Areias de Marte

[The Space Trilogy #1 -- The Sands of Mars (1951) by Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - 2008). Capa: Lima de Freitas] '-' Martin Gibson fôra aclamado por suas histórias de ficção científica, mas a ficção tinha se tornado rapidamente um fato. O homem tinha conquistado o espaço e uma pequena colônia havia se estabelecido em Marte. Agora Gibson tinha realizado seu sonho de visitar a rochosa comunidade somente para descobrir os colonizadores trabalhando no misterioso Projeto Alvorecer (Project Dawn). Mas o que eles estavam escondendo? Uma lua inteira de Marte, Phobos, é declarada "fora dos limites". Um desconhecido projeto de pesquisa caminha para sua conclusão. E então surgem as bizarras faixas nas remotas areias de Marte. Quem ou o quê as fez?
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"The Sands of Mars" is Arthur C. Clarke's first published science fiction novel. While he was already popular as a short story writer and as a magazine contributor, The Sands of Mars was also a prelude to Clarke's becoming one of the world's foremost writers of science fiction novels. (...) It was also published later as part of The Space Trilogy, an omnibus of three of Clarke's earlier works which also includes "Islands in the Sky" and "Earthlight"

The story was published in 1951, before humans had achieved space flight. It is set principally on the planet Mars, which has been settled by humans and is used essentially as a research establishment. The story setting is that Mars has been surveyed but not fully explored on the ground '.'
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The book has given an inspiration for the title of guitarist Jimi Hendrix's last and unfinished album, First Rays of the New Rising Sun. The album also contains an unfinished song "New Rising Sun" in which "Jupiter Sun" is mentioned.

The transformation of Phobos into a second sun has similarities to what is done to Jupiter in Clarke's novel 2010: Odyssey Two. In that case, alien technology triggers a fusion reaction in the planet, which is largely hydrogen. In the case of Phobos - tiny and mostly rock - Clarke proposes an imaginary "meson resonance reaction" that has recently been discovered.

Clarke's vision of Mars was based on what was known or imagined in the 1950s. The Martian canals were long discredited, but it was not thought that Mars had mountains or craters. Seasonal changes visible from Earth were thought to be caused by vegetation of the sort the novel describes. [From Wikipedia].

Aventura / Ficção científica / Literatura Estrangeira / Romance / Suspense e Mistério