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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Mars in fiction/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 9 July 2023 [1].

Mars in fiction

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Nominator(s): TompaDompa (talk) 18:59, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about how the planet Mars has been depicted in fiction, a topic that has been the subject of a fairly extensive body of literature including a few full-length books. I previously overhauled the article completely starting in March 2022 and brought it to WP:Good article status by December. Since then, it has been at WP:Peer review for a few months. I just closed that peer review after receiving a decent amount of feedback and being encouraged to move on here to FAC. This is my first time nominating an article here at FAC.

As far as I can tell, there are currently no featured articles of this kind ("X in fiction/popular culture/whatever"), and I would like that to change. It would be beneficial to have high-quality articles to point to as examples to follow, since unfortunately a large number of "X in fiction" articles are rather poor. A handful of featured articles might go a long way, and I hope this could be the first. TompaDompa (talk) 18:59, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

First-time nomination

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  • Hi TompaDompa, and welcome to FAC. Just noting that as a first time nominator at FAC, this article will need to pass a source to text integrity spot check and a review for over-close paraphrasing to be considered for promotion. Good luck with the nomination. Gog the Mild (talk) 20:55, 8 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@FAC coordinators: A question for the coordinators: This has obviously slowed down a bit over the last couple of weeks. I note that there are several editors who weighed in on the WP:Peer review who have not commented here (yet), in one instance even expressing an intention to review the FAC. What's the policy on leaving those specific editors a message about reviewing this FAC, vis-à-vis WP:CANVASSING? TompaDompa (talk) 20:01, 12 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It is fine to prompt these editors for a review, so long as you do so via a neutrally phrased request. Sometimes placing a polite neutrally phrased request on the talk pages of a few of the more frequent reviewers also helps. Or on the talk pages of relevant Wikiprojects. Or of editors you know are interested in the topic of the nomination. Gog the Mild (talk) 20:46, 12 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wehwalt

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Support per my detailed comments at the peer review.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:41, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Kusma

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I'll try to give this a proper read within the next few days. Just first impressions for now: I love red links (and I am happy they are no longer showstoppers at FAC as they were back in the mid-noughties), but even I think the amount of red links is excessive here, especially in "Early depictions". I'd suggest to choose to link either the English or the Latin title instead of making two long red links, and perhaps link either the author or the work in case both do not yet have articles. It generally feels overlinked (don't link to reference work, for example). There are more MOS:DUPLINKs than I am comfortable with (and I usually belong in the defenders of duplinks camp) including multiple duplicated redlinks. I can't tell whether it is overcited, but it looks overcited. The "Further reading" section seems to duplicate quite a few of the references; while this isn't prohibited by Wikipedia:Further reading, it would be nice to have some short commentary explaining what we should read and why; the section feels a bit overwhelming otherwise. —Kusma (talk) 20:46, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I have reduced the number of WP:REDLINKS, removed all duplicated redlinks I found, removed links to a few common terms, and split the "Further reading" section by type of source. TompaDompa (talk) 23:21, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is an interesting read, but I'm not really sure the way it is done is working. We usually are presented with some aspect of Mars in fiction together with a bunch of examples, but very often there is little detail explaining why the example is an example for this particular aspect.

  • Early depictions: I was suprised to see that Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds says it is "popular science"; is that article wrong?
    • The lines get a bit blurry with works like this. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says "This is one of the earliest works ever written popularizing science, notably Astronomy, for the layman, which it does by wittily presenting its speculations – many about the possibility of Life on Other Worlds, and during which he was dismissive of any likelihood that Mars contained life – in the form of conversations after dinner between the author and a marquise, and by being published in French rather than Latin." TompaDompa (talk) 07:53, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • A Voyage to the World in the Centre of the Earth: To understand what is meant by "inhabitated by spirits", I just had a look at the book, and from what I can see, Mars is a world where certain heroic souls from Earth are being re-embodied after their death. (Of course no country supplies more such heroic souls than England).
  • In contrast, I think Swedenborg's spirits are extraterrestrial, but I didn't read the primary text. [2] [3]
  • s:fr:Les Voyages de Milord Céton dans les sept Planettes also has spirits of the dead on Mars; not sure how embodied they are. In any case, it seems that the theme of "reincarnation on Mars" is already in these older books, not a feature that only came about in the 1880s.
  • I like the "Canals" subsection best so far. It isn't completely clear why it is part of "Early depictions", though.
  • Utopias: "the first work of science fiction set primarily on Mars" this is a bit surprising now; Across the Zodiac has been mentioned before without telling us this rather important fact.
  • You are missing an important dystopia set on Mars: Cat Country or 貓城記 by Lao She, one of the few examples of Chinese SF between 1910 and 1950.
  • The War of the Worlds: I don't think the long list of uncommented "sequels" is very helpful. Admittedly the only one I've read is The Second Invasion from Mars. It isn't listed at List of works based on The War of the Worlds; from what I remember it mentions that the Martians visited before and then tells a completely different story.
    • The idea is to demonstrate that the impact Wells' novel had was both immediate and long-lived, and variegated to boot—not just a bunch of English-language novels, but also short stories, comic books, and works from other parts of the world. The large number of derivative works is a major point made by the sources, e.g. by Westfahl here. TompaDompa (talk) 07:53, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Stopping here for the day. —Kusma (talk) 20:22, 8 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Another break for sleep! Sorry for reading so slowly. —Kusma (talk) 22:05, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Further general comments:

  • I think the video games are not helpful for the article. There seems to be no claim that the video game Marses were influential in literature; if you get into trouble with comprehensiveness I would rather go the other direction and clarify that "fiction" mostly means "literature" (losing the films wouldn't actually lose much, and a separate Mars in film could be pretty awesome).
    • I don't think it's a good idea to restrict the scope of the article in a way that doesn't reflect the sources, especially considering this article is part of a set. Video games get a minimal mention in the sources and right now a minimal mention in the article as well. TompaDompa (talk) 21:51, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please do something about the overciting. If you really, really, really need all of "[20][23][35][77][78][79]", consider {{sfnm}} to at least make it not disrupt the flow of reading.
    • I have gone through all instances where five or more references appeared in a row and eliminated them by variously removing superfluous sources, moving sources to a different place, replacing sources, and rewording the prose to make those things possible. TompaDompa (talk) 21:51, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are still massive amounts of duplicate links, consider using User:Evad37/duplinks-alt.js to find them. A few carefully chosen deliberate duplicate links are fine, but so many are just a distraction.
  • I am unconvinced that individual short stories should be linked to separately if this introduces red links. As I have probably said a few times, there are too many red links in the article.
    • I have removed a few WP:REDLINKS where my research indicated that they were probably not notable, and turned a few others blue. I could work on turning more of them blue, but that would take a not-insignificant amount of time. TompaDompa (talk) 21:51, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Finally finished reading :) Lots of great stuff, but the last three points (and a few listy collections of unexplained examples) still give me pause. —Kusma (talk) 21:54, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Partial support on content and prose. My content concerns have been essentially resolved, and I respect your resistance against those where we differ in opinion (and you know the sources much better). For the questions of overciting and red links, I still have doubts but I will shut up about those now. Excellent work overall. —Kusma (talk) 09:03, 14 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've started working on Alice Ilgenfritz Jones, which turns out to be a first class red link. If the others are equally good (not totally sure about some of the short stories), I would suggest to fill them with decent (DYK+ quality) articles in the time it takes until this article hits the Main Page. —Kusma (talk) 12:07, 14 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think Alice Ilgenfritz Jones and Ella Robinson Merchant have both been listed on WP:Women in Red for quite some time. I'm working on reducing the number of references at the moment, and will likely turn some of the red links blue after that. TompaDompa (talk) 12:13, 14 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
While researching Alice Ilgenfritz Jones (I hope to finish the article very soon), I came across this description of a course on Mars fiction that may or may not be of use; it certainly may help in discussing what to focus on. —Kusma (talk) 20:11, 16 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's a great find and a very interesting read (to me, at least), thank you very much indeed! I found reading it encouraging in terms of the article's focus, since I think they agree rather well with each other. TompaDompa (talk) 21:23, 16 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

