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A Martian is a native inhabitant of the planet Mars. Although the search for evidence of life on Mars continues, many science fiction writers have imagined what extraterrestrial life on Mars might be like. Some writers also use the word ''Martian'' to describe a human colonist on Mars. ==Martians in fiction== The word "Martian", used as a noun instead of an adjective, first entered the English language in late 1877. It appeared nearly simultaneously in England and the United States, in magazine articles detailing Asaph Hall's discovery of the moons of Mars in August of that year. An early, brief fictional account of an invasion of Earth by Martians appeared in 1881, in a futuristic article inspired by the International Exposition of Electricity, Paris. ''Aleriel, or A Voyage to Other Worlds'' (1883) by W. S. Lach-Szyrma was previously reputed to be the first published work to apply the word ''Martian'' as a noun instead of an adjective. The usage is incidental; it occurs when Aleriel, the novel's protagonist, lands on Mars in a spacecraft called an "ether-car" (an allusion to aether, which was once postulated as a gaseous medium in outer space). Aleriel buries the car in snow "so that it might not be disturbed by any Martian who might come across it." Fifteen years later, H. G. Wells' landmark novel ''The War of the Worlds'' (1898) was published by William Heinemann, Ltd. when the latter was a relatively new publishing house. This novel went through many versions and was translated in world wide later. In the story, the Martians are a technologically advanced race of octopus-like extraterrestrials who invade Earth because Mars is becoming too cold to sustain them. The Martians' undoing is a lethal vulnerability to Earth bacteria. In his book ''Mars and Its Canals'' (1906), astronomer and businessman Percival Lowell conjectured that an extinct Martian race had once constructed a vast network of aqueducts to channel water to their settlements from Mars' polar ice caps, Planum Australe and Planum Boreum. Lowell did not invent this Martian canal hypothesis, but he supported it.〔Alfred Russel Wallace refuted Lowell's conjecture in his own book ''Is Mars Habitable?'' (1907), in which he argues that neither the atmosphere of Mars nor its climate could sustain life as we understand it.〕 The belief that Mars had canals was based on observations Giovanni Schiaparelli made through his reflecting telescope. Although the telescope's image was fuzzy, Schiaparelli thought he saw long, straight lines on the Martian surface; some astronomers came to believe that these lines were structures built by Martians. This idea inspired Lowell, who returned to the subject in ''Mars As the Abode of Life'' (1910), wherein he wrote a fanciful description of what this Martian society may have been like. Although his description was based on almost no evidence, Lowell's words evoked vivid pictures in his readers' imaginations. One of the people Lowell inspired was Edgar Rice Burroughs, who began writing his own story about Mars in the summer of 1911. The story is a planetary romance in which an American Civil War veteran named John Carter is transported to Mars when he walks inside a cave on Earth. He finds that Mars is populated by two species of warring humanoids, and he becomes embroiled in their conflict. In February 1912, an American pulp magazine called ''The All-Story'' published Burroughs' story as the first installment of a serial novel, which the editor titled ''Under the Moons of Mars'' (retitled ''A Princess of Mars'' in subsequent editions). The book was the first in Burroughs' Barsoom series. Although the noun ''Martian'' can describe any organism from Mars, these and later works typically imagine Martians as a humanoid monoculture. ''Martian'', in this sense, is more like the word ''human'' than the word ''Earthling''. (Few writers describe a biodiverse Mars.) In science fiction, Martians are stereotypically imagined in one or more of the following ways: As alien invaders; as humanoids with a civilization that resembles one on Earth; as anthropomorphic animals; as beings with superhuman abilities; as humanoids with a lower intelligence than humans; as human colonists who adopt a Martian identity; and/or as an extinct race who possessed high intelligence. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Martian」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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