Desolation Road: the cast of characters

Congratulations to British author Ian McDonald, whose novel Brasyl (Pyr Books, 2007) is listed on the final ballot of the 2008 Nebula Awards. Brasyl has nothing to do with Mars, but the Nebula announcement reminds me that McDonald’s novel Desolation Road (1988), which is set on the Red Planet, is scheduled to be reprinted by Pyr Books this summer. One of the neat things about the 1988 Bantam Books paperback edition of Desolation Road is the cast of characters that appears just before the title page:

Welcome to Desolation Road

Dr. Alimantando -- The town’s founder and resident genius, he perfects his homemade time machine and vanishes forever. Sort of.

Persis Tatterdemalion -- An ace flier grounded forever in Desolation Road, she tends bar at the Bethlehem Ares Railroad/Hotel and waits for the chance to reclaim her dream.

Rajandra Das -- The railroad hobo who has a mystical way with machines -- there isn’t a mechanical object on Mars that doesn’t love him.

The Babooshka -- A barren, feisty grandmother, she wants nothing more than to settle down with a good farming man and grow herself a child -- in a fruit jar.

Paternoster Jericho -- Overthrown crime lord of the Exalted Families, he says he’s “just passing through” Desolation Road, but twenty years later he still says the same thing.

The Gallacelli Brothers -- Ed, Louie, and Umberto. Identical triplets, so identical they each fell in love with -– and married -– the same woman ...

These are just a few of the inhabitants of Desolation Road. They and their children shaped a town, a planet, and a history. And the only thing they had in common was their belief that destiny had passed them by ...

Pictured above: Cover of the 1988 Bantam paperback.

Amazon bows to Authors Guild, to allow disabling of Kindle 2 audio feature

In a stunning move in the dispute between Amazon and the Authors Guild over the legality of a text-to-speech feature in the new Kindle 2 e-reader, Amazon announced today that it will let publishers decide whether they want the electronic device to read their books aloud. Here’s the full text of Amazon’s statement, taken directly from the website of The New York Times:

"Kindle 2’s experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given. Furthermore, we ourselves are a major participant in the professionally narrated audiobooks business through our subsidiaries Audible and Brilliance. We believe text-to-speech will introduce new customers to the convenience of listening to books and thereby grow the professionally narrated audiobooks business.

Nevertheless, we strongly believe many rights-holders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver’s seat.

Therefore, we are modifying our systems so that rightsholders can decide on a title by title basis whether they want text-to-speech enabled or disabled for any particular title. We have already begun to work on the technical changes required to give authors and publishers that choice. With this new level of control, publishers and authors will be able to decide for themselves whether it is in their commercial interests to leave text-to-speech enabled. We believe many will decide that it is.

Customers tell us that with Kindle, they read more, and buy more books. We are passionate about bringing the benefits of modern technology to long-form reading."

This story is still developing, so see reports from other news sources, including the Los Angeles Times and Reuters UK.

Review of “Fly Away Home,” a new short story by Ray Bradbury

Gavin J. Grant, publisher of Small Beer Press in Easthampton, MA, reviews for the Los Angeles Times Ray Bradbury’s We’ll Always Have Paris (2009), a new collection of never-before-published stories that includes a tale set on Mars: “Fly Away Home.” According to Grant, "Fly Away Home" is "one of the weirder stories, and one that, given the renown of The Martian Chronicles, can't help but be widely anticipated ... weird in the way that only an author obsessed with small towns and space travel could make it."

A Kindle 2 interview with Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild

The Engadget Interview: Paul Aiken, Executive Director of the Authors Guild
February 27, 2009
By Nilay Patel

As you're no doubt aware, this week's launch of the Kindle 2 came complete with copyright controversy -- the Authors Guild says that Amazon's text-to-speech features will damage the lucrative audiobook market. To be perfectly frank, we're of two minds on
this debate: on one hand, we're obviously all for the relentless progression of technology, and on the other, we sussed out the fundamental reasons for the Guild's objections almost immediately. It's pretty easy to find the first set of arguments online, but we wanted to make sure we weren't missing anything, so we sat down with Authors Guild executive director Paul Aiken and asked him some burning questions. Read on!

Climbing Olympus, a novel by Kevin J. Anderson

Climbing Olympus (1994), a novel by Kevin J. Anderson

At left: Paperback (New York: Warner Books, 1994), 297 p. Cover illustration by Mark Harrison. A tale of betrayal on the Red Planet, here’s the blurb from the back cover of the book:

“They were prisoners, exiles, pawns of a corrupt government. Now they are Dr. Rachel Dycek's adin: surgically transformed beings who can survive new lives on the surface of Mars. But they are still exiles, unable to ever again breathe Earth's air ... And they are still pawns. For the adin exist to terraform Mars for human colonists -- not for themselves. Creating a new Earth, they will destroy their own world; their success will kill them. Desperate, adin leader Boris Tiban launches a suicide campaign to destroy the Mars Project, knowing his people will perish in his glorious, doomed orgy of mayhem. Unless embattled, bitter Rachel Dycek can find a miracle
to save both the Mars Project -- and the race she created.”

Climbing Olympus was voted the best paperback SF novel of 1995 by Locus magazine.

According to author, reviewer, and longtime science fiction fan Don D’Ammassa, Climbing Olympus is “A very mature, serious, even solemn examination of the possible consequences of the human drive to expand its sphere of control, even at the cost of some finite part of our own humanity. Anderson's Mars is a living world in more than one sense, and even his less admirable characters have an inner strength that we cannot help admiring."

