Craters on Mars to be named for SF writers - request for suggestions

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Sophia

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This is so nice. :) If you have a favourite SF story set on Mars and would like to suggest the author be given the honour of having a crater on Mars named after them, then please reply here. The existing names can be checked at the USGS Planetary Geology web site gazetteer of planetary nomenclature, here. The caveat is that the author must be deceased.
 

Pthom

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Cool, ElaraSophia. Thanks for posting this.
 

thothguard51

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Edgar Rice Burroughs should have his own crater as well, or maybe even a mountain range. He has a series of 11 books where Mars was the world his main MC was transported to...
 

Mishell

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If they don't name one after Kim Stanley Robinson I'm going to cry like a little girl.

Edit: They have to be deceased? Argh, the best writer about Mars is still living. What a shame. I guess I'll have to go kill him.
 
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ClareGreen

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W. E. Johns of 'Biggles' fame wrote 10 sci-fi books, more than one of which took the characters to Mars. My school library had one or two, back when I was small - they were the first sci-fi I ever read. http://www.wejohns.com/SciFi/
 

Lyra Jean

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Edgar Rice Burroughs should have his own crater as well, or maybe even a mountain range. He has a series of 11 books where Mars was the world his main MC was transported to...

I have three of his novels in one. The John Carter Mars stories. Got it Barnes and Noble. My dad was a big fan so I decided to read them as well.
 

Zoombie

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Heck, in a sci-fi setting I was reading, the future rural martians call themselves barsoomians.

Or rednecks.

Heh.
 

Mac H.

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The caveats include:
* The writer must be deceased
* The writer must bit be known for politics after 1800
* Must not be a religious figure

It's a shame about the last criteria. C.S Lewis should be remembered for his sci-fi as well.

Mac
 

Smiling Ted

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The caveats include:
* The writer must be deceased
* The writer must bit be known for politics after 1800
* Must not be a religious figure

It's a shame about the last criteria. C.S Lewis should be remembered for his sci-fi as well.

Mac

True, but Lewis used his "Space Trilogy" as a Neo-Platonic Christian allegory to inveigh against materialism and what he saw as the hubris of science - specifically the notion of technological space travel. At one point, he suggests that the vast distances between planets are an intentional "quarantine" on the part of the Creator.

In that context, he probably wouldn't have wanted a crater named after him, and NASA wouldn't want to put him there.
 

Mac H.

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True, but Lewis used his "Space Trilogy" as a Neo-Platonic Christian allegory to inveigh against materialism and what he saw as the hubris of science - specifically the notion of technological space travel. At one point, he suggests that the vast distances between planets are an intentional "quarantine" on the part of the Creator.
Exactly. He saw the mythology of Mars and chose to incorporate it into his mythology, bringing it into the eyes of a whole new audience. After all, other sci-fi writers brought the mythology of Mars to the same readership - he introduced it to a new audience.

That's gotta be worth a crater or two!

BTW, According to his "A Reply to Professor Haldane" it wasn't an allegory against the notion of technological space travel. Instead it is an attack on another belief :

To quote:

.. the belief that the supreme moral end is the perpetuation of our species, and that this is to be pursued even if, in the process of being fitted for survival, our species has to be stripped of all those things for which we value it- of pity, of happiness, and of freedom

In fact, he makes it clear in that essay (or was it another one?) that he doesn't think that science and technology is evil. Instead, science has become so trusted that any intelligent person wanting to encourage another to do evil would choose to phrase the invitation in scientific terms. In the past, an evil man in authority could just say "Do this, even though it goes against your natural instincts.". Now they would say "This is the scientific thing to do - even though it goes against your natural instincts".

Yes, he speculated that we should be careful before we just go rushing off into technological progress.

And for that, we should thank him - not forget him.

Mac
 
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