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@Nikkimaria: I'll freely admit that this is not my area of expertise, so I have refrained from making any possibly erroneous edits to the images themselves. See my responses above. TompaDompa (talk) 09:36, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Nikkimaria: I took a stab at it, and I believe I have addressed all the issues above. Take a look, and feel free to revert if I messed anything up. TompaDompa (talk) 00:55, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:04, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Hahnchen

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  • Oppose - The article largely deals with the depiction of Mars in literature. It mentions movies and comics. It completely neglects games. This is a blind spot and the article fails the 1b (comprehensive) of the featured article criteria. I suggest taking a look at Terraforming Mars, Surviving Mars, Doom, Red Faction, and others. Some games may be set on Mars incidentally, but it is core to others, exploring the human survival aspect. - hahnchen 12:17, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • This reflects the coverage found in sources on the overarching topic of Mars in fiction, I'm afraid. I'll see if I can find some brief mention of games in the sources, but the coverage of non-literature fiction will necessarily be a minor aspect (and games in particular a very minor aspect) of this article if we are to follow the sources. TompaDompa (talk) 12:27, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Hahnchen: I have added a couple of very brief mentions of games to the article. Note that this represents pretty much the entire extent of game coverage in the sources on the overarching topic (or at least the ones I have found)—only a couple of sources mention games, and they only do so briefly. I could not in good conscience add much more about games to the article, because it would then not be a "representative survey of the relevant literature" as mandated by WP:FACR 1c for reasons of overemphasizing what per the sources is a WP:MINORASPECT. TompaDompa (talk) 13:37, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, non-actionable, I suggest. I would be essential to a broader article on Mars in popular culture, though. SN54129 13:42, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I love the Surviving Mars game but I have to agree, videogames are a minor subtopic in the body of works of fiction related to Mars, and Wikipedia is not TV Tropes (meaning, we are not supposed to simply list every time Mars has been featured in a work of fiction, as in their entry). I was also tempted once to mention the current X-Men comics, where Mars has been fully terraformed and colonized and became a regular location in stories, but I did nothing because I respect the current approach to the article and couldn't find sources from outside comic book niche. Mars is important for the topic of those works, but those works are not important enough for the topic of Mars in fiction if we compare them to "War of the Worlds" or "The Martian". In short: the oppose above is non-actionable. Cambalachero (talk) 23:25, 7 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The oppose was not given because any particular work was omitted. But the complete omission of video games was a clear indication of WP:BIAS. I remain unconvinced that this article is comprehensive, and that its view gives too much weight to western literature compared to other media. You can see this in the sources, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction is cited many many times, yet Mars in the Movies, a book which I assume largely covers Mars in fiction, is cited once. Kusma mentions above the omission of Cat Country, there is no coverage of any Asian perspective. - hahnchen 21:30, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The history of Mars in fiction is, per the sources, largely (but not exclusively) a literary one. I daresay I've conducted a fairly thorough survey of the relevant literature and this reflects what aspects they deem significant and choose to focus upon. The same thing is true of the focus on Western or even English-language works. Some effort has been expended to mitigate this by including works that are not English-language literature where possible, but there is only so much that can be done before it ends up misrepresenting the overall state of the sourcing or engaging in WP:Original research. Inasmuch as there is a bias here, it comes from the sources and is unavoidable without violating our WP:Core content policies.
I don't quite see your point about the sources used. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction isn't limited to literature, nor is it limited to Western works or English-language ones. Mentions of Mars Attacks!, Capricorn One, and Total Recall all come from that source (among others). You say "Mars in the Movies, a book which I assume largely covers Mars in fiction", but it doesn't really. Or at least, it doesn't in the overarching way that is necessary to write an article on a topic like this. It consists of the author giving their opinion on individual movies. Says Miller, "This book is not a filmography per se; rather it takes a more personal approach; it's more about my personal impressions of these films [...]("
At any rate, the article now includes mentions of video games (Doom) and Asian works (Cat Country). TompaDompa (talk) 14:13, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Based on my skim reading, the article places a high emphasis on historical portrayals (those that are fundamental and defining) of Mars, and while works post-2000s are mentioned, they are comparatively limited. There's a fine line between recentism and referencing new forms of media that may not have been prevalent when the primary source works were written. However, video games are a form of fiction and it would be disingenuous to exclude them from an article about fictional works: citing the ABC, Annette Froehlich writes "video games 'are now reaching a cultural legitimacy previously reserved for things like film, music and literature'". In the context of Mars in fiction, they may be a subtopic, but I argue that if incorporated properly (i.e., little more than a passing mention a la Doom), they would surpass WP:MINORASPECT.
Indeed, I am by no means expecting a summation of Category:Video games set on Mars, but a brief mention of some of the front-runners in Mars exploration games should be included. For example, Surviving Mars (2018) is exactly what is says on the tin: a colony management game. Take on Mars (2017) has also been mentioned, but I'm not personally familiar with it. Kerbal Space Program (2011) is another example, but it's more generalised for interstellar travel rather than Mars specifically.
I found a few sources that may be of use in this area to avoid the need to argue against original research or undue bias. They are Outer Space and Popular Culture (2022) by Annette Froehlich and Playing Utopia: Futures in Digital Games (2019) by Benjamin Beil et al (I could not find a PDF or full-text version of this, but the Google Books excerpts may be useful). The book chapter Space Tourism in Contemporary Cinema and Video Games may also be a useful reference but it's again less about Mars and more about general space travel. It's available on ResearchGate. I could not find any scholarly works on the other games mentioned by Hahnchen outside of the typical video game media.
Outside of this, I mostly support promotion but I'd need a more in-depth readthrough later. Anarchyte (talk) 14:00, 15 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've found a book on narrative production in the 21st century that mentions Red Faction in detail that could be used to provide a passing mention in the same way Doom appears in the article. The relevant excerpts are on page 195 (Chapter 5, Introduction). I've also found an article on Mass Effect, another series set on Mars that explores the concept of alien outposts. Anarchyte (talk) 05:33, 17 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
An important distinction to be made here is that the Doom example comes from a source specifically on Mars in fiction, rather than a source on some other topic where the "Mars in fiction" lens can be applied by the reader but isn't inherently present in the text. We must take care not to work backwards from the assumption that XYZ should be mentioned and go hunting for sources to justify it, lest we end up with an article that reflects our perspective on the relative importance of different aspects rather than the sources' perspective (especially if we rely on sources of that latter variety). That being said, the same source that is currently used for Doom also mentions Red Faction. It used to get a mention until another reviewer requested its removal for reasons of coming off as being shoehorned in (which it kind of was). I'll see what I can do. TompaDompa (talk) 22:17, 17 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I understand and agree, which is why I'm not suggesting the article uses game guides or reviews or anything of that nature. The books and articles I've linked above are about the general topic of narrative/games/media within outer space. Anarchyte (talk) 03:30, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well, space in general and Mars in particular are rather different focuses for a source to have in this context. At any rate, I'm working on something. We'll see how it turns out. TompaDompa (talk) 16:47, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I have managed to basically shoehorn in a mention of Surviving Mars, and even that is a bit iffy from a perspective of WP:OR and WP:PROPORTION. Giving "a brief mention of some of the front-runners in Mars exploration games" as suggested above would, absent some yet-undiscovered source on the topic of Mars in fiction taking that perspective, to my eye fall squarely on the wrong side of those policies. I'll see what I can do while abiding by our WP:Core content policies, but the coverage of video games will ultimately necessarily be brief. TompaDompa (talk) 00:06, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Added a bit more about video games in fairly general terms. TompaDompa (talk) 01:31, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I have not read this article properly, just had a skim. I do not believe it is a barrier at all to FA status, however I personally feel the red links are excessive. I personally find them distracting and may be confusing to the many casual readers who will click on this article if it's appearing on the main page. Even though it should not reflect on the article itself, it does (to me anyway), make it feel incomplete, even if it may not be. MaxnaCarta (talk) 01:27, 8 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    (it may be that some redlinks are for authors or works that are not notable. Perhaps do a BEFORE check on each redlink and ensure they're notable enough for an article and remove if not) MaxnaCarta (talk) 01:29, 8 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I'll reiterate what I said in the peer review: "The redlinks are basically all people or works mentioned by the sources, and probably meet the notability guidelines. Many of them I'm certain qualify for stand-alone articles, and the rest I think it's reasonably probable that they do." I could spend an afternoon turning a lot of the WP:REDLINKS blue by creating stubs with sources that demonstrate notability and not much else, but then we would of course end up with a bunch of stubs that don't serve much other purpose than making this page less red. On the flip side, this means that there are a lot of potential articles to write for anyone interested in doing so. TompaDompa (talk) 03:59, 8 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support from Serial