SF megafan Blue Tyson has a different opinion: “This book was not quite bad enough for me to not finish, although it came close 3 or 4 times. Pedestrian basic economic/political struggle. Not really worth wasting your time on. What happens when humans are altered, to in turn alter a world for others to live on. What do they do when it is all finished? 2 out of 5.”

A portion of Climbing Olympus appeared in Full Spectrum 4 (1993) as the short story “Human, Martian – One, Two, Three” (1993).

Hollywood may remake the film Total Recall

According to The Hollywood Reporter, a team in Tinseltown is in final negotiations to produce and develop a “contemporary version” of Total Recall, the 1990 SF action film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone.

The original film, which is based on the Philip K. Dick story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (1966), “follows a man haunted by a recurring dream of journeying to Mars who buys a literal dream vacation from a company called Rekall Inc., which sells implanted memories. The man comes to believe he is a secret agent and ends up on a Martian colony, where he fights to overthrow a despotic ruler controlling the production of air. The movie explores one of Dick's favorite topics, reality vs. delusion, as audiences never knew whether or not the story was a dream.”

PKD's "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" was reprinted in Fourth Planet from the Sun: Tales of Mars from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (2005), an excellent anthology edited by Gordon Van Gelder.

Three Mars novels to compete in Third Annual Bookspot Central Book Tournament

Three Mars novels are scheduled to participate in the Third Annual Bookspot Central Book Tournament, a contest modeled on the NCAA basketball tournament in which you, the fan, vote on books, with the winners advancing to the next round.

The Martian General’s Daughter (2008), by Theodore Judson, will compete in the 64-title new-release tournament and Out of the Silent Planet (1938), by C. S. Lewis, and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), by Philip K. Dick, will compete in the 32-title classic tournament.

The tournament starts on March 15, 2009. Check the posting on Bookspot Central for all the details.

Pictured above: 1965 hardcover of PKD's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

Author Philip José Farmer, 1918-2009

Sadly, science fiction author Philip José Farmer passed away earlier today, February 25, 2009, at age 91. Born in 1918, Farmer had his first works published in the early 1950s. He won several Hugo Awards and was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2001.

Farmer’s novel Jesus on Mars (1979), which was dedicated to his mother, will be reprinted along with two other works by Farmer in the omnibus The Other in the Mirror (Subterranean Press, March 2009).

President of Authors Guild sounds off on Kindle 2 in The New York Times op-ed piece

Roy Blount Jr., president of the Authors Guild, sounds off on the text-to-speech feature in Amazon’s new Kindle 2 e-reader in an op-ed piece in today’s The New York Times. Here’s the end of Blount's piece:

“For the record: no, the Authors Guild does not expect royalties from anybody doing non-commercial performances of 'Goodnight Moon.' If parents want to send their children off to bed with the voice of Kindle 2, however, it’s another matter.”

Pictured above: Jeff Bezos of Amazon holds the new Kindle 2.

io9 gets no love as Gawker Media crowned most valuable blogging company

In the latest sign that science fiction is seen by some as a universe of people and starships and societies where Wall Street is irrelevant, Douglas A. McIntyre of the financial commentary website 24/7 Wall St. neglected to mention the SF blog io9 when he compiled a list of the
“Twenty Five Most Valuable Blogs,” even though io9’s parent, Gawker Media, sits atop the list and several of io9’s siblings are mentioned:

1. Gawker Properties. This blog company has a number of successful sites including Gawker, Defamer, Jezebel, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, and Jalopnik. In combination, the sites have about 23 million unique visitors and over 200 million pageviews a month. The company’s owner, Nick Denton, says the firm’s advertising is holding up this quarter. Traffic at most of the sites is still growing, in some cases at a rate of over 50%. The average CPM for each page across all of the properties is estimated at $15. That makes Gawker at $36 million business. Based on staffing levels, the company should have margins well above 50%. With an 8x operating income valuation, the company is worth $170 million.

Interesting analysis. Unrelated, I wonder if Mr. McIntyre thinks the forthcoming film Watchmen will generate more than $100 million at the box office on opening weekend.

Kage Baker's new novel The Empress of Mars reviewed by Green Man Review

Cat Eldridge of Green Man Review reviews The Empress of Mars (2008), the new full-length novel by Kage Baker. As Eldridge notes, The Empress of Mars
“certainly isn't the first novel that's the result of reworking a shorter work [novella “The Empress of Mars” (2003)], and it works brilliantly in both forms. Now the story in both versions is that of Mary, a woman who owns the only bar on Mars. After being found redundant as the xenobotanist by the British Arean Company, she and a few loyal Mars settlers work very hard to create a bar which in turn becomes a business empire that deals in everything from barley (and beer of course) to really big diamonds.”

The Empress of Mars was published as a limited edition by Subterranean Press in late 2008. A trade edition is scheduled to be published by Tor Books in May 2009.

“Jailhouse Rock,” a novelette by James P. Hogan

Thanks to a recent post by Tinkoo of the blog Variety SF, I had a chance to browse “Jailhouse Rock” (2004),
a novelette by British SF author James P. Hogan that was first published in the anthology Cosmic Tales: Adventures in Sol System (2004).

Set on Mars and its smaller moon Deimos, here’s a summary of
"Jailhouse Rock," taken directly from Variety SF:

“A plane is carrying arms. It's being escorted by an armed military plane. A young soldier, Kieran Thane, is on-board the plane carrying sensitive cargo, & is in constant radio contact with the military escort plane. But hijackers have planned well. Soldier in cargo plane is overpowered & made hostage; escort plane is disabled; cargo plane hijacked. Soldier hostage accidentally learns of destination of hijacked plane because of loose talk among the 5 hijackers. So he's become a liability -- to be killed. An argument among hijackers, & he gets an option to live. He's deplaned enroute, at a place where he can reach civilization in a few hours. On his way to safety, he realizes something is amiss. Lot of drama, & ultimately hijackers are arrested.”

