleriel buries the car in snow "so that it might not be disturbed by any Martian who might come across it." Fifteen years after Aleriel, H. G. Wells' landmark novel "The War of the Worlds" (1898) was published by William Heinemann, Ltd., then a relatively new publishing house. The novel was revised numerous times, and has since been translated into many languages. In the story, the Martians are a technologically advanced race of octopus-like extraterrestrials who invade Earth because Mars is becoming too cold to sustain them.
Martian | Martians in fiction
For his Known Space series of novels, Larry Niven conceived humanoid Martians with a primitive material culture who inhabit an environment of red dust and nitric acid, and for whom water is lethal. In the 1973 novel "Protector", a man named Jack Brennan allies himself with a ruthless, xenophobic humanoid species called the Pak. To preclude the possibility future competition for Pak offspring, Brennan engineers a Martian genocide by sending an ice-covered asteroid to collide with Mars. In Dennis Feltham Jones' 1977 novel "Colossus and the Crab", Martian life predated life on Earth, but faced a process of devolution as conditions on the planet worsened.
Martian | Martians as an extinct race
Fictional representations of Mars have been popular for over a century. Interest in Mars has been stimulated by the planet's dramatic red color, by early scientific speculations that its surface conditions might be capable of supporting life, and by the possibility that Mars could be colonized by humans in the future. Almost as popular as stories about Mars are stories about Martians engaging in activity (frequently invasions) away from their home planet. In the 20th century, actual spaceflights to the planet Mars, including seminal events such as the first artificial object to impact the surface of Mars in 1971, and then later the first landing of "the first mechanized device to successfully operate on Mars" in 1976 (in the Viking program by the United States), inspired a great deal of interest in Mars-related fiction.
Mars in fiction | Introduction
Life of the Martians is depicted by Bogdanov as a socialist, classless (but technocratic) society. The protagonists of the story, Leonid and Netti, view socialism as the peak of human social order, the clear determiner of an advanced and civilized society. As part of this socialist idealism, the Martians recognize equality for all, including gender, and goes so far as to have this equality visualized through the lack of discernible differences between the appearances of each gender (or even individuals, for that matter). For a book published in the early 20th century, the absence of gender roles in this book is remarkably forward thinking and thus certainly worth noting.
Red Star (novel) | Socialist idealism
C. S. Lewis wrote, in "Out of the Silent Planet" (1938), about three humans who visit Mars and meet three different kinds of intelligent native creatures: The hrossa (bipedal "otter" men), the sorns/séroni (lean white giants), and the pfifltriggi (dwarves). They are dying out, but are resigned to their fate. The books also describe a prey animal called hnakra, which is hunted. The planet is ruled by the Oyarsa, an "eldil" (supernatural beings/spirits) whose job is to be the guardian of the planet and ruler of its peoples. In four stories by Eric Frank Russell published between the early 1940s and mid-1950s—and collected in "Men, Martians and Machines" (1955)—a crew of humans and octopoid Martians are shipmates and compatriots on an interstellar voyage.
Martian | Martians as anthropomorphic animals
H. G. Wells' novel "The War of the Worlds" (1898) and its various adaptations have been an extraordinary influence on science fiction writers for more than 100 years. Wells' Martians are a technologically advanced species with an ancient civilization. They somewhat resemble cephalopods, with large, bulky brown bodies and sixteen snake-like tentacles, in two groups of eight, around a quivering V-shaped mouth; they move around in 100 feet tall tripod fighting-machines they assemble upon landing, killing everything in their path. They invade Earth because Mars is dying, and they need a warmer planet to live. They attack cities in southern England, including London, with a deadly heat-ray they fire from a camera-like device on an articulated arm attached to their tripods; they also employ chemical warfare, using a poisonous "black smoke" launched from gun-like tubes.
Martian | Martians as invaders of Earth
He was, however, also a screenwriter who specialized in fantasy film and horror film. Many years later, United Artists bought a screen adaptation that Balderston and fellow screenwriter Anthony Veiller wrote. Harry Horner directed the film, called "Red Planet Mars", and it was released to cinemas in 1952. In the film, a scientist communicates with Martians by radio, and they tell him that Mars is a utopia. When the news circulates, it causes widespread unrest among the people of Western nations. The US government tries to silence further messages, then later announces that the Martians have informed them that they must all worship God in order to save themselves.
Martian | Martians as civilized humanoids
As a race of shapeshifters, physical appearance has little meaning for Martians. The underlying psychological differences are what separated the peaceful Green Martians from the war-like Whites. White Martians have configured their physiology to reflect their philosophy, becoming a separate race from the Green and Yellow Martians. In the current DC continuity, their preferred form is that of angular, hairless humanoids with chalky white skin which often forms bony ridges or plates, giving them the appearance of armor. They have sometimes been seen to have a gaping mouth on their thorax and a horn on the same level on each side.
White Martian | History
There are three type of aliens in the book. The Martians in this version are not like the squid-like Martians described in H.G. Wells's story. These Martians are more humanoid with arms, legs and an enormous head with projector-like eyes and bad looking faces. When they rise, they are high. However this is only the male, for the species exhibits sexual dimorphism. To Earthlings, they appear unpleasant. The Martian women, however, are graceful and beautiful. The residents of Ceres are at war with the Martians. However, they are only mentioned, except for a female slave who is 40 feet tall.
