Great reminder of the relationship between absent evidence and cultural contingency in speculative images throughout history. Here it's possible to love both Viking and Bonestell images equally and for different sets of reasons in terms of what they can tell us about ourselves in relation to places.
Don DavisThe first glimpse of the Martian surface was long anticipated. Bonestell's art dominated ideas of what Mars was like, basically the desert Southwest with most air absent. The idea of a dark blue sky on Mars persisted in space art until that morning. Here are those first looks at the Martian surface.