New Graphic Novel: The Martian Confederacy

Thanks to a news column by Augie De Blieck Jr., at Comic Book Resources, we just learned about a new original graphic novel that has hit local comic shops and bookstores: The Martian Confederacy, by Jason McNamara and Paige Braddock.

According to De Blieck, “Set on the red planet in the year 3535, the story is one of a world that's lost its tourism trade and most of its natural resources. ... To save Mars, it's up to three outlaw rednecks to get back the one thing that can cleanse the putrid air and return the planet to its former glory.”

De Blieck’s column includes a short interview with writer Jason McNamara, who notes that “In writing early drafts of The Martian Confederacy, we kept coming into conversations like, ‘Wasn't that done in Star Wars? Or Planet of the Apes? Or Dune?’ We decided to embrace science fiction as a living language by having our characters embrace those movies as their past."

For more insight, read the blog io9's May 2008 interview with Jason McNamara and check out The Martian Confederacy's website.

Henrik Dahl Juve’s “The Martian Revenge” (1930)

Published in the August 1930 issue of Wonder Stories magazine, we don't believe "The Martian Revenge," by Henrik Dahl Juve, has been reprinted in any anthology. Note that Juve's first name is sometimes spelled as "Hendrik."

Here’s a synopsis of Juve’s story, paraphrased from Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years : a Complete Coverage of the Genre Magazines Amazing, Astounding, Wonder, and others from 1926 Through 1936 (1998), by Everett F. Bleiler and Richard Bleiler:

A human spaceship powered by antigravity travels to Mars and ends up crash landing on the planet. The Martians, small creatures like evolved birds, have built cities, water canals, and agricultural plots. Initially friendly, the Martians turn hostile, but the Earthmen are saved by family members who had hidden themselves aboard the spaceship as stowaways.

Pictured above: The August 1930 issue of Wonder Stories, copies of which are selling on AbeBooks for $25.

Martian Poetry by Craig Raine

More than thirty years ago, poet Craig Raine helped spawn a new genre of poetry, Martian poetry, when his now-famous seventeen stanza piece, "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home," was published in the December 1977 issue of New Statesman magazine.

The poem, reprinted below and elsewhere on the Internet, is from the perspective of a Martian visiting Earth. Apparently, the first few stanzas refer to books, as William Caxton was the first English printer and seller of books.

A Martian Sends a Postcard Home

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings--

they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.

I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.

Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:

then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.

Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making colours darker.

Model T is a room with the lock inside--
a key is turned to free the world

for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.

But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.

In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.

If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep

with sounds. And yet, they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.

Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room

with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises

alone. No one is exempt
and everyone’s pain has a different smell.

At night, when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs

and read about themselves--
in colour, with their eyelids shut.

For a reading about a real Martian postcard, see "90 Days on Mars: Phoenix Lander Sends Martian Postcard," Space.com, August 28, 2008.

Magazine Cover Art: H. Beam Piper's "Omnilingual"

Astounding Science Fiction
Vol. 58, No. 6, February 1957

Cover: Linguist Martha Dane, the main character in "Omnilingual," a short story by H. Beam Piper. Illustration by Frank Kelly Freas.

Here’s how Justine Larbalestier, in her The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction (2002), describes the cover:
“Astounding was the leading science fiction magazine at the time. That Astounding had so few 'girls' grace its cover is an indication of the magazine’s superiority. The one girl who was represented on the cover was not just a girl, but a scientist, and a fully clothed one at that. It illustrates the story ‘Omnilingual’ by H. Beam Piper. The story’s protagonist is a linguist, Martha Dane, and it is she who is illustrated on the cover: forehead creased in concentration, poring over various texts, pen in one hand and her other hand held to her temple as though thinking. She is not stereotypically beautiful and her breasts are not noticeable. It is an unusual cover for the time, as is the story.”

To learn more about Piper's “Omnilingual,” read “Discover How Archaeologists Translated Secret Martian Writings!”, a cool review that was just posted over at BestScienceFictionStories.com.

If you like intellectual stories about Martian archaeology, linguistics, and Rosetta Stones, you might enjoy Ben Bova’s new novel, Mars Life (2008), which involves an anthropological dig on Mars and the discovery of ancient Martian hieroglyphics.

Feedback on SFWA's “Martian Feedback” Column

We noticed that the August-September 2008 issue of The Bulletin of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has a column by Robert Metzger titled “State of the Art: Martian Feedback.”

We’re hoping that someone who has access to this column would be willing to read it for us. We're not opposed to purchasing The Bulletin through SFWA’s website, but they don’t accept plastic and we’re boycotting PayPal until Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal and SpaceX, resigns as chairman of Tesla Motors. Thanks.

Forthcoming: Unabridged Reprint of the Classic The Swordsman of Mars by Otis Adelbert Kline

Paizo Publishing’s blog has posted a neat snippet from its forthcoming September 2008 unabridged reprint of The Swordsman of Mars (1933), by Otis Adelbert Kline.

As James Sutter, Planet Stories series editor for Paizo, writes, Otis A. Kline is “a forgotten master in the Edgar Rice Burroughs tradition, who set precedents both through his own work and as a member of the Weird Tales editorial staff (not to mention as the literary agent for Conan creator Robert E. Howard).”

With an introduction by Michael Moorcock, “This is the first complete edition of The Swordsman of Mars published since the story's original appearance in Argosy Magazine in 1933. Popular editions released in the 1960s featured viciously cut prose in order to fit the story into a standard novel format.”

In a blog post back on August 12, 2008, Sutter discussed how The Swordsman of Mars ties into the overall idea of Paizo’s Planet Stories series.

Author Matthew Corradi on John Carter of Mars

Back in December 2005, sci-fi editor, critic, and author John Joseph Adams interviewed science fiction and fantasy author Matthew Corradi just prior to the publication of a story by Corradi in Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine. At one point, the conversation turned to Edgar Rice Burroughs and his swashbuckling character, John Carter of Mars:

Matthew Corradi: One night when I was probably 10 or 11 I was bored and my dad told me to go read a book. So I went over to his bookshelf and randomly pulled down a double hardbound edition of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Gods of Mars and The Warlord of Mars. It blew me away. The shear sense of absolute adventure and the monumental scope of a dying Barsoom hooked me hard. I had to drag my mom down to the library to find anything and everything written about John Carter, Dejah Thoris and Tars Tarkis. These days I look back on those stories and, sure, they are the foundation and epitome of outrageous, over-the-top pulp science fiction. But sometimes I think as an adult, amid the grind of the job and daily demands, and even in my own attempt to write "important” stories, I’ve lost that sense of adventure that Burroughs gave to me as a kid. So sometimes I’ll pull John Carter off the shelf just to refresh that magic and remind myself that reading should be fun.

