The Martian

Hilliard, A. R. (Alec Rowley), 1908-1951Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.8

Word count: 61K words
Chapters: 7

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Martian by Allen Glasser and A. R. HilliardAuthor: Hilliard, A. R. (Alec Rowley), 1908-1951,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Oct 9, 2012

Editor's review

The Martian is a short science fiction work by Allen Glasser and A. R. Hilliard, digitized by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain ebook. Its value lies first at the documentary level: a product of the early twentieth-century American pulp science fiction magazine era, it is brief and punchy, offering a direct feel for the narrative conventions of the then-popular "Mars fantasy"—alien visitors, misunderstandings and reversals, and light satire of human weakness. It is short and fast-paced, making it a handy small sample for understanding the evolution of the science fiction genre. Readers should not expect hard-SF scientific worldbuilding or a complex setting; its appeal is closer to that of a suspenseful, fable-like short story. For those studying the ecology of early science fiction magazines or the genealogy of Mars-themed fiction, this text can be placed alongside works such as Wells's The War of the Worlds to observe how popular imagination was shaped by the scientific ideas of the age. The ebook is easy to obtain and can be read in one sitting on a commute or between classes, then revisited to analyze its narrative structure and period discourse.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in early science fiction short stories and magazine-era works
Science fiction fans who want a short text to trace the evolution of Mars-themed fiction
Students who need public-domain English short stories for extensive reading
Casual readers who enjoy suspenseful short stories and do not require hardcore worldbuilding

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting a long-form worldbuilding and hard-SF technical detail
Readers who prefer the complex characterization and depth of contemporary science fiction
Researchers who need detailed author biographies and annotations

Reading tips

Read it once through, then return to the opening and note how the author plants misunderstandings and reversals.
Before reading, learn about early twentieth-century ideas such as the Martian canals to understand the period context.
Compare it with Wells's The War of the Worlds to see how the image of the "Martian visitor" is handled differently.
Treat it as a sample of genre history and note its narrative conventions and character functions.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this story a novel or a short story?

According to the Project Gutenberg record, it is a short story, suitable for reading in one or two sittings. Its plot is concentrated, its cast small, and it does not aim for a grand worldview—it is more like a magazine short story with suspense and reversals. Readers should not expect it to unfold details the way a novel would.

Is it related to the movie of the same name, The Martian?

No. The Martian cataloged here was written by Glasser and Hilliard and belongs to early twentieth-century American pulp science fiction short stories; it has no connection in author, era, or plot to Andy Weir's later novel and the film The Martian. When searching, be careful to distinguish works that share an English title but have completely different contents.

Is the original English hard to read?

Overall, the difficulty is moderate. As an early pulp magazine work, its sentences are shorter than nineteenth-century literature and its vocabulary is fairly everyday, though it may contain period idioms and science fiction terminology. A college-level English foundation is enough to read it through; when you encounter unfamiliar words, you can skip them first to keep the plot coherent and look up key terms afterward.

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About the author

Hilliard, A. R. (Alec Rowley), 1908-1951 Author · 1908–1951

A. R. Hilliard (full name Alec Rowley Hilliard, 1908–1951) is an author about whom relatively little public information is available in Chinese library records; only one of his works, The Martian, is currently held. With no reliable records of his nationality, education, or writing career, public sources are limited, and a full biography cannot be reconstructed. On the available evidence, his writing is closely tied to the science-fiction imagination of the first half of the twentieth century: the title points to a visitor from Mars or a Martian-related alien presence, a theme often used in that era to examine human society, technological risk, and fear of the unknown. His style and influence await further historical and critical evidence, and readers should treat The Martian as a first-hand entry point to this author rather than as a basis for inferring his entire body of work.