Edison's Conquest of Mars | Aliens
Scott said the heavy spacesuits would weigh the main character enough to make up for not showing the partial gravity. The climate of Mars is also cold enough that it would make Watney's initial plan to disable the rover's heater immediately impractical. The average temperature is ; it is cold enough on Mars for carbon dioxide snow to fall at the poles in winter.
The Martian (film) | Scientific accuracy
In April 1911, about a year before "The All-Story" published the first installment of Burroughs' "Under the Moons of Mars", "Modern Electrics" began publishing Hugo Gernsback's own romance, "Ralph 124C 41+", which takes place on Earth. Gernsback's Martians live among the humans on Earth; they are taller and physically stronger than humans, with green skin and large eyes. The serial wasn't republished as a book until 1925. 1923 saw the publication of "Aelita, or The Decline of Mars", a novel that is equally science fiction and political fiction. Its author, Soviet Russian writer Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy, tells a story of a Soviet engineer who builds a rocket and invites an acquaintance to accompany him in it to Mars.
Martian | Martians as civilized humanoids
Tweel is a very intelligent creature, despite the fact that he thinks very differently from humans. When Jarvis, the story's protagonist, draws the first four inner planets and the sun in the sand, Tweel successfully identifies Mars as the fourth planet, and the Earth as the third. He therefore is civilized, but he thinks differently from humans, for he jumps directly into the circle in the sand that represents the sun on his beak, which he does not consider unusual at all. The Thoth communicate in distinct forms of whistles, clicks, and shrills, and also have a system of writing for which they use a mysterious kind of leathery paper.
Tweel (A Martian Odyssey) | Psychology and intelligence
A Martian is an inhabitant of the planet Mars or a human colonist on Mars. Although the search for evidence of life on Mars continues, many science fiction writers have imagined what extraterrestrial life on Mars might be like.
Martian | Introduction
The human protagonist explains this system of writing merely looks like circles and spirals, but yet is too complicated for humans to translate, and is far too "alien" for humans to grasp. The language of the Thoth is also exceptionally complex, with no one word for anything—every time something is described, it will never be described in the same way any two times. The human protagonist, Jarvis, cannot grasp even a faint light of this language. The central alien, Tweel, is able to grasp various words in the human's language, English, such as "breet" (supposed to be "breathe") to designate living creatures, "no breet" for inanimate objects, "rock" to indicate silicon-based life forms, "one one two" to indicate a rudimentary level of intelligence, and "two two four" for a higher level of intelligence.
Tweel (A Martian Odyssey) | Psychology and intelligence
Mariner 4 in July 1965 found that Mars—contrary to expectations—is heavily cratered, with a very thin atmosphere. No canals were found; while scientists did not believe that Mars was a moist planet, the lack of surface water surprised them. Science fiction had so influenced real explorations of the planet, however—Carl Sagan was among the many fans who became scientists—that after Mariner 9 in 1971-1972, craters were named after Wells, Burroughs, and other authors. The Mariner and Viking space probes confirmed that the Martian environment is extremely hostile to life. By the 1970s, the ideas of canals and ancient civilizations had to be abandoned.
Mars in fiction | Novels and short stories
Many of Robert A. Heinlein's Martian characters are humans born and raised on Mars. In "Red Planet" (1949), boys attend a boarding school in a human colony on Mars. A population of native Martians tolerates them until the colony administrator threatens a Martian child. The Martians demand that the humans leave Mars, but a human doctor convinces them to reconsider. In Heinlein's 1956 novel "Double Star", humans have colonized the solar system, and a politician on Mars faces the civil rights issue of granting a native Martian species (who are second-class citizens) the right to vote. In Philip K. Dick's novel "Martian Time-Slip" (1964), a human colony on Mars is trying to cope with arduous environmental conditions.
Martian | Human colonists as Martians
In the film "H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds", the Martians are large, bullish creatures, keeping the two large eyes and tentacles described in the book; but do not seem to possess the beak-like mouth. They meet the same fate as the originals, having caught Earthly diseases. Their fighting-machines are extremely tall, with very long silver legs and numerous appendages, and emit a similar sound to the "Ulla" Wells described. The aliens crash to Earth in cylinders, which more closely resemble a meteorite (a similar aspect was used in the 1953 film adaptation), and spread their red weed during the invasion.
Martian (The War of the Worlds) | Pendragon Pictures film
An American astronomer obtains images of Mars suggesting large-scale environmental changes are occurring at a pace that can only be accomplished by intelligent beings with advanced technology. Scientist Chris Cronyn (Peter Graves) and his wife, Linda (Andrea King) have been contacting Mars by a hydrogen powered radio transmitter, using technology based on the work of Nazi scientist Franz Calder. They communicate first through an exchange of mathematical concepts, like the value of pi, and then through answers to specific questions about Martian life. The transmissions claim that Mars is a utopia, which has led to great technological advancement and the elimination of scarcity, but that there is no fear of nuclear war.
Red Planet Mars | Plot
The narrative opens by stating that as humans on Earth busied themselves with their own endeavours during the mid-1890s, aliens on Mars began plotting an invasion of Earth because their own resources are dwindling. The Narrator (who is unnamed throughout the novel) is invited to an astronomical observatory at Ottershaw where explosions are seen on the surface of the planet Mars, creating much interest in the scientific community. Months later, a so-called "meteor" lands on Horsell Common, near the Narrator's home in Woking, Surrey. He is among the first to discover that the object is an artificial cylinder that opens, disgorging Martians who are "big" and "greyish" with "oily brown skin", "the size, perhaps, of a bear", each with "two large dark-coloured eyes", and lipless "V-shaped mouths" which drip saliva and are surrounded by two "Gorgon groups of tentacles".
