Mapping Mars

"Mapping Mars is both a chronicle of the technology that has taken us to the threshold of another planet and a history of the growth of human understanding. It introduces the small band of scientists who are trying to understand the forces that have shaped the face of Mars, to tease apart the earthlike from the alien in these familiar yet distorted landscapes. They are driven both by scientific curiosity and by a more primitive desire to discover what this distant place is really like; of what it would be like to stand under its dusty skies and know it for what it is. They are opening up a new world to the imagination.". "Their world is a dramatic one. On Mars the volcano Ascraeus Mons climbs to more than twice the height of Everest; the impact basin Hellas, as wide as Western Europe, plunges deeper than the Pacific; the canyons of Valles Marineris form a scar as broad as a continent. Our maps fill the emptiness with the names of ancient and imagined lands - Olympus, Arcadia, Hesperia - and departed friends - H. G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan.". "Only on Mars does Utopia have a latitude and longitude. This is the story of how its measure was taken, and of the men and women inspired to explore it and, eventually, to bring it to life."--BOOK JACKET.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.