Wanted: Info on Brain W. Aldiss’ new SF story “Finches of War”

Late last month, ThisIsOxfordshire.com reported that award-winning British science fiction author and artist Brian W. Aldiss has written a new science fiction short story set on Mars. It’s called “Finches of War”. Does anyone have any more information? Thanks.

Dark Horse to reprint John Carter of Mars comics from 1970's Weird Worlds and Tarzan

Dark Horse Comics is collecting and reprinting the John Carter of Mars stories that were originally published in the 1970's comic books Weird Worlds #1-#7 and Tarzan #207-#209. The forthcoming volume, titled John Carter of Mars: Weird Worlds and scheduled to be released in January 2011, features the handsome work of comics legends Marv Wolfman, Murphy Anderson, Gray Morrow, Sal Amendola, Joe Orlando, and Howard Chaykin.

[via JCOM Reader and Doc Mars]

Swedish art: Marsmänniska glass vase

There’s a beautiful Graal glass vase by Swedish artist Eva Englund (1937-1998) for sale on eBay. Created in 1988, the piece is called "Marsmanniska" ("Martian"). It’s about 8 inches high and 25 inches across at the widest point. Only $4,000. The face on the vase looks similar to ones I have seen on a few European covers of The Martian Chronicles. Cool piece of glass!

New gender switch short story: “Amazon Arena of Mars” by Tara Loughead

Jekkara Press, the home of The Adventures of Bulays & Ghaavn and The Gender Switch Adventures, has an interesting, free short story titled “Amazon Arena of Mars” (2010). Written by Tara Loughead and dedicated to Leigh Brackett, the Queen of Space Opera and Martian Science Fiction, the story stars Erica Joan Stark, a character based on Brackett’s legendary male character, Eric John Stark. Here are the opening lines:

“PINT OF BITTER and your comm number.”

The big-breasted bartender regarded Bulays with amusement, because she’d certainly heard that one before.

“Bit desperate, aren’t you?” Called a deep female voice from a seat in the shadowy far corner of the bar.

The woman that stood as she spoke was tall and built and muscled like a lioness. She walked with a flat-hipped arrogance, more than a match for the swagger of Bulays. Her hair was like coiled midnight. She wore a kilt and sandals, her magnificent body bare above the waist. She carried a longsword sheathed across her back...

It’s worth noting that Jekkara Press takes its name from an ancient city located on the Mars of Leigh Brackett.

(Artwork by Vickie Shan)

Retro review: Siskel & Ebert discuss 1996 Sci-Fi spoof Mars Attacks!

Film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert review Mars Attacks! (1996), director Tim Burton's science fiction spoof based on the 1962 Topps trading cards. Starring Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Danny DeVito, Martin Short, Sarah Jessica Parker, Rod Steiger, Tom Jones, Natalie Portman, Jim Brown, Sylvia Sidney and Pam Grier.


One thumb up and one thumb down!

The Forge of Mars – 2002 hard SF novel by Bruce Balfour

The Forge of Mars (2002), a hard science fiction novel by former NASA employee and writer Bruce Balfour.

Paperback original (New York: Ace Books, 2002) $6.99. Cover art by Jean Pierre Targete. The blurb from the back cover:

A NASA team has discovered alien ruins buried in the canyons of Mars, at the site called Vulcan’s Forge. The first man who touched them died, making them very, very interesting. NASA needs to figure out who left them, and what they might mean to earth exploration.

Tau Wolfsinger is the NASA researcher to do that. Brilliant and intuitive, he’s as much an outsider at the agency as he has been everywhere, all his life. Nobody likes using him, but he's the best.

What Tau doesn't know is that the Mars ruins aren't the first of their kind. The others are in the hands of the Davos Group, a shadowy international organization whose members have been hiding similar artifacts for decades, trying to unlock their secrets. Tau has sworn that his talents will not be put to military use, but dangerous people are watching him now, and they do not intend to be stopped.

Bruce Balfour has devoted an entire website to The Forge of Mars. It includes a cool globe of Mars, an excerpt from the novel, and a Reader’s Guide with discussion questions. Interestingly, the main character, Tau Edison Wolfsinger, "sees the world through the filter of Navajo Indian traditions and experience."

The Forge of Mars was reviewed by Cindy Lynn Speer of the SF Site, Christian Sauvé, and the late cryptoterrestrial Mac Tonnies.

