Some more graphs on the same topic of Mars versus Venus in popular culture following from my earlier post. (https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2020/07/29/martians-are-more-popular-than-venusians/)
In the comments to the last post, Andrew suggested “Venerians” is another term that was used for hypothetical beings from Venus. I’ve changed my Venus search term to Venusians+Venerians.
Here’s the full span 1800 to 2019.
I don’t think the post 1980’s boom of Martians is surprising. It is the perceptive shift that Ray Bradbury anticipated in his story “The Million Year Picnic” where the Martians are revealed to be the human colonists. Although Bradbury’s canal references have become dated, humans as Martians have continued in books like Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy and (of course) Andy Weir’s The Martian.
Our post Mariner/Viking understanding of Mars means nobody seriously expects living Martians and even fantastical Martians are more likely to appear as a lost civilisation (e.g. the film Total Recall). However, the dusty almost airless rock ball Mars is still a more enticing option than the high pressure hell world that we now know Venus is.
Confounding some of these searches are a couple of things. Firstly contemporary books looking at older popular culture, such as modern discussions of mid-20th century pulps. The second is the infamous pop-psychology book by John Gray “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” which results in many search hits where people are discussing the book in terms of Martians and Venusians as a way of critiquing the gender stereotypes in Gray’s book.
To clear up some of those issues, I can shift the corpus the Google n-gram searches from the general English to English Fiction. Also, the pre-1890 section of the graph isn’t doing very much relative to later decades, so I’ll look at that separately.
The 1950s era of science fiction is very visible, with a peak for both camps. Interestingly, the slump I expected in 1970 is there for Mars as the popular understanding of the planet changes but it recovers quite quickly. There’s another peak in the early 80’s perhaps fuelled by the Viking missions to Mars.
Peak Venusians is 1951. Peak Martians is 1953. I think that fits my intuitive impression of the field. Note that doesn’t mean there is in total fewer Martians wandering through fiction now. The raw total is, I guess, higher now but smaller as proportion of everything (hence the tiny percentages on the vertical scale).
Camestros Felapton 