Books I'm Reading: Mapping Mars

Oliver Morton's Mapping Mars (Picador, 2003), like so many books about science, is already out of date after only ten years. The rover Curiosity hadn't yet made its spectacular landing on Mars when Morton wrote his book. None of Curiosity's photos of the planet's surface had yet been created. The book is worth reading, nevertheless. Even if the author was unable to draw on the most recent waves of data from Mars, the book splendidly surveys how our conception of Mars has changed as new information about the place--perennially fascinating because it's both relatively Earth-like and almost entirely alien--has become available. The book is as much a survey of the culture of Martian science as it is a book about the planet itself: Morton writes fluently and engagingly both about Mars and about the people that have thought about the planet--astronomers and geologists mostly, but also artists and science fiction writers that have helped shaped the popular image of Mars. Recommended.