The Martian Chroniclers
Burkhard Bilger writes about the enduring allure of Mars, and the Earthlings who theorized about the red planet through the years.
When Schiaparelli drew the first detailed map of Mars in 1877, he imagined it as an earthly paradise: Eden, Elysium, Arcadia, Utopia. "The planet is not a desert of arid rocks," he wrote. "It lives." The sharper their telescopes, the blurrier their vision.