Solar System in fiction close to the Sun and its surface was exposed to extremes of temperature. The asteroids were too tiny and airless. By the early 20th century, prospects for life in the Solar System focused on Venus, the larger moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and especially Mars. With the onset of the Space Age, planetary probes cast increasing doubt on the likelihood of extraterrestrial life in the Solar System, at least life of any magnitude greater than organisms such as bacteria. By the mid-1960s, it was firmly established that life could have no foothold on the hostile surfaces of Mercury or Venus,
Martian Through Georgia that the Martian could just commit suicide, since nobody loves him. The Martian takes out his ray gun and prepares to blow his brains out, when the narrator helps him remember that somebody does love him. Taking this advice to heart, the Martian puts his antenna back in place on his head and remembers the female Martian he had turned down earlier. As the narrator says someday, a new constellation will appear, the Martian, now wanting to seek happiness back on his home planet, blasts off back home, which is seen as a star in a constellation of stars that