The Gods of Mars the two Viking missions which found a dead, frozen world where water does not exist in a fluid state. The Valley of Dor, with the ring of cliffs around it and Sea of Korus within it, is placed in a mile-deep crater at Mars' South Pole. However, Burroughs makes a mistake in that he has the sun rise in the east and set in the west as elsewhere in the planet, and the moons are visible from the Valley. In reality, at the South Pole, Mars' moons would not be seen, and the sun would not rise in the east
Moons of Mars remounted and put in a new dome, where it remains into the 21st century. The names, originally spelled "Phobus" and "Deimus", respectively, were suggested by Henry Madan (1838–1901), Science Master of Eton, from Book XV of the Iliad, where Ares summons Fear and Fright. In 1959, Walter Scott Houston perpetrated a celebrated April Fool's hoax in the April edition of the "Great Plains Observer", claiming that "Dr. Arthur Hayall of the University of the Sierras reports that the moons of Mars are actually artificial satellites". Both Dr. Hayall and the University of the Sierras were fictitious. The hoax gained worldwide