In 1877, Mars was in a particularly favourable position for observation, and Shiaparelli, at that point director of the Brera Observatory near Milan, took advantage of this opportunity to make detailed observations of the planet's surface. Using these observations and additional data from the next decade, he produced maps of Mars which remained the standard until space probes allowed for more accurate images.
But when Schiaparelli's work was translated into English, the Italian phrase "canali", intended to refer to the channels that he had observed, was translated as "canals" - creations of intelligence rather than environment. The confusion regarding life on Mars that was started by this minor alteration was to continue for almost one hundred years, until Mariner 4 sent closeup pictures of Mars back to NASA in 1965.
Impact on Science Fiction
Regardless of the position of the scientific community, the idea of vast canals spanning a desert planet resonated with the science fiction community. Authors were fascinated by the vision of Mars as a dying planet inhabited by the descendants of a fallen civilization older than our own, desperately fighting a losing battle against the ever advancing sands.
This view of Mars inspired H.G. Wells’ classic War of The Worlds, Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, and the Mars known as Barsoom to its inhabitants in Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter novels. Other well-known authors whose work is based around the myth of the Martian canals are Robert A. Heinlein, H. Beam Piper, Leigh Brackett, and Stanley Weinbaum, whose 1934 short story A Martian Odyssey is generally considered to be one of the first portrayals of a sympathetic alien character.
Mapping Mars
However, Schiaparelli is more deserving of praise than the common translation error about canals would suggest. As he made his initial observations of the Martian surface, he began to name the various geographic features that he saw, and those names have left Schiaparelli with a lasting heritage.
Just as the broad flat plains of the Moon were commonly referred to as "seas", Schiaparelli used a similar convention for Martian names, giving us The Sea of Sirens, the Bay of the Dawn, and the Lake of the Sun. Other names came from mythology, the Bible, or history. But regardless of its origins, the geography of Mars has a sort of lyrical poetry to it: Tharsis, Chryse, Ophyr, Thyle, Cydonia, Elysium - they almost seem to have been chosen as locations for adventure and fantasy.
Changing SF Themes
Current scientific theory has it that the only life on Mars may be on the microcellular level, and science fiction authors have sadly and reluctantly moved on from tales of dying civilizations and fallen empires on our sister world. Now science fiction tends to look to life on Mars as it would be lived by colonists from Earth, and, more ambitiously, to the prospect of terraforming Mars. If technology can some day match imagination, a future generation of Mars-born humans may be able to stand on the shore of the Bay of the Dawn and see the sun glinting off the waves of a Martian sea.
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