Mapping Mars: Science, Imagination and the Birth of a World (Paperback)

In a previous Amazon review of another Mars-related book I said "This is the only Mars book you'll ever need." Well, I was wrong. If you've an interest in Mars - a serious, interest mind, not just a passing one - then you need this one, too.

At first glance MAPPING MARS looks very dry and "wordy", with only a few pages of illustrations buried in its centre. In all honesty, it's not a title that jumps at you off the bookshelf while you're browsing the astronomy section. But this is a remarkable book in many ways, a real "labour of love" which portrays Mars - perhaps for the first time since Lowell's ground-breaking book - as a real, rounded world, a world with its own unique cultural history, not just a geological and scientific one.

But it's not a "general" book, a book for everyone, oh no. If you want lots of statistics, cold geological field notes and accurate-but-yawn-inducing science background, the look further along the shelf, or further down the Amazon page. This is a book which deals with how Mars has been seen and portrayed by artists, writers, poets and philosophers, not just scientists. It's a deeply thoughtful - and thought-provoking - work, describing how the Red Planet has acquired a unique place in mankind's culture, how - and more importantly, why - it has fascinated and hypnotised us for all these long, yearning centuries. It eloquently and elegantly describes how the desire to conquer Mars mirrors the earlier desire to conquer and tame the Wild West, how we have - consciously or subconsciously - moulded Mars and its landscapes into a new "Wild Frontier" for the 21st century. Also, it easily and comfortably mixes historical science with speculation about the future, and provides insightful (and refreshingly honest, warts and all) character sketches of almost everyone who is, or was, anyone in martian research.

But I know, I know, there must be lots of other books which do those things too, right? Well, yes, there are, but none of them do it as well, and this one is different in a very important way.

The way it is written makes it different. Reading MAPPING MARS is like having a course of personal, one-on-one lectures by a teacher whos elove and passion for their subject comes across with every word. Oliver Morton loves Mars, is in love with it, he can't hide it, it's there on every page, and this book is so personal that reading it I really felt like I was sitting with him in his study, beside a crackling fire, sipping a warm brandy, just listening to him talk. Some parts really are pure poetry, quite lovely to read.

The book may be called MAPPING MARS, and yes, that area of study is very well covered; everything you could want to know and more about martian cartography is in here. But this book is so much more than a martian version of "LONGITUDE" It's the story of the birth, evolution and, ultimately, destiny of a world, and every turned page rewards the reader with a new, previously-unsuspected aspect of Mars and the planet's history.

Perhaps the book's biggest delight is the way it leads the reader off in totally unexpected directions. I lost count of the number of times I put the book aside to rush to my PC, go online and Google-search for websites with more information about a writer, poem, poet or painting referred to in the text; thanks to MAPPING MARS I now know about the beautiful paintings of Frederic Edwin Church, which is almost worth the price of the book alone...

That's not to say the book is without fault. There aren't enough illustrations for a book which deals with such a visual subject. And the cover is rather less than inspiring too (*I* know better than to judge a book by its cover, but in this commercial, visual-impact age many don't, and first impressions count) even tho to be fair it does accurately reflect the book's theme. And, being a Red, I would have liked more debate too about the ethics of terraforming... but these are just minor and personal quibbles.

Coming to the end of the book I wondered how I could sum it up for the people who would, inevitably, ask me what I thought about it. I decided there was only one way to do it: this book deserves to be more than a book, it deserves to be made into a TV series one day, on the scale of HBO's "FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON", maybe narrated by Tom Hanks himself. If it ever is then maybe, just maybe, people "out there" will finally appreciate Mars for the incredible world it is. And maybe then it will finally become a place where people want to actually go, instead of just read about... in beautiful books like this.

Morton shows how the struggle to understand Mars is faced with limitations. The usual path of comparison with features on Earth prove feeble and vague. Antarctica is one model, the Hawaiian volcanoes another. Neither fits sufficiently to provide valid comparisons. Mars, he urges, must be understood within its own framework. That implies the picture must be built up from a fresh foundation. The foundation has only been sketched by the various probes sent to Mars during the past generation. The interpreters of data transmitted from fly-by probes, landers and surface rovers are the heroes of Morton's account.

Mapping Mars had its origins in Berlin in 1830 when two astronomers sought to establish the length of the Martian day. The 1877 "opposition" led to Schiaparelli's establishing the first nomenclature of visible features, including the famous "canali", misperceived by American Percival Lowell as "canals". When NASA sent the Mariners to Mars, it was Merton Davies who initiated the first true mapping efforts. Morton vividly describes the difficulties in translating fly-by images into realistic representations of the Martian surface. One example of the task is the eight-hour long process needed to transmit a single image the Mariner probe produced back to NASA. Morton then introduces the artists who produced the first graphic drawings made from these early images.

New tools offered additional information, allowing the artist to refine their work. Laser pictures combined with radar mapping added fresh details. The maps improved, and with them, the analysis of how Mars is constructed. The discovery of Martian magnetism offered both insights and challenges. Fresh ideas of Mars' internal structure and process had to be developed. Visible ice, long conceived as frozen carbon dioxide, had to be reassessed. Is there water on Mars, and what has been its role?

Unlike most science writers, Morton gives strong place to the speculative in considering Mars. He laces the story of science with the world of fiction. New information has transformed the writing of speculative fiction and the presentation of "space art" in depicting the planet and its features. He is an enthusiast for these efforts, imparting the struggle novelists and artists have had in "getting it right". They are to be commended for their efforts as Morton is in introducing them to us.

The water issue raises important questions about future, manned, missions to the planet Morton examines the possibilities within a clear explanation of what is plausible. He accepts that manned missions are inevitable, but can only be accomplished from a knowledgeable basis. The ultimate question, can Mars be "terraformed" to permit "normal" habitation by Earthlings, is also evaluated. Will such an effort come from a planet-wide consortium of nations? [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]