My Favorite Mars, Man

Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom? Clark Ashton Smith's Aihai? Ray Bradbury's? Kim Stanley Robinson's? What's your favorite fictional depiction of the Red Planet?

Ray Bradbury's for the lyrical, Andy Weir's (The Martian) for the realistic.

For sword and planet Leigh Brackett: Sea-Kings of Mars and Otherworldly Stories.
For philosophy and futurism Kim Stanley Robinson: Red Mars etc.
For sheer storytelling Ian McDonald: Desolation Road and Ares Express.

A Martian Odyssey for me, along with The Martian Chronicles.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein (I know it takes place on Earth, but it gives a good view of life on Mars)

A Princess of Mars, no doubt about it.

Mars by Ben Bova. The moment one of the characters glimpsed the 'object' is one of my favorite scenes from any story.

Second for Andy Weir's The Martian, although Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy is a close second.

What about Paul J. McAuley's Red Dust?

I should add Alien Dust.

I always loved C. L. Moore's visions of mars, in Northwest Smith, and Bradbury's Martian Chronicles (of course).

Do I get to count the Viking missions? Can you believe it's been nearly 40 years?

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01522

I also loved the old Disneyland ride Mission to Mars (but only because it had the panorama of photographs from the Viking missions).

If the question is about Mars, I'd go for the Brackett already mentioned. But two books set on Mars that I really like are Martian Time-Slip and Farewell, Earth's Bliss. Both have great endings, IMNSHO.

I have dittos for #4 Bruce's A Martian Odyssey and The Martian Chronicles but I would like to read the original Burroughs novels - after acquiring first edition hardbacks found in a used book store for $1 each. {a fond dream}

I'd go for Martian Chronicles too, one of the greats.
No one has mentioned Red Planet by Heinlein, yet - like most of his juveniles, endearing.

There are lots of solar-system epics with Martian elements; don't know if they count. If they do, Floating Worlds by Cecelia Holland and Ceres Storm by David Herter come to mind.

Clark Ashton Smith's Aihai for its horror. Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars for its sheer detailed depiction of a realistic Mars.

>12 ChrisRiesbeck: And, because I like the story even if a memorable landscape isn't conjured up: Dick's Martian Time-Slip and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

And I have a soft spot for Lester del Rey's tale of police corruption on Mars -- Police Your Planet.

KSR's Martian trilogy, no contest. Nothing else even comes close.

There are so many great ones.

Martian Chronicles got me started on SF as a kid and I've revisited it several times, including in two different college courses. Many of the books mentioned above I can easily concur with and for many of the same reasons.

I'll add a personal favorite of mine Red Genesis by S.C. Sykes, a Mars colonization novel. It was the first book in a series called "The Next Wave" where Asimov, as editor, picked out notable SF books by new authors. Each one also contained an article by a scientist on science or technology related to the novel.

Not sure I can think of a favorite, but want to mention "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" by Roger Zelazny

I'd have to say my favorite Mars is Red Planet, as it was one of the first books I ever read.

(Though I will say that when the 2012 "John Carter" movie came out, I was surprised to discover that I still carry a torch for Dejah Thoris.)

And a shout-out to the Mars of Be Bop Deluxe's Modern Music album, which is clearly Barsoom-inspired.

Paul McAuley's Red Dust is a good Mars novel and Terry Bisson's Voyage to the Red Planet is certainly worth a read. I've always had a soft spot for William Rollo's The Olympus Gambit, although it's a bit of a potboiler. Rex Gordon's No Man Friday is pretty good, if mostly for the way the British scientists at Woomera build their rocket to Mars on the sly. And, of course, there's my own humble attempt on the Mars novel, well, novella...

I just galloped through Michael Moorcock's Martian trilogy, The City of the Beast and its two sequels, in the last couple of days. I can't recommend them. So unashamedly ERBian it made me wonder why I wasn't reading the originals.

My favourite Marses (is that the plural?) would have to be that of the Bradbury's Martian Chronicles (aka The Silver Locusts) which I discovered when I was a kid and have re-read many times since. And ERB's Barsoom. Two complete opposites in style, content, and intent but both deliciously, endlessly re-readable.

>15 RandyStafford:

I love Ryan Harvey's description of Clark Ashton Smith's Mars (from his long article on CAS' story cycles (http://www.blackgate.com/the-fantasy-cycles-of-clark-ashton-smith-part-iv-poseidonis-mars-and-xiccarph/)):

In Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Martian novels, he indicated that the drying of the planet was gradually killing its civilizations; Mars was a dying world. Envision Burroughs’s Mars thousands of years after the death of its greatest civilizations, just as Earth colonists have started to arrive, and you have an approximation of Smith’s Mars. The difference is that the lost civilizations of this Mars are grim and gothic, hoarders of weird horrors unlike the adventurous wonders of Burroughs’s “Barsoom.”

>21 TheOtherJunkMonkey:

I concur with your take on those Moorcock books (though I am, more generally, a Moorcock fan). On the other hand, Lin Carter's efforts inspired by Leigh Brackett (The Man Who Loved Mars etc.) turned out pretty well.

For me...

The Barsoom novels by Burroughs will always have a special place - the first novel I remember reading at about 12, was "The Gods of Mars/The Warlord of Mars" SFBC edition - I read it because my dad had been reading it and was so absorbed it started a lifelong love of SF in me. Of course I hardly understood the concepts at that age - it was an adventure novel. It wasn't until my later teens that I reread the books, actually starting with A Princess of Mars and going through the series that I really appreciated them - even the funky, half-written John Carter of Mars.

The Martian Chronicles still fills me with a sense of wonder.

Heinlein's Podkayne of Mars and Red Planet due to the nostalgia

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy is worth reading

Ben Bova's Mars books, especially the first.

Pohl's Man Plus and Mars Plus should qualify also

I also liked? the Illium books by Dan Simmons