A quick review of
Morton, Oliver, Mapping Mars, Fourth Estate (HarperCollins), London, 2002,
pp350.
Oliver Morton is a cut above most science writers. Before joining Wired, he
edited the Economist's science and technology section, a weekly buffet of
impeccably researched and idiosyncratic tidbits. His controlled and
personable prose is a pleasure to read, and his metaphors are startlingly
original. This distinction brings a responsibility that he acknowledges;
on page 56, he promises that Martian crater-chronology "will be discussed
later, along with many other scientific issues some readers probably think
I'm passing over too quickly at the moment".
Morton's insight - that Mars is best approached by its maps and their
makers, human and machine - lends the book a coherence rare for the genre.
Laurence Bergreen's journalistic "The Quest for Mars" (2000) examines much
the same territory, but through spectacles tinted bacterial green. At one
point in that inferior book, we are told that Jim Garvin's study of "the
location and structure of craters may offer clues to the location of life on
Mars". True, but hardly the point of the exercise; Bergreen is soon reduced
to reprinting emails verbatim and musing that "[Garvin is] an artist with
his data, he shows but rarely tells."
With no such biological axe to grind, Morton's honesty and perception are
free to
roam. Mars Pathfinder's main scientific instrument was a failure.
Interplanetary probes orbited by the Shuttle are internally subsidised by
NASA - launch costs are borne by Human Spaceflight, rather than the
(robotic) Office of Space Science. Such facts should be more widely known,
and publishing them helps. Sceptical eyebrows are raised at the right
points, as in a discussion of the climate models suggesting liquid water on
the surface of modern Mars.
I was surprised to learn that only the need for objective reporting
prevented Morton from becoming a founding member of the Mars Society, Bob
Zubrin's noisy and active advocates of human exploration. While sceptical
about the Society's millenarian side, Morton supports its vision of Mars as
home rather than mountaintop. Under Morton, however, the Economist trumpeted
tired and simplistic "robots good, humans bad" homilies when covering
astronomy and spaceflight. Given the magazine's astral readership, this
message did - and does - incalculable damage to the cause of space
exploration. One wonders whether Morton left partly to avoid toeing the
party line, or has been enlightened since.
Anomalists and the wilder mavericks are rightly ignored in "Mapping Mars",
for this is a scientific adventure, but Morton's diffuse focus includes
science fiction, astronomical art and even Hollywood films ("woeful in
almost every
particular"). Kim Stanley Robinson's epic trilogy is given the prolonged
reading it deserves, though we discover (in a footnote) that "surprisingly
few [planetary scientists] seem to have read his Mars books in their
entirety". The book is at its best, however, on home ground; the patchwork
assembly of images to form the first detailed maps of another planet. Of
Mars' early United States Geological Survey airbrush mappers, we are told
"they built up a mental image of the forms they were trying to portray,
their imaginations reaching into the images for detail, their discipline
pulling them back from self-delusion. They made their Mars in their minds
and their airbrushes whispered it on to the Cronaflex."
There are problems. Proofing errors suggest a rush to publication; billions
become millions at an important point in the text, breaking is substituted
for braking. Although the calibre of condensation is high - Morton writes
for Science -
we are left wanting a little more scientific detail at the expense of
personalities. But Morton has taken time and trouble with this book,
interviewing many of the scientists responsible for our modern picture of
the red planet (a cliché he avoids, rightly pointing out that the surface
is a palette of greys and ochre). Competing theories are weighed deftly, and
even our very own "Nicholas" Hoffman gets a look-in. The result captures
much of the genuine majesty of humanity's encounter with Mars, and is the
best popular account of the study of Mars since the Pathfinder landing.
Edwin Kite
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