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

by Oliver Morton

Book Overview

How can you make sense of a world where no one has ever lived? Acclaimed science writer Oliver Morton tells the story of the heroic landscapes of Mars, now better mapped in some ways than the Earth itself. Mapping Mars introduces the reader to the nineteenth-century visionaries and spy-satellite pioneers, the petroleum geologists and science-fiction writers, the artists and Arctic explorers who have devoted themselves to the discovery of Mars. In...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 031242261X
• ISBN13: 9780312422615
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

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

Mapping Mars: Science, Imagination, and the Birth of a World written by Oliver Morton is a wonderfully fascinating story about the fourth planet in our solar system... Mars.For the better part of the book the author informs the reader on the geology of Mars along with history of mapping the surface of Mars early on with telescopes... and then later on the Mars explorer robotics that landed a few years ago. The author's writing style is easy going and very informative. You can read the book with ease... quite frankly once you start you'll find it hard to put down, with the intellectual history and the engaging writing style you'll quickly be engrossed in the book.Mars is cratered much like our Moon and has a most beguiling landscape. There are picture in the book that gives the reader a good sense of what the author is taking about when it comes to the geology of Mars. Only after our spacecraft reached its orbit could we see Mars for what it is, a planet with a surface area as great as that of the Earth's continents, all of it as measurable, as real as the stones in the pavement outside your door.This book is about how ideas from our full and complex planet are projected onto the rocks of that simpler, empty one. The ideas discussed are mostly scientific, because it is the scientists who have thought hardest and best about the realities of Mars. It is the the scientists who have fathomed the ages of its rocks, measured its resemblance to the Earth, searched for its missing waters, and always wondered about the life it might be home to.Engagingly fascinating are the two words that rightfully describe this book, enjoyable without technobable.

A lucid and engaging gem of a book

Mapping Mars covers more ground than its title would suggest. Not only does it give an enjoyable account of the attempts to describe Mars' topography, it also tells of how scientists, artists, and authors have grappled with the red planet over the years. Mars seems to be dear to Morton's heart -- he turned down the opportunity to be a founding member of the Planetary Society -- but he provides a very balanced view of the sometimes abrasive personalities behind Mars exploration.

Well balanced and engaging modern cultural history of Mars

I bought this book on a whim after getting interested in Mars colonization after reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, to which Dr. Morton's book is an excellent non-fiction counterpoint. Not only does he set forth a well-spoken, engaging exposition of the 20th century's cultural and scientific history of Mars, he balances this with a keen sense of the limitations of human knowledge, telling his story in the context of real, live human figures at the forefront of Mars exploration.The central theme, of maps and how they relate to place - and furthermore, how we relate to those maps and places - sets off an easily read story of what Mars has meant to recent society, how scientists have shaped that understanding, and how that understanding is both formed and limited by our extended observers, the robot orbiters and landers that we've sent to our red neighbor.Highly recommended reading both for historical and cultural interest.

A Divergent Mapping Of Mars

Mapping Mars by Oliver Morton is an excellent book! Morton takes the reader on the very human journey to map Mars from Percival Lowell to the folks planning the 2003 rovers. Along the way, Morton brings everything that conceivably connects to this mapping effort, including Mars art [I'm proud to say I have an original Bill Hartmann hanging on my living room wall] and Mars fiction [no, I won't sell you my signed first editions of Stan Robinson's Mars books], into the mix. I also found Mapping Mars to be one of the best introductions to geology and geologists at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century I've read in recent years. My one complaint [and it's not really Morton's fault - Morton was just passing on a piece of history] is with the following passage:[Robert Zubrin] told [his students] that no one did more for society, or was more worthy of respect, than scientists and engineers. If that was so, asked one of the kids one day, why was Zubrin just a teacher. Zubrin came up with an answer-he always had answers-but he took the question to heart. He began applying to graduate schools....I agree with most of the sentiment in this passage, except the part about teachers somehow being less admirable than scientists. I was trained as a geologist and I teach high school earth science. I get asked the same question all the time AND I too have an answer:Someone has to begin training the folks that'll be the first people on Mars [and help the rest become damn fine citizens of the Earth].I highly recommend Mapping Mars, especially to anyone with an interest in Mars, geology and geologists, mapping, the cultural offshoots of the exploration of our solar system, and the future. I'd personally love to go and field check all those Mars maps we've been making back here on Earth, but I'll be too old, plus I have health concerns that would keep me off any crew (but like Gene Shoemaker, someone has to inspire and educate folks back here on Earth). Read Mapping Mars and maybe you'll be inspired to go.

Looking at the Face of a Neighbor

The one geographic feature of the planet Mars that most people can think of is the famous "Face on Mars," a huge rock formation which is, if the fringe interpreters have it right, a gigantic, one-generic-face Mount Rushmore, to be viewed by us humans as sculpted by esthetically inclined Martians. There is more to Martian geography than that, and _Mapping Mars: Science, Imagination, and the Birth of a World_ (Picador) by Oliver Morton, barely mentions the Face, and does not stoop to debunk it. Once again, real science is shown to be much more fascinating than fringe science. _Mapping Mars_ provides a history of how we know what we know about the most nearly Earth-like neighbor, and shows how we are actively creating a world in our own image.There have been generations of pre-rocketry astronomers who tried to make sense of our neighbor planet. Morton gives a history of the English astronomers who named features on Mars after Englishmen, and French, Frenchmen, as well as Percival Lowell's certainty that he could see canals the Martians had made. The detailed mapping, begun with the later powerful earthly telescopes, was not all done with photography. "The well-trained human eye could seize such brief impressions, understand what was seen in them, and remember it," allowing much more resolution than photographs, and the book is illustrated with examples of different artistic versions of maps and terrain. Many science fiction books have tried to take in our understanding of the terrain and the ecology. Movies, however, have not done a good job, disregarding science; "... the blatantly ignored scientific advisor on _Mission to Mars_ ... has been stoically bearing the ridicule of his colleagues ever since." The colors of the terrain and sky have become understood, after much haggling, but the status of water on the planet is still under debate. Morton covers the debate about going to Mars, and if we do, should we be thinking of hijacking its ecology to transform it into something we could traverse without pressure suits? Terraforming Mars, transforming it into something like home, sweet home, is on the minds of not just impractical visionaries, but geologists and chemists as well.Morton has given a wonderful history of a very human enterprise, something we have accomplished and about which we can be truly proud. His summary of what we know about this mysterious planet may need updating after the next lander starts sending back data, but his book will remain an important description of how we got where we are now. He has a fine balance of a reporter's detachment and engagement with his subjects, and even the detailed scientific descriptions are clear. At heart, however, his book is an optimistic and inspiring look at how scientists, astrophysicists, and dreamers sustain Mars as the obsession which it will always be.