Preorder Dejah Thoris: Princess of Mars 12-inch figure from Triad Toys

Fans of science fiction pulp author Edgar Rice Burroughs and his fictional planet of Barsoom can preorder the forthcoming Dejah Thoris: Princess of Mars figure being manufactured by Triad Toys. Twelve inches high and priced at $99, the figure features fully pose-able and removable armor, including head guard, body armor, shoulder armor, wrist armor, leg guards and sandals; ultra-realistic, hand-painted head with Saran hair; over 25 points of articulation, magnetized feet and full metal joints!

Pictured: Dejah Thoris: Princess of Mars

Review of the 2000 film Red Planet

Dwayne Day of The Space Review: Essays and Commentary about the Final Frontier has written an extensive and even-handed review of the Hollywood film Red Planet (2000), starring Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss, Tom Sizemore and Benjamin Bratt. Replete with stunning photos from the film, Day concludes that “Red Planet was not a cinematic masterpiece, but it was the better of the two Mars-themed films released in 2000.”

Last week, Day reviewed the other film, Mission to Mars (2000).

Pictured: Promotional poster for Red Planet.

Harvard Book Store names POD book machine: Paige M. Gutenborg

Earlier this afternoon, Harvard Book Store, an independent bookstore located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, unveiled its print-on-demand Espresso Book Machine, which it aptly named Paige M. Gutenborg. A 21st-century printing press, the Espresso Book Machine can print, bind, and trim a full-color-cover, black-and-white-interior, 300-page book in roughly four minutes. Drawing on a library of several million digitized books maintained by Google, the machine provides Harvard Book Store with the capability to print books locally and ship them globally.

Pictured: Paige M. Gutenborg, which costs about $100,000.

Jeff Garrity revamps cover design of his 2008 free e-novel Mars Girl

Michigan writer Jeff Garrity recently revamped the cover design of Mars Girl (2008), his free e-novel. As poet Marc J. Sheehan wrote on Garrity’s website, “Mars Girl is fast-paced, insightful, inventive and very, very funny. Its vision of where the mutual dependence of politicians and media producers will end is both hilarious and a little frightening. Put Karl Rove and Groucho Marx in a smoke-filled room, spin well on 24-hour news cycle, and you get Mars Girl. This should be required reading for anyone who watches cable news, votes or is thinking of running for President in 2012.”

Recent perspectives on Kurt Vonnegut’s 1959 novel The Sirens of Titan

Fifty years after it was first published as a paperback original, Kurt Vonnegut’s Hugo Award-nominated novel The Sirens of Titan (1959) still entices readers with its scenes on Mars and comical yet profound insight into human nature. Here are three blogs I came across over the past few months whose owners recently read and enjoyed Vonnegut’s novel:

• Book Scribbles: “The scariest thing about Kurt Vonnegut is that he makes perfect sense.”

• Uncle Bob Martin: “As Vonnegut's reputation grew, and his books were moved to general fiction, I followed him there, and slowly stopped being a sci-fi nerd.”

• You Are What You Read: “It's still enjoyable, and fun and easy to read. B”

Pictured: Cover of 1959 Dell first edition, a paperback original.

John Carter of Mars film actress: “Edgar Rice Burroughs was a really smart writer ..."

Last week, the MTV Movies Blog published a piece detailing an interview with Lynn Collins, the American actress who plays the role of Dejah Thoris in the forthcoming Disney/Pixar film John Carter of Mars (2012). Here are some hilarious quotes uttered by Collins:

• "I think they're going more like a really great tan, like the best-tan-you-can-ever-imagine type of thing. I've yet to find it. Maybe the makeup team will be able to."

• “Taylor [actor Taylor Kitsch, who plays the role of John Carter] is so amazing. We went to Pixar and saw some of the workups of some of the fighting that we have to do. I was like, 'Oh my god, there's just no guy better for the job. He's so athletic and wonderful and such a great actor and so positive.'"

• "Edgar Rice Burroughs was a really smart writer, so smart that some of the stuff I can hardly wrap my head around, so that's up to Pixar to see if they can put in visually to life.”

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

“Three Revolvers on Mars,” a murderous new novella by Kristen Lee Knapp

The September 2009 issue of Aphelion: The Webzine of Science Fiction and Fantasy holds “Three Revolvers on Mars” (2009), a new novella by aspiring writer Kristen Lee Knapp. “A kind of sci-fi western sort of thing,” the novella is a tale of murder and revenge set on a future Red Planet. Here are the opening lines:

Jupiter sank beyond the horizon. The sky flared with red and gold colors, fading as a myriad of silver stars appeared above. Gulls circled in the sky, bleating as waves lapped at the small boat, juggling it from crest to crest.

