A mere century ago, Martians were thought to be real, not fictional, creatures. “Mars is inhabited by a highly civilized and intelligent race of beings,” proclaimed Alexander Graham Bell after astronomers discovered what looked like irrigation canals on the red planet. When in 1899 Nikola Tesla detected radio signals that he believed came from Mars, an all-out craze swept society. You could read about the Martians in The New York Times, hear of them in Sunday sermons, and see them depicted on the Broadway stage. Biologists debated whether the aliens were winged or gilled. Inventors devised schemes for communicating with Mars. Philosophers and theologians proposed questions Earth might ask its older, wiser neighbor.
Journalist David Baron spent seven years investigating this strange case of mass delusion. In a fast-paced illustrated talk—filled with period photographs and depictions of the putative Martians themselves—he reveals what the episode says about the human mind: the fallibility of our senses, the power of belief, and the lure of sensationalism. It is a tale both cautionary and uplifting. Although the Martians never were real, the excitement about them was genuine and world-changing, since it sparked a new genre called science fiction and helped launch us into space—toward Mars.
Baron’s book The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America (Liveright) is available for purchase.
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