Iron Jaw and Hummingbird, a New Young Adult Novel by Chris Roberson

Iron Jaw and Hummingbird, a new Young Adult novel by Chris Roberson, was published earlier this month by Viking. The second book in Roberson’s Celestial Empire series, it has been called a “Chinese opera set on a terraformed Mars.” Here’s a more formal description, taken from the publisher’s website:

“Mars is controlled by the Chinese, who call their civilization the Celestial Empire. But for teenagers Gamine and Huang, it is anything but heavenly. Gamine was taken off the street by an aristocrat, schooled as a fine young lady -- then abandoned at her patron’s whim and forced to make her living as a grifter. Huang’s army career is cut short by a bandit ambush. When the two meet, Gamine -- “Iron Jaw” -- is the leader of a sham religious movement, and Huang, or “Hummingbird,” is the bandits’ chief tactician. They join forces to bring down the corrupt government that has determined their lives. Iron Jaw and Hummingbird offers a planet’s worth of adventure!”

Roberson, who maintains his own website, spoke recently about Iron Jaw and Hummingbird to editor and critic John Joseph Adams at Sci Fi Wire, noting that “the events of the novel are loosely based on real revolutions in China's history, such as the Boxer Rebellion."

You can browse the novel’s cover, front flap, table of contents, back flap, and back cover through Amazon's Online Reader.

Iron Jaw and Hummingbird was reviewed by John Enzinas at The SF Site and by Angela at SciFiChick.

Despite the fact that this book is classified as YA, I’m adding it to my reading list. Chinese history and mythology are very cool!

“Monsters of Mars” by Edmond Hamilton (1931)

Thanks to the blog Variety SF, I’ve been browsing the digitized issues of Astounding Stories magazine at the Internet Archive. One of the stories I found is Edmond Hamilton’s novelette “Monsters of Mars,” which was published in the April 1931 issue. Based on the science of the age of radio, the plot involves three Earthmen who visit the Red Planet and unexpectedly find hostile Martians who are eager to conquer Earth.

“Monsters of Mars” starts on Page 4 of the April 1931 issue of Astounding Stories and goes on to Page 5, Page 6, Page 7, Page 8, Page 9, Page 10, Page 11, Page 12, Page 13, Page 14, Page 15, Page 16, Page 17, Page 18, Page 19, Page 20, Page 21, Page 22, Page 23, Page 24, and Page 25. For an alternative approach that is more maddening, start at the Internet Archive's index to the Astounding Stories issues for 1931 and try to find the correct images to read!

As you'll quickly discover, reading Hamilton’s “Monsters of Mars” online can be a scary experience because the Internet Archive presents raw digitized images of the magazine. It might be less frightening if you copy the images and dump them into your photo application, where you can manipulate them to a better size and clarity.

Have a fun and safe Halloween!

Halloween 1938: Ray Bradbury, Forrest Ackerman, and Ray Harryhausen

What were Ray Bradbury, Forrest Ackerman, and Ray Harryhausen doing on Halloween in 1938? The answer is recorded in "The Bradbury Chronicles," a 1975 interview between Ray Bradbury and Shel Dorf which is incorporated in the book Conversations with Ray Bradbury (2004):

Ray Bradbury: ... Ray and I became fast friends. I used to go out to his house. He made a life mask of me and put together a liquid latex horror-mask for me to wear on Halloween back in 1938. And I went to the Paramount Theatre with Ray Harryhausen and Forrest Ackerman, wearing this liquid latex green Martian sort of mask, and had a wonderful time. So you see how crazy we all were. ...

For another interesting Halloween sci-fi tidbit, check out this bookplate signed by Bradbury.

Google Settles Suit Over Book-Scanning

Google Settles Suit Over Book-Scanning
The New York Times, October 29, 2008
By Miguel Helft and Motoko Rich

SAN FRANCISCO -- Settling a legal battle, Google reached an agreement with book publishers and authors that clears the way for both sides to more easily profit from digital versions of printed books.

The agreement, under which Google would pay $125 million to settle two copyright lawsuits over its book-scanning efforts, would allow it to make millions of out-of-print books available for reading and purchasing online.

It outlines the framework for a new system that will channel payments from book sales, advertising revenue and other fees to authors and publishers, with Google collecting a cut.

The deal goes some way toward drawing a road map for a possible digital future for publishers and authors, who worried that they were losing control over how their works were used online, as the music industry has. [...]

Read the entire article in The New York Times.

70th Anniversary of Orson Welles' 1938 The War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast

Tomorrow, October 30th, is the 70th Anniversary of Mercury Theatre's radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, a dramatization of H.G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds (1898). Narrated by Orson Welles, the 1938 broadcast sent thousands of people into a frenzied panic, as they truly believed marauding Martians had landed at Grover's Mill, New Jersey and were advancing on New York City. The headline of the October 31, 1938, issue of The New York Times tells the story.

In recognition of the anniversary, Indiana Public Radio will broadcast Ball State University's live re-creation of the 1938 radio broadcast.

Other public radio stations will mark the anniversary by airing "We Take You Now to Grover’s Mill: The Making of the War of the Worlds Broadcast,” a 1988 documentary by award-winning radio producer and voice actor Joe Bevilacqua.

If you have a scheduling conflict, not to worry, as both Mercury Theatre's 1938 broadcast and Joe Bevilacqua's 1988 documentary are archived on the Internet and can be accessed at any time.

Life on Mars: Virginia Tech’s Sci-Fi Exhibition

Before Life on Mars, ABC’s new television series starring Jason O’Mara, Michael Imperioli, Harvey Keitel, and Lisa Bonet, there was Life on Mars, Virginia Tech’s online exhibition featuring cover art and interior illustrations of works written by H.G. Wells, Festus Pragnall, Miles J. Breuer, Edgar Rice Burroughs, S.D. Gottesman, Harl Vincent, Ross Rocklynne, Edmond Hamilton, Leigh Brackett, Hugo Gernsback, and Stanley D. Bell!

Perhaps the most interesting piece of art from Virginia Tech’s exhibit
is pictured above. It’s the “Cover by unknown artist showing a Martian as proposed by Hugo Gernsback in his article “Evolution on Mars”. From Science and Invention, formerly Electrical Experimenter Vol. XII Whole Number 136 (No.4) August 1924.” It looks very similar to artist Frank Paul's cover for Martianthology (2003), an anthology compiled by Forrest J Ackerman and edited by Anne Hardin!

