Note: This program will be held in the Estes Park High School Auditorium. See below for more details.

“There Is Life on the Planet Mars” ―New York Times, December 9, 1906

Join Boulder author David Baron on a journey through his new book, The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze That Captured Turn-of-the-Century America. Through images and video, he'll share how, for a minute in the early 20th century, we believed there was life on Mars, and how that brief obsession launched us on a quest to explore space and birthed the science fiction genre. After the talk, our partner, Macdonald Book Shop, will have copies of The Martians available for purchase and signing by David!

This program is part of our School of Life series.

More about The Martians and the 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, set up an experimental laboratory in Colorado Springs and 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 Boulder 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. It is a tale both cautionary and uplifting. 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 David

David Baron, an award-winning journalist and broadcaster, is author of The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze That Captured Turn-of-the-Century America. A former science correspondent for NPR and Chair in Astrobiology at the Library of Congress, he 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.

More about the program

This program will be held in the Estes Park High School Auditorium (1600 Manford Avenue). Please park in the High School parking lot and use the entrance marked "Auditorium" at the northwest corner of the building.

We're bringing you this program in partnership with Macdonald Book Shop.