Mars! -- A Reading List
Explore the best books about Mars with our curated reading list! Discover thrilling sci-fi novels, scientific explorations, and captivating stories about the Red Planet.
 
                         
                        
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                    Moving Mars
by Greg Bear
The daughter of a prestigious family has a dream of an independent Mars.
                            
                            
                         
                        
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                    The Martian Race
by Gregory Benford
With NASA's mission to Mars scrapped because of a tragic accident, billionaire John Axelrod steps in to compete with the European-Chinese effort to reach the fourth planet first, and the race is on. Reprint.
                            
                            
                         
                        
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                    Mars
by Ben Bova
Epic in scope, unparalleled in execution, Mars is an unforgettable portrait of space, politics, science, and humanity that captures for all time the mystery and wonder of an alien frontier It is a world shrouded in mystery—a planet pocked by meteors, baked by ultraviolet light, and covered by endless deserts the color of dried blood. To this harsh and unforgiving planet travel the twenty-give astronauts of the international Mars mission. Now, as the landers touch down and the base dome is inflated and the robotic explorers are sent aloft, they must somehow come together in a struggle of discovery and survival. Battling deadly meteor showers, subzero temperatures, and a mysterious “Mars virus,” these intrepid explorers are on their way to the most incredible and shocking discovery of all. Praise for Mars “A sweeping Michener-style saga of the first expedition to our neighboring planet . . . the ultimate summer escape.”—People “In Mars, Ben Bova re-creates for us much of that first excitement we felt in reading about the possibilities of space flight or, later, witnessing the earliest manned exploration.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review “The definitive novel about our fascinating neighbor.”—Arthur C. Clarke “An intelligent, entertaining story that may also serve as a rallying cry.”—Omni “Mars is an exemplary summer read . . . [with] adventurous, brilliant, over-the-edge characters [and] a convincing imaginative core in Bova's carefully imagined, striking, and spooky portrait of the planet.”—Voice Literary Supplement
                            
                            
                         
                         
                        
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                    The Martian Chronicles
by Ray Bradbury
For use in schools and libraries only. The tranquility of Mars is disrupted by the earthmen who have come to conquer space, colonize the planet, and escape a doomed Earth.
                            
                            
                         
                        
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                    A Princess of Mars
by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Suddenly projected to Mars, John Carter found himself captive of the savage green men of Thark. With him was Dejah Thoris, lovely Princess of Helium. And between them and rescue lay a thousand miles of deadly enemies and unknown dangers. The green warrior decided to close in and end the battle; just as he rushed me, a blinding light struck full in my eyes, so that I could not see Zad's approach and could only leap blindly to one side to avoid his mighty blade. It caught me in the left shoulder; but as my vision cleared a sight met my astonished gaze that almost made me forget the fight. Standing on her chariot with Sola and Sarkoja, my beloved Dejah Thoris turned on Sarkoja with the fury of a tigress and struck something that flashed in the sunlight from her upraised hand. Then I knew what had blinded me at that crucial moment, and how Sarkoja had found a way to kill me without herself delivering the final thrust! Sarkoja, her face livid with baffled rage, whipped out her dagger and aimed a terrific blow at Dejah Thoris—and Zad was once more advancing on me with reddened blade. I felt the steel tear into my chest and all went black before me. . . .
                            
                            
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                    Red Planet
by Robert Anson Heinlein
Jim Marlow and his strange-looking Martian friend Willis were allowed to travel only so far. But one day Willis unwittingly tuned into a treacherous plot that threatened all the colonists on Mars, and it set Jim off on a terrfying adventure that could save--or destroy--them all! From the Paperback edition.
                            
                            
                         
                        
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                    Stranger in a Strange Land
by Robert A. Heinlein
Epic, entertaining, Stranger in a Strange Land caused controversy and uproar when it was first published. Still topical and challenging today, the story of Valentine Michael Smith, the first man from Mars to visit Earth, is in the great tradition of stories that endure through the power of the author's imagination that stretches from Gulliver's Travels to 1984
                            
                            
                         
                        
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                    Podkayne of Mars
by Robert A. Heinlein
While accompanying their uncle, a wily politician, on a trip from Mars to Earth, Podkayne and her brilliant, but pesky brother are caught in a plot to keep Uncle Tom from an important conference. Reprint.
                            
                            
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                    Blue Mars
by Kim Stanley Robinson
Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel • One of the most enthralling science fiction sagas ever written, Kim Stanley Robinson’s epic trilogy concludes with Blue Mars—a triumph of prodigious research and visionary storytelling. “A breakthrough even from [Kim Stanley Robinson’s] own consistently high levels of achievement.”—The New York Times Book Review The red planet is no more. Now green and verdant, Mars has been dramatically altered from a desolate world into one where humans can flourish. The First Hundred settlers are being pulled into a fierce new struggle between the Reds, a group devoted to preserving Mars in its desert state, and the Green “terraformers.” Meanwhile, Earth is in peril. A great flood threatens an already overcrowded and polluted planet. With Mars the last hope for the human race, the inhabitants of the red planet are heading toward a population explosion—or interplanetary war.
                            
                            
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                    The War of the Worlds
by H. G. Wells
An English astronomer, in company with an artilleryman, a country curate, and others, struggle to survive the invasion of Earth by Martians in 1894.
                            
                            
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