When man finally colonises Mars, the first settlers are going to find a library ready and waiting for them… Let’s just hop they all like SF.
Attached to the outer casing of NASA’s Phoenix lander (you can see it some pictures) is the Phoenix DVD, packed with "personal messages from visionaries of our own time to future visitors or settlers on Mars" and a multimedia collection of literature and art about the Red Planet. This includes HG Wells' War of the Worlds (and the infamous radio by Orson Welles based on the book), Percival Lowell's Mars as the Abode of Life with a map of the planet’s “canals”, Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles and Kim Stanley Robinson's Green Mars.
The disc – made of a special silica glass designed to withstand the Martian environment for hundreds (perhaps thousands) – was compiled by the Planetary Society, which collected a quarter million messages submitted through the Internet.
What message would you have left for those first settlers? Suggestions, please...