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Per my remarks above; a tight, academic treatment of one of the earliest historical tropes of modern popular culture. SN54129 18:55, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Just as an FYI, but if @FAC coordinators: are waiting for responses from Hahnchen wrt his oppose, I'll just note that we might not be hearing anything from him anytime soon: their last 50 edits go back two and a half years.[7],[8] Frankly, an opposer who lobs a grenade and then does not return to justify or discuss it, impacts the value of their position (very) negatively. SN54129 16:57, 14 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Cambalachero

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Lead
Early depictions
  • "Click on a planet to see the article about its depiction in fiction." goes against MOS:YOU.
  • "Mars is home to spirits in several works of the mid-1700s: in the anonymously published 1755 work A Voyage to the World in the Centre of the Earth, it is a heavenly place where among others Alexander the Great enjoys a second life;[9][10] in the 1758 work De Telluribus in Mundo Nostro Solari by Emanuel Swedenborg, the planet is inhabited by beings characterized by honesty and moral virtue;[5][9][11] and in the 1765 novel Voyage de Milord Céton dans les sept planètes [fr] by Marie-Anne de Roumier-Robert, reincarnated soldiers roam a war-torn landscape." Please rewrite, that sentence is 4 lines long.
    • I honestly don't think it's a problem that some sentences are fairly lengthy. This isn't a run-on sentence, it's three examples with some explanatory context included for each. I have split it into four separate sentences anyway, but that makes it a lot more "listy". TompaDompa (talk)
  • "It later appeared alongside the other planets in the anonymously published 1839 novel A Fantastical Excursion into the Planets where it is divided between the Roman gods Mars and Vulcan, the anonymously published 1873 novel A Narrative of the Travels and Adventures of Paul Aermont among the Planets—where, unlike the other planets, it is culturally rather similar to Earth—and the 1883 novel Aleriel, or A Voyage to Other Worlds by W. S. Lach-Szyrma where a visitor from Venus relates the details of Martian society to Earthlings.[3][5][13][14]" Again, that sentence is way too long.
  • I'm not sure about this (English is my second language), but isn't "trope" an informal word when used with this meaning?
Means of travel
  • "The issue of how humans would get to Mars..." does not sound quite optimal to me. "Issue" sounds as if someone had another word on the tip of his tongue but couldn't figure it out.
Canals
  • "These were generally interpreted—by those who accepted their existence—as waterways" That reads as if the Martin canals was a widely accepted theory except for some people rejecting it, when actually it was a contested and controversial one even in its time.
  • It may be worth pointing out that the Mariner 4 debunked not just the idea of the Martian canals, but the general hopes of finding aliens (or at least intelligent aliens) anywhere in the Solar System as well.

Will continue tomorrow Cambalachero (talk) 19:16, 15 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Utopias
  • "...a civilization on Mars based on a variation on Christianity where woman was created first." That's a misleading link. It may appear to be a link to a trope or type of myth where a woman is the first human, but it's just a link to the regular one (God creates the world in 6 days, Adam and Eve, the apple, etc). It can be fixed with a small change, "...a civilization on Mars based on a variation on Christianity where woman was created first, unlike the Genesis creation narrative."
  • "...Mars became the setting for socialist utopias and revolutions." We have an article on Utopian socialism, but I'm not sure if it would be a better link target because it mixes fiction (socialist utopias in works of fiction) and reality (the alleged ultimate stage of a socialist community).
The War of the Worlds

Seems fine.

Life on Mars
Enlightened
  • Does the source explain the backstory of Martian Manhunter? Because, as far as I know, there used to be a Martian civilization, and they all died out with his sole exception (and a handful others introduced over the years). Seems more of a case for the "Past and non-humanoid life" section.

Will continue tomorrow Cambalachero (talk) 19:56, 16 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]


Evil

Seems fine

Decadent

Seems fine

Past and non-humanoid life
  • Do any of those stories of ancient Martians try to explain why those civilizations collapsed? Is there any recurring plot type about worth mentioning?
Lifeless Mars
  • A lifeless planet with intelligent creatures in hibernation sounds like there is some overlap with the previous section. If so, point that out: that the mentioned trope of an ancient collapsed civilization is used to reconcile the modernly lifeless Mars with some life to keep a plot going.
    • From what I can gather from the sources, this was more a question of writers wanting to write about a Mars that was not completely devoid of life without contradicting what was known about the planet. TompaDompa (talk) 16:42, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Will continue tomorrow Cambalachero (talk) 18:51, 17 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Colonization

Seems fine

Terraforming

Seems fine

Robinsonades
  • The section is too small, just a paragraph of 3 lines. If it can't be expanded with more examples or specific information, then it may be merged into the "Colonization" section (as that was probably the original mission of all stranded astronauts, and the plot would likely reminds us of that quite often).
Nostalgic depictions
  • You added a link to Face on Mars and later another to Cydonia (Mars). The first one is actually a redirect to a section in the Cydonia article (the face does not have an article of its own). Each link should be made in an article only once, see MOS:REPEATLINK.
  • "...and a 2002 episode of the animated television show Futurama." - Why not call the episode "Where the Buggalo Roam" by name? All books and short stories are named in the article, not inferred in a generic "a book by X author", so it would simply keep the style.
First landings
  • "...became popular after US president George H. W. Bush [[Space Exploration Initiative|proposed in 1989]] to accomplish this feat...". Again, that's an easter egg link. Just call the initiative by name, as in "...proposed the [[Space Exploration Initiative]] in 1989 to accomplish..."
Moons

