Martian

A Martian is a native inhabitant of the planet Mars. Although the search for evidence of life on Mars continues, many science fiction writers have imagined what extraterrestrial life on Mars might be like. Some writers also use the word Martian to describe a human colonist on Mars.

Martians in fiction

The word "Martian", used as a noun instead of an adjective, first entered the English language in late 1877. It appeared nearly simultaneously in England and the United States, in magazine articles detailing Asaph Hall's discovery of the moons of Mars in August of that year. An early, brief fictional account of an invasion of Earth by Martians appeared in 1881, in a futuristic article inspired by the International Exposition of Electricity, Paris.

Aleriel, or A Voyage to Other Worlds (1883) by W. S. Lach-Szyrma was previously reputed to be the first published work to apply the word Martian as a noun instead of an adjective. The usage is incidental; it occurs when Aleriel, the novel's protagonist, lands on Mars in a spacecraft called an "ether-car" (an allusion to aether, which was once postulated as a gaseous medium in outer space). Aleriel buries the car in snow "so that it might not be disturbed by any Martian who might come across it."

Martian (The War of the Worlds)

The Martians, also known as the Invaders, are the fictional race of extraterrestrials from the H.G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds. They are the main antagonists of the novel, and their efforts to exterminate the populace of England (and later the Earth) and claim the planet for themselves drive the plot and present challenges for the novel's human characters. They are notable for their use of extraterrestrial weaponry far in advance of that of mankind at the time of the invasion, 1898.

In the novel

Little about the Martians is definitive, the story being told by a first-person narrator.