Edward Sylvester Morse 2 hr 29 min read

Are the strange markings on Mars natural, or the canals of an intelligent race? A working astronomer weighs the great controversy of his day for the general reader.

Edward S. Morse's 1906 book, dedicated to Percival Lowell, is a nonfiction survey of the Mars-canal debate at its height. Fascinating, earnest, historically rich. Read it for a firsthand window onto the era's obsession with life on Mars, when the red planet's 'canals' gripped the world.

In its time

Published in 1906, during the 1900s, the scientific romance.

Reading it

2 hr 29 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).