Edgar Rice Burroughs had life on Mars, but basically an oriental Arabian nights setting transported across the distance of space, where John Carter fought exotic beasts and saved Princesses; the stuff of fairy tales with a science fiction coating. I remember being somewhat bored with the repetitive nature of the plot.
H.G. Wells was much better, where his Martians were the dying evolved creatures of "vast unsympathetic intellect" who looked at this young Earth "with envious eyes", and invaded. Their war machines defeated Victorian armies and navies, and they were set to blight the earth with their red weed, a survival of the fittest, but they were defeated by a lack of immunity to viruses, and the common cold - Wells cleverly playing the evolutionary game both ways.
John Wyndham's early depiction of Mars was a dying planet, where most of the population had been frozen in cryogenic capsules to await the result of the engineering of the canals; but this had failed, and they had been left by the few (elite) who had betrayed them. Very pulp written, under the name of John Beynon. His later work in "The Outward Urge", had a much more realistic Mars, an airless desert, in which an exhibition (because of lack of preparation) crash lands, and the crew die of madness and accident in the bleak inhospitable land.
C.S. Lewis' Mars had the canals, great feats of engineering to stave off a cosmic disaster which would eventually wipe out life on Malacandra (the natives name for Mars). Mars was by then almost known to be devoid of life, but Lewis mythology and creatures (with their own language) gave a picture of a very alien planet, of often very different values from our own, especially of the scientist who wants to seek the survival of humanity by colonising other worlds (at the expence of the natives).
By the time the trimvirate of Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke tackled Mars, the picture was that of a barren land. Asimov (in his Lucky Star series) has a colony, growing special Martian plants for food, but living in bubble cities; the mostly hidden Martians are beings of thought, long since dispensed with bodies. Heinlein (in Red Plant, Podkayne of Mars) has a colony which is involved in an "atmosphere project" to restore Mars to habitation suitable for humans; he has exotic Martian creatures, fauna and flora, drawing on the pulp heritage, but the bulk of the story is to do with the colonists fight for independence from a distant earth company (shades of the Boston Tea Party and American Independence!). Clarke presents the most realistic picture in "The Sands of Mars", where Mars is given an artifical nuclear sun by igniting a moon, to give sun for plants to grow and the cycle of photosynthesis to produce oxygen for future colonists.
Water flows on Mars, before our very eyes
Liquid water has flowed on the surface of Mars within the past five years, leaving behind new deposits in gullies monitored by the now-lost Mars Global Surveyor, new images reveal. The results seem to boost the chances that Mars could harbour life.
Many scientists believe the gullies were carved by liquid water, although others have argued they may be due to avalanches of carbon dioxide gas or rivers of dust.
http://email.newscientist.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ezRG0MjNtS0XDA0DaSi0AG
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