Seems fine Cambalachero (talk) 19:50, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Final comment

All my comments have been dealt with. Support. Cambalachero (talk) 18:02, 22 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Source review

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It seems like the source formatting is consistent and the essential information is there. Given the reviews on The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction I wonder if that is a source suitable for a FA. I presume this isn't usergenerated? Spot-check:

  • 1: OK.
  • 2: I can't access most of the source, but the few things I can see don't look too-closely paraphrased or misstated.
  • 3: I am not sure that this source says anything about Lowell popularizing an idea of a decadent Mars. Nor that it says that terraforming had become the dominant theme in 1990s.
    • The article doesn't really say that Lowell popularized that idea either. It says that "The conception of Martians as decadent was largely derived from Lowell's vision of Mars."—as this source (#30) says, "knowingly or not, Lowell had crafted an evocative and powerful myth that went on to have an impact on innumerable sf stories about Mars, its ancient but decadent culture [...]". On the other hand, this source (#11) says that Lowell "popularised the idea of Mars as the abode of a decadent civilisation struggling to survive in the red desert by means of vast irrigation projects". TompaDompa (talk) 18:28, 17 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think it's a reasonable way to summarize the source's "strife between proponents of Terraforming and those who prefer Mars in its natural state (the "red-green" schism that would preoccupy the Mars fiction of the 1990s)." and later "The idea that Mars might be a promising world for Terraforming invigorated some of the best Mars fiction of the early 1990s. [...] The rise to prominence of Martian Terraforming stories had been prefigured by the work of the poet and cultural critic Frederick Turner [...] As the Mars Pathfinder and Global Surveyor missions of 1996 galvanized public attention around the world, tales of Terraforming gave way again to those of near-future missions and settlement." Robert Markley also says (source #16) "Like the terraforming projects that dominate late-twentieth-century science fiction, the canals are socialism’s epic response to conditions on a dying world." TompaDompa (talk) 18:28, 17 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • 11: Can't access this one. I have to wonder about the accuracy of the page numbers, too.
  • 16: Can't access this one.
  • 23: Can access part of this one, some things I could verify but that huge page range is a problem.
  • 25: I am not sure I see the Genesis commentary there.
  • 27: Can't access this one.
  • 37: Can only access part of it, but it checks out.
  • 38: OK.
  • 45: OK.
  • 47: OK.
  • 51: OK.
  • 52: OK.
  • 59: OK.
  • 78: OK.
  • 81: OK.
  • 90: OK.
  • 94: Can't access this one.
  • 105: Can't access this one.

Except for a bit of 78 and 90, I didn't find any close paraphrasing issues but some of the sources are many pages long and are given huge page ranges. I did not check the further reading section. Not a questionable source from what I know of his non-fiction output, but I am surprised to see George R. R. Martin appearing in a source list - I am too used to A Song of Ice and Fire. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:32, 17 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

For future reference, the numbers above refer to this version (right?).
  • Some page ranges are extensive because the article cites chapters that are lengthy and cover a lot of ground. This should not be a problem for verifiability, especially if one has access to the index (if reading on paper) and/or a search function (if reading electronically).
  • I'm not sure I understand about The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. From what I can gather, the main criticism it received was that the structure/organization of the work is somewhat unhelpful (which is not entirely unfair), not that there is anything wrong with the accuracy of the content as such.
  • The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction is not WP:USERGENERATED but written by subject-matter experts such as David Langford and Brian Stableford.
TompaDompa (talk) 18:28, 17 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that is the version. It's primarily the "superficial" that worries me a bit. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:12, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I see. To the extent that's a problem at all (and I don't know that it is), it's kind of a self-limiting one inasmuch as the source can only be used for things it actually covers—we may wish that it went into more detail about certain things, but where it doesn't we can either stick to covering the basics or supplement its use with other sources. TompaDompa (talk) 16:31, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To be on the safe side, I have replaced all citations to The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, making the point moot. TompaDompa (talk) 23:09, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: You mentioned something about close paraphrasing that I'm guessing needs to be fixed. Seeing as both sources mentioned are used more than once, would you mind indicating the relevant passages in the article? TompaDompa (talk) 21:49, 21 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In this version, the sentences with "rudimentary" sourced to #78 are quite similar to the source. Probably more than necessary. It seems like I can't see the pertinent pages in #90. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:44, 22 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Rephrased. TompaDompa (talk) 19:14, 22 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Great work as usual @Jo-Jo Eumerus: Any further comments? Thanks. Gog the Mild (talk) 15:53, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No, although I am undecided on the scope question Anarchyte raised (The books and articles I've linked above are about the general topic of narrative/games/media within outer space) and whether it raises completeness concerns. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:37, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If I may, I don't think sources "about the general topic of narrative/games/media within outer space" should take precedence over sources on the more specific topic of, well, Mars in fiction when it comes to determining appropriate weight for an article on Mars in fiction. Video games are mentioned in the article (see Mars in fiction#In the new millennium), supported by a source on Mars in fiction. TompaDompa (talk) 22:11, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Anarchyte

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(See also discussion in #Comments by Hahnchen)

Reserving a spot. Will do a more in-depth review through soon. I doubt I'll find many issues at this point, based on my cursory reads. Anarchyte (talk) 04:25, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • "was mistaken for the real thing" -> "was mistaken to be real"?
  • It is unclear how The Massacre of Mankind depicts Mars and how WW1 is stopped. As it's an authorised sequel, it might benefit from an additional sentence of context.
  • "inspiring among others C. L. Moore's stories" - does this mean he inspired Moore and others, or that he was one of many influences for Moore?
  • The paragraph starting "In Chinese science fiction" indicates (following the precedent of the Russian paragraph earlier) that the entire paragraph will be about Chinese science fiction. Perhaps modifying the first sentence of the paragraph will remove the non sequitur.
  • A wiktionary link for Terran could be useful.
  • Isaac Asimov is named in full every time, while other people are referred to by surname.
  • "Tom Chmielewski's 2014 novel Lunar Dust, Martian Sands is a piece of noir fiction set partially on Mars, while Weir's The Martian is hard science fiction—the film adaptation was described by the production team as being "as much science fact as science fiction"." - unclear connection between these two. Better to split The Martian into its own sentence.
    • The lack of a clear connection was somewhat intentional (Mars fiction having "ramified in several directions"), but I have at any rate split the sentence. TompaDompa (talk) 10:04, 20 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      • Is The Martian sentence only talking about the film adaptation, or is it saying that the book is hard science fiction while the film is a mix? Anarchyte (talk) 11:34, 20 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        • They are both hard science fiction (it's a fairly close adaptation), but "as much science fact as science fiction" (another way of emphasizing that it's hard science fiction) was specifically said about the film. I've tried to clarify this. TompaDompa (talk) 13:08, 20 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Anarchyte (talk) 13:19, 20 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ling

