Martian and Human Characters

Individual sections present both Martian and human characters. The Martians are described as brown-skinned and golden-eyed, survivors of a declining civilization who try to defend themselves against the encroaching humans. The humans are presented, for the most part, as arrogant and invasive, unappreciative of the complex civilization of the Martians and interested only in appropriating the planet’s mineral resources. A few humans are described as more sensitive and aware, dedicated to studying the dead or dying civilization around them.

The first individualized characters seen in TMC are called Martians, although the use of the term implies a point of view that is still human. Groups of characters are mentioned in “The Rocket Summer,” but not in any detail. “Ylla,” the second story, describes how a Martian couple’s life is disrupted by dreams that the wife, Ylla, has of an alien. Ylla’s telepathic contact is with an earthling, Nathaniel York, who is coming to Mars. Her husband, Yll, reacts with jealousy to her enthrallment. “The Summer Night,” the third story and one of the bridge pieces, shows that what happens to Ylla was not an isolated incident. One summer evening in a community on Mars, everyone, adults and children, come into telepathic contact with earthlings, shown by their singing or reciting English poetry.

The first human characters arrive in “The Earth Men”: a crew of four men (the Second Earth Expedition) arrive at Mrs. Ttt’s house. The earth-men are comic and blustering, insisting that some major celebration be held in their honor and pouting when none of the Martians take them seriously. The Martians seem bored and unimpressed, sending the men on to others who will deal with them. The men finally realize that the Martians believe they are hallucinations, products of one insane Martian’s mind. A Martian psychologist, Mr. Xxx, then shoots them all, and himself, “proving” they are hallucinations.

The rest of the stories all focus on human characters, mostly males. “The Taxpayer” is a bridge episode, focusing on a man who insists that he wants to leave Earth for Mars because of an impending atomic war. He is treated as insane, but his apprehensions are proved correct by the end of the book. “The Third Expedition” focuses on several characters out of a crew of seventeen: Captain John Black, Navigator Lustig, and Samuel Hinkston. This expedition lands on Mars only to find an exact reproduction of Captain Black’s hometown, and all the crew’s dead friends and family alive again. By the end of the story, all the humans are killed by Martians who have taken the form of their friends and families.

“—And the Moon Be Still as Bright” describes the Fourth Expedition, especially the conflict between Jeff Spender and the rest of the crew. They have arrived to find virtually all the Martians dead of chickenpox, carried by an earlier expedition. Spender’s mourning for the death of an ancient civilization leads him to try to murder the rest of the crew. The characters in this story fight over the question of how settlement will occur, and Spender’s death and Captain Wilder’s departure leave Mars open to exploitative colonization. Several characters first introduced in this story reappear in later ones: Parkhill, Hathaway, and Captain Wilder.

The next three sections, “The Settlers,” “The Green Morning,” and “The Locusts,” describe colonization without going into detail about any characters other than Benjamin Driscoll, who in “The Green Morning” goes out to plant trees to change the Martian atmosphere. “Night Meeting” describes the only meeting between a human and a Martian character that does not lead to the death of either. Tómas Gomez and an unnamed Martian meet each other in the middle of the night. This meeting is one out of time: each character believes his “present” is the real one and the other individual is a hallucination or vision of the past. Starting with misunderstanding and fear, they come to accept the necessity for inhabiting their present moment without trying to prove what the other one is. Neither the human nor the Martian’s perception of their meeting is privileged by the story. This poetic interlude, showing a meeting of minds between two characters who are able to put aside their fear of a being from an alien race and communicate with each other, is one of the most haunting stories in the book.

“The Shore” describes the kind of settlers who come to Mars in more detail, though not as individual characters. “The Fire Balloons” (not included in the 1950 edition) focuses on a group of Episcopal priests who are leaving Earth for Mars. They debate whether their main mission should be saving the sinful humans living in a frontier society or going to the remaining Martians to save their souls. Father Peregrine, the main character, wants to go to the Martians because he is fascinated with the idea of the existence of new kinds of sin, but Father Stone rejects that idea. By the end of the story, the fathers have made contact with the “Old Martians” (globes of blue fire, which appear only in this story), and both Father Peregrine and Father Stone have learned something new about each other and about the nature of spirituality and sin.

