A floating Martian city from Letters from the Planets (1890) by WS Lach-Szyrma. Illustration by Paul Handy.
In honour of the remarkable landing on Mars of the Curiosity Rover, a handful of random illustrations from the vast stock of imagery generated by the Red Planet over the past century-and-a-half. When it comes to Mars I’m afraid you can keep your terraforming and geodesic domes, I prefer the more fanciful scenarios involving air-boats, cloaks and actual canals. Paul Handy’s illustration above shows what I believe is a Venusian vehicle sailing past a Martian city, Lach-Szyrma’s book concerning a journey through the solar system. I only have small copies of these pictures in a book, so far they don’t seem to have turned up online.
A Trip to Mars (1909) by Fenton Ash. Illustrations by WHC Groome.
Fenton Ash was the nom de plume of British author Francis Henry Atkins. A Trip to Mars concerns another exploratory journey taken this time by a pair of Edwardian schoolboys.