The War of the Worlds | The Coming of the Martians
The Martians' lower extremities, whatever they may be, are never shown. (Some speculative designs for the creature suggest the idea of three thin legs resembling their fingers, while others show them as bipeds with short, stubby legs with three-toed feet.) The film's Martian war machines do actually have more of a resemblance than they may seem at first glance. The novel's machines are 10-story-tall tripods and carry the heat-ray projector on an articulated arm connected to the front of the war machine's main body. The film's machines are shaped like manta rays, with a bulbous, elongated green window at the front, through which the Martians observe their surroundings.
The War of the Worlds (1953 film) | Differences from the Wells novel
The novel originated several enduring Martian tropes in science fiction writing. These include Mars being an ancient world, nearing the end of its life, being the home of a superior civilisation capable of advanced feats of science and engineering, and also being a source of invasion forces, keen to conquer the Earth. The first two tropes were prominent in Edgar Rice Burroughs's "Barsoom" series beginning with "A Princess of Mars" in 1912. Influential scientist Freeman Dyson, a key figure in the search for extraterrestrial life, also acknowledges his debt to reading H. G. Wells's fictions as a child. The publication and reception of "The War of the Worlds" also established the vernacular term of 'martian' as a description for something offworldly or unknown.
The War of the Worlds | Mars and Martians
Not all of the antagonistic invaders are from Mars. Because science has revealed that the red planet is devoid of intelligent life, the concept of using Martians is sometimes dropped from some adaptations as it is no longer deemed realistic.
Martian (The War of the Worlds) | Non-Martians
Mention is also made of a Martian aircraft, but it is hardly seen, except to possibly spread the deadly Black Smoke from above over a wider area. Evidence of a second race of Martian appear in the dominant race's cylindrical transport vessels, presumably for use as their food supply while in transit; but they are all killed before the Martians reach Earth. These secondary Martians are bipedal, nearly tall, and have "round, erect heads, and large eyes in flinty sockets"; however, their fragile physical structure, made up of weak skeletons and muscles, would have been broken by Earth's heavier gravitational pull.
Martian (The War of the Worlds) | In the novel
The following works of fiction deal with the planet itself, with any assumed Martian civilization as part of its planetary landscape. Mars has been seen as the perfect distance away from Earth to create the idea of a different life. As this allowed for early works to fuel the minds of what Mars could hold. The ideas of Mars as science fiction, would first start with Giovanni Schiaparelli in 1877. The ideas of Mars will grow and change with new information changing the way Mars would be seen in the science fiction world.
Mars in fiction | Mars in fiction before Mariner
In Andy Weir's 2011 novel "The Martian", astronauts from the Ares missions use white spacesuits to walk on Mars' surface. The suits in the book are described as similar to the EMU suit.
Spacesuits in fiction | "The Martian"
Literature and science fiction have created a wealth of gentilics that are not directly associated with a cultural group. These will typically be formed using the standard models above. Examples include Martian for hypothetical people of Mars (credited to scientist Percival Lowell) or "Gondorian" for the people of Tolkien's fictional land of Gondor or "Atlantean" for Plato's island "Atlantis". Other science fiction examples include Jovian for those of Jupiter or its moons, and Venusian for those of Venus. Fictional aliens refer to the inhabitants of Earth as Earthling (from the diminutive "-ling", ultimately from Old English "-ing" meaning "descendant"), as well as "Terran", "Terrene", "Tellurian", "Earther", "Earthican", "Terrestrial", and "Solarian" (from Sol, the sun).
Demonym | Fiction
Exploration of the planet has continued in the 21st century on to the present day.
Mars in fiction | Introduction
In the 1953 film adaptation, the Martians are short, brown creatures having three-fingered hands with suction cups at the end of long arms and a cyclopean eye divided into three sections: one red, one green, and one blue. The bottom-half of the creature is never fully shown; but blueprints show three legs having each a single suction-cup toe, similar to those on their fingers; other art shows two legs. No description of the alien's internal structure is given; but they are revealed to have blood, and their anemic blood cells are viewed by scientists under a microscope. As in other versions of the story, the Martians succumb to terrestrial bacteria.
Martian (The War of the Worlds) | 1953 film
In the second story in the series, "Valley of Dreams", Tweel's species is revealed to be known as the Thoth: Tweel shows his human companions an ancient Martian mural portraying his species surrounded by what are recognizably ancient Egyptians. When one human describes the mural as resembling the Egyptian god Thoth, Tweel's response is "Yes! Yes! Yes! Thoth! Yes!"; the humans then realize that Martians - collectively known as "Thoth" - visited ancient Egypt, where they gave humans the gift of writing and were perceived as gods. The Thoth are neither animal nor plant, but something else altogether, which humans could consider to be in-between a plant and an animal judging by the standards set by life which has evolved on planet Earth.