Pictured above: 1971 hardcover Doubleday Science-Fiction Book Club double novel of Burroughs’ The Gods of Mars & The Warlord of Mars, with cover illustration by Frank Frazetta.

Review of Beyond Mars: Crimson Fleet (2008)

A review of Beyond Mars: Crimson Fleet (2008), by R. G. Risch, was posted recently on Blogger News Network. Here’s a description of Risch's book, taken off the back cover:

"In the 22nd century, a nameless evil plots the eventual extermination of all mankind. Hidden within the depths of a shadow government, its acts of growing terror only hint at the monstrous things to come. But one force stands in its way to compete domination ... the Martian Fleet and its will to fight!"

And here’s the reviewer’s conclusion: “Overall, Beyond Mars is an interesting adventure for fans of military adventure in space; the story fits well within that particular genre and the author knows his tech and history, but his narrative writing is still a little rough around the edges.”

Classified as military science fiction and Risch's first novel, you can read a couple of pages from Beyond Mars: Crimson Fleet through Amazon’s Online Reader.

1950s Martian Radio: “The Martian Death March” from X Minus One

An NBC science fiction radio broadcast series of about 125 episodes, X Minus One basically ran from April 1955 to January 1958 and was initially a revival of the network’s earlier program, Dimension X (1950-51).

“The Martian Death March” (MP3, approx. 25 minutes), broadcast on September 8, 1955, is a sad tale about the Red Planet in which Martians have been imprisoned on a reservation by the conquering Earthmen. The Martians manage to escape and make a long but costly march back to their homes in the highlands, only to be captured again. Here are the opening lines of the broadcast:

“I’ve always been interested in lost causes. The revolt of the Scottish Jacobites against England. The last stand of the Cherokee and Sioux Indians. And the Death March of the Martian highlanders in 1997. There’s been a lot written about that march. The U.N. commission report covers four volumes, but the whole story isn’t down on paper yet. I know it because I was on that march, from the beginning to the end. There’s one part of the story that no one ever mentions. The Martian Death March of ’97 was lead by an Earthman ..."

University of Arizona Exhibit, Mars, A Fictional Perspective, to Close in September

Mars, A Fictional Perspective, a library exhibit at the University of Arizona Science-Engineering Library that opened last May, is scheduled to close on September 12, 2008.

Here’s a description of the exhibit from the library’s website:

“With the Phoenix Mars Lander now safely on Mars in search of scientific fact, take a brief journey yourself to experience its exciting heritage of imagination and wonder!

Enjoy the highlights of Planet Mars in fiction and popular culture in an exhibit featuring novels from Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, and many others from the 20th Century Science Fiction Genre Collection at Special Collections. Special appearances by Flash Gordon, Martian Manhunter, and Marvin the Martian!

From the adventurous, to the terrifying, to the absolutely silly - you will never imagine Mars the same way again.”

According to one viewer, books on display in the exhibit include:

• A Princess of Mars (1917), The Warlord of Mars (1919), Thuvia, Maid of Mars (1920), A Fighting Man of Mars (1931), by Edgar Rice Burroughs

• The Sands of Mars (1967), by Arthur C. Clarke

• The Martian Chronicles (1950), by Ray Bradbury

• Men, Martians, and Machines (1965), by Eric Frank Russell

• Great Science Fiction Stories About Mars (1966), by T. E. Dikty

• Mystery Men of Mars (1933), by Carl Claudy

• Mars (1992), by Ben Bova

• The Kid from Mars (1949), by Oscar J. Friend

• Welcome to Mars (1983), by James Blish

• The War of the Worlds (1898), by H. G. Wells

The Phoenix Mars Lander is a joint project of NASA and the University of Arizona.

New Anthology, Life on Mars: Tales from the New Frontier, to be Launched in 2010

A recent tidbit at SF Signal notes that editor, author, and critic Jonathan Strahan has announced he has “sold a follow-up anthology to The Starry Rift to Sharyn November at Viking Penguin. Life on Mars: Tales from the New Frontier is a young adult science fiction anthology that takes as its leaping off point that we do go to Mars in 2040, as announced by George Bush last year. Some of my favorite writers will create stories somewhere in the timeline of that future Mars. It should be a terrific book. It won’t be out till some time in 2010 ...”

Meanwhile, check out some other all-Mars anthologies:

• Fourth Planet from the Sun: Tales of Mars from the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by Gordon Van Gelder (2005)

• Martianthology, compiled by Forrest J Ackerman, edited by Anne Hardin (2003)

• Mars Probes, edited by Peter Crowther (2002)

• Mars, We Love You: Tales of Mars, Men and Martians, edited by Jane Hipolito and Willis E. McNelly (1971)

• Great Science Fiction Stories about Mars, edited by T. E. Dikty (1966)

Pictured above: Cover of the August 1953 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine, depicting "Dome repairs on Mars." Artwork by Mel Hunter.

Book Sale: Rare Copy of A Maid from Mars, by Katherine Ross Derrick (1920s)

A book dealer at AbeBooks.com is selling a rare copy of A Maid from Mars (1920s), by Katherine Ross Derrick, for $5,000. This is the first time we have heard of this soft cover book and after searching a number of online resources (Internet Speculative Fiction Database, Google Book Search, Worldcat, Library of Congress, The British Library) we found only two other copies, both published in 1923. Here's a description of the copy for sale:

A Maid from Mars, by Katherine Ross Derrick (1920s)

Publisher: Printed by Oscar Blackford, Truro, Cornwall
Publication Date: 1920?
Binding: Soft cover
Edition: 1st Edition

Description: Derrick, Katherine Ross. A Maid from Mars. Truro, Cornwall: Printed by Oscar Blackford. N.d. c. 1921. First edition. 12mo., 48pp., sandy colored stiff wrappers with illustrated upper cover. Undated but references to wireless, aero-plane, flying machine & the war suggests about 1920. The story of a maid from mars who comes to earth [Cornwall] in human form, learns the language in a few months, attempts to share here Martian culture & spirit & who in the ends thinks mankind unready & splits. The earliest piece written about Mars by a woman & in a context which might be called loosely "feminist". Rare.