Short Fiction Online: “It Takes a Town” by Stephen V. Ramey (2002)

We just finished reading "It Takes a Town,” a short story written by Stephen V. Ramey that was originally published online in Strange Horizons (2002) and recently reprinted in the anthology Triangulation: Taking Flight (2008).

A tale about a small town in Indiana that somehow manages to launch a rocket to Mars, here’s how Martin McGrath describes "It Takes a Town" in a review at The Fix: Short Fiction Review: “Ramey has written one of those folksy American SF tales where small-town Yankees apply their boundless ingenuity to achieve something magical that all the huffing and puffing of big government and big city folk could never manage. In this case, they launch a rocket to Mars. And they do it despite living in a post-fossil fuel, globally warmed society ... This is sentimental, hokey, and familiar stuff that draws on the marrow of American science fiction, and yet it is also irresistibly, infuriatingly appealing. ...”

As the blog QuasarDragon pointed out last month, a reading of Ramey’s “It Takes a Town” can be downloaded as an mp3 file from PodCastle: The Fantasy Fiction Podacst. According to the comments at PodCastle, at least one listener found the story distasteful: “Yet another sentimentalist tale pushing the ideals of community and optimism. ugh. I hear so many of these that not only have i become numb to them and their cliched hopefully happy endings, but i now find myself slightly nauseated.”

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin is a “MARS GUY”

With NASA Apollo 11 Astronaut Buzz Aldrin's comments this week to French news agency AFP that the first humans sent to Mars should be prepared to spend the rest of their lives there, its worth noting that for a number of years Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon, wheeled around Los Angeles in a red Mercedes-Benz automobile with license plates that read “MARS GUY.”

One of Aldrin’s “MARS GUY” plates (California, # 8730546, issued in 2000) was auctioned off in March 2008 by Heritage Auction Galleries of Dallas. The plate, from Aldrin’s personal collection, sold for about $2,000.

Buzz Aldrin is a member of the Mars Society. He drew a “Roadmap to Mars” in an article in the December 2005 issue of Popular Mechanics. This past summer, he answered “7 New Questions on the Future of Mars and Private Space” for the magazine’s blog.

Fan Recalls Marvel’s John Carter, Warlord of Mars; Company to Report Earnings on Nov. 4th

Seduction of the Indifferent, a blog about comics, movies, travel and life in Toronto, recalls a hidden science fiction gem from the late 1970s: Marvel Comic’s John Carter, Warlord of Mars series.

Speaking of gems, Marvel Entertainment, Inc., which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol MVL, will release financial results for its third quarter on November 4th. In case you’ve been vacationing on Mars, Marvel is having a sparkling year!

An Interview with Author and Poet Mary Turzillo

Thanks to SF Signal, we read an October 14, 2008, interview with science fiction author and poet Mary Turzillo. Posted on the blog of the Nebula Awards, the interview has two interesting exchanges that should be of interest to Martian sci-fi fans:

Marva Dasef: Mary, you’ve already had a successful career in science fiction/fantasy. What works-in-progress can we scoop?

Mary Turzillo: I have a cats-on-Mars story coming out in Analog: “Steak Tartare and the Cats of Gari Babakin Station.” I’m working on a story about the god of Pachinko. And I’m working on my Mars colonization novel, Heart’s Journey, Mars Quest. ...

Marva Dasef: Prizes and prestige aside, what is the work that you’re most proud of and what makes it stand out for you?

Mary Turzillo: I have some dark fantasy I’m really happy about:
“Bottle Babies,” because Maureen McHugh liked it. “Eat or Be Eaten: A Love Story” because it’s over the top. But mainly the Mars stories. I’m inspired by my husband’s research into Mars atmosphere and the feasibility of human Mars exploration. I’m a member of the Mars Society. “Steak Tartare” is my current favorite. ...

A retired professor of English, Dr. Mary A. Turzillo is now a full-time writer. In 2000, her story “Mars Is No Place for Children” won a Nebula Award for best novelette. Her novel An Old-Fashioned Martian Girl was serialized in Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine in 2004. More recently, her novelette “Zora and the Land Ethic Nomads,” which is set on Mars, was published in The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction (2007). And, this past summer, her poem “Cats Can Colonize Mars” was published in the journal Star*Line.

Mary Turzillo maintains her own website. She is married to scientist and fellow science fiction author Geoffrey A. Landis.

Reviews of The Martian General's Daughter, a Novel by Theodore Judson

Lou Anders, editor at science fiction imprint Pyr, and the Pyr-o-mania blog have directed us to a positive review of The Martian General’s Daughter (2008), a novel written by Theodore Judson, posted on Science Fact & Science Fiction Concatenation. As Anders mentioned in earlier blog posts, a character on the television series Stargate: Atlantis is/was reading Judson’s novel as part of the TV program’s book club.

Another generally positive review of The Martian General’s Daughter is posted on Don D'Ammassa's website Critical Mass.

Published earlier this year by Pyr, The Martian General’s Daughter is near the top of our reading list. A summary of the novel and sample chapters are available at Pyr’s website.

When Two Worlds Meet: Stories of Men on Mars by Robert Moore Williams (1970)

When Two Worlds Meet: Stories of Men on Mars, by Robert Moore Williams (1970)

At left: Paperback original (New York: Modern Literary Editions, 1970), 222 p., 75¢. Here's the blurb from the back cover:

“Man has stamped his footprints on the Moon. Tomorrow he will venture further -- to touch the planets, to capture the stars, to journey to the edge of infinity ... and beyond. Imagine that future -- when the quest for supreme power drives beings to conquer not one nation, not even one planet, but the vast and endless whole of the Universe. When Two Worlds Meet is the story
of that extraordinary time, of the evil ones whose will is Universal subjugation, and of those brave beings who bear the fight for freedom to the very brink of time itself. When Two Worlds Meet -- Dazzling science fiction from a master, Robert Moore Williams.”

The contents of this collection, which has red colored page ends, include:

• “When Two Worlds Meet,” a novelette originally published in Amazing Stories (April 1950)

• “Aurochs Came Walking,” a shortstory originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (December 1953)

• “On Pain of Death,” a novelette originally published in Astounding Science-Fiction (June 1942)

• “The Sound of Bugles,” a shortstory originally published in Startling Stories (March 1949)

• “The Final Frontier,” a shortstory originally published in Super Science Stories (January 1950)

• “When the Spoilers Came,” a novelette originally published in Planet Stories (May 1952)

Friends of Old-Time Radio Gather to Re-create 1955 Broadcast of Bradbury’s “Mars is Heaven!”