A man and woman lay together inside. The man touched her hair and buried his fingers in her blue-black curls. The woman nestled in his chest, memorizing the scent of his musk and the contours of his arms. …

Kristen Lee Knapp is pursuing his bachelor's degree in English at a university in Florida. “He enjoys abusing his protagonists and their rate of survival is astonishingly low.” He also maintains the blog Life from the Slush Pile.

National Writers Union asks Authors Guild to withdraw from $125m Google books settlement

New York Law School Associate Professor James Grimmelmann of the blog The Laboratorium reports that the National Writers Union has issued a statement asking the Authors Guild to withdraw from discussions about the proposed $125 million Google Books Search settlement. The Open Book Alliance, of which the National Writers Union is a member, notes the lack of “transparency and openness in the effort to digitize books.”

Video of Ray Bradbury’s short story “Usher II” set to Radiohead’s song “Karma Police”

Here’s an interesting video compiled by a student for an English class. It's a telling of Ray Bradbury’s bookish short story Usher II (1950), part of his classic collection The Martian Chronicles, set to English alternative rock band Radiohead’s song “Karma Police,” perhaps the most well-known song on their award-winning album OK Computer (1997).


Almost forgot: It's Banned Books Week!

Looney Tunes: Female rapist has a tattoo of Marvin the Martian

According to the online rap sheet maintained by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, Katrina Lavern Hinds, a 38-year-old woman who was convicted of second degree rape in March 2009, has a tattoo of Marvin the Martian on her abdomen.

The Mars Company, a 2008 free e-novel written by Joseph Roberts

Here is another science fiction novel you can download for free from the self-publishing website Lulu.com: The Mars Company (2008), written by a fellow named Joseph Roberts. The description of the novel (A colony expedition to Mars finds something no one expected) is a bit thin, so here are the opening paragraphs:

Mid-Michigan theatre to stage world premiere of It Came From Mars

According to a recent article at Playbill.com, the Williamston Theatre in Mid-Michigan will stage the world premiere of It Came From Mars, by Joseph Zettelmaier, in early 2010. Featuring Sandra Birch and Morgan Chard, here’s how the play is billed:

Halloween, 1938. Six actors are in rehearsal when they hear an alarming announcement come over the radio -- Martians have landed! Honesty and hilarity ensue when the dramatic dramatists are faced with true drama.

5 things the field of Martian SF needs

1. A full-length biography of Leigh Brackett

2. Kim Stanley Robinson to establish a blog

3. Caitlín R. Kiernan to excavate her long lost novella “The Dinosaurs of Mars,” so she can bring it to life

4. An artist to create a logo for Sky Mountain Brewery, based on David Lunde’s poem “First Beer on Mars” (2009)

5. Allen Steele to write a sequel to his novel Labyrinth of Night (1992), even if that means communicating with disciples of Richard C. Hoagland

Production stills from The Asylum's forthcoming film Princess of Mars, starring Traci Lords

The Asylum, a motion picture studio in Burbank, California, has posted beautiful production stills from its forthcoming low-budget, direct-to-DVD film Princess of Mars. An adaptation of the classic early 20th-century novel written by author Edgar Rice Burroughs, the film features actress and former porn star Traci Lords, as Martian princess Dejah Thoris, and Antonio Sabàto, Jr., as Confederate Civil War veteran John Carter. The film, classified as science fiction, is scheduled to be released in late December 2009.

Pictured: Antonio Sabàto, Jr., as John Carter of Mars.

[via TarsTarkas.net]

“The Hated,” a 1950s psychological short story by Frederik Pohl

Originally published in the January 1958 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine, "The Hated” is a short story written by Paul Flehr, a pseudonym of science fiction Grand Master Frederik Pohl. While the story revolves around the psychological problems an astronaut suffers after returning from a voyage to Mars, it also explores the far side of human hatred. The opening lines are a bit disjointed, but here they are:

Sci-Fri: Mars Solar Garden to span 18 acres

Mars, the global snack food and candy company, recently broke ground on the Mars Solar Garden at its U.S. corporate headquarters in Hackettstown, New Jersey. According to an August 2009 company press release, “The solar garden will be home to over 28,000 solar panels and the largest solar garden in the State of New Jersey to be installed by a food manufacturing plant. The solar garden will provide two megawatts of solar electric power during peak hours, which is equivalent to approximately 20 percent of the plant’s peak consumption. In addition, the solar garden will reduce CO2 emissions by more than 1,000 metric tons, equivalent to removing 190 vehicles from the road each year.” The Mars Solar Garden is being constructed by PSEG Solar Source LLC.

