"Clarke, Arthur C - The Sands Of Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clarke Arthur C)

The Sands of Mars
by Arthur C. Clarke
version 1.0

FOREWORD

The Sands of Mars, my first full-length novel, was written
in the late 1940'sЧwhen Mars seemed very much farther
away than it is today. Reading it again after a lapse of
many years, I am agreeably surprised to find how little it
has been dated by the explosive developments of the Space
Age. True, there are a few technical concepts which are
slightly outmoded (readers may get some amusement try-
ing to spot them); and there is perhaps rather more ex-
planation of fundamentals than is strictly necessary in
these enlightened times. But there is very little indeed
that I would change if I were writing this story today.

It was one of the first science-fiction novels about Mars
to abandon the romantic fantasies of Percival Lowell,
Edgar Rice Burroughs, C. S. Lewis, and Ray Bradbury
(four gentlemen I admire greatly, though not necessarily
for the same reasons). By the 1940's, it was already
certain that the planet's atmosphere was far too thin to
support higher animals of the terrestrial typeЧand what
little there was of it contained no oxygen. There could
be no Martian princesses, alas; and when human beings
reached the red planet, they would not be able to walk on
its surface without breathing aids. The chief problem I
faced in writing this novel was, therefore, that of making
Mars interesting and exciting despite these limitations. Or,
if possible, because of them.

The brilliantly successful Mariner TV mission has shown
that the atmospheric pressure on Mars is even lower than
had been generally assumed; we may need space suits
there, not merely breathing masks. Apart from thisЧand
the unexpected (by everyone except Clyde Tombaugh) dis-
covery of extensive crateringЧthere has been no major
change in our picture of the planet.

Above all, the question of Martian life is still entirely
open. In their well-known paper "A Search for Life on

Earth at Kilometer Resolution," Carl Sagan and his col-
leagues used meteorological satellite photographs to show
that Mariner IV could not possibly have detected life even
on the well-populated Earth. Still less could it do so on
Mars, where we do not know what we are looking for. We
will have to land before we can tell whether there is