Story summary
Mr. Cave has an antique shop in Seven Dials, a district in the West End of London which, at the time the story was written, was a poor area. He is well educated but is in an unhappy situation. His wife, who is younger, treats him with contempt, as do his stepson and stepdaughter. He is in declining health.
He is a friend of Mr. Jacoby Wace, who is Assistant Demonstrator of Anatomy at a nearby teaching hospital and is interested in unusual characters like Mr. Cave. It becomes clear toward the end of the story that the narrator, who plays no part in the events, is an acquaintance of Mr. Wace.
Among antique items which have come into Mr. Cave's possession is a crystal egg. Wandering about the shop one night, he notices that a light comes from it. Studying it closely, "it gave him the impression that the object had for a moment opened to him the view of a wide and spacious and strange country." He takes the egg to Mr. Wace for safe keeping, after his reluctance to sell it to a customer has exacerbated his relationship with his wife and stepchildren.
Mr. Wace is unable to see the view inside the egg as clearly as Mr. Cave, whose fatigued mental state seems to enhance his perception of the vision seen within it. However he believes in Mr. Cave's discovery, and during several sessions he takes notes as Mr. Cave describes what he sees. After a few days Mr. Cave takes the egg home with him between sessions, as the quarrel it caused has subsided; he likes to view the scene within whenever he can.
A description of what is seen inside the egg occupies about a third of the story. The crystal egg seems to have a counterpart in another place, through which the strange scenery is visible. The sky, and the two moons sometimes present, suggest that the view is of the planet Mars. The counterpart is one of several crystals on top of masts on a large building, around which there are flying creatures who apparently own it. They sometimes look closely at these crystals, presumably to study a remote scene.
Mr. Wace, visiting Mr. Cave's shop after a break of several days caused by pressure of work, is shocked to find that Mr. Cave has died. Some of his stock, including the egg, has been bought by another trader in order to pay for the funeral. This trader, Mr. Wace finds, has sold the egg; the customer, probably unaware of its special properties, cannot be traced. All that remains of the affair are the notes of Mr. Cave's observations. Mr. Wace, and his friend the narrator of the story, are left speculating on the significance of the crystal egg: it seems to have come from Mars, and there may be others like it on Earth, counterparts of the other crystals seen, "sent hither from that planet, in order to give the Martians a near view of our affairs."
Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun, has appeared as a setting in works of fiction since at least the mid-1600s. Trends in the planet's portrayal have largely been influenced by advances in planetary science. It became the most popular celestial object in fiction in the late 1800s, when it became clear that there was no life on the Moon. The predominant genre depicting Mars at the time was utopian fiction. Around the same time, the mistaken belief that there are canals on Mars emerged and made its way into fiction, popularized by Percival Lowell's speculations of an ancient civilization having constructed them. The War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells's novel about an alien invasion of Earth by sinister Martians, was published in 1897 and went on to have a major influence on the science fiction genre.
The Martian Chronicles is a science fiction fix-up novel, published in 1950, by American writer Ray Bradbury that chronicles the exploration and settlement of Mars, the home of indigenous Martians, by Americans leaving a troubled Earth that is eventually devastated by nuclear war.
Alien invasion or space invasion is a common feature in science fiction stories and film, in which extraterrestrial lifeforms invade the Earth to exterminate and supplant human life, enslave it, harvest people for food, steal the planet's resources, or destroy the planet altogether. It can be considered as a science-fiction subgenre of the invasion literature, expanded by H. G. Wells's seminal alien invasion novel The War of the Worlds.
Stanley Grauman Weinbaum was an American science fiction writer. His first story, "A Martian Odyssey", was published to great acclaim in July 1934; the alien Tweel was arguably the first character to satisfy John W. Campbell's challenge: "Write me a creature who thinks as well as a man, or better than a man, but not like a man." Weinbaum wrote more short stories and a few novels, but died from lung cancer less than a year and a half later.
A Princess of Mars is a science fantasy novel by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the first of his Barsoom series. It was first serialized in the pulp magazine All-Story Magazine from February–July, 1912. Full of swordplay and daring feats, the novel is considered a classic example of 20th-century pulp fiction. It is also a seminal instance of the planetary romance, a subgenre of science fantasy that became highly popular in the decades following its publication. Its early chapters also contain elements of the Western. The story is set on Mars, imagined as a dying planet with a harsh desert environment. This vision of Mars was based on the work of the astronomer Percival Lowell, whose ideas were widely popularized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The First Men in the Moon is a scientific romance, originally serialised in The Strand Magazine and The Cosmopolitan from November 1900 to June 1901 and published in hardcover in 1901, by the English author H. G. Wells, who called it one of his "fantastic stories". The novel tells the story of a journey to the Moon undertaken by the two protagonists: a businessman narrator, Mr. Bedford; and an eccentric scientist, Mr. Cavor. Bedford and Cavor discover that the Moon is inhabited by a sophisticated extraterrestrial civilisation of insect-like creatures they call "Selenites". The inspiration seems to come from the famous 1865 book by Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon, and the opera by Jacques Offenbach from 1875. Verne's novel also uses the word "Selenites" to describe inhabitants of the Moon.