Tweel (A Martian Odyssey) | Species
However Martian soil has since been found to be toxic to both plant and animal life, although it is believed that microbial organisms have the potential to live on Mars. In one scene, the glass face shield on Watney's helmet cracks; as oxygen momentarily drops below the critical level, he quickly patches the helmet with duct tape and avoids suffocation. According to Shara, "As long as the pressure on the inside is around 30%, you could hold it together before your eyes blow out or you had an embolism." While Martian gravity is less than 40% of Earth's, director Scott chose not to depict the gravitational difference, finding the effort less worthwhile to put on screen than zero gravity.
The Martian (film) | Scientific accuracy
Venusians appearing in works of fiction are usually fanciful, rather than plausible inhabitants of the planet. Before the mid 20th century, little was generally known about the planet except that it was solid and comparable in size to Earth; its cloud cover obscured remote observation of its environment. This allowed writers to speculate that Venusians might be similar to humans or other Earth species, much as they did for fictional Martians. As more was learned about Venus and the implausibility of humanoid or other life on it, Venusians became increasingly uncommon in science fiction.
Venusians | In fiction
The series was also remade as a feature film in 1999 starring Christopher Lloyd as the Martian and Jeff Daniels as Tim. This film was released and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. Ray Walston was featured in the film (both Bill Bixby and Pamela Britton had since died; the former in 1993 and the latter in 1974) and played another Martian who had been trapped on Earth since the time of the first series and wore a similar space suit from the series; his cover was now that of a Government investigator of unidentified flying objects. However, the premise was changed: Martians such as Lloyd's "Uncle Martin" are now non-humanoids with four arms, four legs, and three eyes who use a gumball (which they call "nerplex") to assume human form.
My Favorite Martian | Feature film
(A similar concept appears in Diane Duane's A Wizard of Mars.) "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II", also has the Martians being as foreign to the existing Martian civilization as they are to Earth, and evacuate the planet to conquer Earth after losing a war against the forces of John Carter and Gullivar Jones. It is said that the material they use to build their machines is secreted by the creatures themselves. By the year 2009, the Martians are believed by a post-Big Brother society to have been fiction.
Martian (The War of the Worlds) | Other
This view, though utterly false as is now known, inspired much science fiction. The thinning Barsoomian atmosphere is artificially replenished by an "atmosphere plant" on whose function all life on the planet is dependent. The Martian year comprises 687 Martian days, each of which is 24 hours and 37 minutes long. (Burroughs presumably derived this from the figures published by Lowell, but erroneously substituted the number of 24-hour "Earth" days in the Martian year, rather than the number of 24.6-hour "Martian" days, which is only 669.) The days are hot (again known to be false) and the nights are cold, and there appears to be little variation in climate across the planet except at the poles.
Barsoom | Environment
In this miniseries, several beings that appeared to be Green Martians were found alive on Earth. They were eventually revealed to be White Martians, under mind control and disguised as Greens; a Green Martian named "Cay'An" had brainwashed them to believe they were Green Martians. All of the White Martians had been killed in one way or another before the series' end, except for a juvenile named Till'All. Till'All became friends with J'onn J'onzz, and was introduced to the Justice League at the end of the story.
White Martian | Martian Manhunter miniseries
Ironically, earlier newspaper articles under-exaggerated the Martians as being "sluggard creatures". The main character witnessed the fighting machines moving "with a rolling motion and as fast as flying birds".
Fighting machine (The War of the Worlds) | Novel
The novel is set in the future when Mars has been colonized by humans, but is administered by a governor appointed by the Earth government and the colonists have no political power. On Mars, colonial teenagers Jim Marlowe and Frank Sutton travel to the Lowell Academy boarding school for the start of the academic year. Jim takes along his native Martian pet, Willis the Bouncer, a round furry ball the size of a volleyball, who is about as intelligent as a human child and has a photographic memory for sounds, which he can also reproduce perfectly. At a rest stop, Willis wanders off and encounters one of the adult sentient Martians.
Red Planet (novel) | Plot summary
By the 1930s, stories about reaching Mars had become somewhat trite, and the focus shifted to Mars as an alien landscape. In the following stories, human contact and basic exploration had taken place sometime in the past; Mars is a setting rather than a goal.
Mars in fiction | Living on Mars
They treat an aboriginal race, whom they call "Bleekmen", with casual racism. In "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" (1965), Mars has no indigenous life. To cope with the sterile habitat, the human colonists abuse drugs such as "Can-D" and "Chew-Z".
Martian | Human colonists as Martians
By maintaining the events of the narrative as actual events even within Iceberg press release form and author interviews, Tam has endeavored to create a level of 'suspended disbelief' in the events surrounding The Martian War. Events in the series are portrayed as the first 'real' account of The Martian War, following many motion pictures and novels based on the time period that have not met the praise of the titular character. Tam often references the 'historically inaccurate' nature of the films when describing the events taking place in the narrative, notably in "The Hawke Mission" and "The Independent Squadron"
Kenneth Tam | <a href="Story%20within%20a%20story">Story within a story</a>
"Time" magazine, using the collection as a springboard for a broader discussion of the sf genre, concluded that "The reader who reads science fiction dispassionately is likely to be struck by how closely the human imagination is tied to reality, even when it deliberately sets out to violate it. Stanley Weinbaum's loonies and slinkers have been seen before. The shapes may be different, but his dream-beasts come startlingly close to what the human race has been running across, for a good many years, in its childish nightmares."
