Research

I made a start on my research. And I'm embarrassed to admit that it was about a month ago.

Nonetheless, I've been reading Dynamic Mars, edited by Richard J. Soare, et al. It's a technical deep-dive into the comparative evolutionary geology of Mars. The comparisons are both in terms of the differences and similarities with Earth, as well as in relation to the changes involved during Mars' tragic evolutionary history.  

Although I'm still reading this, it inspired me to go off and create a glossary of Martian geological features. I want to know how to describe Mars like Cormac McCarthy describes the Texas desert back-country. 

Here are a couple of excerpts from No Country for Old Men:

"MOSS SAT WITH THE HEELS of his boots dug into the volcanic gravel of the ridge and glassed the desert below him with a pair of twelve power german binoculars... The sun was up less than an hour and the shadow of the ridge and the datilla and the rocks fell far out across the floodplain below him... He lowered the binoculars and sat studying the land. Far to the south the raw mountains of Mexico... To the west the baked terracotta terrain of the running borderlands. He spat dryly and wiped his mouth on the shoulder of his cotton workshirt." (p.3)

"He stood there looking out across the desert. So quiet. Low hum of wind in the wires. High bloodweeds along the road. Wiregrass and sacahuista. Beyond in the stone arroyos the tracks of dragons. The raw rock mountains shadowed in the late sun and to the east the shimmering abscissa of the desert plains under a sky where raincurtains hung dark as soot all along the quadrant. That god lives in silence who has scoured the following land with salt and ash. He walked back to the cruiser and got in and pulled away." (p.22)

Gives you a real sense of place, doesn't it? And Mars isn't so different, if you take the flora and fauna out of it. So I've been researching the kinds of features that exist on Mars. For example, I've been wondering if there are arroyos on Mars. 

Arroyo is a Spanish word for a creek, a small river, or a gulch (which is a small ravine)

A ravine or gorge is a narrow passage through land, especially: a narrow steep-walled canyon or part of a canyon.

A canyon is a deep narrow valley with steep sides, often with a stream flowing through it.  

So, one should use the term 'canyon' for the largest land-forms, and 'gully', 'gulch' or 'arroyo' for the smallest ones. 'Gorge' and 'ravine' seem like they could be used interchangeably and are middling in terms of size.

Coming back to arroyos and gulches, I found it interesting that to “dry gulch,” as in the Western movies, was to lurk in a gulch to waylay passersby. 

As to whether gulches or arroyos exist on Mars, probably not. On Mars, it appears that such features are much larger, which means that these wouldn't be classified as arroyos (which are relatively small). This is because we don’t see so many well-integrated river channels on Mars as we do in wet climates on Earth. However, we do see huge channels that once carried massive amounts of water. These are similar to slot canyons in that they are long, narrow channels or drainageways with sheer rock walls that are typically eroded into either sandstone or other sedimentary rock. A slot canyon has depth-to-width ratios that typically exceed 10:1 over most of its length and can approach 100:1. Quite dramatic in anyone's book (even for Cormac McCarthy, I'd expect).

So, I'm wading through some highly technical material, which means it was refreshing to receive William Hartmann's A Traveller's Guide to Mars in the mail (I'd forgotten all about it, since postal services of the world have been delivering at the pace of a snail with Covid). 

It's an inviting read and passes itself off as a guide for tourists, something like a Lonely Planet's guide to Mars. It's not without scientific information. Far from it. But it's friendly and even lyrical in its descriptions. Exactly what I need. I'm reminded of my "Crafting Exquisite Sentences" seminar from a few days ago as I go through it:

“Trackless landscape”

“awesome desolation”

“dust devils wander the landscape”, and

“The constellations are the same as the ones we see on Earth, with one exception: a blue-glowing ‘evening star’ with a faint companion ‘star’.”

Now that's the kind of language people want to read, rather than:

"... crater size frequency distribution ..."

"... solufluction process of periglacial mass-wasting ..."

"... warming of the latitude-dependent mantle at times of high obliquity ..."

"... thermally induced increase in CO2 pore gas pressure ...", and finally

"... recurrent slope linea ..."

Don't get me wrong. I love and need this stuff. However, the reader of science fiction wants to be transported somewhere. They want to feel the numbing cold through their densely insulated gloves and boots. Like Lawrence of Arabia, they want to 'see' the endless vistas of the north polar dune fields, and to experience the flashes of lightning that shadow the dust devils that whirl across the Martian plains, scoring cobalt trails into the red landscape. 

They want to bask in the caramel light at mid-day.

And gaze at the deep blue sunset.