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I haven't looked into this in detail, but your not being able to access what a chapter page range is, when it clearly has one, would not be sufficient reason for ignoring what is generally considered an MoS requirement at FAC. If you cannot find the page range purely because this in not available from Google Books I would suggest querying Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request. Encyclopedias organised in a conventional alphabetical way do not require page ranges; they do require publisher locations. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:11, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In any event, citing to a whole chapter when only one page is being referenced would not be acceptable. I note that some of the missing information seems trivially easy to find. Eg, the page range for cite 32 is pages 1-11, see here. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:22, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And can I preempt any suggestion that I am being unreasonable by pointing out that part of the FAC instructions is "Nominators must be sufficiently familiar with the subject matter and sources to deal with objections during the featured article candidates (FAC) process." Gog the Mild (talk) 16:26, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Page numbers added (one book does not use page numbers, and this has been noted with an invisible comment in the citation template). I wasn't aware that publisher location was required information for "Encyclopedias organised in a conventional alphabetical way", but that's good to know if I ever nominate an article that uses such a citation style. TompaDompa (talk) 22:17, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

(←) W-e-e-e-e-e-e-lll, I am gonna be a monumental pain in what Ceoil would call the "arse". Well. I dunno. I will defer to Gog's judgment on whether a large change should be made. B-u-u-u-t, it is very possible that all of those Encyclopedia of SF entries have different authors. The very first one I clicked does. If you click the "About This Entry" link near the top of the article text, it takes you to a page with "Incoming Links" and far more importantly "Who Wrote This Entry?". The "MARS" entry says "The entry for Mars has 6,292 words, was last updated on 24 April 2023 and is signed [RKJK/BS/DRL]. RKJK Robert K J Killheffer: former Books Editor of Omni Magazine. BS Brian M Stableford DRL David Langford " and goes on to provide "How to cite this entry" with two suggestions:

  • Suggested format

Robert K J Killheffer, Brian M Stableford and David Langford. "Mars". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction edited by John Clute and David Langford. London: SFE Ltd and Reading: Ansible Editions, updated 24 April 2023. Web. Accessed 27 May 2023. <https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/mars>.

  • MLA format

Killheffer, Robert K J, Brian M Stableford and David Langford. "Mars." The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Eds. John Clute and David Langford. SFE Ltd/Ansible Editions, 24 Apr. 2023. Web. 27 May 2023. <https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/mars>.

  • Please Note To save you a huge amount of trouble, if we do change the format, there's a fair to middlin' chance that I could make all these programmatically for you. Then you would just have to carefully copy/paste. Which would still be trouble, but a lot less trouble. I dunno. Whatever you and Gog agree on... oh, I think I could add them programmatically too, maybe. If so, you would do... nothing. § Lingzhi (talk|check refs) 08:23, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm not sure what you're saying, exactly. The citations to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction already give the individual entry author(s). TompaDompa (talk) 08:35, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      • '(2023). "Mars". In Clute, John; Langford, David; Sleight, Graham (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (4th ed.). Retrieved 13 May 2023.' Oh, so the first entry is the only one that's wrong? That's good. I didn't look beyond the first one...OK, then you fix that one. problem solved.... And BTW, it's listed in the sources and in further reading, again. § Lingzhi (talk|check refs) 09:19, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        • It says

          Killheffer, Robert K. J.; Stableford, Brian; Langford, David (2023). "Mars". In Clute, John; Langford, David; Sleight, Graham (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (4th ed.). Retrieved 13 May 2023.

          The code is

          {{Cite encyclopedia |year=2023<!-- 24 April --> |title=Mars |encyclopedia=[[The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction]] |url=https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/mars |access-date=2023-05-13 |editor-last=Clute |editor-first=John |editor-link=John Clute |edition=4th |author2-last=Stableford |author2-first=Brian |author3-last=Langford |author3-first=David |author1-last=Killheffer |editor3-link=Graham Sleight |editor3-first=Graham |editor3-last=Sleight |editor2-first=David |author1-first=Robert K. J. |author3-link=David Langford |author2-link=Brian Stableford |editor2-last=Langford |editor2-link=David Langford}}

          Do the authors not show up on your device? I've tried different devices and browsers without any such problems. TompaDompa (talk) 09:34, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ah, I see now. Thanks, sorry for the confusion. § Lingzhi (talk|check refs) 09:44, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Reywas92

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I see this has been brought up a few times above but I think there's still an awful lot of redlinks. Several of these are short stories, which are typically not notable on their own. For example, "Ulla, Ulla" is written by Eric Brown (writer), none of whose works, including short story collections, have articles. Not that this particular one can't be notable, but I see no reason to presume this one, as well as those by Edmond Hamilton, P. Schuyler Miller, etc., would be expected to have an article among the many out there – redirects to articles on collections (if any) or authors seem more appropriate.

Moreover, there are quite a few works, especially in the Early depictions section, whose authors do not have an article either. This makes me question the due weight of many of these mentions altogether. It becomes clutter here of apparently non-notable works by non-notable authors. Most of these are just very short mentions stating how Mars was depicted in the work, without further analysis, relationship with other works, or impact on the understanding of Mars in popular culture. I read "The 1910 novel The Man from Mars, Or Service for Service's Sake by Henry Wallace Dowding portrays a civilization on Mars based on a variation on Christianity where woman was created first, in contrast to the conventional Genesis creation narrative." but wonder why I'm supposed to care if this was just a random person and few people read his book. Just because you think someone could see these redlinks and make little stubs on the short stories doesn't mean there should be so many of them either.

In contrast, the Human survival section only says "The subgenre was later revisited with the 2011 novel The Martian by Andy Weir and its 2015 film adaptation" at the end about a book and film that have likely been read/watched by more people than everything else on the list. It's mentioned again later, but it may deserve a bit more here. Further, the original version of the article, namely the film/TV section has several bluelinked items that are not included here at all, including Tom and Jerry: Blast Off to Mars, The Expanse (TV series), and Doom (film) (Mission to Mars is just mentioned as depicting the Face but not as a landing). I know this is a broad topic that was converted from a largely sourceless list, but this article loses its utility when it has more on obscure short stories than wide-release depictions. I echo Hahnchen's concerns and can't support how this is structured and weighted. Reywas92Talk 13:52, 24 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure that the notability of a work is a good proxy to determine whether its mentioning is due weight, though. The sources discuss individual works as examples of trends and tendencies in the depiction of Mars; that's a completely different thing than the works themselves being notable. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 15:39, 24 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To add to that point, whether a link is red or blue is an imperfect, even poor, indicator of WP:Notability. Several links have turned blue during the course of this WP:FAC, the latest (if I'm not mistaken) being Alice Ilgenfritz Jones and Bellona's Husband: A Romance. More are on the way, but it's going to take some time if we're going to end up with proper articles rather than purely notability-demonstrating stubs.
On the broader question of due weight, I have no problem admitting that what the sources focus on did not correspond to my preconceived notions of what they ought to focus on. But then, this is an encyclopaedia, not TV Tropes. Articles are not supposed to reflect editors' notions of what should be said but rather the coverage found in the sources. As it turns out, the sources focus heavily on history, and lightly on contemporary depictions. It's always possible to add more about "popular" works, but at some point that turns into straight-up misrepresenting the relative weight assigned to different aspects by the sources.
The old version of the article linked above was, for all intents and purposes, a TV Tropes article hosted on Wikipedia. These two websites serve different purposes, and the place for TV Tropes-style articles is of course TV Tropes. TompaDompa (talk) 16:35, 24 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Mike Christie

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TompaDompa asked me (neutrally) to take a look at this FAC; I had commented at the PR that I'd like to review this at FAC. Unfortunately I'm not sure I'll have time to do the article justice, but I've looked through the comments above and I do have a couple of opinions I can give in response to some of the issues that have been raised.

