Interview with author Jack Williamson about the 1947 UFO crash near Roswell, New Mexico

The book Little Gray Men (2000), by Toby Smith, has
a neat interview with author Jack Williamson, the godfather of science fiction, about the UFO crash in early July 1947 near Roswell, New Mexico, and the influence it has had on science fiction writers. Williamson grew up in eastern New Mexico and had just moved to
the small city of Portales as a middle-aged man when the UFO crashed, about 90 miles away. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

Question: You lived in Portales when the incident occurred. Any recollections of it?

Jack Williamson: Not really. Oh, I don't doubt that something fell out of the sky. A high-altitude glider or a parachute maybe.

Question: Ever been to the crash site?

Jack Williamson: I didn’t go to Roswell much as a young man. And I had no reason to go there on the fiftieth anniversary. I’m not sure I know where the site is. TV and the newspapers gave me enough. People made a lot of money off that; it was commercially a big success. But people are people. I’m interested in people; I’ve spent my life writing about them --
as a spectator and an observer.

Question: Harlan Ellison, another colleague of yours, is terribly critical of Roswell, particularly because on the very day we landed a robot on Mars after two decades of preparation, people in southeast New Mexico were, Ellison said, buying hot dogs and saucer souvenirs and looking around for space garbage in a rancher’s field. Any thoughts?

Jack Williamson: [Laughs.] It takes all kinds, I suppose. Most of what we know about Mars has already been put into books. But you know some of those books, take the Mars one by Edgar Rice Burroughs, they didn’t do very well after NASA sent its Viking probes to Mars in 1976. What’s interesting to me is that the photos of Mars look a great deal like the landscape of New Mexico. By the way, in the early 1950s, I wrote a syndicated comic strip for a while that originated in the New York Daily News. It was called Beyond Mars. Still, the two things happening at the same time -- landing on Mars and celebrating Roswell -- do put things into perspective. It makes you pause to consider what truly is important.

Jack Williamson taught at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales for more than 40 years. The university's Jack Williamson Science Fiction Library is named after him and the local public Library has a wing devoted to him and his writings. Williamson died at his home in Portales in November 2006 at the age of 98.

Three Mars stories by author & poet Camille Alexa reprinted in her new collection Push of the Sky

Push of the Sky (2009), a new collection of more than two dozen short stories written by author and poet Camille Alexa and published by Hadley Rille Books, reprints three of her Mars stories, the first two of which you can read for free online: "The Clone Wrangler's Bride" (2007), set on Mars and SpaceWesterns.com's most-read story of all time; its sequel, "Droidtown Blues" (2008); and a dark speculative fiction story titled “Weird Fruits,” which was originally published in the anthology It Came from Planet Mars (2008) and won the 2008 Marooned Award for Best Short Story.

NASA Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin to hip-hop President Barack Obama re Mars: Yes We Can

Cheers to Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin for his campaign to convince President Barack Obama , NASA and the American public that United States space policy is on the wrong trajectory. Advocating an extension of space shuttle missions and only a limited return to the moon, Aldrin believes we should set our sites on colonizing Mars. Check out some recent interviews with and articles by Buzz Aldrin:

• “Questions for Buzz Aldrin -- The Man on the Moon,” interview with Deborah Solomon, The New York Times Magazine, June 15, 2009

• “Let's aim for Mars,” op-ed by Buzz Aldrin, CNN, June 23, 2009

• “Buzz Aldrin to NASA: U.S. Space Policy Is on the Wrong Track,” article by Buzz Aldrin, Popular Mechanics, June 24, 2009

• “Moon Walker Buzz Aldrin: Time to Settle on Mars,” interview with Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, The Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2009

Aldrin recently recorded a rap song and video with hip-hop star Snoop Dogg to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's July 1969 landing on the moon. The song, "Rocket Experience", was Aldrin's idea as part of his mission to reignite public interest in the United States space program and to teach younger generations about the importance of space exploration. Here's one of the lines from the song:

"I'm the spaceman, I'm the rocket man, it's time to venture far, let's take a trip to Mars, our destiny is to the stars."

Geeky SF humor: An odd couple on Mars

Who is this odd couple standing on the surface of Mars?

a) Philanthropist Wendy Schmidt and her husband, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, scouting out a new location for a bricks-and-mortar bookstore.

b) Diva Paris Hilton and her former boy toy, European footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, shopping for the latest trends in celebrity fashion.

c) Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and her predecessor, Jerry Yang, after getting "drop-kicked to fucking Mars” by angry shareholders who
have lost a lot of money under their leadership.

d) Actress Bo Derek and her friend, SF author Ray Bradbury, proving that some humans have a timeless beauty that will live forever.

e) SF character Podkayne of Mars and her beloved creator, author Robert A. Heinlein.

Author Robert J. Sawyer posts his hard-boiled detective novella “Identity Theft” online

Thanks to the generosity of Canadian science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer, you can read his novella “Identity Theft” for free online. Originally published in the anthology Down These Dark Spaceways (2005), “Identity Theft” is a hard-boiled detective story set on Mars. The opening lines:

The door to my office slid open. "Hello," I said, rising from my chair. "You must be my nine o'clock." I said it as if I had a ten o'clock and an eleven o'clock, but I didn't. The whole Martian economy was in a slump, and, even though I was the only private detective on Mars, this was the first new case I'd had in weeks. ...

The story was reprinted in Sawyer’s collection Identity Theft and Other Stories (2008), which has been nominated for an Aurora Award. The Aurora Awards -- Canada’s top SF awards -- will be announced at Anticipation, the 67th World Science Fiction Convention, to be held in Montreal in August 2009.

Thanks to the blogs QuasarDragon and SF Signal for the tip.

Proponents of $125 million Google Book Search Settlement post some easy summer reading

Proponents of the proposed $125 million Google Book Search Settlement have undertaken an early summer public relations campaign to convince authors, publishers and readers that the settlement is to the benefit of all. The material is a bit dry and not as exciting as Leigh Brackett’s novel The Sword of Rhiannon (1953), but at least the reading is easy:

• Letter to “Dear Fellow Authors,” from Roy Blount Jr., president of the Authors Guild, dated June 24, 2009, urging them not to lose their heads over the possibility of a Google monopoly of orphan books.

• Document titled “Unlocking a Vast Archive of Out-of-Print Books: An Outline of Google Book Settlement Benefits,” prepared by the Authors Guild, posted on its website June 24, 2009.