And now this special bulletin from New Jersey ... 2008 Friends of Old-Time Radio Convention kicks off Thursday in Newark and runs through Sunday
... meeting for the 33rd time and will feature dozens of old-time radio stars ... several live radio dramas ... Ray Bradbury's classic short story "Mars Is Heaven!" from the X Minus One sci-fi series ... Lucie Arnaz, daughter of Lucille Ball ... Peg Lynch of Ethel & Albert ... panels on comedy, big bands, the Lindbergh kidnapping, sportscasting, and pulp ... dinners in the evening and a wide assortment of radio memorabilia dealers ... held at the Holiday Inn North near Newark Airport ... listen to the original 1955 radio broadcast of “Mars is Heaven!” from the Internet Archive ... and please support our sponsor by celebrating National Wheaties Week.

The New Ray Bradbury Review Now Available

The first issue of The Center for Ray Bradbury Studies' The New Ray Bradbury Review has been published by Kent State University Press.

“Like its pioneering predecessor, the one-volume review published in 1952 by William F. Nolan, The New Ray Bradbury Review contains articles and reviews about Bradbury but has a much broader scope, including a thematic focus for each issue.”

“This first issue is devoted to the question of adaptation, or Bradbury’s translation into other media. Bradbury often speaks of himself as a ‘hybrid’ writer, as someone whose authorship took shape in a culture dominated by mass media and the decline of book reading. What has been the effect of this ‘reign of adaptations’ on Bradbury’s authorship? How has Bradbury in turn been served by the translation of his work into other media -- radio, film, television -- both by himself and by others? ... This issue also features two of Bradbury’s unpublished screenplays and an extensive bibliography of Bradbury’s adaptation into other media.”

We’re looking forward to reading the piece “Bradbury’s Comic Adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs.”

Five Mars Books You Won’t Find at LibraryThing

Last Friday, LibraryThing trumpeted the news that
the online book networking service has more books cataloged (32,287,447) than the Library of Congress. While this is a cool service and we are considering adding our own collection of books to the network, the "long tail" of LibraryThing is not long enough.
Here are five science fiction books about Mars or Martians that
no member of LibraryThing owns:

• Zarlah the Martian (1909), by R. Norman Grisewood

• Next Stop -- Mars! (1959), by David Edwards

• Out of the Void (1967), by Leslie F. Stone

• Martian Spring (1986), by Michael Lindsay Williams

• Dire Planet (2005), by Joel Jenkins

Editor Anne Hardin Reflects on The Magic Ball from Mars (1953)

Containing fourteen works of short fiction written between 1923 and 1968, Martianthology (2003), compiled by Forrest J Ackerman, is one of the more interesting anthologies about Mars. In this passage from the introduction, editor Anne Hardin reflects on how The Magic Ball from Mars (1953), a children’s book by Carl L. Biemiller, rolled into her life and the anthology:

I never remember learning to read -- it just seemed to be something I could always do. I have fond memories of being surrounded by books, and it was true that by the end of my elementary school days, the librarian, Mrs. Baker, recommended that the principal honor me for having read every book in the library (he treated me to a Coke). But when I was seven, this same Mrs. Baker held a sale of books she’d boxed up that would be discarded otherwise. For a nickel I bought The Magic Ball from Mars -- it was my first voyage into science fiction, and it was wonderful. From that day forward, I still read everything I could get my hands on, but science fiction was at the top of the list.

Years passed, and I forgot about the magic ball. Until last year. The stories for this project were settling into publication concrete, and in the middle of some completely unrelated thought, my Muse called out to me, “REMEMBER THE MAGIC BALL FROM MARS.” Suddenly not just the title, but Johnny Jenks, the hidden “cave” created where a tree had fallen over, the tall visitor from space, (whom I now visualize as Michael Rennie’s Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still), the gift of a baseball card, and ... marsquartz popped into my head. I was seven years old again, and I had to find that story and see what could be done to print it here. I don’t know how today’s seven-year-old handles remembering both the title and the author of anything, but strings of words can be searched on the internet, so I went first to abebooks.com, my source for rare books. The title search scored three hits. I was amused to see that my nickel investment was worth over a hundred dollars (!) ... And here it is back in print, just in time for its fiftieth anniversary.

You can read the first chapter of The Magic Ball from Mars and learn how the book has affected other readers' lives at Biemiller.com, a website devoted to author Carl L. Biemiller.

Recent Flash Fiction: Penelope Friday's "Life from Mars" and Hank Quense's "Fast Living"

Here are two recent pieces of flash fiction that entwine science and fiction:

• “Life from Mars,” by Penelope Friday (2008). Published in Hub, Issue 67, this piece involves a space scientist who tells a story about life from Mars to a group of students. (Thanks to QuasarDragon for bringing this to our attention.)

• “Fast Living,” by Hank Quense (2008). Published at Flash Fiction Online, this story is about twin brothers who contract a rare medical condition while living on Mars.

This Book is Dedicated to ... Vol. 1

• “To the memory of Percival Lowell whose inspired vision of Mars will continue to haunt men’s minds until we go there.” The Secret of the Martian Moons (1955), by Donald A. Wollheim

• “For the Mars that used to be, but never was.” The Alternate Martians (1965), by A. Bertram Chandler

• “For Isaac Asimov, Lester Del Rey, George O. Smith, and the rest of my friends in my favorite club, The Trap-Door Spiders.” The Man Who Loved Mars (1973), by Lin Carter

• “To all the science-fiction-starved readers who are about to read what I like to read: I envy you ... after all, I already know how it ends.” Martian Spring (1986), by Michael Lindsay Williams

• “Leslie, Lisabeth, and Melanie have been the joy of my life and have also become my friends. This book is dedicated to them and to our love for adventure.” Man O’ War (1996), by William Shatner

• “This book is for Scott and Kevin Thomas -– if either of you gets to Mars, send me a postcard.” Fourth Planet from the Sun: Tales of Mars from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (2005), edited by Gordon Van Gelder

Ace Double Novel: The Alternate Martians by A. Bertram Chandler

The Alternate Martians, a novel by A. Bertram Chandler (1965)

At left: Paperback original (New York: Ace Books, 1965), 129 p., #M-129, 45¢. Cover art by Jerome Podwil. An Ace double novel, bound with Chandler’s Empress of Outer Space. Here’s the blurb from inside the front cover:

When Mariner IV radioed back the vision of Mars as a planet pocked with craters and unlikely to harbor life of any advanced sort, some newspapers wondered how science-fiction writers would take this. But, characteristic of their limitless imaginations, they always come up with an answer.