“Interim” and “The Musicians” describe the development of towns and the arrival of families. The settlers build towns just like Iowa, and adolescent boys regularly play a game that involves going to the ruined Martian cities and scuffing through the remains of the dead Martians like they were dead leaves.

“The Wilderness” (not included in the 1950 edition) is the only story to describe the experiences of Earth women in the colonization of Mars. This tale focuses on Janice Smith and Leonora Holmes on their last night on Earth as they finish their preparations to leave for Mars. Janice is going to marry Will, who has built a house for her just like her home. The two main characters are not the only women leaving; the story describes thousands getting ready to move out. These characters are the “good women,” that is, virtuous women whose main goal is to become the wives of settlers. Brief references in earlier stories to “bad women” (“Fire Balloons” and “The Shore”) mention the other kind of women, presumably prostitutes rather than wives. After listing the first settlers as “men accustomed to space…. the coyotes and cattlemen,” a narrator says that “Everyone knew who the first women would be” (119). The Mayor in “The Fire Balloons” also complains about the “wicked women” who came in with the workers.

“The Naming of Names” further describes the process of settlement, with humans giving names to the Martian landscape and tourists coming in. “Usher II” contains a more fantastic character than the rest of the stories. Stendhal, a man obsessed with the greatness of Edgar Allan Poe and incensed against government censorship of literature, plans a revenge based on Poe’s stories. Stendhal sees colonizing a new planet as a means of escaping a spreading government bureaucracy that burns books.

With the spreading settlement and the growth of bureaucracy come older settlers. “The Old Ones” describes the elderly coming to Mars, and “The Martian” describes a deadly contact with a Martian. An old couple find their long-dead son Tom one night, but when they go to town he cannot keep his shape. As the humans in “The Third Expedition” learned, Martians can take on or appear to take on the shapes of humans through their telepathic powers. The emotions of the humans in “The Old Ones” force the Martian through many shapes until he finally dies.

The final stories focus on characters more concerned with what is happening on Earth than on Mars. “The Luggage Store,” a short bridge piece, relates a conversation between the owner and Father Peregrine about the ominous news from Earth. “The Off Season” focuses on Sam Parkhill, one of the crewmen from the Fourth Expedition and his hotdog stand. He’s the final example of the “Ugly American” colonist: blustering and never contradicted by his wife, who obviously sees more than he does. Planning to earn a great living from his hotdog stand, he learns that atomic war has broken out on Earth. This story reveals that some Martians did survive the disease and have been hiding out in the hills; they are the ones who bring the news to Sam. “The Watchers” describe all the colonists coming out to see the war on Earth, the fire of the bombs exploding, and their decision to return to Earth.

“The Silent Towns” is a comic view of the aftermath of the exodus from Mars: Walter Gripp, a miner, misses the evacuation. Enjoying the luxury goods left behind, he discovers there’s at least one woman left on Mars. Enthralled by romantic visions of her beauty, he meets her only to discover that she’s fat and ugly, which sends him racing off to be on his own again. “The Long Years” is a tragic vision of life on Mars after the evacuation. Mr. Hathaway (like Parkhill, a member of the Fourth Expedition) and his family miss the evacuation because of their archaeological research. Twenty years later, Captain Wilder returns from his own twenty-year mission to Jupiter and searches for anyone left on Mars. Hathaway signals the rocket, but dies before he can leave Mars. Wilder realizes that Hathaway’s family members are not humans, but robots built to replace the wife and children who died. Wilder leaves the robots on Mars and plans to go to Earth to see what has happened but as “There Will Come Soft Rains” reveals, there is little human life left on Earth either, just an automated house running down.

The final story, “The Million-Year Picnic,” describes an American family, a husband and wife and three young sons, who escaped from war on Earth to resettle Mars. They plan to meet with another family, with daughters, to begin another colonization effort. The book closes with the image of the family looking at themselves in the water of one of the canals and seeing the Martians.

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