• Letter to the editor of Britain’s Financial Times, from David Balto, antitrust expert and former U.S. Federal Trade Commission official, published June 24, 2009, explaining why booklovers should cheer Google’s plan.

• Letter to “Dear Industry Colleague,” from Tom Allen, president of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), dated June 25, 2009, informing them that if the proposed $125 million settlement is not approved by a federal court in October 2009, the litigation between AAP, the Authors Guild and Google may continue for years.

Can hardly wait to see what happens in October 2009!

1950s British cover art: John Russell Fearn’s novel Goddess of Mars

Here’s some beautiful British cover art from the early 1950s: Goddess of Mars (London: Hamilton & Co., 1950), the fourth and final volume in British science fiction author John Russell Fearn’s four-novel Mars series starring character Clayton Drew. Goddess of Mars was only about 125 pages and published in soft cover. It was reprinted in 1995 by Gryphon Books.

Thanks to G. W. Thomas of the blog Dark Worlds for the scan.

Translating the Constitution of Mars into Farsi

Following my post of June 22nd, "Kim Stanley Robinson digs the Persian poet Rumi," I started playing around with the new English-to-Persian (Farsi) option that was added to Google Translate last week. In testing the feature, I decided to translate into Persian (Farsi) the first section of “The Constitution of Mars,” a piece of short fiction written by Kim Stanley Robinson and published in his awesome collection The Martians (1999). First, the English version:

We the people of Mars have gathered here on Pavonis Mons in the year 2128 to write a constitution which will serve as a legal framework for an independent planetary government. We intend this constitution to be a flexible document subject to change over time in the light of experience and changing historical conditions, but assert here that we hope to establish a government that will forever uphold the following principles:
the rule of law; the equality of all before the law; individual freedom of movement, association, and expression; freedom from political or economic tyranny; control of one's work life and the value thereof; communal stewardship of the planet's natural resources; and respect for the planet's primal heritage.

And now, the same paragraph translated into Persian (Farsi) using Google Translate:

ما به مردم از مریخ را در اینجا در کوه Pavonis در سال 2128 جمع آوری و نوشتن یک قانون اساسی که به عنوان یک چهارچوب قانونی برای یک دولت مستقل به سیاره خدمت می کنند. قصد ما از این قانون اساسی به عنوان یک سند قابل انعطاف برای تغییر در طول زمان در پرتو تجربه و تغییر شرایط تاریخی ، اما ادعا در اینجا است که ما امیدواریم برای ایجاد یک دولت حمایت خواهد کرد که برای همیشه از اصول زیر است : حکومت قانون ؛ و برابری همه در مقابل قانون ؛ آزادی فردی جنبش ، تشکل ، و آزادی بیان ؛ آزادی از ظلم و ستم سیاسی یا اقتصادی ؛ کنترل از زندگی یکی از کار و ارزش آن ؛ نظارت عمومی از منابع طبیعی کره زمین است ؛ و احترام به میراث این سیاره بسیار قدیمی است.

Note that Persian (Farsi) is written and read from right to left, but when I cut the translated passage from Google Translate and paste it in Google Blogger, the words seem to get placed in left-to-right format. The same thing happens if I cut from MS Word and past to Google Blogger. Therefore, I don't think this is really an accurate translation of the first section of the Constitution of Mars.

In any case, “The Constitution of Mars” is posted in a forum on the anarchist website Anti-State.com. I haven’t analyzed the entire text, but a spot-check seems to indicate that the text is the same as the original document published in Robinson's The Martians. Enjoy!

Forthcoming: First issue of The Martian Wave

Speculative fiction author Lawrence Dagstine recently reminded us that the premiere issue of The Martian Wave is scheduled to be published later this summer by Sam’s Dot Publishing. Formerly a webzine, The Martian Wave is now a print magazine focused on interplanetary SF and space opera. According to Dagstine, the first issue “begins a three-story arc of Mars-related shorts I wrote due out between 2009 and 2010. So stay tuned!”

"Mars-side," a new short story by C.B. Calsing

Writer, editor and teacher C.B. Calsing recently had her new short story “Mars-side” (2009) published online at Crossed Genres, “the magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy with a twist.” Set in the decaying mining colony of Coronae Scopulus on a bleak red planet, the story revolves around a young Marsbred seamstress named Brig and her desire to live Earthside. Here are the opening lines:

Brig squinted down at the needle, trying to get the thread through the hole.

“How long, daya think?” Hets asked.

Brig shook her head.

Dark. Everything was always dark. Red dust on the outside of the dome, a local decade’s worth of cigarette smoke from the inside. But now, well, no more cigarettes, sure enough. Some real nicotine fiends had even licked the tar stains off the dome walls on the edge of the city; nothing else in the dome had ever created smoke. But that happened years ago ...

This is an interesting story, worth reading. For some reason, it reminded me of the old U2 song "Red Hill Mining Town." Bleak.

C.B. Calsing is a native of California and started writing science fiction in high school. She just earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of New Orleans. She also teaches middle school English and edits for a prominent e-book publisher.

Thanks to Dave Tackett of the blog QuasarDragon for the link!

Nantucket bookstore controlled by wife of Google CEO reopens after green renovation

While bookstores seem to be closing at a record pace, The Nantucket Independent reports that the island’s beloved Mitchell’s Book Corner, established in 1968, has reopened after closing last fall for an eight-month “green” renovation. The project, which includes a new second floor (that’s where the SF books are!) and an elevator for handicap access, reused original building material and ensured that all new materials were environmentally friendly. The bookstore is controlled by Wendy Schmidt, president of the Schmidt Family Foundation and wife of Google CEO Eric Schmidt, whose clever philanthropic vehicle ReMain Nantucket purchased the store and its historic building in January 2008. As part of the deal, the book business was leased to two store employees.

Why are Martians not allowed to destroy London? An interview with film director Richard Stanley

Time Out London has an interesting interview with South African-born film director Richard Stanley. Perhaps best known for his film Hardware (1990) and getting fired from the set of The Island of Doctor Moreau (1996) after only three days of shooting, Stanley seems to be quite knowledgeable about British science fiction, as this excerpt from the interview demonstrates:

Time Out: How do you think Hardware fits into a tradition of British science fiction?