A Martian Odyssey and Others | Reception
During their travels, they encounter hostile aliens. Russell's Martians can survive in Earth-normal air pressures, but are more comfortable wearing low-pressure helmets and tease their shipmates about the soupy conditions on board. As a writer for "Doctor Who", Brian Hayles created a Martian species of reptilian humanoids called the Ice Warriors, who move stiffly and speak in a husky whisper. Most of the Ice Warriors that the Doctor encounters are brutish and belligerent. As Mars' climate becomes less favorable to sustaining them, the Ice Warriors seek a new planet. These reptilians debuted in "The Ice Warriors" (1967), a "Doctor Who" television serial about an impending ice age in Earth's future.
Martian | Martians as anthropomorphic animals
Isaac Asimov's "David Starr, Space Ranger", the first novel in the Lucky Starr series, features a race of Martians who have retreated into vast artificial caverns half a million years ago. These Martians are incorporeal, telepathic beings, peaceful yet curious about humanity. They have access to advanced technologies completely incomprehensible to human beings, like personal energy shield generators the size of a fabric mask. In Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" (1961), a man raised by native Martians emigrates to Earth, where he must reacclimate. In the novel he functions as a Christ figure. Soon he demonstrates psychic powers, superhuman intelligence, and an ability to manipulate higher dimensions.
Martian | Martians as superbeings
A single man who writes science fiction books and screenplays for a living, adopts a son who claims he is from Mars. The adoptive father comes to be intrigued by the possibility his son might really be a Martian. Ultimately, the father realizes that he loves his son whether or not he is a Martian. The son uses a magical "Martian wish" to be a human so he can remain with his father.
The Martian Child | Plot
Jones and Merchant worked to make sure that their fictional world on Mars was very similar to their own world so that the differences between the two would be easier to compare. Technology on both of the planets are even the same. For example, the Martians also use horse-drawn carriages to get around. This focus on matching the two worlds in fiction writing was common during the nineteenth century and was known as "realism". This does not necessarily mean that the story seems like it could really happen but that everyday people would think that it was similar to their own lives and could put themselves in the story.
Unveiling a Parallel | Analysis
Though Gerrold has acknowledged that his short story is a work of fiction, and despite the fact that the short story won numerous awards as a work of fiction, some members of gay community persisted in perpetuating the misperception that the short story was "true" and criticized the lead role in the film being portrayed as straight.
Martian Child | Production
Miss Martian, the White Martian known as M'gann M'orzz, is a member of the Young Justice during the year between the events depicted in "Infinite Crisis" and the ""One Year Later"" stories. At first she pretends to be a Green Martian, until she is exposed by Bombshell. In her Earth form, M'orzz has green skin, shoulder-length red hair, dresses in a mini-skirt version of Martian Manhunter's outfit, and uses the Earth name "Megan Morse".
White Martian | Miss Martian
Many video games also use this concept, such as the "Red Faction" and "Zone of the Enders" series, and "". A historical rebellion of Mars against Earth is also mentioned in the "Star Trek" series of novels, which are not considered canon.
Mars in fiction | Novels and short stories
At the end of "Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds", Professor Challenger indicates that the "Martians" (not really from Mars in the story) from "The War of the Worlds" are the same Martians from "Star Begotten", and hints at the start of the Martian alteration-program. In Nigel Kneale's 1958-59 BBC television serial "Quatermass and the Pit" and its 1967 movie adaptation, a discovery of strange fossils reveals that human evolution was altered by a dying race of Martians, in order to leave a legacy behind. This may have been inspired by the tale of HG Wells.
Star Begotten | In other works
The earliest known instances of the word "Martian", used as a noun instead of an adjective, were printed in late 1877. They appeared nearly simultaneously in England and the United States, in magazine articles detailing Asaph Hall's discovery of the moons of Mars in August of that year. The next event to inspire the use of the noun "Martian" in print was the International Exposition of Electricity, which was hosted in Paris in the year 1881. During the four months of the exhibition, many people visited to witness such technological marvels as the incandescent light bulb and the telephone. One visitor came away wondering what kind of world such innovations might engender in the next 200 years.
Martian | Martians in fiction
Film critics picked up the point that the Martian winds could amount to "barely a light breeze" in their reviews, and screenwriter Goddard agreed the winds had to be considerably exaggerated in order to set up the situation that sets the story in motion. The process used by the character Watney to produce water was accurate and is being used by NASA for a planned Martian rover. The radioisotope thermoelectric generator was also appropriately used for heat. When his rations begin to run low, Watney builds an improvised garden using Martian soil and the crew's feces as a fertilizer. "We could probably grow something on Mars", said Michael Shara, curator, Department of Astrophysics, Division of Physical Sciences at the American Museum of Natural History.
The Martian (film) | Scientific accuracy
Lasswitz hewed closely to the description by the astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli of Martian channels ("canali"), and even closer to that of Percival Lowell, who viewed them as actual canals engineered by intelligent beings. Lasswitz's depiction is more reflective of the views of these astronomers than those of other science fiction stories of the era dealing with the planet, including H. G. Wells's "The War of the Worlds", Edwin Lester Arnold's "" and Edgar Rice Burroughs's tales of Barsoom, all of which were all written in the wake of Lasswitz's book.
Two Planets | Mars as depicted by Lasswitz
The thinning Martian atmosphere is artificially replenished by an "atmosphere plant" on which all life on the planet depends. The days are warm and the nights are cold, and climate varies little across the planet, except at the poles.