Commodities of Martian Rails: Machinery

Martian Rails (2009), the crayon board game manufactured by Mayfair Games about railroading on the Red Planet in which players build tracks and haul freight, has a long list of cool commodities that players can transport to generate revenue for their rail companies. For example:

Machinery -- The tools and equipment needed to build a society in a harsh land—everything needed to grow and process food, mine minerals, build settlements, move about the land, etc.

Martian Rails is loaded with references to Martian SF!

Nonfiction book Packing for Mars lands on NYT best sellers list

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (Norton 2010), a new nonfiction book by the sexy popular science writer Mary Roach is currently resting at #8 on The New York Times hardcover nonfiction best sellers list, down from #6 last week. “A humorous investigation of life without gravity in the space program," Packing for Mars has an extensive marketing campaign and has received quite a bit of attention. Here are some links worth your time:

• The New York Times review: “Astral Bodies”

• The Space Review: “Review: Packing for Mars”

• The Space Show audio interview: “Guest: Mary Roach”

• Maclean’s review: “Tales of Space Dandruff and Chimponauts”

• The Washington Post review: “How do Astronauts go to the Bathroom in Zero Gravity?”


• NPR audio interview: “Packing for Mars and the Weightless Life”

• Los Angeles Times review: “After Tackling Dead Bodies, the Afterlife and Sex, Mary Roach Looks to the Cosmos”

• The New York Times review: “All the Right Stuff and the Gross Stuff”

• The Planetary Society audio interview: “Talking with Mary Roach, Author of Packing for Mars”

• Excerpt from Packing for Mars

Too bad I'm not artistically inclined, else I'd make a video titled Fuck Me, Mary Roach.

Original advertisement for Edgar Rice Burroughs' 1917 novel A Princess of Mars

Sale: RAH’s 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land owned by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Dragon’s Head Books of Portland, Oregon has an interesting copy of Robert A. Heinlein’s Hugo Award-winning science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) for sale over at AbeBooks. It’s a first edition signed by fantasy author Marion Zimmer Bradley (“from her former husband Walter Breen’s estate -- probably her personal reading copy”). $950

Conservative think tank has greater financial transparency than EFF

Despite a board of directors that includes prominent (but aging) revolutionaries, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a San Francisco-based non-profit organization founded in 1990 that defends the digital rights of consumers and “continues to confront cutting-edge issues,” definitely will not be winning any Best Practices awards for financial disclosure and transparency (D&T) in the near future. Here is EFF’s digital commitment to D&T, as posted on its website:

• 2008-2009 Annual Report

• 2007 Annual Report

• 2006 Annual Report

Contrast that with these documents, all posted on the website of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based research and educational institution whose mission is “to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense”:

• 2009 Annual Report

• 2008 Annual Report

• 2007 Annual Report

• 2006 Annual Report

• 2005 Annual Report

• 2004 Annual Report

• 2003 Annual Report

• 2002 Annual Report

• 2008 Audited Financial Statements

• 2007 Audited Financial Statements

• 2006 Audited Financial Statements

Never thought the Heritage Foundation would be considered more progressive than the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Learn something new every day, eh Monarch.

The Mars of Leigh Brackett depicted through Russian endpaper art

Check out the detail on these two beautiful pieces of endpaper art that I raided from an early 1990’s Russian omnibus comprised of three of American science fiction author Leigh Brackett’s classic Martian tales: The Sword of Rhiannon, People of the Talsiman, and The Secret of Sinharat.

Front endpaper

Rear endpaper

Black Hole Sun - new YA SF novel written by David Macinnis Gill

Black Hole Sun, a new Young Adult science fiction novel written by American author David Macinnis Gill and published by Greenwillow Books, an imprint of behemoth HarperCollins, is scheduled to be released today, August 24, 2010. Billed as a "future-dystopia kick-ass action novel set on Mars," here is the promotional piece from the publisher:

Durango will take on any mission -- as long as it is dangerous, impossible, and hopeless. As long as it pays enough for him and his crew to get by. He doesn’t have a death wish, exactly, but he’s got a lot to run from and a whole lot to forget. Fortunately for Durango, he’s also got Mimi, a symbiotic nano-implant, to keep him on the straight and narrow (and to keep readers laughing along with the adrenaline rush), and a crew of loyal buddies -- male, female, and other. Readers of The Hunger Games and Pratchett’s Nation -- from casual fans of future dystopia to hardcore gamers who like fiction with depth -- will enjoy this action-jammed, cinematic saga set on a terraformed Mars.

HarperCollins has posted about the first 70 pages of Black Hole Sun and Gill has created a mock video trailer that is even more cheesy than the cover art for his novel. On a more positive note, Black Hole Sun received a starred review from Booklist.