Richard Stanley: Britain has had a very honourable tradition of literary sci-fi, HG Wells, John Wyndham, JG Ballard, Brian Aldiss, Michael Moorcock, but for whatever reason they have never really been given the time of day onscreen. I can’t understand why we keep getting high-budget Dickens adaptations on television, but we’ve never had an HG Wells adaptation. Why are the Martian war machines never allowed to destroy London? When Nigel Kneale passed a couple of years ago there was nary a flutter on the television, as opposed to the national state of mourning when Dennis Potter died. I’m dying for somebody to give those stories the classic-status treatment they deserve, instead of being treated as a ghetto genre.

Pictured: Cover of 1913 British edition of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, depicting Martian war machines with London's Tower Bridge in the background.

New piece of flash fiction: “The Last Day of Mars” by Sam Sher

“The Last Day of Mars” (2009), a new piece of flash fiction by Sam Sher, was recently published on his blog, The Sherald Times. Here is the first line: “And there, viewing the last day of Mars, the wanderer found tears upon his cheeks.”

Sam Sher just graduated from Indiana University Bloomington, where he studied telecommunications and film. He is a contributor to GameZombie.tv, “your trusted source in post-zombocalyptic game videos.”

Cat Country, a 1930s Chinese novel set on Mars

According to The Literature of China in the Twentieth Century (1999), by Bonnie S. McDougall and Kam Louie, a significant Chinese writer named Lao She wrote a novel titled Cat Country (Mao-ch'eng chi; can also be translated as The City of Cats) in 1933. Apparently, the "narrator finds himself marooned on Mars and is captured by its inhabitants, the Cat people, who are lazy, cowardly and self-centered. They drag him off to Cat Country, which is dirty, crowded and ridden with inequality. The novel’s chief target of attack is the education system, where students are automatically granted degrees. Intellectuals, political parties of both the right and the left, and members of the elite who take concubines and behave oppressively to women also face biting criticism. The satire in Cat Country is more bitter than funny, and Lao She was later harshly criticised for his comments on the political and social situation in China in the early 1930s.”

The Authors Guild has yet to write the book on Paul Aiken, its Executive Director

The recent news that the United States Dept. of Justice sent civil investigative demands to various parties in the proposed $125 million Google Book Search Settlement offers an opportune time to read about the background of one of the more outspoken participants in the legal conflagration: Paul Aiken, Executive Director of the Authors Guild.

A main character in the future of books, e-books and audiobooks, Paul Aiken also starred in the recent drama over the text-to-speech feature in Amazon’s Kindle 2 electronic book reader. In fact, Aiken et al. have been fighting legal battles with publishing and media companies for more than a decade. But if you’re interested in reading a biography of Mr. Aiken, you’ll have to conduct most of the research yourself, because the Guild has yet to write the book on its Executive Director. Consider:

• According to the website of the Authors Guild, Paul Aiken is the Executive Director. The website has no biographical information or photograph of Mr. Aiken. He is simply the Executive Director, who, presumably, maintains an office in the Guild’s headquarters at 31 East 32nd Street, 7th Floor, New York, NY.

See what I mean? Sadly, the Guild hasn’t adopted the finer points of 21st-century nonprofit governance. However, thanks to Google, the Guild’s archenemy, you can use this information to build your own biography of Mr. Aiken:

• According to his personal profile on the professional networking site LinkedIn, Paul Aiken earned a B.A. in Science from Lawrence University in 1981 and has served as Executive Director of the Authors Guild for 16 years, from 1993 to the present.

• According to a biographical sketch posted on the website of the Authors Registry, Paul Aiken, an attorney and vice president of the Registry, has served as Executive Director of the Authors Guild since 1995. Interestingly, there is no photograph of Mr. Aiken, despite the fact that there are photographs of eight of the other nine directors and officers.

• According to a biographical sketch compiled for a 2006 American Independent Writers’ panel discussion on the Google Print project in which Paul Aiken participated: “A 1985 graduate of Cornell Law School, he has been the executive director of the Authors Guild since 1996. Aiken testified before the White House Task Force on Copyright and the Internet, participated in the Conference on Fair Use and, in the past year, testified on the topic of fair use before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and on the need for a small claims court for copyright infringement before a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. His commentary on the publishing industry has been published in Publishing Research Quarterly and The New York Times.”

• According to the July 1993 newsletter of the Textbook Authors Association, Paul Aiken was a staff attorney for the Authors Guild.

• According to the database of attorneys maintained by the New York State Unified Court System, Paul Daymond Aiken of the Authors Guild graduated from Cornell Law School and was admitted to the Bar of the State of New York in 1986.

• According to the Authors Guild’s 2008 IRS Form 990 in GuideStar, Paul Aiken of 30 East 9th Street, New York, NY, earned $87,500 in compensation as the Guild's Executive Director.

• According to the Authors Guild Foundation’s 2008 IRS Form 990-PF in GuideStar, Paul Aiken of 30 East 9th Street, New York, NY, earned $37,500 in compensation as the Foundation’s executive director. The Foundation, a tax-exempt private foundation established by the Authors Guild in 1972 and headquartered at 31 East 32nd Street, 7th Floor, New York, NY, improves “the condition and welfare of American authors by providing them with education, financial and informational resources.” Surprisingly, the website of the Authors Guild Foundation does not mention Mr. Aiken.

• According to the Authors League Fund’s 2007 IRS Form 990-PF in GuideStar, the Fund paid $20,000 in legal fees to Paul Aiken, Esq. The Fund, a tax-exempt private foundation established by the Authors Guild in 1936 and headquartered at 31 East 32nd Street, 7th Floor, New York, NY, provides “loans to authors in financial need” and “aid to indigent authors.”

• According to an obituary published in Wisconsin's The Portage County Gazette in the year 2000, Paul Aiken of New York, NY, is the youngest son of the late Daymond J. Aiken, a longtime math and physics teacher who taught in Illinois and Wisconsin. The obituary indicates that Paul Aiken is married to Stefanie Rosenfeld.

• According to the Google Book Search project, the late Daymond J. Aiken, Paul Aiken’s father, co-authored several mathematics text books published in the 1950s and 1960s.

• According to various bits of information gleaned from electronic sources, Stefanie Rosenfeld, Paul Aiken’s wife, worked as a book cover designer for Harper Collins and Puffin Books/Penguin Group. One of the covers Ms. Rosenfeld designed: A 1997 reprint of the classic novel The Outsiders (1967), by S. E. Hinton.

• According to a photograph posted on the website of the Patrick McMullan Company, Paul Aiken and Stefanie Rosenfeld attended an Authors Guild function on May 21, 2007.