Price: $5,000

We note that a 22-page book titled The Maid from Mars, by Anna Steese Richardson, was published in 1901. Thuvia, Maid of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, was published first in the United States as a serial in 1916 and then as a book in 1920. It was published in London as a book in 1921.

“The Full Story of the Firstborn Assault on Mars” by Stephen Baxter and Arthur C. Clarke (2008)

Thanks to a post at the blog Free SF Reader, we just read “The Full Story of the Firstborn Assault on Mars,” a piece of short fiction by Stephen Baxter and the late Arthur C. Clarke.

Posted on Baxter’s website, “This short fiction, expanded from the account in our novel Firstborn (Feb. 2008, with Sir Arthur C. Clarke), is exclusive to this website.”

Although we’ve never read their novel Firstborn, as a stand-alone piece of short fiction that’s less than five pages,“The Full Story of the Firstborn Assault on Mars” is not bad. Blue Tyson of Free SF Reader rates it a 4 out of 5.

Enjoy the full story!

Best-Selling Books in Kurt Vonnegut’s Hilarious The Sirens of Titan (1959)

According to Malachi Constant, the wealthy narrator in The Sirens of Titan (1959), a comic science fiction novel about Mars by Kurt Vonnegut, here are the best-selling books “in recent times”:

     • The Winston Niles Rumfoord Authorized Revised Bible
     • The Beatrice Rumfoord Galactic Cookbook
     • The Winston Niles Rumfoord Pocket History of Mars
     • Unk and Boaz in the Caves of Mercury, by Sarah H. Canby

Some kind soul has posted a pdf of Coronet Book's 1975 printing of The Sirens of Titan. See the cover pictured above.

New Short Fiction: “The Last Temptation of Katerina Savitskaya" by H. G. Stratmann

“The Last Temptation of Katerina Savitskaya,” a new piece of short fiction by H. G. Stratmann, has been published in the September 2008 issue of Analog. A lengthy excerpt is posted on Analog's website.

According to SFRevu, the story “features Katerina Savitskaya and Martin Slayton, who first appeared in "The Paradise Project" in the November 2007 issue. The Russian and the American are alone on a Mars, terra-formed by a mysterious alien race. Katerina is a devout Russian Orthodox and Martin a very lapsed Catholic but they are in love and plan to marry when they return. But these mysterious aliens have something planned for them ...”

The Fix: Short Fiction Review provides a detailed summary but spoils the story.

H. G. Stratmann is Henry G. Stratmann, M.D., a cardiologist and science fiction author who has had both fiction and nonfiction pieces published in Analog. He will be a guest at Archon 32 in the St. Louis area in October.

Ray Bradbury Blasts Plan to Close Long Beach Public Library, Celebrates His 88th Birthday

In honor of Ray Bradbury’s 88th birthday today, we’ve reprinted a recent piece of nonfiction by Bradbury that illustrates his passion and lifelong commitment to reading and writing.

You see, there is a proposal to close the main branch of the public library in Long Beach, California, as part of a broader strategy to address a $16.9 million city budget deficit. Bradbury voiced his strong opposition to the proposal in a letter to the editor of the Long Beach Press-Telegram, which was printed by the newspaper under the title "Is Long Beach at War with Books?" on August 5, 2008:

Over the years I have had a love affair with Long Beach and frequently visit.

A few weeks ago I was in your city to mourn the pending forced closure of Acres of Books. Since 1934 this unique cultural heritage landmark bookstore has been a destination for book lovers from around the world with its inventory of over 1 million books. The current city leadership has forced its closure and will bulldoze the site to develop a strip mall and parking lot, an action they call progress.

I recently learned of the pending forced closure of the Long Beach Main Library from public access to balance the city budget. This is heartbreak and an outrage. Libraries are also an essential core public service. How can a major city not provide public access to a civic center library?

City Hall decisions will remove access to over 1.5 million books from one square mile of the city! Is Long Beach at war with the printed word and books?

I have great love for public libraries and received my education there. It was in the library stacks I discovered centuries of human thought and mined those stacks for mind-expanding experiences to fuel my writing. There the great authors were standing shoulder to shoulder on the library shelves just waiting for me to discover them. In fact, it was in the basement of the UCLA Powell Library I wrote Fahrenheit 451 on a pay typewriter.

Forward-thinking citizens established the Long Beach Public Library in 1908 with the help of Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie believed anyone with the right inclination and desire could educate himself if a free public library was available. A Long Beach Main Public Library has stood in the park for 100 years. Your Long Beach Friends of the Library when formed made national headlines by facing down community pressure to remove blacklisted books, including Fahrenheit 451, from the library shelves with Blanche Collins, librarian, in a three-year stand against censorship.

The Long Beach Friends of the Library and Library Foundation continue their work to ensure free, equitable, and accessible library services for every community in Long Beach

Tell City Hall NO to the threatened closure! Long Beach residents and children deserve nothing less than access to a downtown library with ready access to books and programs to help them achieve their goals and aspirations.

Ray Bradbury

Los Angeles

Readers are commenting on their favorite Ray Bradbury stories over at SF Signal, where John DeNardo has posted a cool television commercial starring Bradbury.

Check out Ray Bradbury's website at www.raybradbury.com.

Ace Double Novel: C.O.D. Mars by E. C. Tubb

C.O.D. Mars, a novel by E. C. Tubb (1968)

At left: Paperback original (New York: Ace Books, 1968), #H-40, 99 p., 60¢. Cover art by Jack Gaughan. An Ace double novel, bound with John Rackham’s Alien Sea. Description from inside the front cover:

“Three explorers returned to Earth after nine long years en route to Proxima Centauri and back. You would have supposed that they would have been greeted as the heroes of the century, feted, honored, rewarded. But Earth was rewarding the trio in a strange and terrible manner -- with permanent exile in orbit, never to touch any planet's surface again.