Review of A. Bertram Chandler’s 1965 novel The Alternate Martians

A.V. Club (not to be confused with the Italian football club A.S. Roma) recently posted an interesting review of The Alternate Martians (1965), a paperback original penned by Australian science fiction writer A. Bertram Chandler that comprises one-half of an old Ace Double novel. Apparently, The Alternate Martians is “akin to what Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill pull off with their League of Extraordinary Gentlemen books.”

Trailer: 1968 film Mission Mars, starring Darren McGavin

Trailer for Mission Mars, a 1968 science fiction-horror film that revolves around three American astronauts who land on Mars and discover the frozen body of a Russian cosmonaut... and a man-eating sphere! Starring Darren McGavin as Colonel Mike Blaiswick.


The men stake their lives on the unknown…Their women gamble their love on their return!

Flash fiction: “As Long As It Takes” by Aaron Henderson

The free SF story site 365 tomorrows has a humorous piece of flash fiction titled “As Long As It Takes” (2010) by Aaron Henderson. It’s about a grease monkey on Mars who is looking forward to two great football games and spending some quality time with his wife. Just as soon as he checks out a Martian rover named Spirit...

[via Tinko Valia of Variety SF]

Mixed reviews for Rick Moody’s new satirical novel The Four Fingers of Death

The Four Fingers of Death (Little Brown, July 2010), a new 725-page Vonnegutesque novel by award-winning author Rick Moody that features “a hard-luck writer in 2025, whose novelization of a remake of the 1963 horror cult classic, The Crawling Hand, spins a satirical tale of a returning Mars expedition,” has received mixed reviews over the past few weeks. Here’s a selective recap:

• The New York Times: “It may be that Moody is intentionally turning [main character and author Montese] Crandall into a pathetic figure here by giving him bad jokes, or Moody may himself be straining for humor that doesn’t work. Unfortunately, either way, it’s no fun to read.”

• The Globe and Mail: Moody’s “epic postmodern paean to schlocky old horror films kicks realism in the ass."

• The Wall Street Journal: “If nothing else, The Four Fingers of Death provides further evidence for the inverse relationship between literary theory and literary quality. As a ‘project’ -- that's what the author calls the book in his acknowledgments -- it succeeds; as a novel, it's harebrained and largely unreadable.”

• Bookslut: “Four Fingers seems admirable -- ‘novelicious,’ let’s say, to coin a term in keeping with the text’s ludic anarchy, the tickling it gives a form that’s so often been labeled as dying or dead.”

• NPR: Moody’s “energy and sheer inventiveness make The Four Fingers of Death an original and exhilarating read.” Severed Thumbs Up.

• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Moody’s “new book, chockablock with the novelist's stylistic mastery, is a parody of science fiction with its dystopian pessimism and contemporary meta fiction with its personal obsessions. (Told you it was annoying.)” One finger short.

• The Washington Post: “Any similarities between Vonnegut's work and Moody's novel are superficial. The best of Vonnegut's novels were lean and focused; he didn't need 700 pages to write Cat's Cradle or Slaughterhouse-Five.”

Both NPR and The Wall Street Journal have posted the introduction to The Four Fingers of Death.

Happy 90th Birthday, Ray Bradbury!

Ray Bradbury, the timeless guy of Fantasy & Science Fiction, turns 90-years-old today, August 22, 2010. In honor of the man and this milestone, here are a few links:

• It’s Ray Bradbury Week in Los Angeles, August 22 to 28.

• Flickr has some handsome photos from a recent birthday party for Mr. Bradbury held at Mystery & Imagination Bookshop in Glendale, California.

• UCLA has put together a short but fascinating online tribute, including the title page of The Martian Chronicles (1950) when it was first mocked up by a layout artist.

• AbeBooks has a neat webpage commemorating some of Mr. Bradbury’s greatest achievements.

• Some young lady stars in a hilarious, if juvenile, music video titled “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury” (2010).

Pictured: President George W. Bush and Laura Bush present the National Medal of Arts award to Ray Bradbury (2004).

Cities of Martian Rails: Clarketown

Martian Rails (2009), the crayon board game manufactured by Mayfair Games about railroading on the Red Planet in which players build tracks and haul freight, has a long list of interesting cities that players can capitalize on to generate revenue for their rail companies. For example:

Clarketown -- A small settlement on the cliffs above the easternmost portion of the Mariner Valley (north central section). It is named for the noted author, Arthur C. Clarke. His classic Martian tale from the Golden Age of SF, The Sands of Mars, introduced terraforming.

Martian Rails is loaded with references to Martian SF!

