Life — March 2, 1899 — page 10: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis This 1903 Life magazine illustration depicts "Sports of the Asteroids" — a satirical fantasy of hunting on distant planets. The cartoon shows tiny humanoid figures with hunting equipment (bows, rifles) pursuing fantastical alien creatures in a rocky, cratered landscape beneath a large celestial body. The satire appears to mock contemporary big-game hunting culture by projecting it into an absurd cosmic setting. By transplanting Earth's hunting obsessions to imaginary worlds, the artist likely criticizes the era's colonial-era trophy hunting and sportsmen's pretensions. The diminutive hunters pursuing bizarre alien fauna suggests both the foolishness of hunting as sport and humanity's presumptuous desire to dominate nature—even on fictional planets.