Simon Morden - “If life is simply a question of the right environment, then yes, Mars had life”

Planetary scientist and award-winning sciencefiction writer Dr Simon Morden talks to All About Space about his obsession with Mars and his latest science-fact book on the Red Planet

- Ben Biggs

BIO

Simon Morden

Morden is a British science-fiction author, best known for writing the Metrozone series of novels set in postapocalyptic London. He is the former editor of science and technology magazine Focus, has featured on the Arthur C. Clarke Award judging panel and is the recipient of the Philip K. Dick Award. Morden holds a degree in Geology from the University of Sheffield and a PhD in Geophysics from Newcastle University.

In The Red Planet: A Natural History of Mars, you vividly describe what it’s like to be on ancient Mars. How much of this is scientific fact versus artistic licence?

Over the last 50 years, we’ve built up a considerable body of evidence that tells us what Mars was like at various points in its long history – what the climate was like, what the volcanoes were doing, where the rivers and lakes and oceans were – so while it’s an act of the imagination to describe what it would feel like to sail on the Martian sea or sample gases erupting from fissures on primordial Mars, everything there is backed by peer-reviewed papers.

Do you think life ever existed on Mars? If so, do you think we’ll ever find evidence of it?