Buster Brown Goes to Mars – 1958 comic book

Back-to-school is not only a great time to buy a new pair of shoes, it's a great time to read a little Buster Brown over at the blog And Everything Else Too. Check out the beautiful jpegs of Buster Brown Goes to Mars, a free, 20-page, full-color promotional comic book that was published by Western Publishing in early 1958 and distributed by participating shoe and department stores. The cover shown here was from a store located in Dayton, Ohio. I've seen other covers for stores that were located in Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New York and Wisconsin.

The Martian Chronicles: The Complete Edition signed limited edition giveaway!

Well, here are the details for my The Martian Chronicles: The Complete Edition (2009) giveaway. If you’ve been following along, you already know that I’m giving away my slightly-used copy of this signed, limited, 750-page, “massively expanded new edition of the Ray Bradbury magnum opus” that includes an introduction by SF author John Scalzi, an introduction by SFFH author Joe Hill, twenty-two previously uncollected or unpublished "Other Martian Tales" written by Mr. Bradbury, stunning color plates by British artist Edward Miller, and two previously unpublished screenplays written by Mr. Bradbury (1964, 1997).

Here’s how the giveaway works:

• Giveaway is open to United States citizens only

• Send an email with the subject line “I want The Martian Chronicles!” to booksonmars@hotmail.com

• Your email must include your first name, the first letter of your last name, and the state in which you reside. (Example: Raymond D., California)

• Your email must include an explanation (no more than 500 words) of why you want my slight-used copy of The Martian Chronicles: The Complete Edition

• Your email must be received before midnight, 12:00 am, EST, Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

• I will give my slightly-used copy of The Martian Chronicles: The Complete Edition to the person whose explanation I like the most.

• I will announce the lucky recipient on Labor Day, Monday, September 6th, 2010.

That’s it!

Artist Kelly Freas on how to learn Martian

Just a quick follow-up to my recent post about the nonfiction essay "How to Learn Martian" (1955) by American linguist Charles F. Hockett. The two illustrations, one of which I've reduced here, were done by legendary artist Kelly Freas. Thanks, Doc Mars!

“On The Martian Way” – 1909 short story by Captain Harry Gore Bishop

Here’s an interesting short story written by U.S. Army officer and author Harry Gore Bishop that was printed in The Railroad Trainman (September 1909): “On The Martian Way”. The plot revolves around a series of tragic events on the Earth-Mars run of a commercial space line company and includes a passenger ship carrying invalids to Mars for the benefits of the salubrious Martian atmosphere. Apparently, the story is “notable as one of the first scientific romances to feature a future of routine commercial space travel; also for its use of radio, friendly Martians, computing machines, and electrical gravity-repelling screens.” Here are the opening lines:

The New York office force of the R.D. Jones Co. caught its breath in a gasp of astonishment when it was announced that Captain Goff was to take out the Columbia with passengers only. Even the superintendent seemed ashamed of the directors' decision, for he had sent the word out to old Williams, the veteran chief clerk, scribbled on a slip of paper, and had then promptly gone out by way of his private entrance....

Originally published in The Broadway Magazine (November 1907), “On The Martian Way” was later reprinted in Amazing Stories magazine (February 1927) and Star Magazine (July 1931). It is unknown if the story was revised over the course of its life.

[via Tinkoo Valia of Variety SF]

Chinese cover art: Barsoom

Check out this Flickr gallery of beautiful Chinese cover art portraying the classic Barsoom series of novels written by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Interestingly, the covers include English subtitles. Note that one of the covers is mistitled The Master Mind of Mars (1928). It should be titled A Fighting Man of Mars (1931). Additions or corrections are welcome!

Haydn of Mars, 2005 fantasy novel written by Al Sarrantonio

Haydn of Mars (2005), a fantasy novel by horror and SF author Al Sarrantonio.

Pictured: Paperback original (New York: Ace Books, 2005) $6.50. Cover art by Matt Stawicki depicts Haydn of Mars. Here is the promotional piece from the back cover:

On the planet Mars, in the distant future, the princess Haydn’s arranged marriage to a man she doesn’t love will no longer preserve her beloved Republic. Her archenemy, the warrior-woman Frane, seeks to overthrow the Republic and make herself queen while Haydn -- the legitimate heir to the throne -- must flee for her life.

With a bounty on her head, Haydn remains a reluctant symbol for those who would restore the monarchy. Considered too young and unprepared to assume the throne, Haydn is determined to become a great queen. To that end, she will make an arduous desert trek, give birth to offspring who will be targeted by assassins, find her true love amidst the chaos, meet unexpected allies -- and unexpected treachery.

