I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.
Why do we capital-N Nerds love Mars so much? Because it's beautiful it's tough it's buried in our mythic childhood memories. It's covered with human triumphs but also with sad stories of failure.