  • Personally I would have a few less redlinks but I don't think it's an issue for promotion; it's not an FA criterion. Featured articles have to comply with the MoS, but MOS:RL makes it clear this is up to the editors at the article and there's no hard-and-fast prescription.
  • I am sympathetic to the idea of mentioning more video games, as a good deal of fiction is written in that format, but unless there are sources that cover the topic I think it would be OR to pluck examples from that world. From the commentary on this I think TompaDompa has done reasonable diligence in searching for those sources and has added what they can. I see there's an outstanding oppose on this but without cited sources and with nothing coming up from research I don't see how that's actionable.
  • I think it's easy in an article like this to pull popular examples from the shelf, rather than from survey works; this article avoids that pitfall.

I've read some sections and found nothing to complain about, but have not read the article thoroughly enough to support or oppose. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:42, 13 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: A comment with respect to the oppose above – "The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction is cited many many times, yet Mars in the Movies, a book which I assume largely covers Mars in fiction, is cited once". A quick look at Google Scholar shows that the the sources used in the article are widely cited (eg. [12], [13]), while the suggested additions aren't. So I think the weighting is fine. I don't have enough time for a full review, but I did a literature search when I participated in the PR and did not find any gaps in coverage. Olivaw-Daneel (talk) 18:48, 13 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]


