Welcome to the first ever episode of Origin Story dedicated to a planet. We’re taking a long look at the place of Mars in the popular imagination, from ancient civilisations to fin de siècle Mars mania to the current techbro obsession with exploration and colonisation. Is there life on Mars? Let’s find out.

The ancients associated the red planet with gods of war. With the invention of the telescope in the 17th century, astronomers began to understand Mars better and speculate about its inhabitants. Thanks to the amateur astronomer Percival Lowell, the romance of the red planet, and its alleged “canals”, became a craze in the 1890s. H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs imagined the Martians as colonisers and colonised respectively, while luminaries like Nikola Tesla and Francis Galton hatched outlandish schemes to contact them.

Science played the killjoy. Even as a new wave of Mars mania swept the post-war world, NASA probes unveiled the reality of a cold, dusty, dead planet. But their findings allowed for a new breed of romance: the possibility of actually reaching and settling on Mars.

Ray Bradbury compared Mars to a mirror. What does humanity’s fascination with it say about our own dreams and fears over the centuries? How did the fictional Martian turn from a friendly pacifist into a ruthless killing machine? Why is there such a thin line between fact and fiction? Is Elon Musk’s obsession with settlement really possible or just another delusion? And why exactly do so many people want to travel to a planet that makes the least hospitable places on earth look like Center Parcs?

It’s a mindboggling tale of scientific discovery and wild fantasy, with an all-star cast including Lord Tennyson, William Herschel, Thomas Edison, David Bowie and Arthur C. Clarke. Plus! Our first ever Origin Story playlist, with 23 songs about Mars. We have lift-off.

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Reading list

• Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles (1950)

• Albert Burneko, ‘Neither Elon Musk nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars’ (2025)

• Stuart Clark (ed.), The Book of Mars: An Anthology of Fact and Fiction (2022)

• Robert Crossley, Imagining Mars: A Literary History (2011)

• Marc Hartzman, The Big Book of Mars (2020)

• Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)

• Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk (2023)

• Nicky Jenner, 4 th Rock from the Sun: The Story of Mars (2017)

• Dorian Lynskey, Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World (2024)

• Lord Tennyson, ‘Locksley Hall Sixty Years After’ (1886)

• Walter Tevis, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1963)

• Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? (2023)

• H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (1898)

• Robert Zubrin, The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must (1996)

Audio and video

• Alternative 3, written by David Ambrose and directed by Christopher Miles (1977)

• The Bunker: Why Elon Musk’s plan for life on Mars is a terrible idea (2025)

• The Martian, written by Drew Goddard and directed by Ridley Scott (2015)

• A Trip to Mars, directed by Ashley Miller for the Edison Company (1910)

• The War of the Worlds, written and directed by Orson Welles (1938)

Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

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Imagining Mars

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