Tinkoo rates “Jailhouse Rock” an “A.”

James P. Hogan is the author of the novel Martian Knightlife (2001).

Editor Brian Bieniowski revisits James Blish's novel Welcome to Mars

Brian Bieniowski, managing editor at Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine, revisits James Blish’s juvenile SF novel Welcome to Mars (1967) in a lengthy but awesome editorial titled “You Might Go Home Again” in the March 2009 issue of the magazine. Here's an excerpt:

I can recall the day I read aloud my book report on James Blish's Welcome to Mars to Mrs. Blumenthal's seventh-grade English class. It was December 6, 1988 -- the day Roy Orbison died. I spoke with great gusto about Dolph Haertel's historic trip to the Red Planet in his bread-boarded antigravity-driven packing crate loaded with enough K-rations and bottled oxygen to allow him to survive the over-night journey there and back. Dolph appeared so adult, compared to my own eleven years, and would have had the experience obviously necessary to invent a personal antigravity ship at the advanced age of eighteen. More exciting was the high adventure of Dolph's stranding on Mars ...

Pictured above: An early cover of Blish's Welcome to Mars.

Amazon's Kindle 2 reads aloud, as Sci-Fi predicted

As Amazon begins to ship its new Kindle 2 electronic book reader, here’s an Internet article that’s worth reading: “Kindle 2 Reads Aloud, as Sci-Fi Predicted,” by Bill Christensen, posted at LiveScience.com. Focusing on the text-to-speech feature in Kindle 2, Christensen asks “How long ago did science fiction writers predict that people would prefer to have a machine read to them, rather than read the news themselves?” The answers, as provided by Christensen:

• In 1961, Polish writer Stanislaw Lem wrote about a “lecton” in his novel Return from the Stars

• In 1959, Philip K. Dick wrote about an office memo that reads itself in his short story "War Game"

• In 1934, David H. Keller wrote about a “sound-transposing machine”
in his novella "The Lost Language"

• In 1899, H.G. Wells wrote about a “babble machine” in his story
"When the Sleeper Wakes"

Read the full article for details.

“Planet Killer,” a new short story by Ges Seger and Kevin Grazier

Fans of hard science will probably enjoy “Planet Killer” (2009), a new short story by Ges Seger and Kevin Grazier that appears in Diamonds in the Sky (2009),
an online anthology of astronomy-based science fiction stories edited by SF writer Mike Brotherton.

“Planet Killer” is an astronomical murder mystery set aboard the Martian (i.e., human) starship MSV Procyon as it is dispatched by Martian Space Force on its maiden voyage in the year 2191 to a destination called the Coalsack. With characters that include a captain, XO, chief engineer, and doctor, this is an interesting
hard science story worth reading, even though it is too reminiscent of Star Trek. Not surprising, perhaps, considering that Seger and Grazier once wrote a script for the series Star Trek: Voyager.

According to an editorial note, the characters and situations in
“Planet Killer” originally appeared in The Once and Future War (2006), a novel by Ges Seger.

Forthcoming: Martian Divides, the third Martian Symbiont novel by Phyllis K. Twombly

Martian Divides (2009), the third science fiction novel in Canadian author Phyllis K. Twombly’s Martian Symbiont series should be released in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, you can read an excerpt from her first novel, Been Blued (2007), over at her blog, Scifialiens’s Weblog. Also, if you’re into glossaries, checkout Twombly’s Martian Symbiont series Glossary, which she is considering including in her fourth novel in the series, scheduled to be published in 2010.

Gubbling through Philip K. Dick's novel Martian Time-Slip without DSM-IV-TR

Thanks to a recent post by Charlie Jane Anders of the blog io9, I just read "The Most Brilliant Sci-Fi Mind on Any Planet: Philip K. Dick,” a riveting article by Paul Williams that was published in the November 6, 1975, issue of Rolling Stone magazine. Timely, considering that I’m about twenty pages from the end of Dick’s novel Martian Time-Slip (1964), which I started reading several weeks ago. While I’m not qualified to determine whether Martian Time-Slip is a demented novel, I certainly could have used Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) as a gubble gubble.

Marvel Comics: Gullivar Jones, Warrior of Mars

The Bronze Age of Blogs has beautiful, readable jpegs of the first episode of the comic Gullivar Jones, Warrior of Mars, which was published in the Vol. 1, No. 16, March 1972 issue of Marvel Comics' Creatures on the Loose. Written by Roy Thomas and initially drawn by Gil Kane, Gullivar Jones, Warrior of Mars was short lived. It ran in just six issues of Creatures on the Loose and each episode was only ten-pages long. The storyline was based loosely upon Edwin L. Arnold’s classic Martian SF novel Lieut. Gulliver Jones: His Vacation (1905).