Best of success in building your biography of Paul Aiken, Executive Director of the Authors Guild! If you find out what Mr. Aiken was doing between the years 1985 and 1993, please let me know. Thanks!

Listen to a reading of author Charles Stross’s recent novelette “Trunk and Disorderly”

Published in the January 2007 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine, “Trunk and Disorderly”, a comical novelette written by British SF author Charles Stross, was recorded as a free audiobook for the Winter 2008 issue of Subterranean Online magazine. Read by Sam Mowry, the recording is about 1.5 hours long and is divided into thirteen MP3 files.

Billed as “a P. G. Wodehouse meets Robert A. Heinlein as filtered through Mr. Stross’s sensibilities” work, here’s a synopsis of “Trunk and Disorderly”, taken from the review site Tangent: “The avuncular hero, Ralph, a neo-Edwardian lush who enjoys extreme Martian sky-diving, has to deal with a host of problems: his ex-robotic girlfriend, his new butler, his half-sister’s smelly and ornery pet mammoth, and, oh yes, being held hostage by an insane evil Vizier.”

The first ten pages of Charles Stross’s “Trunk and Disorderly” are available on the website of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine.

SF author Alastair Reynolds inks £1m book deal

Congratulations to Welsh science fiction author Alastair Reynolds, who, according to the The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom, signed a 10-book deal worth £1m with the Gollancz imprint of the UK-based publishing house Orion. A former astronomer who has had many short stories published, Reynolds writes predominately hard science and space opera novels.

To the best of my knowledge, Reynolds has set three of his works on the planet Mars:

• "Great Wall of Mars", a novella originally published in Spectrum SF #1 (February 2000)

• "The Real Story", a short story originally published in the anthology Mars Probes (2002)

• “Understanding Space and Time”, a novella originally published as a limited edition book (Birmingham Science Fiction Group, UK, 2005)

Alastair Reynolds maintains his own website and a blog.

Pictured: Cover of Understanding Space and Time (2005). Artwork by David A. Hardy.

Neopro Shawn Scarber is working on a military SF novel titled War Dogs of Mars

Neopro speculative fiction author Shawn Scarber keeps
an online journal about his writing and has provided some excellent insight into a military science fiction novel on which he’s working: War Dogs of Mars. Scarber reads a
lot of military SF and, in general, he thinks the sub-genre is missing something, so his work isn’t going to be the typical military SF novel. Set on the Red Planet, War Dogs of Mars is about a small force of freedom fighters who attempt to “push back the pigs of the USSR
who have been seduced by the evils of the black market.” The last I heard, Scarber is up to Chapter 9.

Kim Stanley Robinson digs the Persian poet Rumi

Here’s an interesting literary tidbit that I just dug up, thanks to the Google Book Search project: SF author Kim Stanley Robinson is a big fan of the 13th-century Sufi and Persian poet Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, whose formal name has several variant spellings and who is commonly referred to in the English-speaking world as Rumi.

In his award-winning novel Red Mars (1992), Robinson uses one of Rumi's most often quoted passages in writing about a stay at a Sufi caravanserai on the surface of Mars:

"We say a bedtime prayer from the Persian poet Rumi Jalaluddin,” the old woman told him, and recited it:

I died as mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal.
I died as animal and I was human.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die human,
To soar with angels blessed above.
And when I sacrifice my angel soul,
I shall become what no mind ever conceived.

“Sleep well,” she said into his drowsing mind. “This is all our path.”

In his award-winning novel Green Mars (1993), Robinson mentions a Sufi settlement on Mars called Rumi. A few pages later, Robinson writes about a visit to another Sufi settlement, Margaritifer:

“It’s a Farsi poem by Jalaluddin Rumi, the master of the whirling dervishes. I never learned the English version very well--

‘I died from a mineral and plant became,
Died from the plant, took a sentient frame;
Died from the beast, donned a human dress--
When by my dying did I ever grow less ...’

“Ah, I can’t remember the rest. But some of those Sufis were very good engineers.”

In his award-winning novel Blue Mars (1996), Robinson mentions a town called Rumi in discussing delegates to a constitutional congress on Mars. Presumably, this town grew out of the settlement referred to in Green Mars.

It’s also worth noting that Kim Stanely Robinson mentions the Sufi and Persian poet Rumi several times in his non-Mars novel The Years of Rice and Salt (2002). See if you recognize any lines in this passage:

“Do you know the poem by Rumi Balkhi, ‘I Died As Mineral’? No? It is by the founder of the dervishes, the most spiritual of Muslims.” He recited:

I died as mineral and came back as plant,
Died as plant and came back as animal,
Died as animal and came back a man.
Why should I fear? When have I ever lost by dying?
Yet once more I shall die human,
To soar with angels blessed above.
And when I sacrifice my angel soul
I shall become what no mind ever conceived.

“That last death I think refers to the hun soul, moving away from the po soul to some transcendence.”

I’ve never read anything written by Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, but my interest has been piqued. Thanks KSR!

Smithsonian taps virtual world of MMO game Blue Mars 2150 for future exhibit

GamesBeat and several other online news sources report that the Smithsonian Institution is teaming up with technology companies Virtual Space Entertainment, Avatar Reality and Big Stage Entertainment to build an interactive museum exhibit that will let users participate in a futuristic society on a terraformed Mars with breathable air. The project, which has
its roots in the massively multiplayer online game (MMO) Blue Mars 2150, is scheduled to open to the public in 2010.

Meanwhile, the game Blue Mars 2150, which has been released in beta, is scheduled to land on the Internet in August 2009. According to a recent article on BusinessWire, “A track with robotic 120-feet-tall dogs, college reunions in the garb of your alma mater and visiting the tomb of the first emperor of China are among the many Martian attractions.” Who knows, perhaps a player will be able to create an avatar who is a science fiction fan, relaxing with a beautiful woman by the side of a swimming pool, reading a pristine first edition hardcover of Fahrenheit 451, without fear that the book will get wet.

Barsoom Pictures Inc. has a role in Saltywood's John Carter of Mars film

As fan Jeff Doten of the website Barsoomia noted recently, a company called Barsoom Pictures Inc. has some kind of role in Disney/Pixar’s long-awaited John Carter of Mars film (2012). A search of the California Secretary of State’s corporations database reveals that paperwork for a company called Barsoom Pictures Inc., 500 South Buena Vista Street, Burbank, CA, was filed in late April 2008. The agent listed is Marsha L. Reed, who, if I’m not mistaken, is an executive at Disney. In addition, a search of the Utah Division of Corporations and Commercial Code's business entity database reveals that Barsoom Pictures Inc. was registered to conduct business in that state on June 8, 2009.

