Old Mars

Old Mars

I was trying for a real Barsoomian sort of Mars, a Mars of the Old School, where John Carter might have leapt high over Tars Tarkas' head and glimpses might be caught of Ray Bradbury's ancient race between illusory Midwestern October villages. Perhaps this is the world where aliens built the giant air machine that Arnold Schwarzenegger triggered in Total Recall...


Barsoom

Here's an exterior view of what one might think of as the Old Mars, with neither the desolate, crater-pocked surface of recent exploration, nor the classical red image criss-crossed with mysterious, greenish bands that might be canals, but older yet, before all the surface water and much of the atmosphere was swept away or sank beneath the surface... Is that Phobos or Deimos in the foreground? It can be neither of the moons astronomers know by those names, but possibly in some alternate universe, where, later, John Carter would come to woo his princess, Dejah Thoris...


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