Mars in fiction from red-colored vegetation, and Schiaparelli observed what he took to be linear features on the face of Mars, which he thought might be water channels. Because the Italian for channels is "canali", English translations tended to render the word as "canals", implying artificial construction. Lowell's books on Mars expanded on this notion of Martian canals, and a standard model of Mars as a drying, cooling, dying world was established. It was frequently speculated that ancient Martian civilizations had constructed irrigation works that spanned the planet in an attempt at saving their dying world. This concept spawned a large number of
The Message to the Planet is a great novel, a merely interesting one, or an unclassifiable pandemonium". Another reviewer remarked that anyone "seeking an untroubled read and pat answers should seek them elsewhere". In his study of Iris Murdoch's fiction, Peter Conradi wrote that "The Message to the Planet" was a "lesser" novel, inferior to its predecessor "The Philosopher's Pupil", but with some memorable scenes. On the other hand, Suguna Ramanathan calls it "an extraordinary achievement" and "of all her 24 novels, the largest in scope and most powerful in thrust". The Message to the Planet The Message to the Planet is a novel by