Many fictional tales of Mars have links between Martians and Man. With some telling that Martians are in fact Man, either we are a far off descendant, or that we will come to inhabit Mars and therefore become Martians. 'The idea that the Martians might ultimately turn out to be us – and better versions of us to boot'-Richard Dunn & Marek Kukula.
Mars is either imagined as a ruined planet, that had its chance and possible life, but has now become ruined and uninhabitable, in films such as Mission to Mars, or its told as having the possibility for a Utopian like place as in Aleriel.
In stories, such as The Martian Chronicles, where humans travel to Mars to start over or look for a better Utopian life it is clear that humans tend to bring trouble with them, and are bale to leave their destructive nature behind on Earth. Yet still we cling to the hope that a better life awaits us, free of concerns such as Global Warming in the form of a new home on Mars. Carl Sagan, an architect on NASA’s planetary exploration programme, remarked that ‘Mars has become a kind of mythic arena onto which we have projected our Earthly hopes and fears’ -Richard Dunn & Marek Kukula.
Science fiction I suppose has gives us a way of us exploring Mars and other world today, when it is not yet possible to actually reach it ourselves. We are so close to putting man on Mars, yet so very far and this frustrating point in our history has made us even more fascinated by the planet and our relationship with it in the future. 'The spell that science fiction exerts over space exploration is illustrated once more by the inclusion of text and artwork from Robinson’s Mars novels on a DVD carried by NASA’s Phoenix lander, which touched down in the north polar region of Mars in 2008. This ‘First Interplanetary Library’, intended as a time capsule and message to future Martian explorers, contains literary representatives from several different terrestrial cultures and can be seen as yet another manifestation of the Utopian flame that Mars continues to fuel.'-Richard Dunn & Marek Kukula.
Richard Dunn & Marek Kukula- https://www.tor.com/2015/11/17/utopian-mars-from-aleriel-to-the-martian/
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