Actor Roddy McDowall travels to Mars in this 1960 episode of The Twilight Zone

I just finished watching an awesome episode of The Twilight Zone from March 1960 on YouTube. It’s titled “People Are Alike All Over,” starring actor Roddy McDowall (Planet of the Apes) as astronaut Samuel Conrad and actress Susan Oliver (Star Trek) as a beautiful Martian named Teenya. Long story short, McDowall’s character ventures to the Red Planet and ends up as a caged exhibit in a Martian zoo. Rod Serling’s opening and closing narrations bracket the three stages of the story:

You're looking at a species of flimsy little two-legged animals with extremely small heads, whose name is Man. Warren Marcusson, age thirty-five. Samuel A. Conrad, age thirty-one.

They're taking a highway into space. Man unshackling himself and sending his tiny, groping fingers up into the unknown. Their destination is Mars, and in just a moment we'll land there with them.

Book cover evolution of The Martian Chronicles

The Mad Hatter’s Bookshelf & Book Review has a beautiful gallery of selected covers from 1950 to 2009 showing the evolution of Ray Bradbury’s classic The Martian Chronicles. A 2008 United Kingdom edition, pictured here, is new to me!

[via John DeNardo of SF Signal]

Dark comic book series Birdwatching From Mars delayed until early 2010

Dark speculative fiction author Barry Napier announced on his blog that the first issue of Birdwatching From Mars, a forthcoming comic book series written by Napier and illustrated by a team of artists, will not be available for purchase until March 2010. In the meantime, you can read this detailed synopsis of the series:

Judge postpones October 7th fairness hearing on $125m Google Books Search settlement

New York Law School Associate Professor James Grimmelmann of the blog The Laboratorium reports that United States District Court Judge Denny Chin has granted the motion filed by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers to postpone the October 7, 2009, fairness hearing on the proposed $125 million Google Books Search settlement.

Waking the volcanoes: 1997 interview with authors Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

Locus Online has a few interesting excerpts from the magazine’s September 2009 interview with science fiction author Larry Niven. The section about “The Soviet Union was driven bankrupt by a plan evolved at my house in Tarzana, with Jerry Pournelle in charge” reminds me of an excerpt from an interview with Niven and Pournelle that was conducted by fellow author Geoffrey A. Landis in November 1997 and published in the magazine Science Fiction Age.

10 things Ray Bradbury and musician Nikki Sixx have in common: #3 - Hate the Internet

#3. Both SF&F author Ray Bradbury and Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx hate the Internet.

Ray Bradbury was quoted in a June 2009 article in The New York Times as saying: “The Internet is a big distraction. Yahoo called me eight weeks ago. They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.’ It’s distracting. It’s meaningless; it’s not real. It’s in the air somewhere.”

Nancy Kress: Writing my YA Mars short story was like “shitting rocks”

A sign of her modesty and sense of humor, award-winning science fiction and fantasy author Nancy Kress revealed on her blog that writing her forthcoming young adult SF short story about teenagers on Mars was like “shitting rocks.” The story, whose title has not yet been revealed, was submitted to Australian editor Jonathan Strahan for Life on Mars: Tales from the New Frontier, a YA near-future anthology scheduled to be published in 2010.

Respectfully, perhaps Kress and Strahan should title the story "Shitting Rocks."

Mars-like red dust storm shrouds Sydney

A science fictional, Mars-like, red dust storm shrouded Sydney, Australia on Wednesday, nearly closing the country’s largest airport and leaving millions of people bewildered and concerned. Fueled by the worst drought on record, the “cloud of red Outback grit,” was Australia’s worst dust storm in 70 years. Jochen Schweitzer of Surry Hills told the BBC, "My wife woke me up -- the sky looked like it was from Mars -- amazing colours.” The Sydney Morning Herald even published an article with this line: “As British science fiction writer John Wyndham might have said, when people in Sydney wake up to a sky from Mars, something is seriously wrong somewhere.” The dust storm is now reportedly moving east toward New Zealand.

What makes this even more eerie is that the 68th Worldcon will be held in Melbourne, Australia in September 2010. One of the Guests of Honor: Kim Stanley Robinson.

And, as I reported last week, director Damon Keen and his film team in New Zealand are working on a short film entitled Last Flight. It’s about the last woman alive on Mars and her dwindling air supply. Lights, camera, action!