Caitlín R. Kiernan’s novella The Dinosaurs of Mars is not extinct

A recent entry in the LiveJournal of SF&F author Caitlín R. Kiernan reveals that her stand-alone novella The Dinosaurs of Mars, a work-in-progress for which award-winning artist Bob Eggleton did a concept sketch in mid-2007, is not extinct and may be completed in 2010. Meanwhile, here’s a humorous excerpt from an October 2006 entry in Kiernan’s journal:

Yesterday was pretty evenly divided between e-mail (of which there was a veritable hillock) and The Dinosaurs of Mars. I'm trying to actually begin writing the novella, but I keep getting sucked into additional research. I spent a couple of hours yesterday reading the various crack-pot assertions posited by Richard C. Hoagland via his The Enterprise Mission website. I think I spent the most time on the pages devoted to "proving" his claim that Saturn's moon Iapetus is an artificial world. All this stuff is directly relevant to The Dinosaurs of Mars, but I still feel like a fool reading it. I actually find myself feeling sorry for Hoagland. It's obvious that he believes these things, and he believes them with passion, and they are wonderful fictions. If these things were true, if there was the science to back him up, what a wonderful lot of marvels we'd have. I can forgive his desire to believe, just not his sloppy logic, self-delusion, and endless ad hoc reasoning as he tries to dodge falsification. Also, it should be noted that Hoagland has abused the ellipse, both in print and online, as no other person writing in the English language has ever dared.

Richard C. Hoagland is the author of The Monuments of Mars: A City on the Edge of Forever (5th ed., 2002).

NASA creating online multiplayer video game

Space.com reports that three game developers have signed on to create NASA's massively multiplayer online video game (MMO), called Astronaut: Moon, Mars & Beyond. The game, which will emphasize fun, will be developed by Virtual Heroes, Project Whitecard, and Information in Place. “We're talking about first person exploration, so it's all about exploring the environment, expanding and building things rather than shooting other players," said Jerry Heneghan, founder and CEO of Virtual Heroes. A playable demo of the game is scheduled to be released before the end of 2009.

Recommended novels from a 2002 reference book

In 2002, the American Library Association published
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Readers' Advisory: the Librarian's Guide to Cyborgs, Aliens, and Sorcerers, a 230-page reference book by Derek M. Buker.

Buker detailed five books in a short chapter titled “Mars”:

• Climbing Olympus (1994), by Kevin J. Anderson

• Moving Mars (1993), by Greg Bear

• Mars (2000), by Ben Bova

• Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), by Robert A. Heinlein

• Red Mars (1992), by Kim Stanley Robinson

And listed 28 “other recommended titles”:

• White Mars; or, The Mind Set Free (1999), by Brian Aldiss

• The Greening of Mars (1984), by Michael Allaby and James Lovelock

• Hard Sell (1990), by Piers Anthony

• Total Recall (1989), by Piers Anthony

• Solis (1994), by A. A. Attanasio

• Voyage (1996), by Stephen Baxter

• The Martain Race (1999), by Gregory Benford

• Voyage to the Red Planet (1990), by Terry Bisson

• The Martian Chronicles (1950), by Ray Bradbury

• Martian Time-Slip (1964), by Philip K. Dick

• The Far Call (1978), by Gordon R. Dickson

• Mars Prime (1992), by William Dietz

• Semper Mars (1998), by Ian Douglas

• Jesus on Mars (1979), by Philip Jose Farmer

• Article 23 (1998) by William R. Forstchen

• Double Star (1956), by Robert A. Heinlein

• Podkayne of Mars (1963), by Robert A. Heinlein

• Red Planet (1949), by Robert A. Heinlein

• Mars Crossing (2000), by Geoffrey Landis

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

• Red Dust (1993), by Paul J. McAuley

• Man Plus (1976), by Frederik Pohl

• Mining the Oort (1992), by Frederik Pohl

• Icehenge (1984), by Kim Stanley Robinson

• Man O’ War (1996), by William Shatner

• Frontera (1984), by Lewis Shiner

• Labyrinth of Night (1992), by Allen M. Steele

• Martian Viking (1991), by Tim Sullivan

With “Derek’s Pick”:

• Red Mars (1992), by Kim Stanley Robinson

And “Best Pick for the Reluctant Reader”:

• Climbing Olympus (1994), by Kevin J. Anderson

Interesting choices, with about half from the 1990s!

“First Contact,” a short story by E. S. Strout

I just learned about “First Contact” (© 2008), a short story by author E. S. Strout that was published online in the February 2009 issue of Aphelion: The Webzine of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Here’s a short description of the story:

“The Mars lander found something that didn't belong -- an object that looked artificial among the worn and irregular Martian rocks.”

An earlier version of Strout’s “First Contact” (© 2003) was published online in the November 2003 issue of Demensions.

E. S. Strout is a medical doctor. His stories have appeared in Planet Magazine, Anotherealm, Millennium F&SF, Beyond-sf, Static Movement, and Bewildering Stories.

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

Author John Scalzi on forthcoming The Martian Chronicles: the Definitive Edition

There’s an awesome discussion going on over at John Scalzi’s blog Whatever about the forthcoming limited edition of The Martian Chronicles: the Definitive Edition (late 2009). This “massively expanded new edition of the Ray Bradbury magnum opus” from Subterranean Press and PS Publishing contains the original book (with an introduction by John Scalzi), 22 previously uncollected or unpublished Martian stories by Ray Bradbury (with
an introduction by author Joe Hill), two previously unpublished screenplays of The Martian Chronicles (1964, 1997), an essay by
Ray Bradbury, and illustrations by Edward Miller.

The book isn’t cheap ($300 for the signed, limited edition; $900 for the signed, lettered edition housed in a custom traycase), but you can buy the signed, limited edition for $225 (a savings of $75 off the regular price of $300) if you pre-order it from Subterranean Press by February 20, 2009. If you're a serious Bradbury fan, check it out!

Cover art: “The Ark of Mars” by Leigh Brackett

Here’s some cool magazine cover art that I’ve never seen before: Author Leigh Brackett’s novella “The Ark of Mars” (1953) as depicted by artist Stan Pitt on the cover of the June 1954, #26, issue of Australia’s American Science Fiction Magazine.

