“In my opinion, it’s an overrated phenomenon. Mars get along perfectly without so much as a micro organism. See there’s the south pole beneath us now.

No life. No life at all, but giant steps, ninety feet high. Coloured by dust and wind into a constantly changing topographical map, flowing and shifting around the pole in ripples ten thousand years wide.

Tell me…Would it be greatly improved by an oil pipeline?”

• Dr Manhattan, Watchmen