Miss Pickerell and the Amply Read Planet

Recently, we stumbled across an insightful essay titled “Past Masters: Mars – The Amply Read Planet,” by Bud Webster, at the website Helix: a Speculative Fiction Quarterly. Written in July 2006, the essay mentions many of the seminal works in the cannon of Martian science fiction. More interesting is Webster’s “list of what I consider to be the 100 best story titles that mention Mars.” The list contains novels, short stories, and a poem, “A Martian Sends a Postcard Home,” by Craig Raine (1979).

Pictured above: Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars, by Ellen MacGregor (1951), which is included in Webster’s “100 Best” list and is recommended reading by Dr. Bert Vogelstein of the Academy of Achievement.