Fiction > The Children of Tellus
At the turn of the century, many believed that we were alone in the universe. Mars was sterile desert, Venus was too hot and stormy. Perhaps the Moons of Jove harbored life, but they certainly had no people. The seas of our own moon, recognized since ancient times, were often dismissed as a trick of the light.
This was, of course, before the Maritans arrived.
At first they were subtle--the strange lights in the sky in the gay nineties, an odd radio transmission here or there. Maybe a rover in the Mojave.
But then there were people. At first just explorers and scientists, but soon there were diplomats and traders. In 21', they landed on the White House lawn. In 23', disaster befell Mars, and they came in droves; sometimes peacefully, sometimes not.
But most shockingly, they were human Martians! Of course, they weren't Earth - men, but they were men nonetheless. We could eat the same food and breath the same air. A few of us even married them.
None of this should've really surprised us. The old myths--from the Epic of Gilgamesh to Homer to the Bible--all said that there were people on other worlds, that men had long ago sailed to distant worlds on chariots of fire. Perhaps they were right after all.
Pages:
- The Solar System
- The Central Solar System
- The Terrestrial Worlds
- The Outer Solar System
- The Peoples of the Solar System