Many works of fiction have featured UFOs. In most cases, as the fictional story progresses, the Earth is being invaded by hostile alien forces from outer space, usually from Mars, as depicted in early science fiction, or the people are being destroyed by alien forces, as depicted in the film Independence Day. Some fictional UFO encounters may be based on real UFO reports, such as Night Skies. Night Skies is based on the 1997 Phoenix UFO Incident.
"A Martian Odyssey" is a science fiction short story by American writer Stanley G. Weinbaum originally published in the July 1934 issue of Wonder Stories. It was Weinbaum's second published story, and remains his best known. It was followed four months later by a sequel, "Valley of Dreams". These are the only stories by Weinbaum set on Mars.
The Martian Chronicles is a 1980 television three-episode miniseries based on Ray Bradbury's 1950 book The Martian Chronicles and dealing with the exploration of Mars and the inhabitants there. The series starred Rock Hudson, Darren McGavin, Bernadette Peters, Roddy McDowall, Fritz Weaver, Barry Morse, and Maria Schell. It was aired on NBC in January 1980 in three episodes with a total running time of just over four hours. The series depicts Mars as having a "thin atmosphere" which humans can breathe, with water-filled canals and desert-like vegetation. The miniseries was directed by Michael Anderson and written by Richard Matheson.
Star Begotten is a 1937 novel by H. G. Wells. It tells the story of a series of men who conjecture upon the possibility of the human race being altered, through genetic modification, by Martians to replace their own dying planet.
H. G. Wells was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction. His writing career spanned more than sixty years, and his early science fiction novels earned him the title of "The Father of Science Fiction".
"Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed" is a science fiction short story by American writer Ray Bradbury. It was originally published in the magazine Thrilling Wonder Stories in August 1949, under the title "The Naming of Names". It was subsequently included in the short-story collections A Medicine for Melancholy and S Is for Space.
Strange Ports of Call is an anthology of science fiction stories edited by American writer August Derleth. It was first published by Pellegrini & Cudahy in 1948. The stories had originally appeared in the magazines Blue Book, Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Science and Invention, Astounding Stories, Coronet, The New Review, The Black Cat, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Wonder Stories, Comet, The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly and Planet Stories.
Barsoom is a fictional representation of the planet Mars created by American pulp fiction author Edgar Rice Burroughs. The first Barsoom tale was serialized as Under the Moons of Mars in pulp magazine The All-Story from February to July 1912 and published compiled as a novel as A Princess of Mars in 1917. It features John Carter, a late-19th-century American Confederate veteran who is mysteriously transported from Earth to the dying world of Mars where he meets and romances the beautiful Martian princess Dejah Thoris. Ten sequels followed over the next three decades, further extending his vision of Barsoom and adding other characters.
The Infinite Worlds of H. G. Wells is a four-hour television miniseries conceived by Nick Willing and released in 2001 by the Hallmark Channel. It is based on a number of short stories by H. G. Wells, and in some territories was titled The Scientist.
The War of the Worlds is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells. It was written between 1895 and 1897, and serialised in Pearson's Magazine in the UK and Cosmopolitan magazine in the US in 1897. The full novel was first published in hardcover in 1898 by William Heinemann. The War of the Worlds is one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between humankind and an extraterrestrial race. The novel is the first-person narrative of an unnamed protagonist in Surrey and his younger brother in London as southern England is invaded by Martians. It is one of the most commented-on works in the science fiction canon.
Old Mars is a "retro Mars science fiction"-themed anthology edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, published on October 8, 2013. According to the publisher Tor Books, the collection celebrates the "Golden Age of Science Fiction", an era before advanced astronomy and space exploration told us what we currently know about the Solar System, when "of all the planets orbiting that G-class star we call the Sun, none was so steeped in an aura of romantic decadence, thrilling mystery, and gung-ho adventure as Mars." Old Mars won a 2014 Locus Award.
Andrew Taylor Weir is an American novelist. His 2011 novel The Martian was adapted into the 2015 film of the same name directed by Ridley Scott. He received the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2016 and his 2021 novel Project Hail Mary was a finalist for the 2022 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
Imagining Mars: A Literary History is a 2011 non-fiction book by science fiction scholar Robert Crossley. The book chronicles the history of Mars in fiction, and to a lesser extent in culture. The overarching thesis of the work is that the scientific understanding of Mars and the versions of the planet imagined in works of fiction have developed in parallel and influenced each other. It covers a timeframe spanning from the pre-telescope era up to the present day, especially the time period after 1877. Particular attention is paid to the influence of amateur astronomer Percival Lowell (1855–1916), who popularized the myth of Martian canals in the public consciousness, and science fiction author H. G. Wells (1866–1946) who wrote the seminal 1897 novel The War of the Worlds. The book charts how the depiction of Mars changed throughout the second half of the 1900s in response to successive advances in planetary science, while noting that some authors preferred to continue portraying the planet in a nostalgic way that was by then scientifically outdated.
