“Dying Planet is a work of meticulous scholarship documenting the scientific controversies and literary representations of Mars from the early Renaissance to the present. Its comprehensiveness will make it a valuable resource for literary scholars, cultural critics, and scientists interested in the cultural history of this fascinating world.”—N. Katherine Hayles, author of My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts “This is both a complete literary history and an exemplary exercise in modern science studies, tracing how a particular science works over the generations to incorporate new technologies, create paradigm shifts, and understand the universe a little more accurately. By combining these in one study, Robert Markley clarifies a great deal about the poorly understood but very important relationships between science, literature, culture, and reality. He also gives us all the latest news from Mars, which keeps getting more interesting. It’s a fascinating story, and Markley is the first to tell it.”—Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars “Dying Planet is an excellent and detailed book. For anyone seeking to understand the fascinating intertwined histories of science and science fiction, and how a ball of rock, just six thousand seven hundred kilometres in diameter and several tens of millions of kilometres away, has exerted such an astonishing influence on our imaginations, it will be well worth reading.”
Charles S. Cockell
Interdisciplinary Science Reviews
“Dying Planet is an impressive study of Mars in the cultural imagination, especially in science and science fiction. . . . Thoroughly captivating and meticulously researched, Dying Planet supplies readers with a generous bibliography of science fiction writing about Mars.”
Kent A. Ono
American Literature
"[A] wonderfully nuanced reading of the red planet's cultural history. . . . [T]his is a masterly exploration of the 'interplanetary sublime.'"
P.D. Smith
The Guardian
"Markley writes about Mars as a knowledgeable outsider, weaving in cultural history and science fiction. . . . [T]here are many historical, literary, political, and cultural nuggets. . . ."
David Grinspoon
Scientific American