On June 12, 2009, The Salt Lake Tribune reported that Disney/Pixar will film part of John Carter of Mars in Utah, spending about $27 million and creating nearly 400 jobs. In return for generating this economic activity, the project will receive a $5.5 million tax credit under a state incentive program. While The Salt Lake Tribune did not mention Barsoom Pictures Inc., an article published in the Desert News on June 11, 2009, stated that the Governor's Office of Economic Development Board (GOED) "also approved a refundable tax credit of up to $5.5 million for Barsoom Pictures." Presumably, the tax credit will be paid out of the Utah Film Commission's Motion Picture Incentive Fund.

As Governor Jon Huntsman stated in a GOED press release in April 2009, “There is Hollywood and Bollywood, Utah has Saltywood. The combination of the enhanced [tax] incentive, our variety of scenery and locations, as well as our proximity to Los Angeles all contribute to our reputation as a premier destination for filmmaking.”

Pictured: Utah Film Commission's "Location #10000786 - Near Castle Dale - Mars." Castle Dale is a small town just east of the San Rafael Swell, a vast geologic feature that has sections where the geography and topography resembles that of Mars. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Mars Desert Research Station outside of Hanksville is about a three-hour car ride south of Castle Dale.

“Paulo on Mars”, a new Biblical short story scribed by Guy Stewart

Science fiction scribe and SFWA member Guy Stewart published a new Biblical story, “Paulo on Mars” (2009), a few months ago on his blog, Possibly Irritating Essays: Thoughts on Christianity, Faith, Science Fiction and Writing. Set on the Red Planet and paying homage to Saint Paul, as well as several of my favorite science fiction authors, here are the opening lines:

Paulo Marcillon brushed ochre dust from his outsuit but froze mid-motion. Words of Jesus leaped into his head: “...shake the dust off your feet...it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah than this city..."

He wasn’t ready to write off Robinson City just yet. Burroughs, Clarketown and Bradbury had pushed a few dozen Christians out their airlocks without suits since the Pogrom began. But not RC. ...

Although I’m not religious, I am a fan of Biblical archaeology and I've been to several sites in Greece and Turkey. Here’s one of the books in my library: In the Steps of St. Paul (1936, 2002), by H. V. Morton.

Pictured: Portion of “Saint Paul Preaching on Mars Hill”, a 19th-century engraving by T. Shilippoteaux.

In an age of Kindle-able books, Ray Bradbury tells Yahoo to go to hell

I never tire of listening to Ray Bradbury talk about his love for and the importance of books, reading and libraries. Approaching age 90, the timeless guy of Sci-Fi has a raging fire of passion inside him that will probably never be extinguished. The latest example is from an interview between Bradbury and artist Michael O’Kelly that was just published in California's Ventura County Reporter. Here’s an excerpt:

Michael O’Kelly: Today, in the schools, the English literature departments are encouraging children and teenagers to spend more and more time using the computer, and it seems to be a bit of a battle between using computers and reading books. How do we encourage kids and why is it so important for kids to be reading books instead of reading on a string?

Ray Bradbury: My answer to that is, Yahoo called me a few months ago and they wanted to put my books on the Internet, and I said, “Yahoo, listen to this, to hell with you! Go away! To hell with you! I believe in books!” So parents should say to the teachers, “Forget computers.” Put a book in their hands, it’s important; and they can carry it with them anywhere.

Ray Bradbury will kick off the H. P. Wright Library author series in Ventura, CA, on Saturday, June 20, 2009.

Ventura artist Michael O’Kelly is owner of California Pottery and Tile Works in Los Angeles and director of the Ray Bradbury Theater and Film Foundation.

Addendum: The June 20, 2009, issue of The New York Times has an article titled “A Literary Legend Fights for a Library,” which describes Ray Bradbury’s effort to raise money for the Ventura County public library system.

Coming From Nowhere, a new debut novel written by Pembroke Sinclair

Congratulations to Pembroke Sinclair, a self-described struggling writer, who recently had his first novel, Coming From Nowhere (May 2009), published as an e-novel by eTreasures Publishing. Set on the Red Planet, here’s a description of the novel, taken from the Kindle catalog:

JD does not have a past at least not one that she can remember and that makes living life on Mars challenging. With nowhere to go, she is sent to the local military academy where she is trained to become a member of the elite secret police. While there, she becomes a pawn in Roger’s struggle for military dominance and Chris’s rebellion to overthrow the military regime. She supposedly holds a secret that will change the face of the soldier, but, unfortunately, she doesn’t know what that secret is. Her only desire is to find the truth of her existence, and finds herself thrust into a realm where the truth of her past and present is more horrific than she ever imagined.

In a solid review, The Absent Willow Review concludes: “If you enjoy science fiction featuring a good old fashioned rebel group who pits themselves against an omnipotent power then you will certainly get a kick out of this book. It is full of interesting characters, and an intriguing plot.”

Pembroke Sinclair writes science fiction, fantasy and westerns and has had several stories published. His “The Dark Side of the Moon” will be published by Sonar4 Publications in September 2009.

Tor.com opens publisher agnostic SF/F bookstore

Tor.com, a well-known and highly regarded Science Fiction & Fantasy website that features industry news, reviews, original short fiction, artwork, and discussion, has just opened an online “publisher agnostic” SF/F bookstore. What’s an online “publisher agnostic” SF/F bookstore? Read the announcement by Tor.com web producer Pablo Defendini or go straight to the new Tor.com Store!

Casting poll for John Carter of Mars film reveals fans don’t know much about Hollywood

Now that we know Canadian actor Taylor Kitsch will play the role of John Carter and American actress Lynn Collins will play the role of Dejah Thoris in the long-awaited Disney/Pixar film John Carter of Mars (2012), we can take a closer look at a cool casting poll conducted by the Unofficial Fansite of the John Carter of Mars Movie over the past several months.

Although the poll covered several major characters from the science fictional Mars of pulp author Edgar Rice Burroughs and generated 2,137 votes, I’m only interested in the results for John Carter and Dejah Thoris. Fans made a few spelling errors when they cast their votes and my math is probably not perfect, but it is clear that most of us (including myself) don't know much about Hollywood casting.

