Red dreams

We Are the Martians RADIO Radio 4, scheduled for March

Unless a future probe turns up something of staggering import, we have to assume humankind represents the only consciousness that’s ever thought about Mars. So what have we made of the fourth planet from the sun down the years?

This three-part series, part of Radio 4’s Martian Festival, traces the stories that we’ve told ourselves about Mars over the centuries. Expect utopian visions and, via HG Wells, stories of invasion and the rediscovery of ‘old Mars’ by steampunk. The series also explores how scientific insights and the imagination have continually overlapped when it comes to the red planet.