A Princess of Mars | Setting
Like many science fiction works of the period, this one became superseded by later developments after it was written. In this account, the first space stations in Earth orbit are built in the 1990s, and the first Moon landings take place in the 2020s. Mars is described fairly accurately as a desert planet with no Martians, but there are plant forms in the bottom of the "canali" (which are implied to be a natural phenomenon). Venus is a watery planet with some primitive life forms, the most advanced of which are lungfish. Also a curious feature for someone reading it at the start of the 21st century, is that Wyndham assumes that by the early-to-mid 21st century little will have changed politically since the 1950s (another fairly common assumption in the science fiction of the time).
The Outward Urge | Major themes
Race is a constant theme in the Barsoom novels and the world is clearly divided along racial lines. Red, Green, White, Black, and Yellow races all appear across the novels, each with particular traits and qualities which seem to define the characters of the individuals. In this respect, Burroughs' concept of race, as depicted in the novels, is more like a division between species. The Red and Green Martians are almost complete opposites of one another, with the Red Martians being civilized, lawful, capable of love and forming families, and the Green Martians being savage, cruel, tribal and without families or the ability to form romantic relationships.
Barsoom | Race
All Barsoomian races resemble Homo sapiens in most respects, except for being oviparous and having lifespans in excess of 1,000 years (though actual life expectancy is far shorter.) However, the Green Martians are much taller, have four arms, tusks, and antennae like ears. The traditional Martian lifespan of 1,000 is based on the customary pilgrimage down the River Iss, which is taken by virtually all Martians by that age, or those who feel tired of their long lives and expect to find a paradise at the end of their journey. None return from this pilgrimage, because it leads to almost certain death at the hands of ferocious creatures.
Barsoom | Peoples and culture
The novel also suggests a potential future for human evolution and perhaps a warning against overvaluing intelligence against more human qualities. The Narrator describes the Martians as having evolved an overdeveloped brain, which has left them with cumbersome bodies, with increased intelligence, but a diminished ability to use their emotions, something Wells attributes to bodily function. The Narrator refers to an 1893 publication suggesting that the evolution of the human brain might outstrip the development of the body, and organs such as the stomach, nose, teeth, and hair would wither, leaving humans as thinking machines, needing mechanical devices much like the Tripod fighting machines, to be able to interact with their environment.
The War of the Worlds | Human evolution
David Gerrold was out about his homosexuality when he adopted his son. In the novelette, the sexuality of the protagonist is not disclosed although the novel identifies him as gay. In the feature film, the protagonist was a straight widower (with a female love interest), causing criticism from the LGBT community.
The Martian Child | Background
David Gordon, a popular science fiction author, widowed two years prior as they were trying to adopt a child, is finally matched with a young boy, Dennis. Initially hesitant to adopt alone, he is drawn to Dennis because he sees aspects of himself and his own awkward childhood in the boy. Dennis suffers from the delusion that he is from Mars. He protects himself from the sun's harmful rays, wears weights to counter Earth's weak gravity, eats only Lucky Charms, and hangs upside down to facilitate his circulation. He refers often to his mission to understand Earth and its people, taking pictures, stealing things to catalog, and spending time consulting an ambiguous toy-like device with flashing lights that produces seemingly unintelligible words.
Martian Child | Plot
The background of Mars presented in the novel, as a desert planet crisscrossed by giant canals built by an ancient civilization to bring water from the polar ice caps, is a common scenario in science fiction novels of the early 20th century, and was actually put forward as a plausible theory by some astronomers around the turn of the last century, notably Percival Lowell mentioned in the novel. It stems from early telescope observations of Mars by 19th century astronomers who, beginning with the Italian Giovanni Schiaparelli in 1877, believed they saw straight lines on the planet. Schiaparelli called them "canali" (grooves), which was popularly mistranslated into English as "canals".
Red Planet (novel) | Influences
Despite persistent misperceptions, this film is not based on David Gerrold's semi-autobiographical novelette "The Martian Child", but rather is based on his fictional Hugo and Nebula Award-winning short story of the same name, which has caused much confusion about the source material, especially for Gerrold's fans in segments of the gay community. The short story does not reveal the fictionalized protagonist's homosexuality. Only when, years later, Gerrold rewrote and expanded his story to novella length did he choose to reveal his sexuality. While Gerrold had, in real life, adopted a son as an openly gay man, in the film the protagonist is straight and has a female love interest.
Martian Child | Production
G. Wells' novel. The closest resemblance is probably that of the antagonists. The film's aliens are indeed Martians and invade Earth for the same reasons as those stated in the novel (the state of Mars suggests that it is becoming unable to support life, leading to the Martians' decision to try to make Earth their new home). They land in the same way, by crashing to the earth. However, the novel's spacecraft are large cylinder-shaped projectiles fired from the Martian surface from some kind of cannon, instead of the film's meteorite-spaceships; but the Martians emerge from their craft in the same way, by unscrewing a large, round hatch.
The War of the Worlds (1953 film) | Differences from the Wells novel
The column proves to be hollow and a nearby one turns out to conceal a desiccated Martian, with a transparent braincase. Mental communication between it and Steve guides him to a hall, which contains a projection of a head. It reveals that it represents the collective consciousness of all Martians. They were an old race, who once ruled a good part of the galaxy, but who retreated to Mars to ponder. To give themselves time to think, they took their city out of time, in an eternal present. Eventually they discovered that they had a further destiny, but could not reverse the process, being then incapable of physical effort.
