Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art

The Barbican Centre in London has a new art exhibition called Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art, which runs through 18 May 2008. The exhibition’s mission is “to interpret and understand contemporary art.” Here’s a description, taken from Barbican’s website:

“Anthropologists from outer space set out on a mission to understand life on earth. Imagine that they begin their mission by examining the curious phenomenon that human beings call ‘contemporary art’. What does Art tell them about human life and culture? Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art presents contemporary art works under the fictional guise of a museum collection conceived by and designed for extraterrestrials. Playful and irreverent, the museum’s collection features some 175 works by over 115 artists,” including Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol.

Listen to Dr. Klaatu, Director of the Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art, give an introduction to the exhibition’s collection and a tour of selected treasures. Also, checkout the complete list of artists, links to reviews and interviews, and a pdf of the Martian alphabet.

Other Barbican activities that compliment the art exhibition: Films from Another Planet and Close Encounters talks and workshops.

NPR's Mars Movies

As a follow-up to our recent post about Heritage's vintage movie poster auction catalog and in light of two neat posts at io9 about the film Your Trip to Mars (1952) and the Mars movie fad of 1999-2002, we suggest listening to Mars Movies, an eight-minute audio piece from National Public Radio that was originally broadcast on July 4, 1997. Here’s a description of the piece:

“Movie critic Bob Mondello has a brief history of Hollywood's love affair with Mars as a theme in science fiction films. From War of the Worlds to It Came From Outer Space to Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, the red planet has always been a cinema standby when a screenwriter needs a group of aliens for the Earth to overcome.”

Pictured above: Promotional poster for It Came From Outer Space (1953), whose screenplay was based upon The Meteor, a story by Ray Bradbury. The film, which is available in DVD, was reviewed by Science Fiction Weekly.

The Reading Habits of Americans

The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday ran a humorous article titled “Borders Tries About-Face on Shelves,” which details the nation’s second-largest book retailer’s “radical move” to spur sagging sales by displaying its books so that the covers actually face customers. With Borders’ stock down 58% over the past 52 weeks, it probably makes sense for the retailer to start thinking outside of the box.

Speaking of big-box retailers, Barnes & Noble's stock spiked more than 6% Thursday on news that founder and chairman Leonard Riggio purchased $11.5 million of company stock. Riggio signaled an equally bullish attitude about the reading habits of Americans in The New York Times on March 2 when he challenged Steve Jobs’ recent comment that “People don’t read anymore.” As if to confirm that Americans are reading and bookselling is profitable, Riggio and his wife, Louise, recently donated $20 million through the Riggio Foundation to build housing for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Recent Short Fiction: Mary Turzillo’s “Zora and the Land Ethic Nomads”

Mary Turzillo’s Martian novelette "Zora and the Land Ethic Nomads" (2007), mentioned in our post of January 11, 2008, is now accessible as a pdf through her journal. It was originally published in The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction (2007), an anthology that includes pieces by Stephen Baxter, Ian Watson, and Brian Aldiss.

Unrelated to Mars but worth noting: Turzillo’s short story “Pride,” which appeared in the anthology Fast Forward 1 (2007), is a finalist for this year’s Nebula Award.

New Novel: Rolling Thunder by John Varley

John Varley’s new novel, Rolling Thunder (2008, Ace Books), has been released and is now available in bookstores. Following Red Thunder (2003) and Red Lightning (2006), this is his third science fiction novel about Mars. A prolific author who maintains his own website, Varley has won both the Nebula and Hugo Awards for his work. Here’s a description of the new novel:

Lieutenant Patricia Kelly Elizabeth Podkayne Strickland-Garcia-Redmond -– otherwise known as Podkayne -– is a third-generation Martian with a planet-sized chip on her shoulder. Her grandfather Manny was one of the first men to set foot on Mars. So Poddy has some equally planet-sized shoes to fill ... That’s why she’s joined the Music, Arts, and Drama Division of the Martian Navy. Though some may say her voice is a weapon in itself, Poddy passed the audition with a little help from some higher-ups. And now she’s going to Europa, one of Jupiter’s many moons, to be an entertainer. But she’s about to learn that underneath the song and dance routines, there can be plenty of danger to go around in the Martian Navy, even if you’ve just signed on to sing ...

