"The English man of action amazes me. He has the unique gift of living simultaneously in the twentieth and seventeenth centuries. Technically he is advanced, socially or should I say anti-socially, he has stagnated for three hundred years."

Quaint is the word that comes to mind when summing up this "first men to Mars" story. The language is very Wyndham, the cadence of dialogue provincial and the sexism in full flow. I admire the little details in science fiction works that creep through the ages - The BBC changing a camera lens on air, for instance, anachronistic today yet feasible at the time.

Yet for all the history and ways in which we've outstripped that era technologically, the message of the work rings through. It's worth reading, if just for that - the Martians and their attitude is one we could learn from, if only to accept it.