Mars and Its Canals: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Mars and Its Canals, credited to Percival Lowell, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Mars and Its Canals by Percival Lowell. Read in English by LibriVox volunteers. In the days before telescope photography, astronomers had to draw what they thought they saw through the eyepiece throughout the long dark nights. Sometimes they saw saw more than there really was to see, and a bit over 100 years ago Percival Lowell published books on what he was sure were canals on Mars, signs of intelligent civilization. (In case you too are skeptical, we also have at Librivox a criticism of Lowell's theories in a book published a year later (in 1907) by Alfred Russel Wallace.) - Summary by ToddHW

Recording facts

• Recording title: Mars and Its Canals
• Author credits: Percival Lowell
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 34
• Listed recording duration: 10:06:36

Catalogue topics

• Mars
• astronomy
• canals
• seeing what isn't true
• hoaxes

Opening tracks: first 24 of 34

1. 01 - Preface — 4:40
2. 02 - On Exploration — 14:48
3. 03 - A Departure-point — 13:12
4. 04 - A Bird’s-eye View of Past Martian Discovery — 19:47
5. 05 - The Polar Caps — 13:45
6. 06 - Behavior of the Polar Caps — 20:03
7. 07 - Martian Polar Expeditions — 31:02
8. 08 - White Spots — 14:16
9. 09 - Climate and Weather — 26:38
10. 10 - Mountains and Cloud — 19:35
11. 11 - The Blue-green Areas — 16:56
12. 12 - Vegetation — 14:48
13. 13 - Terraqueousness and Terrestriality — 28:05
14. 14 - The Reddish-ochre Tracts — 15:20
15. 15 - Summary — 20:18
16. 16 - The Canals — 16:22
17. 17 - Their System — 13:53
18. 18 - Gemination of the Canals — 18:39
19. 19 - The Double Canals, Parts 1 and 2 — 37:06
20. 20 - The Double Canals, Parts 3 and 4 — 39:53
21. 21 - Canals in the Dark Regions — 7:46
22. 22 - Oases — 25:22
23. 23 - Carets on the Borders of the Great Diaphragm — 9:40
24. 24 - The Canals Photographed — 12:03

Listen to this recording

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.