As Podkayne reveals in the opening page of Rolling Thunder, Varley has been influenced by several legendary Martian science fiction authors: “Mom and Dad got all whimsical naming me, with the Podkayne business. It was a time of patriotism; everybody was all hot about 'Mars for the Martians!' and trying to be more 'Martian' than their neighbor. In my high-school graduating class alone there were three John Carters, two Dejah Thorises, a girl named Burroughs, one poor fellow saddled with Edgar Rice, and a Bradbury. The name Podkayne came from a novel from last century that I’ve never read. I’ll get around to it one of these days, but I don’t much care for science fiction.”

The “novel from last century” is, of course, Podkayne of Mars: Her Life and Times, a juvenile novel that Robert A. Heinlein penned back in 1963. Heinlein’s influence upon Varley is noted in a review of Rolling Thunder by the blog io9 and in a review by The Denver Post. Varley spoke to the matter in a recent interview with io9 and in a 2004 interview with Science Fiction Weekly.

Interestingly, Podkayne is also the name of a lander spacecraft in Varley's "In the Hall of the Martian Kings" (1977), a novella which first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and was nominated for a Hugo Award.

And, if critic Dave Itzkoff of The New York Times is still whether Young Adult science fiction has any value, a first edition of Heinlein’s juvie Podkayne of Mars is selling on AbeBooks for $3,000. The publisher’s original price: $3.50.

Heritage’s Movie Poster Auction Catalog

Heritage Auction Galleries of Dallas has an awesome 340-page, full-color catalog of its upcoming Vintage Movie Poster Auction, March 11-12, 2008.

While the catalog covers several genres of film, there are scores of vintage posters and lobby cards of science fiction movie classics such as The Blob, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I Married a Monster from Outer Space, The Time Machine, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, Blade Runner, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Frankenstein. There’s even a poster of The Big Sleep, a film noir private detective classic starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, co-written by Leigh Brackett.

In any case, here are some Mars-related posters up for auction, with the sales estimates taken from the Heritage catalog:

• Red Planet Mars (United Artists, 1952)
Estimate: $400-$800

• Invaders from Mars (20th Century Fox, 1953)
Estimate: $1,000-$2,000

• Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (Universal International, 1953)
Estimate: $200-$400

• The War of the Worlds (Paramount, 1953)
Estimate: $5,000-$8,000

• Devil Girl from Mars (Spartan, 1955)
Estimate: $2,000-$4,000

• It! The Terror from Beyond Space (United Artists, 1958)
Estimate: $300-$500

• The Angry Red Planet (American International, 1960)
Estimate: $300-$600

• Robinson Crusoe on Mars (Paramount, 1964)
Estimate: $300-$500

Reading of Heinlein's "The Green Hills of Earth"

Thanks to a post at SFFaudio, we learned that BBC7’s Seventh Dimension will broadcast a reading of Robert A. Heinlein’s short story “The Green Hills of Earth” (1947) tomorrow, March 9. Thereafter, the broadcast will be available for about a week through BBC7’s Listen Again feature.

Here’s a description of Heinlein’s story, from SFFaudio: “This is the poignant story of Rhysling, the blind space-going songwriter whose poetic skills rival Rudyard Kipling’s. This yarn is about a radiation-blinded spaceship engineer crisscrossing the solar system writing and singing some of the best lyrics in science fiction. In a fine display of writing skill, the spaceship and crew feel as real to the reader as a contemporary tramp steamer.”

And here are some lines from The Grand Canal, a song about Mars, taken from Heinlein’s story:

As Time and Space come bending back
       to shape this star-specked scene,
The tranquil tears of tragic joy still
       spread their silver sheen;
Along the Grand Canal still soar the
       fragile Towers of Truth;
Their fairy grace defends this place of
       Beauty, calm, and couth.

Bone-tired the race that raised the
       Towers, forgotten are their lores;
Long gone the gods who shed the tears
       that lap these crystal shores.
Slow beats the time-worn heart of Mars
       beneath this icy sky;
The thin air whispers voicelessly that all
       who live must die-

Yet still the lacy Spires of Truth sing
       Beauty's madrigal
And she herself will ever dwell along the
       Grand Canal!

-- From The Grand Canal, by permission of Lux Transcriptions, Ltd., London and Luna City.

As SFFaudio notes, Heinlein credited the title of his story to "Shambleau," a short story about Mars by C. L. Moore (1933) in which a spacefaring smuggler named Northwest Smith hummed the tune The Green Hills of Earth to “himself in a surprisingly good baritone as he climbed the stairs.”