As to which actor should play the role of John Carter, here’s how some of 1,954 fans voted:

1. Hugh Jackman (received 476 votes or 24% of the total)
2. Tom Welling (338)
3. Matthew McConaughey (169)
4. Viggo Mortensen (128)
5. Eric Bana (98)
6. Christian Bale (78)
7. Brandon Routh (66)
8. Bruce Campbell (41)
9. Brad Johnson (ii) (39)
10. Paul Telfer (37)
25. Taylor Kitsch (received 8 votes or less than 1% of the total)

As to which actress should play the role of Dejah Thoris, here’s how some of 1,809 fans voted:

1. Monica Bellucci (received 222 votes or 12% of the total)
2. Salma Hayek (159)
3. Morena Baccarin (149)
4. Josie Maran (144)
5. Jessica Alba (124)
6. Dina Meyer (104)
7. Kate Beckinsale (96)
8. Aishwarya Rai (95)
9. Malaika Arora (69)
10. Angelina Jolie (55)
81. Lynn Collins (received 1 vote or less than 1% of the total)

Thanks to the Unofficial Fansite of the John Carter of Mars Movie!

Cover art: Mars of pulp author Otis Adelbert Kline

The blog Golden Age Comic Book Stories has scans of the covers of two classic Martian science fiction novels written by Otis Adelbert Kline and originally published as serials in Argosy magazine in the early 1930s:

• The Swordsman of Mars, First Edition, hardcover (Avalon, 1960)

• The Swordsman of Mars, paperback (Ace, 1961)

• The Outlaws of Mars, First Edition, hardcover (Avalon, 1961)

• The Outlaws of Mars, paperback (Ace, 1968)

Otis Adelbert Kline, a contemporary of Edgar Rice Burroughs, is often considered an ERB knock-off, but Michael Moorcock’s introduction to the recent unabridged reprint of The Swordsman of Mars (2008, Paizo Publishing), restores Kline to his proper place in the history of SF.

Thanks to Dave Tackett of the blog QuasarDragon for the link to the Kline scans.

Pictured: Dust jacket of a First Edition of The Swordsman of Mars. Artwork by Ed Emshwiller.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos criticizes Google Book Search Settlement; Public Index not on the shelf

CNET News reports that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos criticized the proposed Google Book Search Settlement at yesterday's Wired Business Conference in New York.

In related news, New York Law School has yet to shelve its The Public Index project in response to the proposed settlement. According to a NYLS press release dated May 5, 2009, The Public Index will consist of a website that features "discussion forums, a comprehensive archive of settlement documents and related commentary, and a tool for users to insert their analysis and commentary on individual paragraphs of the proposed settlement.” The project, which is being undertaken by students and overseen by renowned Professor James Grimmelmann, was scheduled to be launched “later this May.”

Looking ahead, the highly anticipated “Fairness Hearing” on the proposed Google Book Search Settlement will be held in U.S. federal court in New York on October 7, 2009.

Author Salman Rushdie considered using the ruby slippers to rescue an astronaut marooned on Mars

In 1994, a few years after his novel The Satanic Verses (1988) spurred Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to issue an infamous fatwa, British Indian author-in-hiding Salman Rushdie managed to get an anthology, East, West: Stories, published. One of the stories, “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers”, may not be science fiction, but it involves an imaginative premise: purchasing an original pair of Dorothy’s ruby slippers from the classic film The Wizard of Oz (1939) to rescue an astronaut marooned on Mars. I’m not sure what the story means or how it fits into Rushdie’s theme of East, West, but here’s an interesting excerpt:

At that time many television channels were devoted to the sad case of the astronaut stranded on Mars without hope of rescue, and with diminishing supplies of food and breathable air. Official spokesmen told us of the persuasive arguments for the abrupt cancellation of the space exploration budget. We found these arguments powerful; influential voices complained of the sentimentality of the images of the dying spaceman. Nevertheless, the cameras inside his marooned craft continued to send us poignant pictures of his slow descent into despair, his low-gravity, weight-reduced death.

I watched my cousin Gale as she watched the bar’s TV. She did not see me watching her, did not know that she had become my chosen programme.

The condemned man on another planet -- the condemned man on TV -- began to sing a squawky medley of half-remembered songs. I was reminded of the dying computer, Hal, in the old film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Hal sang “Diasy, Daisy” as it was being unplugged.

The Martian -- for he was now a permanent resident of that planet -- offered us his spaced-out renditions of “Swanee,” “Show Me the Way to Go Home” and several numbers from The Wizard of Oz; and Gale's shoulders began to shake. She was crying.

I did not go across to comfort her.


I first heard about the upcoming auction of the ruby slippers the very next morning, and resolved at once to buy them, whatever the cost. My plan was simple: I would offer the miracle-shoes to Gale in all humility. If she wished, I would say, she could use them to travel to Mars and bring the spaceman back to Earth.

Perhaps I might even click the heels together three times, and win back her heart by murmuring, in soft reminder of our wasted love, There’s no place like home.

According to Wikipedia, several original pairs of Dorothy’s ruby slippers have sold at auction over the years, including one for more than $600,000 in 2000.

Also, according to Wikipedia, Iran has repeatedly rejected requests to withdraw the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. Apparently, only the person who issued the fatwa may withdraw it. Unfortunately, Ayatollah Ruhalloh Khomeini died in 1989.

“Appointment on Mars”, a 1952 television tale of tomorrow starring Leslie Nielsen

If you have the bandwidth, or the patience, you can watch “Appointment on Mars” (1952, 29:37 min.), starring a young Leslie Nielsen, on the video website Hulu. An episode from the first season of ABC’s 1950s television series Tales of Tomorrow, “Appointment on Mars” aired on June 27, 1952. The plot involves three astronauts who land on Mars, hoping to profit from finding valuable minerals for a mining company. After discovering a rich deposit of uranium ore, one of the astronauts becomes increasingly paranoid that they are being watched. Soon, all three astronauts are dead.

According to the Locus Index to Science Fiction, “Appointment on Mars” was based on “What Price Venus?”, a novella by Salvatore A. Lombino that was first published in the August-September 1953 issue of Fantastic Universe magazine.

Thanks to Steve Davidson of The Classic Science Fiction Channel for the Hulu tip!

