The Martians: The Story of a Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America

We're delighted to be joined this month by best-selling author David Baron whose most recent book, The Martians, covers a fascinating aspect of history.

This is a hybrid (in-person and online) meeting, held at the Los Altos Library (find us in the Orchard Room) and over Zoom. Please RSVP to attend online even if you plan to join us at the library. Zoom details visible to attendees.

About this Talk
A mere century ago, Martians were thought to be real—not fictional—creatures. “Mars is inhabited by a highly civilized and intelligent race of beings,” proclaimed Alexander Graham Bell after astronomers discovered what looked like irrigation canals on the red planet. When Nikola Tesla, in 1899, detected radio signals that he believed came from Mars, an all-out craze swept society. You could read about the Martians in The New York Times, hear of them in Sunday sermons, and see them depicted on the Broadway stage. Biologists debated whether the aliens were winged or gilled. Inventors devised schemes for communicating with Mars. Philosophers and theologians proposed questions Earth might ask its older, wiser neighbor. Best-selling author David Baron spent seven years investigating this strange case of mass delusion. In his fast-paced, highly illustrated talk—filled with period photographs and depictions of the putative Martians themselves—he reveals what the episode says about the human mind: the fallibility of our senses, the power of belief, and the lure of sensationalism. Although the Martians never were real, the excitement about them was genuine and world-changing, for it sparked a new genre called science fiction and helped launch us into space—toward Mars.

About Our Speaker
David Baron is author of The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America, chosen as one of 2025’s best books by The New Yorker, TIME, Boston Globe, Science News, and the Chicago Public Library. A former science correspondent for NPR and Chair in Astrobiology at the Library of Congress, David has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and other outlets. His popular TED Talk, about his passion for chasing solar eclipses, has been viewed more than two million times.

The speaker will be remote.