If Earth wanted that crew isolated so badly, it ought to be worth a lot for someone to learn the reason, because the powers that ruled the world were not talking.

The Scorfu -- the Martian equivalent of a Mafia -- had the idea that the three exiles might prove winning pieces in their endless competition with Earth. And therefore the somewhat unscrupulous but absolutely fearless operative, Slade, could be persuaded that the three from Centauri might mean a million for him -- Cash on Delivery, Mars.”

Best known for his Dumarest saga spanning more than 30 volumes, Tubb also wrote several novels based on Space: 1999, the popular science fiction television series of the 1970s.

Michael Ashley, in his The Time Machines: the Story of the Science-fiction Pulp Magazines from the Beginning to 1950 (2000), notes that E. C. Tubb was “the most prolific British sf writer throughout the fifties ... a hard-edged writer of sf realism, and few of his stories pull any punches.”

Marsbound: Joe Haldeman and Red Planet Blues

Joseph Bottum reviews Marsbound, Joe Haldeman’s new novel (2008), in his essay "One More Trip to the Red Planet: Mars in the Science-Fiction Imagination" at ChristianityToday.com.

With a flash of nostalgia, Bottum concludes “Marsbound is a book that declares from the beginning that it's going to follow the old conventions. Not enough of those conventions, alas. I want back my canals and my princesses and my golden eyes. I want back a reason for the Red Planet to remain central to the science-fiction canon. I don't exactly want to go Mars, but I want once again to imagine going there.”

Unexpectedly, Bottum devotes a vast amount of space to discussing how authors from H. G. Wells to Kim Stanley Robinson have treated water on the Red Planet, or lack thereof. One work notably absent is Isaac Asimov’s short story, The Martian Way. Originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine in November 1952, it is the tale of a ruthless Earth politician who threatens the pioneers on Mars by cutting off their water supply. To get things flowing again, a daring spaceman does things “The Martian Way,” by making a desperate journey to ice-ringed Saturn.

For recent real-science readings about water on Mars, see “How to Mine Martian Water,” by Jeremy Hsu at Space.com (via SF Signal), and “Martian Clays Tell Story of a Wet Past,” a press release from the SETI Institute detailing Dr. Janice Bishop’s research.

1940s Martian Radio: “Zero Hour” from The Mysterious Traveler

A radio series of more than 350 episodes, The Mysterious Traveler ran from 1943 to 1952. One of the episodes, titled “Zero Hour” (MP3, approx. 30 minutes) and broadcast on June 22, 1948, is the tale of the discovery of a “fifth column” of Martians stationed in rural Montana. Masquerading as humans, the Martians have been landing quietly on Earth for almost twenty years in preparation for a full invasion at ... Zero Hour!

For more great radio and audio drama about Mars and Martians, please visit SFFaudio.

Larry Niven’s “The Hole Man” (1974)

Originally published in Analog magazine in January 1974, “The Hole Man,” by Larry Niven, won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story that year. Here’s a description of the work, taken from Fictionwise:

“A team of astrophysicists land on Mars to study an abandoned alien base that was used to study humans during the Ice Age. All the environmental and communications systems are still running … but their operation remains a mystery. When one member of the team tries to prove his crazy quantum black hole theory about how the alien communications unit works, he inadvertently unleashes an astrophysical time bomb that threatens the very existence of the Red Planet.”

A hard-science read of about twenty pages, Niven considers “The Hole Man” a “straightforward crime story rendered distinctive only by an unusual murder weapon.” According to Niven's website, he wrote the piece after he and fellow sci-fi author Jerry Pournelle interviewed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking about Hawking’s work on black holes.

The blog Variety SF rates Niven's story a “B.”

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database indicates that "The Hole Man" has been reprinted in several anthologies, but we purchased it through Fictionwise for less than $1.

Ray Bradbury Laments the Decline of Bookstores

With the kids heading back to college next week, we can't help but think about the good olde days, when weekends started on Thursday, bookstores were just off campus, and our friends actually had reading lists.

Ray Bradbury, the "timeless guy of Sci Fi" who will celebrate his 88th birthday on August 22nd, remembers the days. In “Ray Bradbury on Literature and Love,” a July 2008 interview with Steve Wasserman, Literary Editor of Truthdig and former editor of the now defunct Los Angeles Times Book Review, Bradbury spoke candidly about bookstores, book reviews, the news industry, and doing what you love. Here’s an exchange about bookstores:

Ray Bradbury: A lot of it is the smell of books. There are--a lot of those bookstores were used bookstores. Some were high-quality used books and new publications, but the other bookstores were ... a lot of used books, and there’s thousands of them in there, and they were covered with dust and the smell of ancient Egypt. So, you go into a used bookstore and surprise yourself. Surprise in life should be everything. You shouldn’t know what you’re doing. You should go into a bookstore to be surprised and changed. So the bookstores change you and reveal new sides of yourself. That’s the importance of a used bookstore.

Steve Wasserman: And is something being lost with the disappearance of these bookstores, even as the technology for conveying to people the contents of books seems to every day advance?

Ray Bradbury: The bookstores are there for you to stumble over yourself. You must--that’s the trouble. ... Universities do not teach you; they do not discover you. I raised myself in used bookstores. I went in looking for myself and I found me on every shelf. I opened strange books. I saw a mirror image of myself in there and said, “Oh, my God, that’s me! I’ll take that. I’ll go home.” So used bookstores are surprise boxes to be opened constantly. And they’re not there now, so there’s no chance of revealing people to themselves. They don’t get revealed with these new inventions, with the, the telephones that they use, with the Internet and what have you. That’s no surprise--it doesn’t work.

Thanks to SF Signal for bringing this interview to our attention.

Discover’s Ten Best Science Fiction Planets

Last week, Discover Magazine’s blog posted a piece about the “10 Best Science Fiction Planets.” One of the planets that made the list: the Red, Green, and Blue Mars of Kim Stanley Robinson.