Jazz saxophonist is an aspiring SF author, wrote an unpublished novel set on Mars

The Las Vegas Sun reveals that well-known saxophonist Phil Wigfall, who plays with the Nevada Jazz Orchestra and other musical groups, is also an aspiring science fiction author. A graduate of UNLV and Berklee College of Music in Boston, Wigfall has a forthcoming CD of electronica that includes a dark sci-fi story that takes place in Vegas in the year 2031. He also wrote A Sol in the Life of Otto Fink, an unpublished novel that is set on Mars 2,500 years in the future.

Unrelated to Mars, but very cool: One of Wigfall’s favorite books is John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667).

Pictured above: Phil Wigfall

Sci-Fi baby names: Jeffrey

Name: Jeffrey

Origin: Mars Colony

Source: Babylon 5 (TV series, 1994-1998)

Biography: Jeffrey Sinclair is the senior military officer on the Babylon 5 space station. Given the unenviable task of keeping the peace among the often hostile entities who inhabit or pass through the deep-space diplomatic port of call, Sinclair is a sober man dedicated to the cause of galactic harmony.

Quote: “It can be a dangerous place, but it’s out last best hope for peace."

Variants: Geoffrey

[Taken directly from Sci-Fi Baby Names: 500 Out-of-This-World Baby Names from Anakin to Zardoz, by Robert Schnakenberg (2007)]

“Winds of Mars”, a new novella by SF author and sailor Bud Sparhawk

Thanks to the generosity of the folks at Baen Books, I’m reading my way through “Winds of Mars” (2009), an interesting new novella written by science fiction author Bud Sparhawk. Published in the June 2009 issue of Jim Baen’s Universe and posted on Baen’s website for all to read, “Winds of Mars” is about a sailing race on the Red Planet. Here are the opening lines:

The wind blew soundlessly across the red-gray Amazonis landscape. Arching high above the station's masts were the fluttering tell-tails on the tug's sails. Halsey "Sands" Ribblokenni barely gave them a glance as he headed for the dispatcher's shack. His mind was more on the Tuesday night's race out on the Tiblia Plantia. He was in third place in the latest series and, if he managed to win the next race, he'd move up to second. ...

John C. “Bud" Sparhawk started reading science fiction in 1948 with the Ray Bradbury stories in Collier's magazine. He had his first SF story published in Analog: Science Fiction and Fact magazine in 1976 and has written many more since. His novelette “Olympus Mons!” was published in the January 1998 issue of Analog. Bud Sparhawk lives in Maryland and enjoys sailing on Chesapeake Bay.

Thanks to Tinkoo of the blog Variety SF for the link!

Hollywood's long-awaited John Carter of Mars film to star Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins

The Hollywood Reporter reports that Canadian actor Taylor Kitsch and American actress Lynn Collins will star in the forthcoming Disney/Pixar film John Carter of Mars. The film, which is being directed by noted Hollywood director Andrew Stanton and is scheduled to land in theaters in 2012, is based on the Barsoom series of science fiction novels written by pulp author Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Taylor Kitsch will play the title character, John Carter, a Civil War veteran who finds himself mysteriously transported to Mars, where he becomes involved with the warring races of a dying planet. Lynn Collins will play the role of Dejah Thoris, a Martian princess and heir to the throne of the kingdom of Helium. Both Kitsch and Collins appeared in the recent film X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009).

Pictured above: Lynn Collins, dressed appropriately for the role of Dejah Thoris.

Curiosity: Author Robert A. Heinlein exiled to Jet Propulsion Laboratory's cafeteria in 1976

Belated congratulations to Clara Ma, a sixth-grader from Lenexa, Kansas, who submitted the winning essay in a recent national contest to name the rover of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission. Scheduled to be launched in 2011, NASA gave the rover the name that Ma proposed: Curiosity. In recognition for winning the contest, Ma visited NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, on June 8, 2009, and signed the rover while it was being assembled and tested at JPL’s "Mars Yard."

This reminds me of a curious, but humorous, incident that transpired at JPL back in 1976. Here’s how SF author Jerry Pournelle tells the story in the book Requiem: Collected Works and Tributes to the Grand Master (2nd ed., 2008), by Robert A. Heinlein and Yoji Kondo:

Some years ago when the United States flew spacecraft instead of endlessly redesigning them, I had the extraordinary fortune to be sitting with Robert A. Heinlein in the cafeteria at Cal Tech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory during the landing of the Viking probe to Mars [July 20, 1976]. We were in the cafeteria because, while I had both press and VIP credentials, Mr. Heinlein did not. I had brought him to JPL because I thought he belonged there; but there hadn’t been time to get him credentials, so the NASA authorities ordered him out of the Von Kantian Center.

I was outraged, and wanted to make a scene, but Robert would have none of that. He trudged up the hill to the cafeteria.

There is sometimes justice in this world. At the moment our first spacecraft landed on Mars, most of the network news cameras were in the cafeteria trained on Mr. Heinlein, rather than down in the center recording what NASA's officialdom thought they should be watching.

Perhaps this explains why Robert A. Heinlein is not mentioned in “Mars? New Realities for Sci-Fi,” an article which appeared in The New York Times in late July 1976, and why he is missing from the library on Mars.

Hollywood’s John Carter of Mars to film in Utah, projected to create nearly 400 jobs

The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Disney/Pixar is expected to partly film the highly anticipated pulp science fiction film John Carter of Mars (2012) in Utah from November 2009 to July 2010. Apparently, some of the filming will take place at Lake Powell, where the Hollywood classic Planet of the Apes (1968) was partially filmed.

According to documents filed with the Governor's Office of Economic Development, Disney/Pixar is projected to spend $27.7 million in the state and create 398 jobs for Utahns. In turn, the project will receive a $5.5 million tax credit under a state incentive program.

The film John Carter of Mars, which is being directed by noted Hollywood director Andrew Stanton, is scheduled to land in theaters in 2012. The film is based on the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom series and his fictional character John Carter of Mars. According to The Salt Lake Tribune, Burroughs worked as a railroad police officer in Salt Lake City in 1904.

“The First Poem on Mars”, a new piece of poetry by Håkan Tendell

“The First Poem on Mars” (2009), a new piece of poetry penned by Swedish writer Håkan Tendell, is posted on his blog, Världsrymden väntar. A single, lengthy stanza comprised of 95 lines, here's the opening of the first poem on Mars:

How can they sleep on a night like this,
when we’ve finally made it through?
My comrades, so tired, so awfully tired.
Hello, what is wrong with you?
Am I the only one with energy left
after this historic day? ...