A. Bertram Chandler presents a particularly challenging response. If Mars is indeed barren, what are we to say of the wonderfully lifelike Mars worlds of H. G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Otis Adelbert Kline, and so many others. They are too real to be lost! They must exist somewhere! And so Chandler sends his space expedition to that barren and lifeless Mars to find The Alternate Martians.

It's a science-fiction adventure, packed with action, and filled with some unexpected Red Planet surprises!

Blue Tyson, in summarizing the novel, noted: “Here, apparently a sequel to The Coils of Time of sorts, the idea is that in another coil, the Mars of Brackett or Burroughs or Bradbury might exist in some form, as it is just another time being remembered incorrectly by those writers. With some modification to a ship and time machinery, they manage to investigate. The only problem is they do get somewhere Barsoom-like, complete with a Carter, Tarkas, and a Thoris analogue, but they are enslaved by H. G. Wells Martians!"

In a review of The Alternate Martians, Rich Horton concluded: “As I said, loopy stuff. But in its limited way, kind of fun. Chandler never cared a whit, as far as I can tell, for stuff making sense, or for consistency, or, well, for anything but the next colorful incident. I find that exasperating, on the whole -- others may not care as much.”

Free Audiobook: J.J. Campanella Reads His Novel, The Standards of Creation

Thanks to a recent audiobook review at SFFaudio, we’re listening to James “J.J.” Campanella read his unpublished novel, The Standards of Creation. The work is “set against a background containing some of the most classic science fiction elements: terraforming on Mars, life in the Martian colony, biological scientific development in the future such as the different versions of the cloned NATO officers, and an alien device that looks like a huge black marble silently making its way toward the sun while scientists struggle to communicate.”

While The Standards of Creation is an epic of more than sixteen hours, we’ve only had an opportunity to listen to the first two chapters. After a slow start in a Chicago taxicab in which we contemplated ditching the fare, the story’s pace has accelerated and taken us to Mars. We intend to listen to chapter three later today.

J.J. Campanella is the creator of Uvula Audio and a frequent audio narrator on StarShipSofa.

Mars Exhibit at Cal Poly to Include SF Books

The Robert E. Kennedy Library at California Polytechnic State University will host the exhibit Mars Within Reach: Arctic Melodies and Science from the Red Planet, “a multisensory experience that explores the science and culture surrounding the search for life on Mars.”

The exhibit, which will feature scale models of NASA's Phoenix lander and the Mars rovers, high-resolution images of the Red Planet, and science fiction books that include titles by author Edgar Rice Burroughs, runs from November 7, 2008, to January 12, 2009.

For more information, please read the press release and a recent news article.

Review of Liz Williams’ Novel Winterstrike

Fantasy Book Critic has a nice review of Winterstrike (2008), a new novel by British science fiction and fantasy author Liz Williams. Set on Mars and involving a library, the novel is the first in a Gothic SF trilogy.

At the moment, Winterstrike is available only in the United Kingdom. Hopefully, it will be released in the United States at some point in the near future. Meanwhile, read Liz's LiveJournal.

Book Sale: Planet Plane by John Beynon (1936)

A tale about a million dollar contest to complete the first interplanetary journey to Mars, Planet Plane, written by John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris under the pseudonym John Beynon, was published as a hardcover novel in 1936 in the United Kingdom. It was not until nearly forty years later, in 1972, that the novel was published in the United States, as the paperback Stowaway to Mars, under the pseudonym John Wyndham. Here’s the description of a signed first edition of Planet Plane for sale at AbeBooks:

Planet Plane, a novel by John Beynon (1936)

Publisher: London, Newnes
Publication Date: 1936
Binding: Hardcover
Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
Signed: Signed by Author(s)
Edition: 1st Edition

Description: First Edition, First Impression. With first issue dustjacket priced 3/6 on the inner flap. Signed as John Beynon on the title page. Although born as John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris, his most famous titles appear under the moniker John Wyndham. 8vo. Original yellow cloth, titles to spine in black. With the dustjacket. Hinges split, some uneven discolouration to spine, foxing to fore edge, dustjacket chipped to spine tips and corners, spine faded, edges strengthened by sellotape. A very rare item signed with the dustjacket.

Price: $3,568

You can read Stowaway to Mars online at Arthur's Classic Novels.

Critic Rich Horton: "Tenbrook of Mars,” by Dean McLaughlin, for AnLab Award

In providing an analysis of the 2008 issues of Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine in his LiveJournal,
SF critic Rich Horton writes:

“The best novella by far, and the best story in Analog
in some time, was Dean McLaughlin's "Tenbrook of Mars" (July/August). This is a very moving story of
a Martian colony marooned for 20 years, and the engineer who becomes the leader, and pulls them through against all odds until help can arrive. It's very old fashioned, yes, and thoroughly effective.
... My Anlab votes: "Tenbrook of Mars" -- and the other three could go in any order. This year there is really truly no contest for first place.”

Fábio Fernandes concluded in a review at The Fix: Short Fiction Review that McLaughlin’s novella “is an entrancing story regarding the logistics of survival and a page-turner, even though the ending is predictable and has a certain deus ex machina flavor that almost smacks as cliché, but the story works well in spite of that.”

BBC Radio 7 Broadcasts Leigh Brackett’s “The Last Days of Shandakor”

BBC Radio 7 recently broadcast a reading of “The Last Days of Shandakor” (1952), a novelette by Leigh Brackett. Both Episode 1 (30 minutes) and Episode 2 (30 minutes) are archived and will be accessible for the next few days through BBC 7’s "Listen Again" feature.

“An epic space adventure written in which Mars is portrayed as a dying planet where desperate Earthmen compete with the last Martians and other alien races for lost knowledge and hidden power," Brackett's "The Last Days of Shandakor" was originally published in the April 1952 issue of Startling Stories magazine.