Discover senior editor Stephen Cass writes:
“Robinson’s Mars Trilogy has become the standard against which all hard science fiction books about Mars are weighed. Beginning in the near future, with the founding of the first permanent outpost on the red planet, and continuing for two centuries as Mars is terraformed, Robinson’s Mars is a meticulously researched and believable fictional version of our solar system neighbor.”

Kim Stanley Robinson will be a Guest of Honor at the 2010 World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne, Australia.

New Book: Marsbound by Joe Haldeman

Marsbound, a new novel by Joe Haldeman, was published earlier this month (Ace Books, 2008).

According to Locus Online, Marsbound, “possibly first of a trilogy, [is] about a teenaged girl whose family is among the first settlers on Mars, where she discovers aliens inhabiting underground caverns.”

A more detailed description appears on the cover flap of the new hardcover book: Young Carmen Dula and her family are about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime--they’re going to Mars. Being picked from the lottery is considered an opportunity not to be missed, even though Carmen isn’t so sure she wants to bother with it anymore. After training for a year and preparing to leave on the six-month journey through space, she finds that the initial excitement has given way to nervous trepidation--and frustration.

Once on the Red Planet, however, Carmen realizes things are not so different from Earth. There are chores to do, lessons to learn, and oppressive authority figures to rebel against. And when she ventures out into the bleak Mars landscape alone one night, a simple accident leads her to the edge of death until she is saved by an angel--an angel with too many arms and legs, a head that looks like a potato gone bad, and a message for the newly arrived human inhabitants of Mars: We were here first.

According to Haldeman’s LiveJournal entry for January 11th, 2008, the book has a complex history: “The thing had three incarnations, and when I put them together I somewhat screwed up the chronology, so I'm carefully charting it out as I go along. (The incarnations -- first a novella version in Dozois's Escape From Earth anthology, where the protagonist is a teenager ["The Mars Girl"], then the novel itself, Marsbound, where the protagonist is older, being serialized in Analog right now, and a somewhat longer and more complex book version, recently changed to accommodate the sequel Starbound, which was not in my original plans.)”

Interestingly, Haldeman’s LiveJournal entry for February 15th, 2008, describes how he chose the title Marsbound. Other titles he considered included Menace From Mars, Mars Threat, Mars Giveth, and To Mars.

You can read an excerpt from the book Marsbound at publishing house Penguin’s website or through Amazon’s Online Reader.

Haldeman's original novella, “The Mars Girl,” which appeared in the anthology Escape From Earth: New Adventures in Space (2006) and was a finalist for the 2007 Locus Poll Award for Best Novella, was reviewed by John DeNardo at SF Signal, Paul Kincaid at The SF Site, and Elizabeth A. Allen at Tangent: Short Fiction Review.

The expanded novella, rechristened Marsbound, was published as a three-part serial in Analog in early 2008 and reviewed by Jason Sanford and the blog The Elephant Forgets.

The new full-length book, Marsbound (Ace Books, 2008), was reviewed by Paul Haggerty at SFRevu.

In reviewing the three incarnations of Marsbound, several critics have drawn similarities to Robert A. Heinlein's two juveniles, Red Planet (1949) and Podkayne of Mars (1963). Haldeman’s LiveJournal entry for May 19th, 2008, speaks to the issue and is worth reading in its entirety. Here’s a small piece: “My bathtub read currently is Heinlein's Podkayne of Mars. My next novel, Marsbound, has some superficial similarities, and I thought before it comes out I'd better reread the Heinlein one, to see what I might have unconsciously plagiarized, after 42 years. ... I'm sure some critics will claim that I stole all the ideas from the Heinlein book, but not if they actually read both of them."

For the technologically inclined, Marsbound can be purchased as an eBook through Fictionwise or Amazon's Kindle, and as an unabridged audiobook through Audible.com or Apple's iTunes.

A Vietnam veteran, amateur astronomer, and Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author, Joe Haldeman is an adjunct professor teaching writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. He and his wife, Gay, were Guests of Honor at ArmadilloCon 30, held this past weekend in Austin, Texas.

Magazine Cover Art: “A Rose for Ecclesiastes”

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
No. 150, November 1963
Cover: “A Rose for Ecclesiastes,” by Hannes Bok

Issue contains “A Rose for Ecclesiastes,” by Roger Zelazny, which was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

Discovery of Water on Red Planet No Surprise for Author and Scientist Ben Bova

Part II of a ColoradoBiz Magazine interview with author Ben Bova was published in the August 6, 2008, issue. The conversation revolved around the recent discovery of water on Mars, the planet’s ability to support life, and Bova’s new book, Mars Life (Tor Books, 2008).

Here’s an interesting exchange between Bova and magazine editor Mike Cote:

Mike Cote: In Mars Life, there’s a debate about limiting the number of people who travel there and protection of both the environment and archeological sites. We’re seeing the same argument in the West right now with the escalation of energy exploration. As a scientist, how do you balance the two?

Ben Bova: As far as Mars is concerned, the idea of turning Mars into a real estate development is pretty ludicrous. Lots of my science fiction friends talk about terra-forming Mars, remaking the whole planet so that it’s like Earth and people can walk around in their shirtsleeves. Not only is this technically very, very difficult, but it’s probably the most expensive undertaking you can imagine. I don’t think it’s even necessary or desirable.

Mars should be a preserve for scientists to explore and learn, especially if we find evidence of life, either existing now or extinct. Mars should be a research park in my opinion, and I’m sure that’s the way it’s going to go.

Part I of the interview discussed Bova’s views on renewable energy.

Why Hollywood Should Ignore Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land

In a recent article titled “Hands off, Hollywood!” from The Star Online, an English-language news website in Malaysia, columnist A. Asohan argues that “There are some books so good that you pray Hollywood doesn’t mangle them into movies.”

One of the five books Asohan hopes Hollywood ignores: Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein (1961). According to Asohan, “It deserves its own special place because it’s not what the Hollywood types would recognise as sci-fi. ... Like so much good sci-fi ignored by Hollywood, Stranger in a Strange Land uses the genre’s tropes to hold up a mirror to society. We look at ourselves best through alien eyes.”

Michael Chabon’s “The Martian Agent: a Planetary Romance” (1993)

In honor of Michael Chabon’s winning the 2008 Hugo Award for Best Novel for his The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Timothy McSweeney of McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury fame has posted online an excerpt from Chabon’s 1993 short story, “The Martian Agent: a Planetary Romance.”