And here’s a description of Brackett's novella, taken from the website of SciFi at Dark Roasted Blend: “Last manned spaceship is launched by free men, hunted by sinister robotic spaceships; great adventure and atmosphere; the first part (chase to the nearest star) simply sizzles, desperation mixes with hope, great emotion there. The second part after the landing is a bit of a let-down, but still contains big depictions of truly alien mind processes, cuddly ESP alien herd, and pretty cool people politics.”

10 Stories you wouldn’t know are Martian Science Fiction, Volume 3

This is Volume 3 of a project whose goal is to compile a long list of stories you wouldn’t know are about Mars or Martians by simply reading the titles. (See Volume 1 for stories #1 through #10 and Volume 2 for stories #11 through #20)

For example, stories such as “The Enchanted Village” (1950), by
A. E. van Vogt, and “Hellas is Florida” (1977), by Gordon Eklund and Gregory Benford, will be included on the list, while stories such as "The Raid from Mars"(1939), by Miles J. Breuer, and “The Day the Martians Came” (1967), by Frederik Pohl, will not.

Some of the stories you can read online or purchase through sites such as Fictionwise, but most you cannot. The Locus Index to Science Fiction and the Internet Speculative Fiction Database are good tools for obtaining citations that you can take to your local library. If your library does not have the anthology or magazine mentioned in the citation, ask your librarian about an “Interlibrary Loan Request.” I’ve been able to borrow old anthologies and get photocopies of stories from old pulp magazines with few problems.

Here are the next ten stories:

21. “Via Etherline” (1937), by Eando Binder
“Radio bulletins from the first expedition unfold the terrors of huge Martian insect foes, ruled by still larger creatures.”

22. “Dark Mission” (1940), by Lester del Rey
A man with amnesia wakes up inside the wreckage of a crashed spaceship and later discovers he is a Martian.

23. “Lady Killer” (1952), by Chad Oliver
“An expedition is mounted to Mars in the hopes of finding humanoid females there who are interfertile.”

24. “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” (1963), by Roger Zelazny
A poet and linguist stationed on the Red Planet falls in love with a Martian after being invited into an ancient temple to study their sacred texts.

25. "Sad Solarian Screenwriter Sam" (1972), by Frederik Pohl
The discovery of Martians on the Red Planet has screenwriter Sam Harcourt dreaming of a movie titled Barsoom.

26. “The Catharine Wheel” (1984), by Ian McDonald
“Alternates between the last voyage of the Catharine of Tharsis, the famous locomotive of the Bethlehem-Ares line on Mars, and the last days of the life of that engine's namesake.”

27. “Soft Clocks” (1989), by Yoshio Aramaki
“Story of a surreal Mars ruled by a latter-day [Salvador] Dali, whose cyborg daughter, Vivi, is afflicted with anorexia.”

28. "Heinlein's Children" (1995), by Arlan Andrews
“SF writers, hackers, and others of that ilk, intercept and modify the signals from the Mars probe to make it appear that the Face and other structures on Mars are real and evidence of an alien civilization.”

29. “Ulla, Ulla” (2002), by Eric Brown
“About an expedition to Mars, finding the truth behind H. G. Wells’ novel.”

30. “La Malcontenta” (2005), by Liz Williams
An imprisoned woman known as the Malcontent of Calmaretto is let out for the festival of Ombre in the city of Winterstrike on Mars.

Enjoy!

Pictured above: Artwork by Bob Eggleton

Definitive edition of The Martian Chronicles to include previously unpublished tales

Fans of Ray Bradbury and his The Martian Chronicles (1950) will not be disappointed with the publication of The Martian Chronicles: the Definitive Edition (late 2009) by Subterranean Press and PS Publishing, which recently acquired the rights to co-publish this long-delayed book. Comprised of the classic The Martian Chronicles, previously uncollected and unpublished tales, two screenplays, an essay by Bradbury, an introduction by SF author John Scalzi, and illustrations by Edward Miller, the publication of this book will bring closure to the saga involving the original publisher, Hill House.

For a detailed description of The Martian Chronicles: the Definitive Edition and a complete listing of the Table of Contents, check out the website of Subterranean Press.

More cheers to Bill Schafer of Subterranean Press and Peter Crowther of PS Publishing. This looks like an awesome book!!!

Footprints in the Sand: Dr. Manhattan on Mars

I’m probably one of the few SF fans who owns but hasn’t read the acclaimed graphic novel Watchmen (1986-1987), a tale about superheroes written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons that is partially set on Mars. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to the Warner Bros. film adaptation, which is scheduled to open in theaters on March 6th.

Meanwhile, here's some food for thought: According to Elizabeth K. Rosen's book Apocalyptic Transformation: Apocalypse and the Postmodern Imagination (2008), the footprints Watchmen character Dr. Manhattan leaves in the sands of Mars are “surely meant to recall” Footprints in the Sand (1936), the famous religious poem penned by Mary Stevenson. Here are the opening lines of the poem:

One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord.
  Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.
    In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand.
      Sometimes there were two sets of footprints,
        other times there were one set of footprints.

Visit the "Official Website for Footprints in the Sand operated by the estate of Mary Stevenson" for the full text of the poem.

Results of poll: Should Oprah’s Book Club read the classic Burroughs novel A Princess of Mars?