Recent Short Fiction: “Skinhorse Goes to Mars” by Jay Lake

The fifteenth issue of Postscripts magazine, published this past September, is a special science fiction issue that features the works of many well-known writers, including “Skinhorse Goes to Mars” by Jay Lake.

While we have not had an opportunity to read Lake’s story, here’s a synopsis taken from a short review by Aliette de Bodard at The Fix: Short Fiction Review:

“The human race, having polluted Earth beyond recall, has moved to other planets -- except, of course, that they have made as much of a mess there as they did back on Earth. Venus has become a huge ball of cancer, invaded by a genetic modifier, and Mars is riddled with self-replicating murderous soldiers.”

In a longer review at the Internet Review of Science Fiction, Lois Tilton concludes: “This is a story strongly driven by its prose, by its energetic and evocative language. The pace moves so rapidly that ... the reader is just supposed to hang on for the ride with eyes closed and not ask questions. Lose the momentum, like a bicyclist, and it all falls down.”

Jay Lake maintains his own website at www.jlake.com.

20th Annual New York City Collectible Paperback & Pulp Fiction Expo

If you’re going to be in New York City this weekend, check out the 20th Annual New York City Collectible Paperback & Pulp Fiction Expo, which will be held on Sunday, October 19, 2008, at the Holiday Inn on 57th Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues.
For more information, please see the website of Gryphon Books.

Capricorn One: Special Edition of Little Red Lies

Based on a screenplay by Peter Hyams and first appearing in movie theaters in 1978, a special edition of the film Capricorn One has been released on DVD. Starring Elliot Gould, James Brolin, O. J. Simpson, and Hal Holbrook, this is a great film about how NASA fakes the first spaceflight to Mars to protect its space program from budget cuts.

Beyond the original film, the new DVD contains some other interesting features:

• Audio commentary by Peter Hyams, who explains how he got the idea for the storyline and “how he feels seeing O. J. on film after more recent events.”

• A newly-produced piece, Flights of Fancy: The Politics and Paranoia of Capricorn One, which sets the film in the context of America’s conspiratorial paranoia of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

To learn more about the new Capricorn One: Special Edition DVD, read a review at The Digital Bits, which has a cool picture of the mission patch cast members wear in the film.

Apparently, Hyams is remaking the original 1978 film. It's scheduled to reach theaters sometime in 2010.

Meanwhile, if you're interested in novelizations of the film, see our blog post from March 4, 2008.

Seven Mars Novels by E. C. Tubb

Thanks to several sources, including a checklist of science fiction books at the website Critical Mass, we've put together a list of Mars novels written by British sci-fi author E. C. Tubb:

• Atom-War on Mars (1952)
“Colonists on Mars declare their independence of Earth.”

• I Fight for Mars (1953), writing as Charles Grey
“Martian colonists battle alien robots.”

• Enterprise 2115 (1954), writing as Charles Grey
Variant title: The Mechanical Monarch (1958, Ace Double novel)
“The survivor from the first space-ship disaster meets the Martians.”

• Journey to Mars (1954)
“A luckless spaceman schemes to get to Mars and sneak aboard a flight to the stars.”

• City of No Return (1954)
"Adventures on Mars finding an amazing ancient city.”

• Alien Dust (1955)
“Relates the first thirty-five years of the colonization of Mars.”

• C.O.D. Mars (1968)
The Scorfu, the Martian equivalent of a Mafia, plot to capture three astronauts returning to Earth from Proxima Centauri.

Note that we have not included "Temple of Death," a novella Tubb wrote in 1954 but that was "lost" until it was published in 1996 by Gryphon Books.

“The Toad Prince or, Sex Queen of the Martian Pleasure-Domes,” by Harlan Ellison (2000)

Originally written in 1991 but first published in a 2000 Special Collector’s Edition of Amazing Stories magazine (Vol. 71, Issue 5, #600), “The Toad Prince or, Sex Queen of the Martian Pleasure-Domes,” a novella by Harlan Ellison, is a return to the old days of pulp science fiction:

“Once upon a time, in a golden kingdom far away, a kingdom dreaming of never was but should have been, on an especially lovely day, a most exceptionally comely blonde princess, with eyes the color of skies toward which the noblest eagles yearn, chose to take a leisurely stroll at the veriest verge of the vast grounds bounding her father’s palace. ...”

According to the biography Harlan Ellison: the Edge of Forever (2002), The Toad Prince or, Sex Queen of the Martian Pleasure-Domes was “written as a tribute to Ellison’s pulp ancestors ... and
... accompanied in its original magazine appearance by a wonderfully lurid pulp illustration by Don Ivan Punchatz, is a lark, but a weighty lark, recasting the familiar fairy tale of the Frog Prince into a tale of an Earthborn prostitute named Sarna whose successful career on the Martian frontier -- serving both human settlers and the oppressed Martians -- is interrupted when a ‘yellow’ (a half-breed Martian descended from Martian women raped by Earth settlers) is murdered in her room, leaving behind a mysterious toadlike creature called only ‘one of the Six.’ Forced to flee for her life when a long overdue Martian revolution threatens to kill all the human settlers, she learns that the toad-thing can communicate with her telepathically, offering to help save her and all the other humans on Mars, if she will help it reunite with its five siblings, from whom it has been separated for something like a million years. Skeptical but desperate, she agrees, and most of the story involves the quest to find each of the siblings ..."

“The Toad Prince or, Sex Queen of the Martian Pleasure-Domes” was reviewed briefly by David Soyka at the SF Site. In a longer review, Mark R. Kelly of Locus Online asked: “Will readers 'get' its nostalgic parody of 1940s space opera? In a pop culture saturated by the 'star-blasting space adventure' of Star Trek and Star Wars, maybe not.”

Pictured above: Cover of Amazing Stories, Issue #600.

