Element 79 is a collection of science fiction short stories authored by English astronomer and writer Fred Hoyle [1] and published in 1969. Included in the collection is the eponymous short story, Element 79. The collection takes its name from the atomic number of the seventy-ninth element, gold.
The anthology includes fifteen short stories:
The story involves the interactions of a group of largely unrelated humans confined to a compartment complex of an interplanetary spaceship that appears to have collected them as part of an expedition to find and study different planetary species.
Pym, a retired university professor of physics, feels dissatisfied with the mediocrity of his lifelong scientific accomplishments, and so accepts a deal with the devil that allows him to contribute a new significant finding to the scientific world.
On a space expedition to a distant planet, a “life” form manifests itself by dramatically increasing the mental capability of the one crew member who most appreciates the conditions on the new planet.
A playwright engaged in the process of constructing a play explores plot ideas concerning the sexual relationship of a male university professor with two women.
The ancient Greek god Dionysus having slept for a few millennia, awakens and visits California of the 1960s where he experiences freeway driving and crowded commercial airline flight.
The deterioration of an unnamed city (obviously Los Angeles) is described as due to a devil's plot, and the experience of an innocent girl at an interplanetary devils convention in the city is related.
An elderly, competent mountain climber, during a descent, reminisces about the mountaineering ax he now uses, and how he had once risked his life to retrieve it.
The four men aboard a spaceship expedition to circumnavigate the planet Venus are forced to abandon ship by a denizen of the planet, Agent 38.
This story traces an imagined progression of future NASA-funded explorations, first to the Moon and then to Mars. On Mars, human explorers interact indirectly with Martians who live beneath the surface of the planet, but are never seen directly. The Martian lifeforms are not based on biochemistry, as are humans, but do have a vast calculation ability. The Martians use this ability to gradually and systematically dominate human civilization.
A bird watcher, driving back from an unsuccessful attempt to sight a member of a rare bird species, accidentally runs into a pair of these birds, killing them.
A two-car collision leads to the death of one male driver, while the other male driver wanders off in a daze. Five individuals who knew one or the other of the two drivers visit the morgue to identity the dead driver. However, before the body is uncovered, the identity of the deceased is in an undetermined state due to a principle in quantum physics. The actual determination, as to who is dead and who is alive, is made, however, on the basis of how the five attendees viewed their relationships to the two drivers.
An eccentric genius teaches combinations of animals, for example a cat, a dog and a bear, to enjoy the companionship of together watching TV programs such as sports, Westerns, suspense plays, and films of violence.
Meteoroids in interplanetary space undergo a sequence of interactions that results in a particular meteoroid composed of a large quantity of element 79 (gold) landing violently in Scotland. The fragments of the meteorite are collected by the government and subsequently released only in limited amounts in order to maintain gold’s value. This process enriches England, allowing it to develop automated technology so that many people, although not out of a job, do not actually have to work.
The Greek gods Hermes and Aphrodite sit in judgment over four different bizarre individuals, each representing a different aspect of humanity, to determine which one should be given domination over humanity.
Far in the future of human society, a rebellious young man resists the imposed status quo where all adolescent boys and girls are subjected to brain surgery to promote harmony, individuals are conditioned to be uninterested in sex, and where human populations exist as small isolated communities separated by wilderness areas.
The alien invasion or space invasion is a common feature in science fiction stories and film, in which extraterrestrials invade the Earth either to exterminate and supplant human life, enslave it under an intense state, harvest people for food, steal the planet's resources, or destroy the planet altogether.
The Mars trilogy is a series of science fiction novels by Kim Stanley Robinson that chronicles the settlement and terraforming of the planet Mars through the personal and detailed viewpoints of a wide variety of characters spanning almost two centuries. Ultimately more utopian than dystopian, the story focuses on egalitarian, sociological, and scientific advances made on Mars, while Earth suffers from overpopulation and ecological disaster.
Red Star is Alexander Bogdanov's 1908 science fiction novel about a communist society on Mars. The first edition was published in St. Petersburg in 1908, before eventually being republished in Moscow and Petrograd in 1918, and then again in Moscow in 1922. Set in early Russia during the Revolution of 1905 and additionally on a fictional socialist society on Mars, the novel tells the story of Leonid, a Russian scientist-revolutionary who travels to Mars to learn and experience their socialist system and to teach them of his own world. In the process, he becomes enamored of the people and technological efficiency that he encounters in this new world. An English translation by Charles Rougle was published in 1984.
Rocketship X-M is a 1950 American black-and-white science fiction film from Lippert Pictures, the first outer space adventure of the post-World War II era. The film was produced and directed by Kurt Neumann and stars Lloyd Bridges, Osa Massen, John Emery, Noah Beery, Jr., Hugh O'Brian, and Morris Ankrum.
Sleepers of Mars is a collection of early short stories by British writer John Wyndham, published after his death, in 1973 by Coronet Books.