[via Torie Atkinson of Tor.com]

Review of the 2000 film Mission to Mars

Dwayne Day of The Space Review: Essays and Commentary about the Final Frontier has written a comprehensive and balanced review of the Hollywood film Mission to Mars (2000), starring Gary Sinise, Tim Robbins, and Connie Nielsen. With beautiful photos from the film, Day concludes that “Mission to Mars promised a technically accurate representation of human Mars exploration, but fell short in many areas, including the story.”

Next week: Dwayne Day reviews the film Red Planet (2000).

Pictured: Promotional poster for Mission to Mars.

Prime Books to reprint Clark Ashton Smith’s 1932 weird tale “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis”

Publishers Weekly reports that Prime Books will reprint “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis,” a classic archaeological science fiction/horror short story set on Mars by Clark Ashton Smith that was originally published in the May 1932 issue of Weird Tales magazine, in the forthcoming collection The Return of the Sorcerer: The Best of Clark Ashton Smith (November 2009).

Meanwhile, you can read “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis,” and some outstanding editorial matter from an earlier reprinting, for free at the website The Eldritch Dark: The Sanctum of Clark Ashton Smith.

Authors Guild tries to delay October 7th hearing on $125m Google Books Search settlement

New York Law School Associate Professor James Grimmelmann of the blog The Laboratorium reports that the Authors Guild and its ally, the Association of American Publishers, have filed a legal motion and memorandum to delay the October 7, 2009, fairness hearing on the proposed $125 million Google Books Search settlement. The reason: “It is clear that the complex issues raised in the U.S. Statement of Interest preclude submission of an amended settlement agreement by October 7.”

Mars art: “First Americans on Mars,” a 1960s illustration by artist George Bakacs

Here’s a colorful, if slightly cheesy, piece of Mars art: “First Americans on Mars,” an illustration by artist George Bakacs depicting the first United States team on the Red Planet. The illustration appeared in the juvenile science book Rockets to Explore the Unknown (1964), by Don E. Rogers.

[via Matt Novak of the blog Paleo-Future]

The Colonisation of Mars, a free e-novel by Canadian writer Larry W. Richardson

Here’s a hefty science fiction novel you can download from the self-publishing website Lulu.com at no charge: The Colonisation of Mars (2009), by Canadian writer Larry W. Richardson. The description:

Google confirms trio of mysterious doodles are tribute to SF author H.G. Wells

Google confirmed on its blog yesterday that a trio of mysterious doodles posted on its homepage over the past couple of weeks is a tribute to British science fiction author H.G. Wells, who would have been 143 years old on September 21st: “Inspiration for innovation in technology and design can come from lots of places; we wanted to celebrate H.G. Wells as an author who encouraged fantastical thinking about what is possible, on this planet and beyond. And maybe have some fun while we were doing it.”

Pictured: The third doodle.

Mars Underground, a 1997 novel by scientist, author and artist William K. Hartmann

Mars Underground (1997), a novel by planetary scientist, author and artist William K. Hartmann

At left: Paperback (New York: Tor, 1999), 428 p., $6.99. Cover design by Martha E. Sedgwick. Here’s a description of the novel, from the back cover:

Call for submissions: The Mammoth e-Book of Mindblowing Mars SF, Volume II

The Mammoth e-Book of Mindblowing Mars SF, compiled in early August 2009, has generated enough interest that I have decided to compile another volume of 20 stories, poems, and pieces of flash fiction that will shatter your imagination, enabling you to see something in a fresh crimson light: The Mammoth e-Book of Mindblowing Mars SF, Volume II.

So far, I have five works about Mars or Martians that I would like to include in The Mammoth e-Book of Mindblowing Mars SF, Volume II:

• "Droidtown Blues" short story by Camille Alexa (2008)

• "Bride" flash fiction by J.R. Blackwell (2006)

• "Just the Thing" flash fiction by J. Loseth (2006)

• "Message to Mars" short story by Alice M. Roelke (2008)

• "Christmas on Mars" flash fiction by Patricia Stewart (2008)

Now, I need fifteen more works about Mars or Martians! So, if you know of a short story, poem or piece of flash fiction penned by a woman science fiction, fantasy or horror writer since the year 2000 that can be read for free online or downloaded at no charge, please submit a comment and web link so I can consider the work for The Mammoth e-Book of Mindblowing Mars SF, Volume II. The deadline for submissions is October 31, 2009!

Pictured: SF reader prepared to have her mind blown.