Ben Bova's Mars Life: Reviews and Interview

Here are some recent pieces worth reading if you’re a Dr. Ben Bova fan and interested in his new novel, Mars Life (2008):

• A review of Mars Life, at Biology in Science Fiction

• A review of Mars Life, at Mostly Fiction Book Reviews

• An interview with Dr. Bova, at Science Fiction and Other ODDysseys

The Library in Edwin Lester Linden Arnold's Gulliver of Mars (1905)

SF Signal’s recent reminder that Gulliver of Mars (1905), a classic novel of Martian science fiction by Edwin Lester Linden Arnold, is in the public domain and can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg provides a good opportunity for us to reproduce a
neat passage from the book:

The servitor directed me to the library, and after desolate wanderings up crumbling steps and down mouldering corridors, sunny and lovely in decay, I came to the immense lumber-shed of knowledge they had told me of, a city of dead books, a place of dusty cathedral aisles stored with forgotten learning. At a table sat Hath the purposeless, enthroned in leather and vellum,
snoring in divine content amongst all that wasted labour, and nothing I could do was sufficient to shake him into semblance of intelligence. So perforce I turned away till he should have come to himself, and wandering round the splendid litter of a noble library, presently amongst the ruck of volumes on the floor, amongst those lordly tomes in tattered green and gold, and ivory, my eye lit upon a volume propped up curiously on end, and going to it through the confusion I saw by the dried fruit rind upon the sticks supporting it, that the grave and reverend tome was set to catch a mouse! It was a splendid book when I looked more closely, bound as a king might bind his choicest treasure, the sweetscented leather on it was no doubt frayed; the golden arabesques upon the covers had long since shed their eyes of inset gems, the jeweled clasp locking its learning up from vulgar gaze was bent and open. Yet it was a lordly tome with an odour of sanctity about it, and lifting it with difficulty, I noticed on its cover a red stain of mouse's blood. Those who put it to this quaint use of mouse-trap had already had some sport, but surely never was a mouse crushed before under so much learning. And while I stood guessing at what the book might hold within, Heru, the princess, came tripping in to me, and with the abrupt familiarity of her kind, laid a velvet hand upon my wrist, conned the title over to herself.

"What does it say, sweet girl?" I asked. "The matter is learned, by its feel," and that maid, pursing up her pretty lips, read the title to me -- "The Secret of the Gods."

"The Secret of the Gods," I murmured. "Was it possible other worlds had struggled hopelessly to come within the barest ken of that great knowledge, while here the same was set to catch a mouse with?"

I said, "Silver-footed, sit down and read me a passage or two," and propping the mighty volume upon a table drew a bench before it and pulled her down beside me.

"Oh! a horrid, dry old book for certain," cried that lady, her pink fingertips falling as lightly on the musty leaves as almond petals on March dust. "Where shall I begin? It is all equally dull."

A “long-lost classic of Martian adventure” originally published under the title Lieut. Gulliver Jones: His Vacation, Arnold’s Gulliver of Mars has been involved in a decades-long debate as to whether it
and an earlier novel by Arnold, The Wonderful Adventures of Phra the Phoenician (1891), inspired the Barsoom series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

As Allen Kupfer concluded in a review of Gullivar of Mars (University of Nebraska Press, 2003, Commemorative Edition, with a new introduction by Richard A. Lupoff): “Who influenced whom? Who didn’t? I repeat: who cares? Genre fans should ignore such trifles
and rejoice in the fact that these early science-fiction writers are responsible for bringing innumerable young readers into the sf/fantasy fold. And speaking for myself, though I continue to think Wells the best of the early authors, it was the Burroughs novels
(with the Frank Frazetta covers) that got me hooked.”

Pictured above: Paperback (New York: Ace Books, 1964?). Cover art by Frank Frazetta.

The Frank Frazetta Martian Longsword

Albion Armorers, Inc., sells cool limited edition reproductions of the Frazetta Martian Longsword at FilmSwords.com. Here's a slice of the action:

“A lot of us grew up reading the exploits of John Carter and longed for the needle-sharp longsword that was pictured in Frank Frazetta's cover art.

Legendary swordmaker and artist Jody Samson has recreated that famous sword here. The Frazetta Martian Longsword is available in 2 limited editions: a hand-ground limited edition of 10 swords made by Jody himself, and a production limited edition of 1,000. Swords hand-ground by the talented staff at Albion.

Each sword is handmade of 1075 carbon steel (hand-ground blade) and silicon bronze (investment cast guard and pommel).

Though certainly a striking display item, The Frazetta Martian Longsword is fully functional.”

And, check out The Frank Frazetta Museum in East Stroudsburg, PA!

Pictured above: 1970 Nelson Doubleday hardcover edition of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars, with cover art by Frank Frazetta.

Lords of Atlantis by Wallace West (1960)

Lords of Atlantis, a novel by Wallace West (1960)

At left: Paperback (New York: Airmont Publishing Co., 1963), #SF3, 128 p., 60¢. Here’s the blurb from the back cover:

"In the dim past, men had fled to Mars for refuge, but now the red planet was a dying world, and the Martians returned to colonize Earth and rule over the Titans -- descendants of those who had stayed behind at the time of the now-legendary catastrophe.

But the rulers of the Titans, retained by the conquerors on their ancestral thrones, grew restless under the benevolent progress of the Lords of Atlantis, looked back to a so-called ‘golden age,’ and plotted rebellion.

Here is a thrilling novel of what might have been the basis of the Great Legends that have come down to us: of the ‘gods,’ of Atlantis, of Zeus, Hermes, Hephaestus, Hera, Athena, Aphrodite, Jason, Medea -- and of a mighty empire which was weighed in the balance and found wanting!"

Surprisingly, the novel was mentioned in a 2003 article at Space.com titled “Get close to Mars with Books, Film, Music”: “Hardly a classic in any sense of the word, West's story is still one of my personal favorites. The pulp novel was first published in 1963 and details the last days of a Martian colony on Earth during early human history. Included in the story's campy plot: the tale of humans who fled to Mars to avoid an ice age and have returned to reign over the Earthlings that stayed behind, the death of Mars, Greek mythology and the legend of Atlantis."

You can read Lords of Atlantis online through Wowio and purchase it as an eBook for Amazon’s Kindle.

Podcast Review of John Varley's First Mars Novel, Red Thunder (2003)

When Brit Luke Burrage isn’t earning a living as a juggler, he reads science fiction books and reviews them via his Science Fiction Book Review Podcast.

Recently, Burrage reviewed Red Thunder (2003), the first of a trilogy of science fiction novels about Mars written by author John Varley. At nearly 33 minutes, Burrage's podcast is full of humor but has few positive comments about Varley's “Redneck Thunder,” which Burrage considers to be “vapid, insipid and stupid.” He gives Varley’s novel 1.5 stars out of a possible 5.