Here are the results of the recent poll I conducted as to whether Oprah’s Book Club should read A Princess of Mars (1912/1917), the classic novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

• 55% of those who answered the question chose the answer "Absolutely, it would be a great opportunity for SF to attract new readers"

• 25% chose the answer "No, that would be sacrilegious and disrespectful to the memory of author Edgar Rice Burroughs"

• 20% chose the answer "Yes, but only if Oprah invites Burroughs fan, SF author, and fellow Chicagoan Mike Resnick on the show"

• 0% chose the answer "Maybe, if Oprah doesn't treat the novel as marketing fodder for the film John Carter of Mars"

Thanks to the 20 people (including me) who participated!

New poem: "First Beer on Mars" by David Lunde

“First Beer on Mars,” a new poem written by David Lunde, appears in the March 2009 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine. Comprised of six stanzas, the poem is about the Sky Mountain Brewery, “now hailed as Mars’ first native industry, and the thing that made life on Mars palatable.” As someone who often has difficulty understanding poetry, I had no problem here.

Friday the 13th: I Turned into a ... Martian!

Thanks to a recent post by Dave Tackett of the blog QuasarDragon, I just read I Turned into a ... Martian! by Steve Ditko, a monstrosity from the September 1960 issue of Journey into Mystery. Here are the opening lines from the first panel of this comic:

“Man had taken a giant step into space when I became the first person to land on Mars! After a week of exploring I seemed to be the only living thing on the whole planet, and yet ...”

Thanks Dave!

Limited edition of The Martian Chronicles offers expensive lesson in pre-ordering books

Bill Schafer of Subterranean Press and Pete Crowther of PS Publishing have announced the latest news on the long-delayed limited edition of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles (1950) that was supposed to have been published by Hill House. The good news is that Subterranean and PS have acquired the rights to co-publish the book and will be offering a substantial discount on the numbered version for a short period of time. The bad news is that fans who pre-ordered the book through Hill House have lost money, in some cases as much as several hundred dollars. Read the announcement for more details.

Cheers to Bill Schafer of Subterranean Press and Pete Crowther of PS Publishing for helping to resolve a complicated matter.

Pictured above: 1951 paperback by Bantam Books

National Federation of the Blind enters debate over Amazon's Kindle 2, opposes Authors Guild

In a bold move that has broadened the debate over the text-to-speech technology in Amazon’s Kindle 2
e-reader, the National Federation of the Blind, the largest organization of blind people in the United States, issued a press release Thursday rejecting the argument of the Authors Guild that "the reading of a book out loud by a machine is a copyright infringement unless the copyright holder has specifically granted permission for the book to be read aloud."

Furthermore, while acknowledging that Kindle 2 is “a step in the right direction," the National Federation of the Blind asserted that:

“the device itself cannot be used independently by a blind reader because the controls to download a book and begin reading it aloud are visual and therefore inaccessible to the blind. We urge Amazon to rectify this situation as soon as possible in order to make the Kindle 2 a device that truly can be used both by blind and sighted readers. By doing so, Amazon will make it possible for blind people
to purchase a new book and begin reading it immediately, just as sighted people do."

NASA honored for tweets from Mars

NASA Honored for 'Tweets' from Mars
CNN.com
February 12, 2009

NEW YORK (CNN) -- NASA was honored Wednesday for its efforts to inform the public through the popular social-networking Web site Twitter.

More than 38,000 people followed NASA's "tweets" of the Mars Phoenix Lander mission.

NASA received the "Shorty Award" for documenting the mission of the Mars Phoenix Lander. The Mars Phoenix Lander spent nearly five months in 2008 on the red planet conducting research. ...

Read the entire article on CNN’s website.

Although the article notes that NASA beat out several science bloggers, I’m of the opinion that the more than 600 tweets from
“Mars Phoenix” were not only science, but a brilliant form of science fiction, as the tweets were really generated not by the spacecraft on Mars, but by Veronica McGregor, a NASA spokesperson on Earth.

Liz Williams’ novel Winterstrike makes 2009 Arthur C. Clarke Award long list

Torque Control, a blog maintained by the British Science Fiction Association, has published the long list of works that have been submitted for the 2009 Arthur C. Clarke Award, the United Kingdom’s premier prize for science fiction literature. Among the 46 works is Winterstrike (2008), a novel by Liz Williams that is set on Mars. The award shortlist is scheduled to be announced in March.

No word yet on when the novel Winterstrike will be released in the States. Meanwhile, check out Williams' short story "La Malcontenta" (2005), which is set in the city of Winterstrike on Mars.

The Valley Where Time Stood Still, a novel by Linwood Vrooman Carter

The Valley Where Time Stood Still (1974), a novel by Lin Carter

At left: Paperback (New York: Popular Library, 1976), 222 p., $1.25. Cover art by Carlos Ochagavia. Here’s the blurb from the back cover:

“Together M'Cord and the others descended the great stone steps carved out of the rock incalculable aeons ago. It was only as they approached the valley floor that they saw that the desert seen from above was an illusion created by the thick mist masking what lay below. Ahead of M'Cord, the wolf-like Martian outlaw who had brought the expedition this far hesitated a moment. Then he plunged through the mist and disappeared. Now it was M'Cord's turn to follow ... to discover and master the ultimate secret of Mars and the universe ... or else be destroyed by the dark forces that ruled -- The Valley Where Time Stood Still.”

Extracts from three books precede Chapter 1 of the novel: The Bible (King James version, Philadelphia, 1947), The Book of the Dead (Wallis Budge version, London, 1923), and The Book (Martinez-Schuster translation, Syrtis, 2031).

The Valley Where Time Stood Still is part of Lin Carter’s Mysteries of Mars series. The novel is considered the first book in the chronology of the series, even though it was the second book published. The other books are The City Outside the World (1977), Down to a Sunless Sea (1984), and The Man Who Loved Mars (1973).