Listen to a reading of Alastair Reynolds’s 2002 short story “The Real Story”

More news from last year that I missed: In August 2008, StarShipSofa: The Audio Science Fiction Magazine posted a podcast reading of “The Real Story” (MP3, 92 minutes), a short story written by British SF author and newly minted millionaire Alastair Reynolds that was originally published in the anthology Mars Probes (2002). A tale about a female journalist who seeks the real story behind the first manned mission to Mars, “The Real Story” is narrated by Tee Morris. Here are the opening lines of this aural delight:

New Zealand film team working on Last Flight, about the last woman alive on Mars

A film team in New Zealand is working on a short film entitled Last Flight, about the last woman alive on Mars and her dwindling air supply. Written by director Damon Keen and starring Kassie Watson as the female astronaut, the film’s budget is only about $20,000 NZD. I’m not sure when Last Flight will be completed or how it will be released, but you can read the script (PDF, 14 p., 62 KB), view the final storyboard (PDF, 93 p., 5 MB), and admire some of the beautiful filming locations in New Zealand.

Sea Kings of Mars: A review of Leigh Brackett’s 1953 novel The Sword of Rhiannon

Blogger Deuce Richardson of The Cimmerian, a website and "shieldwall for Robert E. Howard, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Best in Heroic Fantasy, Horror, and Historical Adventure,” has written an insightful review of one of my favorite Martian science fiction/fantasy books: The Sword of Rhiannon (1953), a tomb-raiding and seafaring tale by the Queen of Space Opera, Leigh Brackett.

Noting the influence that Robert E. Howard had upon Leigh Brackett, Deuce Richardson concludes that “The Sword of Rhiannon is not Brackett’s ‘sword-and-planet’ masterwork. […] Leigh hadn’t been in the writing game quite a full decade when she penned The Sword of Rhiannon and was yet to come into her full powers as an author. That said, Brackett had obviously found her own voice at that point, assimilating her influences and staking out her queendom in the science-fantasy field. The Sword of Rhiannon moves at a relentless pace and is filled to the brim with plot-twists and reversals of fortune. [Matthew] Carse is a ‘damaged hero’ in the classic Brackett mold who hews and schemes his way across a gorgeously-imagined world. The Sword of Rhiannon was a milestone in Leigh Brackett’s career and is a novel well worth reading today.”

Pictured: Cover of Paizo Publishing's 2009 reprint of The Sword of Rhiannon.

Dept. of Justice files “Statement of Interest” re proposed $125m Google Books Search settlement

The United States of America, by and through counsel, submits this statement of its views concerning the proposed class action settlement (the “Proposed Settlement” or “Agreement”) between the American Association of Publishers, et al. (the “Class Plaintiffs”) and Google Inc. (“Google”).

The United States has been informed by the parties that they are continuing to consider possible modifications of the Proposed Settlement to address the many concerns raised by various commenters and by the United States in its discussions with the parties. The Proposed Settlement is one of the most far-reaching class action settlements of which the United States is aware; it should not be a surprise that the parties did not anticipate all of the difficult legal issues such an ambitious undertaking might raise. Further, the parties have represented to the United States that they put this Court on notice of their ongoing discussions and that they may present a modified version of the Proposed Settlement in the future. The United States is committed to working with the parties constructively with respect to alterations the parties may propose. …

Read the Dept. of Justice's entire "Statement of Interest" (PDF, 32 pages), September 18, 2009.

For a plain-English interpretation of the statement, read the article “Government Urges Changes to Google Books Deal,” The New York Times, September 18, 2009.

[via New York Law School Associate Professor James Grimmelmann of The Laboratorium and The Public Index]

“First Words,” a new short story by British SF&F writer Mark J. Howard

This past summer, the website The Wry Writer, which is designed to “provoke, encourage, and enable interesting and rewarding conversations with and between writers and readers of spec-fiction,” published a humorous short story penned by British science fiction and fantasy writer Mark J. Howard. Entitled “First Words” (2009), the story is about the first words uttered by the first human to set foot on the Red Planet. Here is the opening paragraph:

Nearly half an hour passed before the panic died down, although to the casual observer the word ‘panic’ would hardly seem to apply. The four astronauts spent that time gabbling at one another in a controlled and even manner, running through checklists and reading out numbers from various screens. Eventually, it was ascertained that the damage was not as bad as had been initially feared and their thoughts returned to the continuation of the mission. Forty minutes after this, Commander Trent Hooper, snug inside a bulky environment suit, opened the outer hatch and looked out over the Martian landscape for the first time. …

Mark J. Howard lives in Lancashire, England, with his dog.