Heinlein’s short story “The Green Hills of Earth” has appeared in several anthologies, including Invasion from Mars: Interplanetary Stories selected by Orson Welles (1949), which we detailed in our post of September 21, 2007.

Steinbeck in Alfred Coppel's "Mars Is Ours" (1954)

Here’s a foreboding passage from "Mars Is Ours," a short story by Alfred Coppel (1954) which cleverly uses John Steinbeck’s novel The Moon Is Down (1943) as a powerful device in a dark plot about an American-Russian military confrontation on the Red Planet. Originally conceived as a play, Steinbeck's novel was later adapted into a play.

He thought of the play he had been reading last night. One of the proscribed authors, but it didn’t seem to matter much up here. Graylist, Blacklist. The Loyalty Boards. They all seemed far-off and unreal across the gulf of night. But the play had troubled him. Steinbeck, or some such name. And the title so apt as the line of Weasels crawled their way across the Martian plain through the star-shot darkness. The Moon is Down. About invaders in a war that was forgotten now in a place he’d never heard of. Yet there was a frightening phrase in the play. One that brought on the nightmare again in spite of the luminol. Perhaps it had been wise to keep such a book out of the hands of civilians.

He shook his head wearily. It showed the way discipline was breaking down in the Task Group when an officer could lend a Graylist book to his commander without a twinge of conscience or fear. But my God, he wondered, what else can be expected after ten months on this desert looking for a Cominform Base that might not even exist. He told himself that he must remember to thank Hallerock for lending him the book.

Pictured above: The October 1954 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, in which Coppel’s "Mars Is Ours" first appeared. More recently, the story was published in Fourth Planet from the Sun: Tales of Mars from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, an anthology edited by Gordon Van Gelder (2005).

Capricorn One: Little Red Lies (1978)

Capricorn One, by Ron Goulart (1978)

At left: Paperback original (New York: Fawcett Gold Medal Books, 1978), 189 p., $1.75. Based on a screenplay by Peter Hyams. From the book's back cover:

“To all appearances the launching of Capricorn One, the first spaceship to Mars, seemed perfectly normal. Everybody in the country was watching the countdown on television. But behind the scenes, two and a half hours before lift-off, a strange and terrifying drama was being played out. A NASA director was warning the three astronauts that their spacecraft was faulty. He told them they must fake the trip via computer magic. This way they could convince the President the mission had succeeded. Failure would mean the end of the space program. Nothing would stop these madmen. Not the truth. Not reality. Especially not the astronauts, who became unwilling conspirators. For them, a special fate had been arranged ...”

As Deborah Allison points out in her article “Novelisations and Capricorn One," Goulart’s book is one of two novelizations based upon Hyams’ 1972 screenplay, which Hyam brought to fruition in the wake of Watergate and released in the summer of 1978 as the film Capricorn One, starring Elliot Gould, James Brolin, O. J. Simpson, and Hal Holbrook. The second novelization, also titled Capricorn One, was written by Bernard L. Ross (a pseudonym of Ken Follett) and was published in Great Britain in late 1978 with a slightly different story line.

According to “Little Red Lies,” a 2007 news article by Dwayne A. Day at SpaceReview.com, Hollywood is remaking Hyams' 1978 film. Meanwhile, checkout a recent review of the Blu-ray DVD.

Light Reading for a Sunday Afternoon, Vol. V

Here are a few recent news pieces worth reading:

• “At the Martian Museum Art's Outasight in Outer Space,” by Alice Jones, The Independent, Feb. 28, 2008. London’s Barbican has a new exhibition, Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art, whose mission is “to interpret and understand contemporary art.”

• “Ground Zero for Apocalypse,” by John Weeks, The Sun, Feb. 23, 2008. An Inland Empire newspaper details Robert Reginald’s recent book, Invasion! (2007), “a trilogy of tales inspired by H. G. Wells’s classic SF novel War of the Worlds.”

• “Craving Science Fiction Films,” by Pamela Scott Shelton, American Chronicle, Feb. 19, 2008. Craving quality sci-fi films, Shelton mentions Red Planet (2000), starring Val Kilmer and Carrie-Anne Moss, in a positive light.

• “Bradbury Building Future Writers,” by Michael Aushenker, Palisadian-Post, Feb. 13, 2008. Speaking to aspiring writers in California, Ray Bradbury cites the influence Edgar Rice Burroughs has had upon his career.