Authors Guild to new Kindle 2: You don't have the right to read a book out loud

An article in today’s The Wall Street Journal states that some authors and publishers are concerned about a text-reading feature in Amazon’s new Kindle 2 electronic book reader:

“... Some publishers and agents expressed concern over a new, experimental feature that reads text aloud with a computer-generated voice.

‘They don't have the right to read a book out loud,’ said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. ‘That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.’

An Amazon spokesman noted the text-reading feature depends on text-to-speech technology, and that listeners won't confuse it with the audiobook experience. Amazon owns Audible, a leading audiobook provider. ...”

Is this the opening volley in another class-action lawsuit?

Why Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel Red Mars may prove unfilmable as a television mini-series

Martin Anderson of the blog Den of Geek wonders
if the TV network AMC can successfully adapt Kim Stanley Robinson’s award-winning novel Red Mars (1992) into a television mini-series. According to Anderson, potential problems include the sheer scope of Robinson’s epic, scientific accuracy, the sex appeal of octogenarians, and economics.

Read Kim Stanley Robinson's recent comments to Aussiecon 4 regarding the forthcoming Red Mars television mini-series.

25 Martian Science Fiction reasons to purchase Amazon’s new Kindle 2 e-reader

Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon, introduced yesterday a new version of the company’s wireless electronic book reader, called Kindle 2. In addition to a sleeker design, the upgraded device has a crisper display, more memory, longer battery life, and a text-to-speech function that allows the device to read words to users. With a cost of $359, a selection of over 230,000 books, and shipping scheduled to start on February 24th, here are
25 Martian Science Fiction reasons why you should consider buying the new Kindle 2 e-reader:

• Gulliver of Mars (1905), by Edwin L. Arnold

• The Forge of Mars (2007), by Bruce Balfour

• The Martian Race (1999), by Gregory Benford

• The Evidence: a Novel (2006), by Austin Boyd

• Thuvia, Maid of Mars (1920), by Edgar Rice Burroughs

• Police Your Planet (1956), by Lester del Rey

• Martian Time-Slip (1964), by Philip K. Dick

• Semper Mars (1998), by Ian Douglas

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

• Marsbound (2008), by Joe Haldeman

• Mars Underground (1997), by William K. Hartmann

• Podkayne of Mars (1963), by Robert A. Heinlein

• The Martian: a Novel (1897), by George Du Maurier

• The Martian War: a Thrilling Eyewitness Account of the Recent Invasion as Reported by Mr. H.G. Wells (2005), by Gabriel Mesta

• Starstrike: Task Force Mars (2007), by Douglas Niles

• Blue Mars (1996), by Kim Stanley Robinson

• Edison's Conquest of Mars (1898), by Garrett P. Serviss

• The Secret Martians (1960), by Jack Sharkey

• In the Courts of the Crimson Kings (2008), by S.M. Stirling

• The Planet Mars and Its Inhabitants: a Psychic Revelation (1922), by Eros Urides

• Red Lightning (2006), by John Varley

• Olympus Mons (2003), by William Walling

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

• Stowaway to Mars (1936), by John Wyndham

• First Landing (2001), by Robert Zubrin

According to Amazon's Jeff Bezos, “Our vision is every book ever printed, in any language, all available in less than 60 seconds."

“The Certainty Principle,” a new short story by Colin P. Davies, stimulates solid discussion

“The Certainty Principle,” a new short story by British author Colin P. Davies published in the February 2009 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine, has stimulated some solid discussion in a reader’s forum on Asimov’s website (beware of spoilers). The story is about a space naval officer who checks into the Red Planet Low-Gravity Retreat on Earth after being dishonorably discharged because of a fatal incident on Mars. I read “The Certainty Principle” back in early January and highly recommend it.

If you don't have a subscription to the print version of Asimov's, you can purchase the February 2009 issue in electronic format through Fictionwise for a mere $3.99.

Colin P. Davies is the author of two other short stories about Mars: “A Touch of Earth” (1995) and “The Girl with the Four-Dimensional Head” (2004), both of which were published in his collection Tall Tales on the Iron Horse (2008).

Scientist Robert Zubrin encourages Congress to consider trips to Mars in economic stimulus bill

Scientist and author Dr. Robert Zubrin argued in a recent op-ed piece in Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, that Congress should consider economic stimulus solutions that include tax-deductible down payments on homes, flex-fuel laws for new cars, and trips to Mars.

Dr. Robert Zubrin is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is also president of the Mars Society and the author of several books, including the science fiction novel First Landing (2001). You can listen to Dr. Zubrin discuss his latest publication, How to Live on Mars: A Trusty Guidebook to Surviving And Thriving on the Red Planet (2008), in an interview with SciFiDimensions, an online science fiction magazine.

Author James Van Pelt has fond memories of SF

Author James Van Pelt wrote a moving piece in his LiveJournal titled “Twenty-Five Autobiographical Science Fiction Connections.” The list of items, which is a nostalgic look back at memorable science fiction moments in his life, contains several connections to Mars. Here’s my favorite one, item #4:

"The first book I ever bought a second copy of was Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. I had gotten sick and threw up on the first copy (I missed the bucket). TMI, I know."

Check out the entire list, which mentions Edgar Rice Burroughs, C. S. Lewis, and Tom Corbett.

New book: Paizo reprint of Otis Adelbert Kline’s classic novel The Outlaws of Mars

Paizo Publishing has released its unabridged reprint of The Outlaws of Mars (2009), a classic sword-and-planet tale written by Otis Adelbert Kline that was first published as a seven-part serial in Argosy magazine in 1933 and 1934. The latest book in Paizo’s Planet Stories series, The Outlaws of Mars has an introduction by Joe R. Lansdale that puts the novel and Kline, a contemporary of Edgar Rice Burroughs, into a modern context.