Artist Chesley Bonestell’s “The Exploration of Mars” featured on cover prototype of book in honor of Arthur C. Clarke

“The Exploration of Mars” (1956), a famous painting by pioneering and influential space artist Chesley Bonestell, is featured as wrap-around cover art on the prototype of Sentinels In Honor of Arthur C. Clarke, a forthcoming book of fiction and nonfiction edited by Gregory Benford and George Zebrowski.

Depicting a Werhner von Braun design for a Mars spacecraft, the Bonestell painting originally appeared in Willy Ley and Von Braun's science book The Exploration of Mars (1956). According to one online source, the original Bonestell painting hangs in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC.

Featuring pieces by Isaac Asimov, Stephen Baxter, Gregory Benford, Sheila Finch, James Gunn, Robert A. Heinlein, Frederik Pohl, Pamela Sargent, Joan Slonczewski and Allen Steele, Sentinels In Honor of Arthur C. Clarke is being published by Hadley Rille Books and is scheduled to be released in March 2010.

Pictured: The Exploration of Mars (1956), a science book written by Willy Ley and Wernher von Braun.

Author Kim Stanley Robinson blasts judges of UK’s Man Booker Prize for neglecting SF

Science Fiction Author Hits Out at Booker Judges
Guardian, September 18, 2009
By Alison Flood

Kim Stanley Robinson, one of the greatest science fiction authors writing today, has hit out at the literary establishment, accusing the Man Booker judges of "ignorance" in neglecting science fiction, which he called "the best British literature of our time".

The winner of Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards and author of the bestselling Mars trilogy, Robinson attacked the Booker for rewarding "what usually turn out to be historical novels." [...]

Read the entire article in the Guardian.

Listen to a reading of Michael Moorcock’s 2002 novelette “Lost Sorceress of the Silent Citadel”

It’s news to me, but back in February 2008, StarShipSofa: The Audio Science Fiction Magazine posted a podcast reading of “Lost Sorceress of the Silent Citadel” (MP3, 87 minutes), a novelette of space opera written by British author and science fiction Grand Master Michael Moorcock that was originally published in the anthology Mars Probes (2002). Narrated by Steve Eley and primarily an homage to the Mars of author Leigh Brackett, here are the opening lines of this aural delight:

They came upon the Earthling naked, somewhere in the Shifting Desert when Mars’ harsh sunlight beat through thinning atmosphere and the sand was raw glass cutting into bare feet. His skin hung like filthy rags from his bloody flesh. He was starved, unshaven, making noises like an animal. He was raving -– empty of identity and will. What had the ghosts of those ancient Martians done to him? Had they traveled through time and space to take a foul and unlikely vengeance? A novella of alien mysteries -- of a goddess who craved life -- who lusted for the only man who had ever dared disobey her. A tale of Captain John MacShard, the Half-Martian, of old blood and older memories, of a restless quest for the prize of forgotten centuries. ...

[via John DeNardo of SF Signal]

Google, Harvard Book Store plug into print-on-demand Espresso Book Machine

In the wake of last week’s announcement by science fiction and fantasy website Tor.com that it has entered the print-on-demand (POD) publishing field, both information juggernaut Google and bricks-and-mortar Harvard Book Store have made similar moves.

Google announced that it signed an agreement with On Demand Books LLC, the maker of the Espresso Book Machine, to provide print-on-demand paperback copies more than two million public-domain titles in the Google Book Search digital database. A 21st-century printing press, the Espresso Book Machine can print, bind, and trim a full-color-cover, black-and-white-interior, 300-page book in roughly four minutes.

Harvard Book Store, an independent bookstore in Cambridge that dates to 1932, plans to plug into the Espresso Book Machine on September 29th, enabling it to print-on-demand several million books and ship them globally. In order to introduce the book machine to its patrons, the store will launch a Name Our Book Machine Contest, “challenging creative minds to develop a fitting and informal name for this new, robotic member of the Harvard Book Store family.”

Pictured: The Espresso Book Machine, which costs about $100,000.

When film critic Roger Ebert watches Kung Fu movies, he thinks of John Carter of Mars

Although I never think about John Carter of Mars when I’m watching a Kung Fu movie, renowned film critic Roger Ebert does. Reprinted below is a humorous excerpt from the beginning of Ebert’s original review of T.N.T. Jackson (1975), a movie about drug-smuggling in Asia starring Jeanne Bell as the title character. The excerpt is taken from I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie (2000), a collection of more than 200 of Roger Ebert's most scathing and entertaining reviews.