Comments from Piotrus

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I've been also asked, neutrally, for my input. Overall, I think it's a solid article, that suffers from an issue with comprehensivness (systemic bias due to focus on English fiction, and the issues of insufficient coverage of non-literature sources as mentinoned above by others). At the same time, as TD already noted, this is a consequence of bias in the Anglo- and fiction- centric sources used, and it some cases, sources to improve the situation may simply not exist. I am glad to see the article mention's Strugatsky's The Second Invasion from Mars. I wonder if we can improve this slightly be adding mentions of The Man from Mars by Polish writer Lem? Some other works that may deserve mention, if they are covered in secondary sources (Polish, obviously): 1) pl:Mars (powieść), 2) pl:Trzeci najazd Marsjan and 3) a 2021 Mars-focused Polish sf anthology called Mars. Antologia polskiej fantastyki [14], in which of particular interest likely would be "przedmowa Wojtka Sedeńki, w której znajdziecie historię Marsa w literaturze fantastycznej w Polsce i na świecie" ("foreword by Wojtek Sedeńka, in which you will find the history of Mars in fantasy literature in Poland and around the world"). In general, I would be happy to expand the article with information from Sedeńka's foreward, and TD should have asked me to look into it before nominating this here. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, this work is not available online, and I am not in Poland, so the best I can do is to ask some Polish Wikipedians to see if they have the book or can access it and send me the scan of that chapter. As such, I'd conditionally oppose promoting this, or suggest putting this on hold, until me and TD can get and digest that chapter. Sidenote: it is possible similar relevant works exist in other languages, but who knows :( For better or worse, however, now that we know there is a relevant article about on Poland, I think we should do our best to get it and use it. PS. In the meantime, here's an academic article in Polish (that is open access and OCRed and should work with machine translation) on colonizing Mars that may contain some useful content to address the systemic bias issue (although having quickly scanned it, I don't think it will have that much to add, but at least it does mention Kosik's book, if in passing). As for the aformentioned work by Lem, here's an English academic source that should be relevant: [15] (it also mentions another of his stories related to mars, "Anake", that does not seem to have a separate wiki article, en or pl, yet). -Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:48, 19 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Reading Piotrus's comments reminded me that there's a strong science fiction tradition in Italy, so I had a look on the Italian Wikipedia. This section of the "Terraforming Mars" article mentions a board game that apparently won multiple awards, but more usefully the article links to it:Marte nella fantascienza, the equivalent Italian article. It's only intermittently sourced, but there are a few items there that might be worth mentioning if appropriate sourcing can be found -- a list of depictions of Mars in comics and manga, for example. There are lists of films, TV shows, and video games, but no sources are given so it might not be possible to find usable discussions of those. The article cites this webpage, which is not a reliable source, but it might be worth scanning to see if anything there could be added. I also spotted this, which I think is a reliable source.
Piotrus suggests delaying to add more material. I don't know enough about the works he's referring to to have an opinion on that, but I do think that if there are sources for sf about Mars in Polish and Italian, as seems to be the case, there are probably sources for sf about Mars in French, German, and Japanese, at least, and perhaps other languages. I couldn't oppose on those grounds, though; I think at FAC more than just a suspicion that other sources exist is required for an oppose. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:04, 19 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think any of the sources I've read about Mars in fiction cover any of those Polish works (I recall specifically looking for coverage of anything by Lem and only finding brief references to Solaris as a point of comparison), but I managed to find a spot for The Man from Mars to expand upon a point made by the sources. I have requested the foreword from Mars. Antologia polskiej fantastyki via WP:RX, though it seems likely to me that it would largely cover the same ground as the other sources since there is a large degree of overlap between the existing sources—or one might say a consensus about the main points. This Italian source (linked in the "Further reading" section), for instance, mostly covers the same ground as the other sources with Lowell and Schiaparelli, Wells and Burroughs, Bradbury and Clarke, and Robinson and Weir (among others, of course). https://www.fantascienza.com/6657/america-marziana, brought up by Mike Christie above, explicitly draws from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Baxter's "Martian Chronicles: Narratives of Mars in Science and SF" (both cited in the article), is specifically about the American history of Mars, and likewise covers mostly the same ground as the other sources. TompaDompa (talk) 12:08, 19 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Mike - good point about board games. As a board game afficitionado, I will agree that it would be good to mention stuff like Terraforming Mars (board game) - but is board game "fiction"? The game does have some plot but... Hmm. In other news, I was able to locate and buy an epub of the Polish anthology with Sedeńko's article I mentioned, I'll try to read it soon (if anyone would like it, shoot me an @). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 13:51, 19 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) That's great! I would certainly be interested in reading it. In the meantime, I have added the anthology itself as an example of how Martian fiction has diversified in the new millennium. On board games, I was honestly kind of surprised to find none of the sources discussing Terraforming Mars, a game that even I who am by no means a board game enthusiast has heard of, but I think it might be an intentional omission on their part ("is board game 'fiction'?" indeed). TompaDompa (talk) 14:07, 19 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
PS. Mike also makes an intersting point about manga/anime aka Japanese science fiction. Sci-fi anime is another topic I am reasonably familiar with. In general, from what I know of this genre, Mars is not a major icon, but there it would be good to mention Japanese sci fi/anime/manga in a sentnece or two somewhere. Follow are some meh sources (not academic) but worth taking a look at: [16], [17]. At least they mention some major shows that might be worth looking into - maybe there is an academic work that tackles something here? (Ideally we would have a Japanese speaker look into Japanese sources, but we have to do with what - or rather, who - we have here... perhaps someone would like to leave a message at WikProject's Japan or Anime?). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 14:01, 19 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) PPS. It's getting late on my end, but I did read Sedeńko's not very long article. The overview of international (mostly American) literature will likely not contain anything new (I did not check each work), but there is a useful section on Mars in Polish sci-fi literature. Works mentioned: 1) pl:Władysław Umiński's
W nieznane światy (1895, later renamed Na drugą planetę); I'll try to translate/write an entry on Umiński - called by some "Polish Verne" - in foreseeable future; 2) pl:Władysław Satke's Goście z Marsa (1897), 3) Lem's Men... we already mentined, then as Sedeńko writes - nothing much until recent times, leading to 4) Konrad Fiałkowski's Star City. Opowieści z Marsa (2007) and Rafał Kosik's Mars (2003) I mentioned above; he finally mentions Arkady Saulski's (no pl wiki article yet) recent works, a dylogy Kroniki Czerwonej Kompanii – Czarna kolonia (2016) and Wilk (2016). He does provide a brief overview of each of those works, and then there is the anthology itself he discusses in the next section of his article. Do we need to mention all of these works? I am not sure - my gut feeling is that Fiałkowski's and Saulski's works are not that significant; I'd encourage mentioning of the others. Umiński's and Satke's works are historically significant for Polish sci-fi, and Kosik is a popular modern author. And the anthology itself would be good to mention too, perhaps in the section that mentions English-language works like Mars Probes. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 14:23, 19 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Having now read the foreword, it did indeed largely cover the same ground as the other sources already examined. I personally think this is a good thing, as it demonstrates that there exists some kind of academic consensus about the main points of the topic. I did manage to expand the general topic a little bit using the source and added a mention of Umiński's novel in the appropriate place. The article now mentions three Polish works: that one, Lem's The Man from Mars, and the anthology itself. I think that strikes a reasonable balance between countering WP:Systemic bias in the sources on the one hand and not overemphasizing certain aspects that get comparatively little coverage in the sources on the other. It's perhaps no surprise that English-language sources on the topic mostly focus on English-language works, but (evidently) so do German, Italian, and Polish-language ones.
On a separate note, is it possible to figure out what the pages for the foreword are (so we can add that information to the citation template)? TompaDompa (talk) 19:05, 19 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Managed to work in a mention of Kosik's novel as well. TompaDompa (talk) 19:50, 19 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I am afraid not, until someone gets a hold of they physical book or it is scanned with at least a snippet view for Google Books or something else we can access :( We could try to apprixate it by comparing page numbers of ebook to paper book, but is it worth bothering? Well, that's a good question for FA regular and reference experts - how do you cite page ranges in an ebook? Maybe ask on Talk:FA or such? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:46, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Alright. Asked at WP:RX per a suggestion above. TompaDompa (talk) 06:10, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Re "how do you cite page ranges in an ebook?": you can put in a short phrase to search for -- e.g. "Search for 'Lorem ipsum'" -- as part of the citation. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:44, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose giving the chapter title should suffice in this case then, since it is a short chapter and the (repeated) citations to it refer to content throughout the chapter. TompaDompa (talk) 11:04, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We can always find more examples of treatment of Mars in various media that are not yet in the article, from French comics to Doctor Who. The question is a bit where to stop, or whether there should be various sub-articles "Mars in anime and manga", "Mars in bandes dessinées", "Mars on television" etc. Alternatively, is there a rough scholarly consensus on what types of media to include in the topic "Mars in fiction" and how prominently? —Kusma (talk) 14:18, 19 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Clicking on the French comic link reminded me of Battle Angel Alita: Mars Chronicle... Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 14:25, 19 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This is a pretty amazing website covering Mars in fiction from all aspects (video games, American comics, Franco-Belgian comis, ...) but it is in French and probably not WP:RS reliable, so only useful as inspiration. The topic is certainly vast. —Kusma (talk) 14:29, 19 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'd argue that even "vast" is an understatement; as Westfahl notes, there are thousands upon thousands of relevant titles. Obviously, we cannot (and should not want to) include all of them in an article like this. On the question of "is there a rough scholarly consensus on what types of media to include in the topic 'Mars in fiction' and how prominently?", I'd say you're pretty much looking at it (but then I would, wouldn't I?); looking at the sources, (prose) literature is by far the most prominently discussed medium, with film a clear but distant second. Television and comic books get brief coverage. Games—video or otherwise—barely get mentioned at all (only by a minority of sources, not by any of the highest-quality sources, and only briefly). If anything, I'd say this article is a bit over-inclusive when it comes to the less-discussed forms of media. TompaDompa (talk) 19:05, 19 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It would be nice to add at least one if not more mentions of something related to Japan (here's an academic source that should allow us to include the classic Cowboy Bebop: [18]). I think the Polish angle is covered duly at present, given the sources we have (I'd however suggest mentioning Satke as well, Sedeńko discusses him at reasonable lenght). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:48, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I took a look at that source, and I don't think it's much help here. Despite a title like "Manga is from Mars: Cowboy Bebop", that source barely mentions Mars at all (just once, in the sentence "The setting for Cowboy Bebop is a metropolis shielded beneath a sky dome in a crater on Mars, where the populace of this urban colony are cheerful despite the prevalence of gigantic and unethical pharmaceutical companies, regular downsizing (that has led one gang of security men to rob the places they used to guard), as well as the general, run-of-the-mill crime of a big city."). It's a review of Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, a film described by Thomas Kent Miller as "only a Mars movie by a technicality". I think it would be better to keep looking. TompaDompa (talk) 05:54, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Found a suitable Japanese work to include: Moto Hagio's Star Red. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction even describes it as a homage to Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, so I think that works nicely. TompaDompa (talk) 06:05, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmm. Do you think stuff from the media listicles I linked above (CBR, Gamerant) can be used to add something more? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 08:38, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not really. I would only use those sources as complements, i.e. for additional details about things where significance has been demonstrated by being discussed in higher-quality sources. TompaDompa (talk) 10:30, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough. Have you given any thought to mentioning Satke, per my comment above? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:00, 21 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Minor issue I noticed: you don't provide English titles for foreign works (Auf zwei Planeten, the Polish anthology, etc.). Overight or purposeful choice? I think we should provide Englsh titles in addition to original, given that this is an English Wikipedia...? It is also inconsistent - Auf's article is at Two Planets. But Japanese work we added (Star Red) is referred to in English in our text, not in Japanese... Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:04, 21 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
One more issue: the "highlight duplicate links" gadget I use suggests the article has quite a few duplicated blue links. Polish science fiction is linked three times, for example - I think per MoS it's two too many? I suggest you install that gadget if you don't have it active yet. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:07, 21 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I thought about adding the Satke novel, but decided against it. There is (now) a fair coverage of Polish literature about Mars in the article and this particular work was as Sedeńko alludes to rather overshadowed internationally by the works of Lasswitz and Wells from the same year. So in the context of Mars in fiction I think we're fine without it (and I'm wary of overcompensating for WP:Systemic bias), though perhaps there is stronger reason to mention it in the Polish science fiction article.
The lack of English titles for some works is intentional. In some cases, it's because there isn't a clear "correct" English title to give (e.g. if the work has no translation into English, or several competing ones with different titles). In the case of Auf zwei Planeten, it's additionally because that novel didn't even get an English translation until three quarters of a century later (which is a point the sources emphasize). In some other cases like Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds I've deferred to the title of the Wikipedia article, but for Lasswitz' novel it just didn't seem appropriate to use the English title. I also don't particularly want to add a whole bunch of parentheses with alternate or translated titles if it's not necessary.
The duplicate links are intentional. MOS:DUPLINK was recently amended to relax the restrictions against repeated links following discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking#DL, sections, and mobile readers which was decidedly in favour of doing so. The article is still (to my eye) on the conservative side when it comes to repeating links, considering its length. TompaDompa (talk) 04:18, 21 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@TompaDompa Thanks for telling me about relaxation of DUPLINK rule. I am still a bit wary regarding not translating some titles, which I feel some readers will find jarring/arbitrary, and I urge you to reconsider. IMHO, for works that debuted in language other than English, we should always provide both titls (original and translated). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 08:26, 21 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Tried adding translated titles. I frankly think it looks way worse, but there you go. TompaDompa (talk) 12:09, 21 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