The Wizard of Mars | Plot
The world of Barsoom is morally unambiguous: characters are either good or evil; there is no sense of moral relativity. A sense of honor transcends race or political affiliation and characters fight alongside one another, and against their adversaries, because it is the right thing to do. Qualities of compassion, loyalty and bravery are celebrated, and callousness, deception, and cowardice are frowned upon. Typically the novels include descriptions of aspects of the Martian world such as the architecture, and the presence of desolate landscapes punctuated by abandoned cities, technological achievements, advanced medicine, cultural elements such as superstitious religious practices and eating habits, breeding practices, and methods of population control.
Barsoom | Motifs
Wells never gave the Martians a specific name. One of the earliest names of the race was the Mor-Taxans, from the 1980s TV show. In Larry Niven's "Rainbow Mars" they are called "Softfingers", and in "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II", the native Martians of the "Barsoom" books refer to them as "molluscs", "mollusc invaders", or "leeches", while Hawley Griffin contemptuously refers to them as "afterbirths". George Alec Effinger's "" in the shared world anthology "", has Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter has the inhabitants of Barsoom, Burroughs' vision of Mars, refer to Wells' Martians as "sarmaks", which name has become somewhat popular and appears in the Wold Newton universe and in articles in "ERBZine", the official Burroughs fanzine.
Martian (The War of the Worlds) | Names
Several post-Mariner works are homages to the older phase of Mars fiction, circumventing the scientific picture of a dry and lifeless Mars with an unbreathable atmosphere through such science fiction generic staples as positing its future terraforming, or creating alternate history versions of Mars, where Burroughs' Barsoom, Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles" or "The War of the Worlds" are literal truth. Nostalgia for the older Mars also frequently appears in comics and role-playing games, particularly of the steampunk genre:
Mars in fiction | Nostalgic Mars fiction
They have the ability to "possess" human bodies through a process of cell-phase matching, which allows them to carry out their guerrilla war with Humanity undetected. They are incredibly intelligent, able to communicate in seconds over light-years of space, create effective booby traps, and even adapt seemingly normal human objects for their own purposes. However, their intelligence lends itself to their one true weakness: their hubris, as it is established that they often claim victory before it is accomplished, do not admit to their mistakes, and with the exception of the Advocacy, those who fail are executed.
Martian (The War of the Worlds) | TV series
Ma'alefa'ak, a native of the planet Mars, is the twin brother and archenemy of J'onn J'onnz, a.k.a. the Martian Manhunter. Led to believe he was the only member of the Martian race born without telepathy and a weakness to fire, Ma'alefa'ak was actually stripped of this ability and his memory erased when he mind-raped J'onn's wife, M'yri'ah. Feeling ostracized because of his perceived genetic differences, Ma'alefa'ak engineered a deadly trap for the remainder of his race called "H’ronmeer’s Curse". When the Martians attempted to use their telepathic abilities to communicate with each other or the Great Mind, they would fall victim to a plague of fire and literally burn to death.
Ma'alefa'ak | Fictional character biography
H. G. Wells was a student of Thomas Henry Huxley, a proponent of the theory of natural selection. In the novel, the conflict between mankind and the Martians is portrayed as a survival of the fittest, with the Martians whose longer period of successful evolution on the older Mars has led to them developing a superior intelligence, able to create weapons far in advance of humans on the younger planet Earth, who have not had the opportunity to develop sufficient intelligence to construct similar weapons.
The War of the Worlds | Natural selection
The White Martians are one of three fictional extraterrestrial races native to Mars in the DC Comics' shared universe. White Martians, also known as Pale Martians, appear in the comics of the DC Universe, chiefly "JLA", "Martian Manhunter", and "Son of Vulcan". They first appeared in "Justice League" #71 (May 1969).
White Martian | Introduction
In his book, Rex Gordon describes Mars as a planet inhabited by different kinds of life forms.
No Man Friday | Martian creatures
The life cycle of Martians (as described by MacRae) is the same in "Stranger in a Strange Land". It is noted in this novel that the "old ones" inhabit two planes of existence: the physical and the (unspecified) other. Further, the water friends theme is recapitulated in "Stranger in a Strange Land" as "water brothers." Furthermore, the Martian ability to make an item or person disappear, which was a major plot point in "Stranger", is demonstrated here. Jack Williamson writes that "The Martians in this story have a special interest, because they are the educators of Valentine Michael Smith [and] they display the same appalling powers that Smith brings back to Earth." The general description of Martian society as characterized by reverence for freedom is similar.
Red Planet (novel) | Connections with "Stranger in a Strange Land"
The Martians arrival on Earth is aboard large, cylindrical spacecraft launched from some kind of immense cannon on Mars, and their chief weapon of war is the invisible 'Heat-Ray' that produces a white flame that consumes any organism it touches. This is mounted on an articulated arm attached to the front of the tall tripod, called a 'fighting-machine' in Wells' novel, which travels across the landscape destroying humans and their habitat. A secondary weapon, the "Black Smoke," is a toxic gas released from canisters launched at a distance from Bazooka-like tubes, referred to in the novel as a "gun," which kills humans and animals alike; it is rendered harmless by Martian high-pressure steam jets and water.
Martian (The War of the Worlds) | In the novel
Besides being a pastiche of Martian Manhunter, there are other references to science-fiction with Mr. Martian.