You remember the story about John Carter of Mars. He was Edgar Rice Burroughs’s hero, and he galloped all over Mars on whatever passed for a horse up there. One day he was attacked and chased by a band of villains who started hacking at him with their swords.

Carter of Mars drew his own trusty blade and started hacking back at them, while trying to make it up the castle stairs. But they were too much for him. First he lost a leg. Then an arm. They were gaining on him. "The hell with this," said John Carter, throwing away his sword, drawing his atomic ray gun and zapping the bad guys into a radioactive ash heap.

I think about that story every time I see a Kung Fu movie, because Kung Fu movies depend on the same unwritten rules as John Carter novels: Nobody can have a gun. If they had a gun, they’d just shoot you, and you wouldn’t get to go through the whole “aaaaaiiiiieeeee” number and leap about with your fists flashing, your foot cocked, and your elbow of death savagely bent. It's great to have a black belt, but it’s better if the bad guys know the rules.

They do in T.N.T, Jackson, which is easily the worst movie I've seen this year (yes, worse, far worse than Rape Squad). And so we get all the obligatory postures, all the menacing glares, and especially all the slow-motion leaps through the air. At the end, so great is the heroine's wrath that she propels her fingers of vengeance all the way through the villain, who looks mighty surprised at that, let me tell you.

Hopefully, the forthcoming film John Carter of Mars (2012) will not be as bad as T.N.T Jackson!

"One Martian Afternoon," a 1950s short story written by Tom Leahy

Originally published in the July 1953 issue of If: Worlds of Science Fiction magazine, "One Martian Afternoon,” a short story written by Tom Leahy, is a disturbing tale set on a moist Mars. Revolving around a young girl from Earth, a “sort of Martian Old Mother Hubbard,” and purple river apple cobbler, here are the opening lines of "One Martian Afternoon":

The clod burst in a cloud of red sand and the little Martian sand dog ducked quickly into his burrow. Marilou threw another at the aperture in the ground and then ran over and with the inside of her foot she scraped sand into it until it was filled to the surface. She started to leave, but stopped.

The little fellow might choke to death, she thought, it wasn't his fault she had to live on Mars. Satisfied that the future of something was dependent on her whim, she dug the sand from the hole. His little yellow eyes peered out at her. …

You can read "One Martian Afternoon” online or download it for free from either ManyBooks.net or Project Gutenberg.

[via Dave Tackett of QuasarDragon and John DeNardo of SF Signal]

Forthcoming: Out of Orbit, a book based on artist Tom Dell’Aringa’s webcomic Marooned

Last month, artist Tom Dell’Aringa announced details of Out of Orbit, a forthcoming book based on his twice-weekly webcomic Marooned: A Space Opera in the Wrong Key. In addition to the first 100 strips of Marooned, which chronicles the adventures of Captain John and his robot companion, Asimov, who have been stranded on Mars, the book will contain bonus material, including:

• Five Marooned bonus strips

• Mars Orbital Surveyor Image Gallery, in which various artists “provide a fresh and stunning look into the Marooned world”

• Selected pieces of development art from the Marooned vault

• Mission Log, which reveals the story behind the story of Marooned

• “Payload,” an exclusive six-page short story written and drawn by Steve Ogden which explains how the Marooned character Lian Fisher arrived on Mars

Pre-Orders for Out of Orbit will be accepted shortly!

Book, newspaper and magazine stock watch

As someone who is interested in the history and future of books, newspapers, magazines, publishing and technology, I have been watching the year-to-date share price performance of a selected group of publicly-held companies whose business activities include the publication, sale, and/or distribution of books, newspapers, and/or magazines (and/or their electronic equivalents). Here’s the list of 14 stocks I am watching, ranked by YTD performance:

1. Borders Group + 718%

2. Books-A-Million + 389%

3. Apple Inc. + 105%

4. Amazon.com + 63%

5. Google Inc. + 55%

6. News Corp. + 47%

7. Barnes & Noble + 46%

8. Pearson PLC (ADR) + 30%

9. McGraw-Hill Companies + 17%

10. The New York Times Co. + 8%

11. Thomson Reuters + 6%

12. John Wiley & Sons – 2%

13. Courier Corp. – 15%

14. Bertelsmann AG – 22%

The data, derived from Google Finance, is as of the close of business on September 15, 2009. Note that I’ve rounded up or down to the nearest whole percentage. I’ll be updating the list at the end of every month. And, yes, I'm well aware that I'm comparing apples to oranges to bananas.