While Burrage seems to make some good points, we hope to read Red Thunder after we finish reading Varley's third novel about Mars, Rolling Thunder (2008), which hit bookstores in the United States last March.

An Alternate History of Chinese Martian SF

Thanks to James Patrick Kelly’s column “On the Net: Alternativity,” in the October/November double issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine, we learned about a humorous post titled “An Alternate History of Chinese Science Fiction” at
the blog No Fear of the Future.

According to Kelly, the blog post "is part jape and part literary criticism. ... lists the most influential SF books of the last hundred years, from 4600 to 4700. (For those of you who are wondering, this is the year 4705 in the Chinese calendar.)”

Two books that made the list:

• Bai Ai Tan's A Princess of Mars, published in the year 4609. “No one will ever call Bai Ai Tan a great writer, and parts of A Princess of Mars have aged badly, though not to the degree of his Tarzan novels. But A Princess of Mars and the other Barsoom stories still carry a certain pulp charge, and in the right frame of mind even a jaded modern reader can enjoy them.”

• Ran Shan Hui’s “Mars” trilogy, published in the 4690s, “starting with The Voyage of Night Shining White, which won the ZGSFA and Nebula Awards. ... It combined the inventiveness of the old pulp authors ... with realistic science fiction (a very believable future history of the transformation and settling of Mars, from the arrival of the first colonists to the rise of multinational corporations). ... What set the trend of the Nineties more than The Voyage of Night Shining White, The Dragon’s Nine Sons, and Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea?”

The Los Angeles Public Library has a Chinese language copy of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars (1992). Presumably, you can purchase a copy through Buyoyo.com!

Book Sale: Copies of Stanley G. Weinbaum’s Classic Short Story, “A Martian Odyssey”

Interested in an investment opportunity that might actually appreciate in value? How about an older copy of “A Martain Odyssey” (1934), a classic tale of Mars by Stanley G. Weinbaum and considered one of the best science fiction short stories ever written!

Consider these three offerings, listed at AbeBooks:

Wonder Stories magazine, Vol. 6, # 2 (July 1934)

Publisher: Stellar Publishing Co., New York
Publication Date: 1934
Binding: Illustrated Wrappers
Book Condition: Near Fine
Edition: First Edition
Description: An exceptional copy with a trace of usage. Contains
"A Martian Odyssey", Weinbaum's innovative and classic story, later published by Fantasy Press in the collection by that name.
Price: $283.50


Dawn of Flame and Other Stories, by Weinbaum (1936)

Publisher: Jamaica, N.Y.: Printed by Rupert Printing Service
Publication Date: 1936
Signed: Signed by Author(s)
Edition: 1st Edition
Description: pp. 313 ... inserted frontispiece (photographic portrait of Weinbaum), original black fabrikoid, front panel stamped in gold, all edges stained red. First edition. The author's posthumous first book. This memorial volume collecting seven short stories and novelettes by Weinbaum, including the first book appearance of his classic "A Martian Odyssey," was prepared by the Milwaukee Fictioneers, an informal fan group of which Weinbaum was a member. 500 copies were printed, but only 250 were bound. Five of the bound copies have an introduction by Raymond A. Palmer, the remainder (including this one) have one by Lawrence Keating. This copy is signed by Palmer on the recto of the sponsor leaf. ... A fine copy without dust jacket as issued. A seminal volume in the history of the SF specialty press.
Price: $2,500


A Martian Odyssey and Others, by Weinbaum (1949)

Publisher: Reading, Pennsylvania: Fantasy Press
Publication Date: 1949
Binding: Hardcover
Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
Edition: 1st Edition
Description: Octavo, cloth. First edition. One of 500 special copies with numbered limitation leaf inserted. ... A fine copy in fine dust jacket with touch of rubbing at head and tail of spine panel and front corner tips and tiny inked check marks against titles listed on rear panel. A very nice copy.
Price: $350

Frozen Death Looms for Phoenix Mars Lander

“Frozen Death Looms for Phoenix Mars Lander”
By Andrea Thompson
Senior Writer, Space.com
October 8, 2008

After more than four months on the arctic plains of the red planet, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's days are finally numbered. As the sun begins to set for the frigid Martian winter, the spacecraft will lose its energy supply, freeze and eventually fall into a mechanical coma from which it will likely never wake up.

Phoenix's mission has been to dig up samples of Martian dirt and the subsurface layer of rock-hard water ice at its landing site in Mars' Vastitas Borealis plains. The lander has been scanning the samples for signs of the region's past potential for habitability.

Phoenix landed on Mars on May 25, late spring in the Martian northern hemisphere. The mission was originally slated to last three months, to the end of August, but was extended twice; first to the end of September and recently through the end of December.

But whether or not Phoenix will survive that long is uncertain and depends on how the spacecraft's systems handle its ever-dwindling energy supply and the harsh conditions of the Martian winter.

"We're at the mercy of Mars," said Phoenix project manger Barry Goldstein, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Read the full article at Space.com

BBC Radio 7 to Broadcast Reading of “The Last Days of Shandakor” by Leigh Brackett

BBC Radio 7 will broadcast next week a reading of “The Last Days of Shandakor” (1952), a novelette by Leigh Brackett.

Episode 1 will be broadcast on October 15 and again on October 16, 2008. Presumably, Episode 2 will be broadcast shortly thereafter. Hopefully, these episodes will be archived and accessible for a limited time through BBC’s "Listen Again" feature.

Originally published in the April 1952 issue of Startling Stories magazine and last broadcast on Radio 7 in January 2008, here’s a description of “The Last Days of Shandakor,” taken from SFFaudio:

“An epic space adventure written in which Mars is portrayed as a dying planet where desperate Earthmen compete with the last Martians and other alien races for lost knowledge and hidden power.”

Fictionwise Stocks "Mousetrap," a Short Story by Andre Norton (1954)

Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in June 1954, “Mousetrap,” a short story written by science fiction grand master Andre Norton, has been reprinted in several anthologies and is now available for purchase as an eBook through Fictionwise.

Here’s the description from Fictionwise: “The tourist's guides on Mars referred to Sam Levatts as a ‘desert spider.’ To all the locals he was just a drunk. A barfly that frequents the taverns with a wild tale of ‘the lovely lady.’ But Len Collins thinks there might be something more to Sam's drunken tales. For everyone,
even the tourists, knows of the value of the ‘sand monsters.’ The
‘sand monsters’ are gigantic, horrible, sand statues that are worth their weight in any treasure imaginable. And Sam is the only one that may know their secret.”