SupportComments from Chiswick Chap

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  • Well, I note that many reviewers are finding this difficult to assess. Any '... in fiction' topic is automatically across domains (e.g. science, literature); TD has noted that such topics have rarely if ever appeared at FAC; and scholars, too, have tended to avoid science fiction, whether for reasons of taste or again because of its domain-spanning nature (leaving a mass of low-quality or primary sources). All of this makes evaluation tricky. I've brought several '... in fiction' topics to GA, i.e. asserting that these are 'decent' without attempting to demonstrate 'comprehensiveness', whatever that might mean when an encyclopedia article is necessarily orders of magnitude smaller than the literature on which it reports.
  • For what it's worth, I find the coverage here admirable, indicating the breadth of the topic in time (from the 17th century), by aspect, and by medium.
  • I note the skimpy 'See also' mention of Mars in culture. There ought to be some intersection of the two articles, e.g. as cultural aspects of Mars (male, warrior god, angry red planet, aggressive astrological sign, etc) impinge on the thinking of authors creating fictional versions of life on Mars. A quick look at the other article reveals its poor state. Its coverage of 'Mars in fiction' is limited to a 'see also' hatnote, a curious choice, while its fiction coverage is limited to a section which occupies most of the article, 'Intelligent "Martians"', entirely failing to address the rest of the 'in fiction' topic. Clearly it should have a summary-style section named 'Mars in fiction' with an overview of the current article, but that's not our concern here; we should I think have here some discussion of cultural aspects.
    • There is some discussion of the cultural aspects as they relate to fiction, in proportion to the coverage in the sources. There is significant cross-pollination between fiction and culture more broadly when it comes to the Martian canals, for instance. Other such aspects covered by this article are the focus on the supernatural in the late 1800s and the planet being named after the Roman god of war. TompaDompa (talk) 10:57, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Given the above, and the comments already made by other reviewers, I have only the most minor of comments to make on the text itself:

  • "Mediums" (used in lead) usually means people with a link to the spirit world, so "media" is preferred for the meaning "books, film, TV, newspapers and such".
  • "by the middle of the century". Which one?
  • "between the unsuccessful 1905 Russian Revolution and the successful 1917 Russian Revolution" could be made less repetitive, especially as the 1905 event has already been mentioned in the previous sentence.
  • "which refers to the planet as Malacandra". => "which calls the planet Malacandra." (and perhaps the name should be quoted).
  • "This would carry on to later works" => "This carried on to later works" (or "in later works").
  • "civilization on Mars now extinct." => "civilization on Mars, now extinct."
  • "anthology of new Barsoom fiction:" – I'd consider a repeat link here, as Barsoom was last linked a long way up the article, and the presence of an anthology is rather more substantial than a single story. We have been rather timid with "overlinks", but they have in fact always been permitted, and the rules have recently been sensibly relaxed to permit them when clearly helpful to the reader. I'd say this was an obvious case in point.
  • The presence of a substantial 'Further reading' section begs the question "so why aren't we incorporating key claims by these scholars"?
    • We are, for most of them (see below). For the ones we aren't, they either have a particularly narrow (though relevant) scope or largely cover the same ground as the other sources (and I've happened to cite the other sources that cover those points instead). TompaDompa (talk) 10:57, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • There seem to be overlaps between the inline citations and the sources listed in 'Further reading'. For instance, "Stableford, Brian (2006) is described in ref [10], but I see that "Stableford, Brian" in fact consists of two bluelinks to the article on that author, where I'd have expected a single link of "Stableford 2006" to the full citation below, and would suggest therefore removing the redundancy, either by reducing the inline citation to e.g. a harv link to the cited source, or by removing the entry from 'Further reading'. There may well be other examples.
    • There is indeed substantial overlap, and this is intentional. Per MOS:FURTHER, sources used as inline references can be repeated in this section if "the References section is too long for a reader to use as part of a general reading list", which I think is pretty clearly the case here. TompaDompa (talk) 10:57, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • It would be helpful to disarm the (complete set of) distracting Harv warnings in 'Further reading' by adding "|ref=none" to all the unused links, but I doubt this is part of the FAC criteria.

Overall, I think that it's very desirable that this should be accepted as an FA. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:23, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Chiswick Chap: I have replied to your comments above. TompaDompa (talk) 10:57, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Coord note

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Hi Tompa, I was walking through the article with a view to promotion when I noticed Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still explicitly referred to as a Martian and was curious to see the sources for that as he is only implicitly so in the film, based on the distance he says he travelled to Earth. I could see Westfahl describing him as a "parental Martian" while acknowledging his home planet is only suggested, but I couldn't see Ashley's or Crossley's mentions -- do you have access to the complete text of those works to explain how they support the article text as is? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 12:35, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly. I do have access to the complete text of both of those, but neither Crossley nor Ashley discuss that particular work. Westfahl does, and has in several publications (Interzone (June 2001), p. 57–58 contains a fairly lengthy discussion of the issue that concludes that Klaatu is a Martian both textually and intertextually; The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy (2005), p. 499 says "Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still, whose journey of 250 million miles suggests a Martian origin"; and The Stuff of Science Fiction: Hardware, Settings, Characters (2021), p. 151 says "when Klaatu of the original The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) twice asserted his journey to Earth had taken 250,000,000 miles, and that his planet and Earth were 'neighbors,' he effectively communicated that Mars was his home planet, since Mars is the only known planet that is ever 250,000,000 miles from Earth (when the planets are in opposition)."). There are some other sources (from other authors) that are relevant, but in the interest of brevity I will simply link to a discussion on this topic on the article's talk page back in January: Talk:Mars in fiction#The Day the Earth Stood Still. TompaDompa (talk) 13:07, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Mea culpa, I ended up looking at the second and third citations for the next clause re. Stranger in a Strange Land, which were Ashley and Crossley, rather than Sherman and Westfahl (for the second time) for the Klaatu reference. Yes, Westfahl certainly makes a good case for Klaatu being a Martian although I'd have preferred to see more than one prominent author asserting this. As is, I think a bit more equivocation such as "Klaatu, whose origins strongly hint at Mars" or some such might be more in keeping with the sourcing -- WDYT? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:58, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think Westfahl is a sufficiently authoritative source (and the evidence he bases it on solid enough) that we can just leave it as it is, especially considering that Westfahl is not alone in this identification of Klaatu as Martian. TompaDompa (talk) 16:18, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
After reading ref. 62 (Westfahl 2001) I think the identification of Klaatu as Martian merits at least a footnote. —Kusma (talk) 16:34, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Very well, I added one (reused the one I created for the article Klaatu (The Day the Earth Stood Still) a while back). TompaDompa (talk) 16:50, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think that does the trick, tks guys. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 18:09, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Ian Rose: Anything else that needs to be addressed? TompaDompa (talk) 15:57, 24 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies, I meant to acknowledge this before I went on a short break, I will return to it soon. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:37, 2 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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