Lost Mars
British Library Science Fiction Classics
$1.99
Price checked Oct 28. Prices change often, so confirm on Amazon before you buy.
Ten classic Red Planet stories from Wells to Bradbury to Ballard, each with smart context on how our dreams of Mars kept changing.
Our take
Ten vintage trips to a Mars that never was
This is Mars as people dreamed it before the probes arrived: canals, ancient civilizations, lonely colonists and very strange neighbors. Mike Ashley gathers ten stories from 1887 to 1963, with H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury and J.G. Ballard alongside forgotten names, and his introductions to each story are a big part of the appeal. Readers single out Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey" and Walter M. Miller Jr.'s "Crucifixus Etiam" as the standouts. We picked it as a cheap, well-curated tour of how science fiction's imagination grew up. Some of the oldest entries read slowly, and a few show their era's attitudes.
4.3 out of 5 from 58 Amazon ratings