Originally published in McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales (Issue #10, 1993), which Chabon edited, “The Martian Agent” was recently published in Steampunk, an anthology edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (2008).

While we have not had an opportunity to read Chabon’s story, here is some feedback from those who have:

• A nod to another pulp magazine tradition, the serialized novel. This story takes place in an alternative past where the American Revolution was not successful. The story focuses on the young sons of a captured American rebel. -- The SF Site

• It kind of cheats the reader with expectations from its title. The story reads like the first chapter of a novel, featuring the exploits of two young brothers in a Post-Civil War alternate America, fleeing from their father’s enemies. Franklin and Jefferson Drake run, but to no avail; they are taken by the enemy and put in St. Ignatius Boys’ Home, which is a walk in the park compared to their parent’s fate, but it is nonetheless a melancholy situation. They are rescued by their uncle, Captain Thomas Mordden, inventor and aeronaut, who claims that it is possible for men to travel to the moon. But, alas, the story doesn’t go very far beyond this point, and we never learn who that Martian Agent is ... -- The Fix: Short Fiction Review

• Enough to send readers back into the cold but reliable arms of The New Yorker. -- The New York Times

Apparently, a note at the end of “The Martian Agent” indicated that Chabon intended to write a second installment of the story, titled “The Indistinguishable Operations of Empire and Fate." If so, it was never published. As sci-fi critic Rich Horton hinted, perhaps Chabon transformed an unpublished extended version of his story into a movie script instead. The Los Angeles Times noted in a 2002 article that “In 1997, Jan De Bont, the director of Speed, optioned Chabon’s script The Martian Agent which the writer describes as ‘Lawrence of Arabia on Mars in 1899.’ It was never made.”

Favorite SF Stories: Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains"

Thanks to a recent post by the blog QuasarDragon, we learned about sci-fi author, editor, and blogger Jason Sanford’s favorite science fiction story: “There Will Come Soft Rains,” by Ray Bradbury (1950).

As Sanford points out in his commentary on the blog BestScienceFictionStories, a version of "There Will Come Soft Rains" is printed as a chapter in Bradbury’s classic novel, The Martian Chronicles (1950), and can be read online as a pdf.

Sharing Cover Art: Lester del Rey, Henry Harrison, and H. Beam Piper

Trolling through Amazon.com's catalog of Kindle eBooks the other day, we found a record for Lester del Rey’s Police Your Planet (1956), a story in which “a disgraced, embittered Earth cop is exiled to a Mars that has been thoroughly corrupted by domed city life.” The cover art that Amazon is using to promote del Rey’s eBook is pictured here.

Much to our surprise, the same cover art, or some variation thereof, is being used by Amazon to promote at least three other science fiction eBooks: Planet of the Damned, by Henry Harrison, and Lone Star Planet and Four-Day Planet, both by H. Beam Piper. Please check the links to see our point.

Can anyone help us identify the artwork? Thanks!

Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy Makes List of 20 Essential Science Fiction Books of Past 20 Years

Denvention 3, the recent 2008 Worldcon gathering in Denver, had a much-anticipated panel discussion titled “20 Essential Science Fiction Books of the Past 20 Years,” the results of which are posted on moderater, semi-retired science fiction critic, and Hugo Award winner Cheryl Morgan's blog. The other panelists were Charles N. Brown, Gary K. Wolfe, Graham Sleight, and Karen Burnham.

Perhaps not surprisingly, three of the five panelists (Wolfe, Sleight, Burnham) included Kim Stanley Robinson’s landmark Mars Trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars; 1992-1996) on his or her list of “20 Essential Science Fiction Books of the Past 20 Years.”

Just how highly regarded is Robinson’s trilogy? In commenting on Red Mars back in 1992, Arthur C. Clarke called it “A staggering book ... The best novel on the colonization of Mars that has ever been written ... It should be required reading for the colonists of the next century.”

Interview with Paul Mantee, Starred in Cult Film Robinson Crusoe on Mars

Paul Mantee, a movie and television actor who is perhaps best known for his role as shipwrecked astronaut Commander Christopher “Kit” Draper in the 1964 cult sci-fi film Robinson Crusoe on Mars, discusses the film in a recent interview with Ron Garmon of Los Angeles CityBeat.

A more detailed interview with Mantee about the film was published in Science Fiction and Fantasy Film Flashbacks: Conversations with 24 Actors, Writers, Producers and Directors from the Golden Age, by Tom Weaver (2004). The bulk of this interview can be read online through Google Book Search.

Shot in California’s Death Valley, Robinson Crusoe on Mars was based upon Daniel Defoe’s classic novel, Robinson Crusoe (1719), and a Rex Gordon science fiction novel, First on Mars (1956). After crashing at the box office in 1964, a restored letterbox version of the film was released with related material as a DVD in 2007.

Leigh Brackett’s “Black Amazon of Mars” (1951)

In the afterglow of last winter's Paizo Publishing reprint of The Secret of Sinharat / People of the Talisman, Leigh Brackett's classic 1964 Ace double novel, it’s worth recalling that the latter work is an expansion of an early Brackett novella, “Black Amazon of Mars.”

First published in Planet Stories in March 1951 and featured on the magazine’s cover, "Black Amazon of Mars" received immediate praise from aspiring science fiction writer Lin Carter, whose letter to the magazine's editor, Jerome Bixby, was published a few months later:

Dear Bix:

For some reason or another, it seems to be a long time between letters. ... Well, on to the meat of the mag, yclept Black Amazon of Mars, or Stark Rides Again! This was a good, rousing bradswords-and-atom-blaster sort of science-fantasy, in the reliable Planet style. This sort of yarn has been appearing in PS ever since Vassals of the Master World, Black Friar of the Flame, and Red Witch of Mercury, and will undoubtedly keep right on appearing in PS as long as that magazine continues to grace the newsstands. Not that I have anything against this sort of story, but after seeing it so often it becomes tiresome. The story is always the same; hero is bronzed Earthman, heroine is proud Martian princess (or proud Venusian sorceress, or proud Saturnian warrior-queen, etc. cetera), villain who is a ruthless and ambitious fellow Martian or Venusian or Saturnian, who resents the Earthman, having a crush on said proud MP (or PVS, or PSWQ etc.). Repetition does not endear this sort of thing, it just becomes silly.