10 things Ray Bradbury and musician Nikki Sixx have in common: #4 - Hollywood Walk of Fame

#4. Both SF&F author Ray Bradbury and Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx are stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Ray Bradbury received the 2,193rd star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2002 for his contributions to literature, film, and television. "I am truly grateful to be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame," said Bradbury at the ceremony. "I received so much inspiration from this city that it is a wonderful feeling to be a permanent part of my hometown. I dedicate this landmark to all of my family, friends and fans that have encouraged me throughout the years and I want to thank Mayor Hahn, the City of Los Angeles and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce for this honor."

Nikki Sixx does not have his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but Mötley Crüe received the 2,301st star in 2006 for its contribution to music. "We're across the street from the Erotica Museum and Frederick's of Hollywood. This is a perfect place for us to be," Sixx told an estimated 600 screaming fans at the ceremony.

Previous entries on the Ray Bradbury-Nikki Sixx 10 list:

#10. Both are Angelenos who once palled around with a motley crew doing crazy things

#9. Neither attended college

#8. Both are intimately familiar with Playboy magazine

#7. Both created an illustrated man

#6. Both have exploded on stage

#5. Both have had their lives impacted by a horrible car accident

Ethical problems with human-centric narratives in Lego "Mars Mission" play sets

The new, second volume of Rigor Mortis Magazine has an interesting article entitled “Ethical Problems with Human-Centric Narratives in Lego Mars Mission Play Sets,” written by Gerald Saul, head of the film & video department at the University of Regina in Canada. According to Saul, the “Mars Mission” toy building block sets produced by Lego in 2007 and 2008 are all about “invasion, colonization, slavery, and unethical scientific experimentation.”

Pictured: Lego “Mars Mission” sets.

Decoders say author H.G. Wells is at the center of Google's crop circle-UFO doodle

Google's Crop Circle Mystery: Is HG Wells at Centre?
Guardian, September 15, 2009
By Alison Flood

One hundred and eleven years ago, HG Wells immortalised Horsell Common in Woking, Surrey as the setting for the first Martian landing in his classic novel The War of the Worlds . Today, the unassuming park was pinpointed by Google in what Twitter users believe to be a reference to the birthday of the father of science fiction.

At around 4am this morning, Google tweeted the latitude and longitude "51.327629, -0.5616088" and a link to today's crop circle "Google doodle", complete with a hovering flying saucer and a missing "l". The coordinates are situated on a road running past Horsell Common, which users of Twitter quickly realised was the location for one of the first and best known alien landings in science fiction. [...]

Read the entire article in the Guardian.

Pictured: Part of the Google doodle. Here's the whole doodle.

An audio interview with author Leigh Brackett

Thanks to SF mega-fan Blue Tyson, I’m really looking forward to listening to an audio interview with one of my favorite Martian SF authors, Leigh Brackett! Conducted by noted film critic Tony Macklin, the interview (MP3, 68 minutes) covers Brackett’s writing career, in both fiction and film. Although it is unclear to me when the interview was actually taped (mid 1970s?), here are the opening lines of Macklin’s short, written preface to the discussion:

My interview with author Leigh Brackett took place in Kinsman, Ohio. I drove with my young daughter on a hot, humid, blazing August day to Leigh's rural farm house. She was a gracious hostess and introduced us to her husband, fellow science fiction author Edward Hamilton. A lot of heady imagination was born in that rural locale.

Blue Tyson rates the interview a 5 out of 5. No reason to doubt that!

Pictured: Leigh Brackett

Read Chapter 4 of Queen of the Iron Sands, a new free online serial novel by Scott Lynch

Fantasy author Scott Lynch has posted Chapter 4 of his unpublished novel Queen of the Iron Sands. A “free serial adventure in weekly web installments” inspired by author Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic novel A Princess of Mars (1912, 1917) and the United States Women's Airforce Service Pilots of World War II (WASP), here’s the promotional piece for Queen of the Iron Sands:

At the height of the Second World War, Violet DeVere was a WASP - a Women's Airforce Service Pilot, trusted with ferrying the most advanced warplanes in the United States arsenal. Five years after the war, she's barely making ends meet as a crop duster and part-time science fiction writer.

Kidnapped across a hundred million miles of space, Violet suddenly finds herself a prisoner in an impossible empire, an inhabited Mars shielded from earthling eyes by a scientific illusion called the Veil. Mars and its people are ground beneath the heel of the ruthless All-Sovereign, whose legions rule the skies. All resistance to his absolute despotism has been driven to the deadly red sands beyond civilization.

Outgunned and outnumbered, Violet DeVere and her few brave Martian allies make a desperate stand against the All-Sovereign ... against an ageless tyrant with the power to destroy every living thing in the solar system.