Here’s a description of The Outlaws of Mars, taken directly from Paizo’s website:

“Jerry Morgan accepts his scientist uncle’s offer to transport him
to Mars for a series of thrilling adventures and exploits featuring terrible monsters, fantastic societies, and gorgeous princesses in
the Edgar Rice Burroughs tradition.”

I recently ordered a copy of The Outlaws of Mars and I can hardly wait to read it!

Google and Amazon stack mobile phones, Android devices with books

Google and Amazon to Put More Books on Cellphones
The New York Times
February 5, 2009
By Miguel Helft

SAN FRANCISCO -- More electronic books are coming to mobile phones.

In a move that could bolster the growing popularity of e-books, Google said Thursday that the 1.5 million public domain books it had scanned and made available free on PCs were now accessible on mobile devices like the iPhone and the T-Mobile G1.

Also Thursday, Amazon said that it was working on making the titles for its popular e-book reader, the Kindle, available on a variety of mobile phones. The company, which is expected to unveil a new version of the Kindle next week, did not say when Kindle titles would be available on mobile phones. ...

Read the entire article in The New York Times.

Read about Android, an Open Handset Alliance Project.

Science Friday: NPR discusses Mars

This afternoon NPR’s Talk of the Nation: Science Friday radio program, hosted by Ira Flatow, discussed two neat topics: the contamination of Mars by bacteria from Earth, and the new Google Mars maps. Here's the coolest line from the broadcast: "The moon is dead, Jim."

Try the new Google Mars.

New short fiction: “Eko and Narkiss,” a myth by Jeremy Adam Smith

Thanks to a recent post by Dave Tackett of the blog QuasarDragon, I just read “Eko and Narkiss,” a science fictional myth by author Jeremy Adam Smith that was published online in the February 2009 issue of Lone Star Stories. The myth is related to Smith's
“The Wreck of the Grampus,” a novella which appeared in the April 2008 issue of Lone Star Stories.

“Eko and Narkiss” describes the human settlement of Mars and explains why the ancestors of the early settlers sacrifice a machine at the start of every planting season and forge narcissi from the scraps of the sacrifice. Here are the opening lines:

“Excerpted from Every Child’s Solar Encyclopedia: Myths and Legends of the Solar System (Babel: Woelfle, 452). What follows is the story of Eko and Narkiss as told by Arion Overture, famed in the third century for preserving the oral traditions of the ancient solar system. Overture was deactivated in 261, after he fell victim to Kafka's Syndrome and was unable to finish any story that he began.”

Jeremy Adam Smith is senior editor of Greater Good magazine. His short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in Apex Digest, Interzone, New York Review of Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and numerous other publications.

Aussiecon 4 interviews Kim Stanley Robinson

Nicole R. Murphy of Aussiecon 4, the 2010 World Science Fiction Convention, recently interviewed author Kim Stanley Robinson, who was kind enough to provide some insight into his writing, environmental concerns, and thoughts about Worldcons. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

Nicole R. Murphy: A lot of people are very excited by the notion of the mini-series of Red Mars. How involved are you in the project, and how do you feel about with putting on a screen something that has existed only in people’s imaginations until now?

Kim Stanley Robinson: The AMC cable channel has a team of people working on the project; I am not one of them, nor do I want to be, but my agents are, and they keep me informed. We have a certain amount of input. But they are still involved with the screenplay writer, so it is at a very early stage. I have ambivalent feelings about any film projects from my work, because as your question notes, it changes things, and sometimes not in a good way. But the books remain no matter what, so mostly I think it's a good idea to film them, as it would bring more readers to the books, and more money to the bank account.

Aussiecon 4 will be held in Melbourne, Australia in September 2010. Kim Stanley Robinson is the Guest of Honor.

New book cover features Mars art by Bob Eggleton

The blog of SF writer and editor Christopher Paul Carey has an image of the cool new Mars cover art
Bob Eggleton painted for The Other in the Mirror (Subterranean Press, March 2009), a forthcoming omnibus by Philip José Farmer. Carey wrote the introduction to the work, which contains Farmer’s classic novel Jesus on Mars (1979).

Long-delayed limited edition of The Martian Chronicles one step closer to publication

Bill Schafer of Subterranean Press announced that Subterranean and PS Publishing are in the final stages of negotiating the rights to co-publish a
long-delayed limited edition of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles (1950). Apparently, the original publisher, Hill House, ran into some difficulties and was not able to bring the publication to fruition. A fan forum over at Ray Bradbury’s website chronicles the confusion and concern of those who have paid several hundred dollars for the book but have yet to receive it.

Hoping Subterranean Press and PS Publishing can help resolve the matter and publish the limited edition of The Martian Chronicles.

Pictured above: 1951 paperback by Bantam Books

Barsoom artwork by Michael Whelan

G. W. Thomas of the blog Dark Worlds has posted some beautiful artwork by renowned artist Michael Whelan depicting the Barsoom (Mars) of author
Edgar Rice Burroughs. Whelan’s artwork was used as the wraparound cover art for the late 1970s Del Rey/Ballantine Books editions of Burroughs’ Barsoom series.

Pictured above: Whelan’s Thuvia, Maid of Mars

NASA rover near "Stapledon" on Sol 1802

NASA reports that its Mars Exploration Rover Spirit was near a soil target known as "Stapledon" on sol 1802 (January 26, 2009). “Stapledon” is named after William Olaf Stapledon (1886-1950), a British philosopher and science fiction author who wrote Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future (1930), among other works.