Stories about monsters are stories about ourselves. Our current obsession with zombies might have something to do with our own societal doubts and agoraphobia in a rapidly urbanizing society. Stories about robots and Frankensteins are about the uncomfortable progression of science and what it means to be human. Science fiction entities tell us more about the writer and the reader than the entity itself; in Japan, stories of the nuclear age came with destructive monsters, while in America radiation makes supermen.
But stories about space? There’s a reason we’ve called it the final frontier, no matter how creatively limiting that concept is. Stories about space and aliens are generally stories about mankind interacting with experiences outside of the dominant culture of the time, and stories about Mars are stories about those outsiders who are adjacent or near or new. Mars was (and technically still is) just far enough away to stimulate our imaginations and just close enough to compel foreboding. And through the stories of Mars we can see mankind’s evolving relationship with, fear of and desire to learn from the frontier. The interactions with Mars and Martians in books and film show our changing perceptions of neighbors and imperial expansion and “Manifest Destiny.”
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