Håkan Tendell has been dreaming about living a life as a writer since he was a child.

Science: Mars could collide with Earth or get hurled out of the Solar System by Jupiter

'Tiny Chance' of Planet Collision
BBC News, June 10, 2009
By Pallab Ghosh

LONDON -- Astronomers calculate there is a tiny chance that Mars or Venus could collide with Earth -- though it would not happen for at least a billion years.

The finding comes from simulations to show how orbits of planets might evolve billions of years into the future.

But the calculated chances of such events occurring are tiny.

Writing in the journal Nature, a team led by Jacques Laskar shows there is also a chance Mercury could strike Venus and merge into a larger planet.

Professor Laskar of the Paris Observatory and his colleagues also report that Mars might experience a close encounter with Jupiter -- whose massive gravity could hurl the Red Planet out of our Solar System. [...]

Read the entire article and watch a video (1:20 min.) at BBC News.

Read an article titled "Mercury, Mars, Venus and the Earth: When worlds collide!" at the website of the Paris Observatory.

Poll: Will Women's history land in a Martian crater in the near future?

Now that the impact of the naming of Asimov Crater on Mars by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has been recorded, I’m conducting a poll to determine which future landmark event in Women’s history you think will happen last. Here are four monumental events I'm thinking about:

• The United States will elect a woman president

• A woman will walk on the surface of Mars

• A woman will be named CEO of Merrill Lynch

• The IAU will name a crater on Mars in honor of a woman science fiction writer

According to the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature, large craters (approximately 60 km and larger) on Mars are named for “deceased scientists who have contributed to the study of Mars; writers and others who have contributed to the lore of Mars,” while planetary features on Deimos, a moon of Mars, are named for “authors who wrote about martian satellites [Phobos and Deimos].”

If I understand the list of Martian craters published in the gazeteer, we now have seven craters named in honor of male SF writers: Burroughs Crater (1973), Weinbaum Crater (1973), Wells Crater (1973), Lasswitz Crater (1976), Alexey Tolstoy Crater (1982), Heinlein Crater (1994), and Asimov Crater (2009). And zero craters named in honor of female SF writers!

If the IAU is considering diversifying this astronomical anomaly in the near future, here is my shortlist of important women SF writers who have made a significant contribution to the lore of Mars:

• Leigh Brackett (1915-1978)

• Catherine L. Moore (1911-1987)

• Judith Merril (1923-1997)

The poll, which closes on July 10, 2009, is located near the top right-hand column of this blog, below the cover art of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles.

Pictured above: Leigh Brackett, the Queen of Martian science fiction.

“Six Bullets for John Carter”, a new short story by pulp writer Chad Eagleton

Thanks to a recent post by Dave Tackett of QuasarDragon, I just finished reading “Six Bullets for John Carter” (2009), a fantastic new short story set on Mars and penned by pulp writer Chad Eagleton. Posted on the literary website Beat to a Pulp, here are the opening lines of Eagleton's story:

He stares at the reflection of his bandaged face in the piss-colored glow of polished metal above the dingy sink. He stares only a moment before stepping away from the mirror to the grimy porthole where Mars glowers like an angry red eye. ...

Chad Eagleton lives in the Midwest. His work has been featured in Pulp Pusher, Powder Burn Flash, A Twist of Noir, and other E-zines.

Pictured above: How I envision "the blonde from Alpha Centauri."

Fortune magazine looks inside Amazon's effort to transform the book business

The website of Fortune magazine takes a special, interactive look at Amazon’s latest effort to transform the book business in a series of articles and videos listed below. A 21st-century businessman, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos sees "a genuine opportunity to make the cost structure of printing and distribution much more attractive.”

• And the Word was: Kindle. "Amazon founder Jeff Bezos used the Web to shake up book retailing. Now, his company has invented the Kindle e-reader, and is using the Internet to sell electronic books, newspapers and magazines."

• Bezos’ big-screen Kindle (video). "The Amazon.com CEO says the Kindle DX is a great value despite the near $500 price tag."

• Cover story: Amazon's next revolution. "CEO Jeff Bezos used the web to shake up book retailing. Now he's using the Internet to sell electronic books on his Kindle e-reader. A look at Amazon's latest effort to transform the book business, writ digital."

• All the news fit to e-print (video). "Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos says his company's new Kindle DX could be a lifeline for print media."

• Amazon re-Kindles the iPhone. "It took Amazon (AMZN) less than a month after the release of the second-generation Kindle electronic-book reader to put a free Kindle application on the iPhone App Store."

• The end of paper? "Someday you may be reading your newspaper on an e-paper device -- a thin piece of plastic the size of a legal pad that can be taken to the beach or on the train. That day may be a lot closer than you think."

Interested in re-kindling that old-book smell for your e-reader? Try Classic Musty Scent, a fictitious aerosol e-book enhancer made by DuroSport Electronics.

Pictured above: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos atop a pile of books.

Red Faction: Guerrilla, a new destruction-based video game set on Mars

Red Faction: Guerrilla (2009), the new third-person, open-world, action-shooter, destruction-based video game set on Mars, is generating a lot of publicity. Set in the year 2128, fifty years after the events of the original Red Faction (2001) and about forty-five years after the events in Red Faction II (2002), players assume the role of Alec Mason, an insurgent fighter with the newly re-established Red Faction movement, who battles to liberate the planet from the oppressive Earth Defense Force (EDF). From the desolate mining outpost of Parker to the gleaming EDF capital city of Eos, players can use firearms, explosives, rocket launchers, sledgehammers, and military and civilian vehicles to further Red Faction’s cause.

According to one fan, “The almost limitless potential for reckless mayhem is what makes Guerrilla such an unashamedly fun game to play, which is why this is without a doubt the biggest summer blockbuster so far this year and consequently an essential purchase.” The reaction of another fan was more direct: “Blowing shit up is fun.”

Whether you’re a hardcore disciple of the Red Faction series, or just a bibliophile trying to learn more about the gaming industry, here are some interesting interviews with a few of the individuals involved in the development of Red Faction: Guerrilla:

• Interview with Rick White, producer

• Interview with James Hague, design director

• Interview with Luke Schneider, lead multiplayer designer

• Interview with Richard Machowicz, host and producer of Future Weapons on the Discovery Channel and consultant on Red Faction: Guerrilla

Check out the Official Red Faction: Guerrilla website!