Description:

Five books that helped inspire a passionate rage for the planet Mars that has continued unabated for over a century. "Mars" was Percival Lowell's first book about the Red Planet and the one in which he first suggested the possibility of intelligent life on that world. Inspired by Lowell's work, H.G. Wells wrote "The War of the Worlds"---here included with its "prequel", "The Crystal Egg" and a non-fiction essay on what physical form life on Mars may take. At the same time that "War of the Worlds" first appeared, American science writer Garrett Serviss published an unofficial sequel: "Edison's Conquest of Mars".