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2030
    ‘The Cydonia region is also of great interest because of some unusual surface features, areas where great blocks of rocks stand out starkly from the surrounding plains. One of these blocks bears an uncanny resemblance to a simian face. This has been explained as a fortuitous chance of lighting. However, there have also been suggestions based on another image at a slightly different angle that the shape is quite real and is related in several ways to nearby features on a geometrical basis. There have been suggestions that the “face” on Mars is evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence at some earlier epoch laying down a purposeful pattern on the planet’s surface. Whether or not this shape is fortuitous or designed or is another example of anthropomorphic Mars remains to be seen when the area is again surveyed, and in more detail, by one of the upcoming missions to Mars…’
    Return to the Red Planet (1990)
    Eric Burgess

Excerpt from ‘The Labyrinth of Cydonia’ The New Solar System (Version 6.0), McGraw Hill Hypertexts (2032)
    SCROLL The first clues that extraterrestrial intelligence had entered the solar system in the ancient past were largely ignored by the scientific community. When NASA’s Viking I space probe rendezvoused with Mars on July 20, 1976, the spacecraft’s orbiter circled the planet, conducting the most extensive photographic mapping of Mars (see Chapter Two). During Orbit 35, the Viking’s camera caught the first image of the Face, in the Cydonia region of Mars’ northern hemisphere, on the edge of Acidalia Planitia. PRESS ENTER, PLEASE.
    (Animation of Viking I approaching and orbiting Mars fades to the first vague photograph of the Face; footage of NASA’s Viking team gathering around monitors at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.)
    SCROLL Although the Face was immediately noticed by the Viking Imaging Team, it was dismissed as being a natural formation caused by wind erosion. However, a few scientists and earthbound space explorers followed up on the enigmatic Frame 35A72. Calling themselves the Independent Mars Investigation Team, the dozen members asked an unpopular question: was the Face evidence that a spacefaring interstellar civilization had once inhabited Mars? PRESS ENTER, PLEASE.
    (An orbital panorama of the Cydonia region; graphic lines are overlaid on the photograph to show the relationships between key objects; frame zooms in to focus on separate details in the montage.)
    SCROLL The informal group examined Viking photos of Cydonia over the next decade, now enhanced by a computer-generated processing system called SPIT, or Starburst Pixel Interleaving Technique (see Appendix 2). They made a number of intriguing discoveries. Lying 11.2 kilometers west of the Face there was apparently a city, composed of four major pyramids arranged equilaterally in a cluster measuring 4 by 8 kilometers around a central city square. A few kilometers south of the Face, another large structure was located, labeled by the group as the ‘D & M Pyramid’ after Vincent DiPietro and Gregory Molenaar, the Pyramid’s discoverers. Like the City, it was apparently aligned towards the Face. Since the D & M Pyramid seemed to have an unevenly defined fifth side on its north-east flank, apparently a large crevasse had been opened in one side of the Pyramid, possibly caused by meteorite impact. Alignments between the City, the D & M Pyramid and the Face appeared to comprise two adjacent right-angles—a triangle—further evidence that the formations were artificial in origin. In addition, the group calculated that sunrise on Mars occurred during the solstices from directly to the east of the Face, so that the sun could be seen rising above the Face from the City Square, PRESS ENTER, PLEASE.
    (A series of photos and filmclips: a meeting during the first ‘Case For Mars’ conference in Boulder, Colorado; the cover of a report, titled Unusual Martian Surface Features; a hilltop