Now, the only thing that saves Black Amazon from being dull, boring and silly, is that it was written by Leigh Brackett, a talented and imaginative authoress. She took this weary old plot, that would have been limp, uninspired and unreadable hack in the hands of an Erik Fennel or an Emmett McDowell, and turned it into poetry. "The great tower of stone rose up monstrous to the sky. It was whole and there were pallid lights within that stirred and flickered, and it was crowned with a shimmering darkness." She knows the secret of fusing poignant emotion, rich description, convincing action, and above all, a tremendous sense of atmosphere and lavish, excellent use of the English language, to her bare plot and turning it into something damn readable, Black Amazon was a good story, colorful, poetic, and exciting. Let’s have more from Brackett. ...

Sincerely,

Lin Carter, the Sage of St. Pete
The One, the Only, the Original Sage!

More than forty years later, the original “Black Amazon of Mars” novella was republished in Stark and the Star Kings (2005), a collection of material by Brackett and Edmond Hamilton, her husband. Interestingly, this collection was reviewed by writer and critic John Clute of SciFi.com. Clute's review prompted a letter to the editor by opposing critic Rich Horton regarding the expansion of "Black Amazon of Mars," which in turn triggered a hilarious response and (Ace) “double thanks” from Clute.

Pictured above: Brackett’s “Black Amazon of Mars,” featured on the cover of Planet Stories (Vol. 4, No. 11, March 1951). Art by Allen Anderson.

Top Martian Sci-Fi Audiobooks on iTunes

One of the neat things about iTunes is its list of Top 100 Sci Fi & Fantasy audiobooks. While it is unclear to us whether the list is based on the number of times a title has been purchased by consumers or the average rating of customer reviews, it is updated on a regular basis. At the moment, several Martian Sci-Fi titles are on the list:

   #51. Minority Report and Other Stories (2002), by Philip K. Dick, includes “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” (1966)

   #55. Out of the Silent Planet, by C. S. Lewis (1938)

   #61. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury (1950)

   #83. The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells (1898)

Other Martian Sci-Fi audiobooks available at iTunes include Joe Haldeman’s new book, Marsbound (2008).

New Collection of Judith Merril Novels

Spaced Out: Three Novels of Tomorrow, by Judith Merril (2008), was published earlier this summer by NESFA Press, the “publishing pseudopod” of the New England Science Fiction Association. A hardcover collection including two works about Mars co-written by C. M. Kornbluth, here are the contents:

• Shadow on the Hearth (1950), by Merril. The story of nuclear war on Earth from the perspective of Gladys Mitchell, a housewife who must cope with threats to her family.

• Outpost Mars (1952), by Merril and Kornbluth, writing as Cyril Judd. The story of Dr. Tony Hellman and fellow humans of Sun Lake Colony on Mars, who are accused of stealing a supply of marcaine, a Martian drug, from the planet’s most powerful magnate. (Note that Outpost Mars is part of the Planetary Society’s Visions of Mars library aboard NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander.)

• Gunner Cade (1952), by Merril and Kornbluth, writing as Cyril Judd. The story of Gunner Cade, a professional soldier of the Realm of Man, who is captured by rebel forces on Mars but escapes, only to find that he is being hunted by fellow gunners.

The cover art for this collection is by William K. Hartmann, painter, scientist, and author of Mars Underground: a Novel (1997)

Surprisingly, Spaced Out: Three Novels of Tomorrow does not include Merril’s The Tomorrow People (1960), a novel about Johnny Wendt, sole survivor of a failed expedition to Mars.

Also, it's worth noting that The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy at the Toronto Public Library is named after Judith Merril. Donated in 1970, the collection was originally known as The Spaced Out Library and consisted of items from her personal collection.

Lastly, Suford Lewis, editor at NESFA Press, just won the 2008 Forrest J Ackerman Big Heart Award, the highest service award in the science fiction community, at Denvention 3. Congratulations!

New Short Fiction: “Tenbrook of Mars” by Dean McLaughlin

“Tenbrook of Mars,” a new novella by Dean McLaughlin, has been published in the July/August 2008 issue of Analog.

As SFRevu describes the plot, “Don Tenbrook had wound up acting manager on an outpost on Mars when a disaster cut off their supplies. While he won't admit to it, he's credited with ‘saving the colony.’ He's coming home to a hero's welcome and finding something
out about how help from Earth was handled. We get his history and how survival was engineered. Does he have a surprise waiting for him?”

A more complete synopsis and brief analysis is provided by The Fix: Short Fiction Review.

Interestingly, McLaughlin pays tribute to several authors and students
of the Red Planet by incorporating the following spaceships into his storyline: the Edgar Burroughs, the Giovanni Schiaparelli, the Percival Lowell, and the Raymond Bradbury.

An active science fiction writer since the early 1950’s, McLaughlin’s best known work is "Hawk Among the Sparrows" (1968), which was nominated for both the Hugo Award and Nebula Award for Best Novella.

Kindle Report Ignites Amazon’s Stock

Shares of online retailer Amazon.com rocketed nearly 10% today on speculation that 2008 sales of its Kindle electronic book reader will be twice as high as originally expected. Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney projected in a research report that sales of Kindle will reach about 380,000 units this year and could generate more than $1 billion for Amazon by 2010. "Turns out the Kindle is becoming the iPod of the book world," Mahaney wrote.

Launched in 2007, Kindle offers readers more than 4,500 science fiction titles, including classics such as Stowaway to Mars, by John Wyndham (1936), Rebels of the Red Planet, by Charles L. Fontenay (1961), and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, by Philip K. Dick (1965), as well as more recent works such as Semper Mars, by Ian Douglas (1998), Starstrike: Task Force Mars, by Douglas Niles (2007), and In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, by S. M. Stirling (2008).

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is founder of Blue Origin, a privately-funded aerospace company which might actually transport a reader to Mars some day.

