{"id":7670,"date":"2009-11-24T00:15:05","date_gmt":"2009-11-24T07:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/?p=7670"},"modified":"2015-09-25T09:17:52","modified_gmt":"2015-09-25T16:17:52","slug":"red-planet-wet-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/red-planet-wet-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Planet, Wet<\/em> Planet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mars-hubble\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I knew it!” Leigh shouted, punching her fist into the air. “I told you sons of… sons what it would be like years ago!”<\/em><\/p>\n

A rebel yell cut loose, and suddenly the room was a babble of voices.<\/em><\/p>\n

— Leigh Brackett (in an alternate timeline), as envisioned by S.M. Stirling<\/a> in his novel, In the Courts of the Crimson Kings<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Looks like Leigh Brackett<\/a> and Edgar Rice Burroughs<\/a> were more right than some scientists. Ever since NASA’s Mariner 4 did a drive-by look-see at Mars in 1964, there have been plenty of astronomers and planetologists\u00a0lining up to “debunk” the idea that the Red Planet was ever anything but an arid rustball since the formation of the solar system.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A recent study of the planet’s surface features, as reported on space.com<\/a>, seems to indicate that a vast ocean once covered about a third of Mars. While the ancientness\u00a0of the\u00a0date assigned to\u00a0Mars’ thalassic\u00a0period is far in excess of that indicated by either Leigh or ERB,\u00a0these new findings are still a powerful testament to the prophetic power of imagination and intuition, in my humble\u00a0opinion.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0sincerely hope that stretches\u00a0of the newly-determined shoreline are given names like Valkis,\u00a0Jekkara and Torquas<\/a>. What better name for the long-vanished Martian\u00a0sea\u00a0than the “Throxean Ocean<\/a>“? Far better to do that than to apply names from Terran geography and mythology, which has generally been the case thus far. Burroughs<\/a> and Brackett<\/a> were there first.<\/p>\n

My thanks to Steven Reid Harbin.<\/p>\n

\"PZO8005-Cover.indd\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 “I knew it!” Leigh shouted, punching her fist into the air. “I told you sons of… sons what it would be like years ago!” A rebel yell cut loose, and suddenly the room was a babble of voices. — Leigh Brackett (in an alternate timeline), as envisioned by S.M. Stirling in his novel, In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[219,272],"tags":[244,146,245,236,235,237],"class_list":["post-7670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leigh-brackett","category-edgar-rice-burroughs-other-authors","tag-brackett","tag-edgar-rice-burroughs","tag-leigh","tag-martian-oceans","tag-sm-stirling","tag-wet-mars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7670"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16757,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7670\/revisions\/16757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}