And here’s a slightly different description from Andre Norton Books: Bibliography and Cover-art Collection, a fan website: “The ‘sand monsters’ of Mars are mysterious statues in the desert, that have withstood time, storm, and extreme heat and cold ~ but they crumble into dust at a touch. The tourist bureaus (and the Space Marines) now have the surviving statues protected from everyone trying out his personal version of superglue (since the museums and scientists have gigantic standing rewards for anyone who can get one to Earth). Any would-be hero will have to find an undiscovered sand monster to get a chance at the reward.”

“Mousetrap” was read by Rick Stringer on The Time Traveler Show, Episode #7, September 2006, which you can download and listen to as an mp3 file (approx. 23 minutes).

A fascinating woman, lover of cats, and prolific writer of science fiction and fantasy, Andre Alice Norton died in 2005. According to Andre-Norton.org, Ms. Norton’s estate is involved in a legal dispute over issues related to copyrights and royalties.

New Novel: Winterstrike by Liz Williams

Winterstrike, the sixth novel from Liz Williams and the first in a Gothic science fiction trilogy, was published in early September 2008 by Tor UK. Set in the same world as her Banner of Souls, here’s a description of the new novel, taken from the website of Blackwell Bookshop in the UK:

"In the centre of Winterstrike, Mars's first city, in the middle of the meteorite crater that gave the city its name, stands the fortress: a mass of vitrified stone striped as white as a bone and as red as a still-beating heart. And on one particular night, at the top of the fortress and on the eve of war, at the summit of a tower so high that from it one could see out across the basalt walls to the dim, shimmering slopes of Olympus, stood a woman ...

Winterstrike spy Hestia Mar has been sent to Caud to recover details of an ancient weapon. During her stay in the Martian city, she encounters the ghost of a warrior, who turns out to be the encoded representation of the city's bombed library. Hestia Mar manages to access the library's data, but realizes too late what she has done: by downloading the information, she has virtually guaranteed the use of the weapon against Caud by her own government. Desperate to rescue the situation, she makes her way back home across the dangers of the Crater Plain.

Meanwhile, in Winterstrike itself, the festival of Ombre has been taking place on the eve of war. Hestia's cousin Shorn - imprisoned by her family for accidentally consorting with a male - manages to escape. Her sister Essegui, pursuing her to the dangerous mountains of Mars, discovers a plot by creatures who hold the secrets of the Martian past, and its future. While Essegui battles forces back in Winterstrike, Hestia travels to Earth in an attempt to save her city."

Detailed reviews of Winterstrike are available at TheBookbag.co.uk and the blog Walker of Worlds. Shorter reviews are available at the newspaper The Guardian, the blog Cheryl’s Mewsings, and the message boards at sffworld.com.

As one blogger has pointed out, Winterstrike is not listed at Amazon in the United States, but it is available at Amazon UK. Hopefully, it will be released in the United States at some point in the future.

Also, it is unclear to us whether Winterstrike is an expansion of Williams' short story "The Age of Ice," which was published in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine in April/May 2006. (Reviewed by Tangent: Short Fiction Review)

A British science fiction and fantasy writer, Liz Williams is the daughter of a stage magician and a gothic novelist. She earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Science from Cambridge, and her career has ranged from reading tarot cards to teaching. Her fifth book, Banner of Souls, was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. She maintains her own online journal.

Readograph Records Martian History in Yezad: a Romance of the Unknown (1922)

If you read this blog on a regular basis, you’ve probably discovered that one of our areas of interest is how books and libraries are portrayed in science fiction.

Here’s a neat passage from an obscure novel titled Yezad: a Romance of the Unknown (1922), by George Babcock, in which Marcomet, a ten-foot tall Martian, describes how the historical record of Mars is preserved:

Every important fact has been carefully noted in an imperishable record, consisting of certain compositions which will neither burn, break, nor deteriorate by time. Yet, these are so light and thin in substance, that a complete record covering Mars' entire history may be carried with perfect ease under the arm of a child.

By an electro-radium process, the record is transcribed on sheets less than one ten-thousandth of an inch in thickness, and of the average book page size. Upon this records, including all the happenings from day to day, are carefully preserved. Thus the important events covering a period of a hundred years are easily transcribed upon one sheet. Ten thousand of these records reach but one inch in thickness, and contain the history of Mars for a million years. While such a record would weigh but a total of one pound on Earth, they weigh far less, or about four-tenths of a pound, on Mars. Each of these plates is capable of recording about one hundred times the amount of reading matter contained in a complete twenty-nine volume work of Earth's largest encyclopedia. Since no news is ever printed or read on Mars, all important events are recorded on these 'radio- sheets.' Every man, woman and child is supplied with a small instrument, no larger than a coin of Earth, and called a
'Readograph,' which, when placed gently against the 'radio-sheet,' adheres to it, and repeats, by talking aloud, similarly to a phonograph, all that the Readograph touches. It repeats the record as often as the Readograph is applied, with the volume and tone of the original voice.

It is quite easy to find the record of any day, month, or year desired, by moving the Readograph over the face of the radio-sheets.

For a summary of the storyline in Yezad: a Romance of the Unknown, read the entry in Science-fiction, the Early Years: A Full Description of More Than 3,000 Science-fiction Stories from Earliest Times to the Appearance of the Genre Magazines in 1930 (1990), by Everett F. Bleiler and Richard Bleiler.

Cable TV's AMC Plans a Mission to Mars Based on the Kim Stanley Robinson Novel

Several news outlets are reporting a story from Hollywood Reporter that cable television network AMC is developing a series project based on the science fiction novel Red Mars (1992), by Kim Stanley Robinson, which chronicles the inhabitants
of the first human colony on the planet. Here's a little piece of the story:

"This fits in with our bigger vision of wanting series that feel like cinematic one-hour movies," said Christina Wayne, senior vp original series and miniseries at AMC. "We're always looking for big genres but to do them in slightly different ways so they feel fresh and new," she added ... Jeremy Elice, vp original programming series, added that the project will be character-driven. "It's not the spectacle of sci-fi that you typically see," he said.

Kim Stanley Robinson was just named a "Hero of the Environment 2008" by Time magazine, as detailed in an awesome post by the blog Biology in Science Fiction.