Space Artist Michael Carroll to Speak at Mars Society Convention

Michael Carroll, an internationally recognized astronomical and science fiction artist, is scheduled to speak at the 11th Annual Mars Society Convention, to be held at the University of Colorado at Boulder, August 14th to 17th, 2008.

Carroll’s artwork has appeared in magazines, on television programs, at museums, and in several books, including the nonfiction Mars 1999 (1987) and Race to Mars (1988). His paintings also cover numerous nonfiction and science fiction books, including Fourth Planet from the Sun: Tales of Mars from the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (2005). An image of one of Carroll’s paintings, Russian Rover (1992), is currently on the surface of the Red Planet as part of the Visions of Mars library aboard NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander.

The author of several children’s science books, Carroll also edited Eat My Martian Dust: Finding God Among Aliens, Droids, And Mega Moons with Robert Elmer (2005), a collection of fourteen science fiction short stories with Christian themes.

New Book: Mars Life by Ben Bova

Mars Life (Tor Books, 2008), a new novel by Ben Bova, has been published and is now available in bookstores. Following Mars (1992) and Return to Mars (1999), this is his third science fiction book about geologist Jamie Waterman and the human exploration of the Red Planet.

A prolific writer who has authored more than one hundred works, Bova is a six-time winner of the Hugo Award and past president of both the National Space Society and the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Here’s a description of Mars Life: Jamie Waterman discovered the cliff dwelling on Mars, and the fact that an intelligent race lived on the red planet sixty-five million years ago, only to be driven into extinction by the crash of a giant meteor. Now the exploration of Mars is itself under threat of extinction, as the ultraconservative New Morality movement gains control of the U.S. government and cuts off all funding for the Mars program.

Meanwhile, Carter Carleton, an anthropologist who was driven from his university post by unproven charges of rape, has started to dig up the remains of a Martian village. Science and politics clash on two worlds as Jamie desperately tries to save the Mars program and uncover who the vanished Martians were.

A 25-page excerpt of Mars Life is available at Bova’s website and he discusses the issue of financing space exploration in an interview with ColoradoBiz Magazine.

A review by John Joseph Adams is posted on Sci Fi Wire.

Conveniently, the publication of Mars Life coincides with the real world debate as to whether NASA’s Phoenix Mars Mission has discovered life on Mars. Bova speaks to both in "How would we react to Martian life?", his most recent column for the Naples Daily News.

Project Blue Mars: An Online Virtual World

While Phoenix Mars Mission scientists are diligently investigating perchlorate salts on the Red Planet, computer programmers at Avatar Reality, Inc., are busily completing production of Blue Mars, a new “online massively multiplayer virtual world ... featuring stunning graphics, realistic characters and endless social bonding opportunities. Set on Terraformed Mars in the year 2177 AD, players will be able to live out their fantasies through personalized avatars.” Blue Mars is scheduled for beta release at the end of 2008.

Who knows, perhaps a player will be able to create an avatar who is a science fiction fan, relaxing by the side of a swimming pool reading a first edition hardcover of Stranger in a Strange Land in pristine condition.

For more information about Blue Mars, read “Will Martian water discovery fuel interest in sci-fi Blue Mars world?” at The Industry Standard’s website.

“The Memory of Mars” by Raymond Jones (1961)

Below is a bookish passage from “The Memory
of Mars,” a piece of short fiction written by Raymond F. Jones and published in Amazing Stories magazine in December 1961.

The story’s plot revolves around a news reporter on Earth named Mel Hastings, his dead wife Alice, a vacation to Mars, and a clandestine Galactic Council that replaces humans with androids. With implanted memories and therapy through psycho-recovery, it reminds us somewhat of Philip K. Dick’s “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” (1966).

In the second layer of junk in the drawer he came across the brochure on Martian vacations. It must have been one of the dreams of her life, he thought. She'd wanted it so much that she'd almost come to believe that it was real. He turned the pages of the smooth, glossy brochure. Its cover bore the picture of the great Martian Princess and the blazoned emblem of Connemorra Space Lines. Inside were glistening photos of the plush interior of the great vacation liner, and pictures of the domed cities of Mars where Earthmen played more than they worked. Mars had become the great resort center of Earth.

The full text of "The Memory of Mars" is available free of charge at ManyBooks.net and Project Gutenberg.

Jones also wrote two other pieces of Martian short fiction, “The Martian Circe” (1947) and “The Lights of Mars” (1973), as mentioned in Richard Simms' checklist of Jones' short fiction.

Pictured above: The Vol. 35, No. 12, December 1961 issue of Amazing Stories.

Denvention 3: World Science Fiction Convention

Denvention 3, the 66th World Science Fiction Convention, is being held this week, from Wednesday, August 6, through Sunday, August 10, 2008, at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver.

The 170-page quick reference guide lists some interesting events, including:

• Mars Update, a panel discussion about the latest buzz on the Red Planet, featuring scientist Bill Higgins, author Geoffrey Landis, and scientist and author Steven Howe.

• Mars Through the SF Ages: ERB to KSR, a panel discussion about how the Red Planet has fascinated science fiction writers from Edgar Rice Burrough to Kim Stanley Robinson. Panelists D. Douglas Fratz, Jeff DeLuzio, editor and reviewer John Joseph Adams, educator Margaret McBride, and author Mary Turzillo talk about visions of Mars and how they have changed over the course of time.

• Trends in Book Collecting, a panel discussion featuring nonfiction author and former educator Bradford Lyau, long-time SF fan Mark Olson, bookseller Tom Whitmore, and William Priester: “Don't you wish that you had kept that first edition hardcover of Stranger in a Strange Land in pristine condition instead of taking it with you to the swimming pool? Our panel of book collectors will discuss how to make an educated guess as to what current books are going to be worth more in the future, and what volumes in your library might be worth more than you think.”

• Timeless Stars panel discussions about C. M. Kornbluth and Clifford D. Simak.

• A showing of the film, Mission to Mars (2000), starring Gary Sinise, Tim Robbins, and Kim Delaney.

Also, “Mars Attracts Sci-Fi Author Ben Bova,” a recent article in the Rocky Mountain News, notes that Bova will receive the Robert A. Heinlein Award at Denvention 3. Bova’s latest novel, Mars Life, his third about the Red Planet, has just been published by Tor Books.