Mr. Martian | References about science fiction
His first published science fiction story was "Bis zum Nullpunkt des Seins" ("To the Zero Point of Existence", 1871), depicting life in 2371, but he earned his reputation with his 1897 novel "Auf zwei Planeten", which describes an encounter between humans and a Martian civilization that is older and more advanced. The book has the Martian race running out of water, eating synthetic foods, travelling by rolling roads, and utilising space stations. His spaceships use anti-gravity, but travel realistic orbital trajectories, and use occasional mid-course corrections in travelling between Mars and the Earth; the book depicted the technically correct transit between the orbits of two planets, something poorly understood by other early science fiction writers.
Kurd Lasswitz | Works
The story is based on the author's own experiences as a single adoptive parent, with most of the key moments drawn from actual events. The main difference between the story and Gerrold's own experience is that Gerrold's son, Sean Friedman, never actually believed he was a Martian; the Martian identity was simply a game that the two of them played. The initial idea for the story actually came from the author overhearing another adoptive parent remark that her daughter had told her teacher that she [the adoptive daughter] was really a Martian. Although nothing specifically science fictional occurs in the story, Gerrold makes suggestive hints.
The Martian Child | Background
"Quatermass and the Pit" (1958–59) is a British television serial in which a crashed spacecraft is discovered in London. The wreck evidences that the human population of Earth resulted from the experiments of a Martian civilisation, now long dead. A film remake was released in 1967.
Martian | Martians as an extinct race
A common use of fictional biology in science fiction is to provide plausible alien species, sometimes simply as terrifying subjects, but sometimes for more reflective purposes. Alien species include H. G. Wells's Martians in his 1898 novel "The War of the Worlds", the bug-eyed monsters of early 20th century science fiction, fearsome parasitoids, and a variety of giant insects, especially in early 20th century big bug movies. Humanoid (roughly human-shaped) aliens are common in science fiction. One reason is that authors use the only example of intelligent life that they know: humans. The zoologist Sam Levin points out that aliens might indeed tend to resemble humans, driven by natural selection.
Biology in fiction | Monsters and aliens
On the alternate-future Earth designated Earth-691 by Marvel Comics, the Martians from H. G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds" return in 2001 for another attempt at conquering the planet (they were later retconned as extrasolar aliens using Mars as a staging area. After humanity's enslavement, men not used as breeders or collaborators are trained and forced to battle gladiator-style for the Martians' amusement; women are used as breeders to supply infants, eaten by the Martians as a delicacy. Jonathan Raven, dubbed Killraven as his gladiatorial "nom de guerre", escaped with the help of the gladiatorial "keeper", but without his brother, Deathraven.
Killraven | Fictional character biography
"The Martians" was a term used to refer to a group of prominent Hungarian scientists (mostly, but not exclusively, physicists and mathematicians) who emigrated to the United States in the early half of the 20th century. Leó Szilárd, who jokingly suggested that Hungary was a front for aliens from Mars, used this term. In an answer to the question of why there is no evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth despite the high probability of it existing, Szilárd responded: "They are already here among us they just call themselves Hungarians." This account is featured in György Marx's book "The Voice of the Martians." Paul Erdős, Paul Halmos, Theodore von Kármán, John G.
The Martians (scientists) | Introduction
The White Martians are featured in the animated film "". During his stay with the Justice League on the Crime Syndicate's parallel Earth, J'onn J'onnz safeguarded First Daughter Rose Wilson. When Rose felt connected to J'onn, she attempted to kiss him, J'onn responded to show her "how Martians used to kiss", which is a telepathic exchange where he showed his history on Mars to her which showed him battling White Martians, and earlier images such as J'onn startling Dr. Erdel, and the League fighting Starro.
White Martian | Film
The book follows the crew of a highly advanced spaceship, (relative to the time of publishing, radio is a highly advanced technology), as it explores the universe and has several encounters with various lifeforms on different planets that inevitably become hostile. These mini-adventures follow a prologue of sorts which gives background to the crew. The four stories are told from point of view of a nameless sergeant-at-arms.
Men, Martians and Machines | Contents
Most adaptations of H.G. Wells' novel incorporate Martians as the invading race. A few draw upon their description from the original novel such as the infamous radio adaptation, as well as musical version, and Pendragon film adaptations. Most versions of the Martians differ from Wells' version. Despite a lack of verbal language in the novel (with the exception of the battle cry, "Ulla"), for example, many versions give them one nevertheless.
Martian (The War of the Worlds) | In other adaptations
In September 2011, "The New 52" rebooted DC's continuity. In this new timeline, Ma'alefa'ak was reintroduced in a 2015 storyline in which the Earth-born Martian survivors of the mass death of the Martian race build a weapon to infiltrate and help enslave the Earth.
Ma'alefa'ak | Fictional character biography
DeMatteis and Mark Badger further redefined the character and changed a number of important aspects of both his character and his origin story. It is revealed that Dr. Erdel did not die and that the character's humanoid appearance was due to physiological trauma and attempts to block out the death of his race, his familiar appearance a "compromise" between his true form and a human appearance based upon Erdel's mental concept of what a Martian should look like. Later series use retroactive continuity (retcon) to establish that his real form is private and that, even on Mars, his "public" appearance was the familiar version.
Martian Manhunter | Post-Crisis (mid-1980s–mid-1990s)