Mars and Its Canals: Enriched edition. Unveiling the Mysteries of Mars' Enigmatic Canals

by Percival Lowell

"Mars and Its Canals" by Percival Lowell. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Astronomy

226 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1906

Reviews

[Barry Haworth · Rating 3 out of 5]

As someone who grew up reading a lot of science fiction from the 1950s and earlier I was familiar with the notion of Mars with its network of canals which its inhabitants had constructed to preserve the dying planet's water supply. Though long since debunked, it was nevertheless interesting to read this book, which I found on Project Gutenberg, and explore the origins of the myth of the Martian canals.

In this book Lovell describes the observations he has made and the conclusions that he draws from them. Some things are fully confirmed by modern observations, like the seasonal changes in the size of the Martian polar caps. Others, like the seasonal changes in appearance of features on the planet, are also correct observations, but he draws the incorrect conclusion that these are due to vegetation. Some things he gets flatly wrong, like his conclusion that Mars has no mountains or valleys, or that the polar caps are not carbon dioxide (a theory he considers only to reject). He observes the changing white spot of Nix Olympia, but fails to recognise it as a mountain peak, having elsewhere concluded that Mars has no mountains.

Most interesting is the account of how canals are observed. I had always assumed that the canals were a steady feature, at least thorough Lovell's telescope, but even for him they were a transient phenomenon, caught in glimpses in one part of the planet at a time as the atmospheric conditions changed, and having to be drawn from these brief glimpses in a long observing session.

There are of course no canals on Mars. Lovell's maps are essentially a combination of optical illusion and wishful thinking. Still, for someone with an interest in classic science fiction, or an interest in the dangers of wishful thinking, this book is a worthwhile read.

[Benjamin Stahl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly dry overall, but interesting here and there and written very nicely.

[Kara · Rating 5 out of 5]

While Lowell's observations and conclusions have been debunked as merely wishful thinking, its hard not to admire the earnestness of his work and the amount of effort he put into it.

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

This recently came up on Project Gutenberg, so I gave it a whirl. Oh, my. The writing style is rather dense and it's a DNF; I only dipped in piecemeal. And I don't think it's worth reading in its entirety, except to a historian of astronomy.

This is also an object lesson in some kind of delusion, I suppose. Student scientists should all be required to view little fuzzy photographs of the period (circa 1906) then view Lowell's drawings of the Martian canals to compare. And then read at least parts of the chapter on the canals, and the chapter on "Life" -- yes, I mean the chapter about life on Mars -- in which Lowell states, for starters: Study of the fundamental features of Martian topography has disclosed, as we have seen, the existence of vegetation on the planet as the only rational explanation of the dark markings there...

And when you've done that, you might want to check out a more recent book like Geographies of Mars: Seeing and Knowing the Red Planet.

[Rex Libris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mars and Its Canals was written in 1905 by the "amateur" astronomer Percival Lowell. He built his own observatory outside of Flagstaff, AZ, and did extensive research on Martian topography. Extrapolating what he knew about evolutionary development on Earth, Lowell poisted that there was most likely at least vegatative life on Mars, maybe more.

Now we know the canals were mere illusionary effects, but Lowell's application of the knowledge of the time comes across as facially plausible.

I downloaded this ebook from the Library of Congress website, and it was an utter mess. It was filled with formatting and scanning mistakes from front to back. Nothing of this inexcusably poor quality would ever be put out there by Project Gutenberg. If the LOC is the country's foremost library, we are in even more trouble than we thought.