The Ice Warriors are a fictional extraterrestrial race of reptilian humanoids in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. They were originally created by Brian Hayles, first appearing in the 1967 serial The Ice Warriors where they encountered the Second Doctor and his companions Jamie and Victoria. In Doctor Who, the Ice Warriors originated on Mars, which within the series narrative is a dying world. Their early appearances depict the Ice Warriors as attempting to conquer the Earth and escape their planet as early as Earth's Ice Age. A frozen group are discovered by an Earth scientific team who dub them ‘Ice Warriors’ in their first appearance. Despite this not being the name of their species, an Ice Lord later refers to his soldiers as Ice Warriors in the 1974 serial The Monster of Peladon. Similarly there is a fleeting reference to themselves as such in The Curse of Peladon. Although originally appearing as villains, subsequent appearances have depicted Ice Warriors that have eschewed violence and even ally themselves with the Doctor. They have also been featured in flashback and cameo appearances, in addition to appearing frequently in spin-off media such as novels and audio releases.
The Sands of Mars is a science fiction novel by English writer Arthur C. Clarke. While he was already popular as a short story writer and as a magazine contributor, The Sands of Mars was also a prelude to Clarke's becoming one of the world's foremost writers of science fiction novels. The story was published in 1951, before humans had achieved space flight. It is set principally on the planet Mars, which has been settled by humans and is used essentially as a research establishment. The story setting is that Mars has been surveyed but not fully explored on the ground. The Sands of Mars was Clarke's first published novel.
Robinson Crusoe on Mars is a 1964 American science fiction film directed by Byron Haskin and produced by Aubrey Schenck that stars Paul Mantee, Victor Lundin, and Adam West. It is a science fiction retelling of the classic 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. The film was distributed by Paramount Pictures and filmed in Technicolor and Techniscope.
The interplanetary dust cloud, or zodiacal cloud, consists of cosmic dust that pervades the space between planets within planetary systems, such as the Solar System. This system of particles has been studied for many years in order to understand its nature, origin, and relationship to larger bodies.
Roman Frederick Starzl (1899–1976) was an American author. He, and earlier, his father, owned the Le Mars Globe-Post newspaper of Le Mars, Iowa. Roman Frederick was also the father of physician Thomas E. Starzl. His writing is largely forgotten now, but he was called a "master" by the pioneer of space opera E. E. Smith. Starzl's Interplanetary Flying Patrol, in The Hornets of Space, may have influenced Smith's Galactic Patrol. There is an extensive interview with Thomas Starzl about his father in Eric Leif Davin's Pioneers of Wonder.
"Loophole" is a science fiction short story by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, first published in 1946 in the magazine Astounding Science Fiction. It was subsequently published as part of a short story collection in A Treasury of Science Fiction (Groff Conklin, 1948 and Expedition to Earth in 1953.
The ethics of terraforming has constituted a philosophical debate within biology, ecology, and environmental ethics as to whether terraforming other worlds is an ethical endeavor.
The idea of sending humans to Mars has been the subject of aerospace engineering and scientific studies since the late 1940s as part of the broader exploration of Mars. Some have also considered exploring the Martian moons of Phobos and Deimos. Long-term proposals have included sending settlers and terraforming the planet. Proposals for human missions to Mars came from e.g. NASA, Russia, Boeing, SpaceX, and the Inspiration Mars Foundation. As of 2022, only robotic landers and rovers have been on Mars. The farthest humans have been beyond Earth is the Moon.
Flight to Mars is a 1951 American Cinecolor science fiction film drama, produced by Walter Mirisch for Monogram Pictures, directed by Lesley Selander, that stars Marguerite Chapman, Cameron Mitchell, and Arthur Franz.
The Planetary series of stories by Stanley G. Weinbaum is a series of short stories, published in Wonder Stories and Astounding Stories in the 1930s, which are set upon various planets and moons of the Solar System.
"Mars Is Heaven!" is a science fiction short story by American writer Ray Bradbury, originally published in 1948 in Planet Stories. "Mars Is Heaven!" was among the stories selected in 1970 by the Science Fiction Writers of America as one of the best science fiction short stories published before the creation of the Nebula Awards. As such, it was published in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One, 1929–1964. It also appears as the sixth chapter of The Martian Chronicles, revised as "The Third Expedition."
Charles Cockell is a British astrobiologist who is professor of astrobiology in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh and co-director of the UK Centre for Astrobiology.
Sergey Vladimirovich Polyakov is a Russian-American scientist performing research for USPolyResearch. He is best known for his R&D in space technology and chemical engineering including the theoretical and experimental studies of the performance of life support systems (LSS) for Soviet interplanetary spaceships and the MIR and ALPHA orbital stations using a ground-based Martian expedition real-scaled simulator on YouTube in the Institute for Biomedical Problems. Developed an integrated approach to the design of air revitalization and water reclamation/conditioning system from human wastes on the basis of energy-efficient membrane and depth-filtration methods.
A Prophetic Romance: Mars to Earth is an 1896 utopian novel written by John McCoy, and published pseudonymously as the work of "The Lord Commissioner," the narrator of the tale. The book is one element in the major wave of utopian and dystopian literature that characterized the final decades of the nineteenth century.
Project Mars: A Technical Tale is a 2006 science fiction novel by German-American rocket physicist, Wernher von Braun (1912–1977), credited as Dr. Wernher von Braun. It was written by von Braun in German in 1949 and entitled Marsprojekt. Henry J. White (1892–1962) translated the book into English and it was published later by Apogee Books (Canada) in 2006 as Project Mars: A Technical Tale, almost thirty years after von Braun's death. The original German text remains unpublished.
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