And she will come to realize that -- in order to save her world -- she must sacrifice all that she holds dear...

Haydn of Mars is the first novel in a trilogy. It was followed by Sebastian of Mars (2005) and Queen of Mars (2006). All three novels were republished as a single hardcover volume: Masters of Mars (Science Fiction Book Club, 2006).

Trailer: 1964 film Robinson Crusoe on Mars, featuring Adam West

Trailer for Robinson Crusoe on Mars, a 1964 Techniscope science fiction film that retells the classic 18th-century novel penned by Daniel Defoe, starring Paul Mantee, Victor Lundin, Adam West and Mona the monkey.

Nonfiction essay: "How to Learn Martian" by Charles F. Hockett (1955)

Interested in exploring some of the linguistic problems involved in communicating with aliens? Check out "How to Learn Martian", a nonfiction essay written by American linguist Charles F. Hockett that was published in the October 1955 issue of Astounding Science Fiction (British edition). Access is a bit cumbersome, as the issue is part of a huge library of old pulp magazines that have been scanned in CBR format.

[via Tinkoo Valia of Variety SF]

Events of Martian Rails: Blue Mars!

Martian Rails (2009), the crayon board game manufactured by Mayfair Games about railroading on the Red Planet in which players build tracks and haul freight, has a long list of events to which players can respond in order to generate revenue for their rail companies. For example:

Blue Mars! -- Canal improvements. As money and political ambitions allow, the government rebuilds some of the ancient Martian canals that have fallen into disrepair. Once repaired, these canals are treated as blue canals for the remainder of the game.

Martian Rails is loaded with references to Martian SF!

“The Marriage” a previously unpublished Martian tale by Ray Bradbury

In last week’s post about the new, sold-out, expanded, limited, signed, 750-page The Martian Chronicles: The Complete Edition (2009), by literary giant Ray Bradbury, I blogged about the exodus of “The Wheel.” Today, I’m highlighting another tale that explores the intricacies of race relations: “The Marriage"

“The Marriage” (2009) is a simple but hopeful two-page piece about the marriage of a human, Captain Samuel Pace of the Space Service, to Elta, a native Martian woman with eyes like gold. Here are the opening lines:

IT WAS a fine night in the Martian August. The double moons threw down a radiance that put away the shadows, and the warm sky was covered with a great variety of stars. It was a splendid night for the wedding.

Mr. Samuel Pace paused long enough in polishing his shoes to go to the window and look down into the open courtyard of this ancient Martian house. Torches were lit everywhere...

“The Marriage” is the fourteenth of Bradbury’s "Other Martian Tales” and the last of his previously unpublished tales. Stay tuned for details about my The Martian Chronicles: The Complete Edition giveaway!

Looney Tunes: Florida child molester sports tattoo of Marvin the Martian

According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Victor M. Sanchez, a 31-year-old man who was convicted of “lewd or lascivious molestation victim 12-15 years old offender 18 or older” in 2008 and sentenced to 5 years in prison, sports a tattoo of cartoon character Marvin the Martian on his left shoulder. Sanchez is currently housed at the Holmes Correctional Institution and is scheduled to be released in mid-2011.

Jet Powers diffuses royal Martian plot in this Golden Age comic

Pappy’s Golden Age Comics Blogzine has beautiful, readable jpegs of a Jet Powers comic titled “The Interplanetary War,” in which our fearless hero travels to the Red Planet, diffuses a royal Martian plot, and then battles Venusian invaders threatening both Mars and Earth! A Magazine Enterprises comic written by Gardner Fox and illustrated by famed artist Bob Powell, this two-part story was published in 1951 in Jet issue #3 and issue #4.

Cover art: Thuvia, Maid of Mars

Check out this Flickr gallery of cover art portraying the lovely Thuvia, Maid of Mars, one of the characters rescued by John Carter and Tars Tarkas in Thuvia, Maid of Mars (1920), the fourth novel in the Barsoom series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. More than 25 pieces of beautiful artwork, including covers from Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Russia, and Japan! Additions or corrections are welcome.

Retro collection by Scott Edelman includes 2002 story “Mom, the Martians, and Me”

A new retrospective collection of American science fiction, fantasy and horror author Scott Edelman’s best science fiction short stories from the past thirty years has just been published by Fantastic Books. Titled What We Still Talk About, the collection includes “Mom, the Martians, and Me,” which was originally published in British editor Peter Crowther's anthology Mars Probes (2002) and is one of my favorite stories about Martians!

A clever short story in which the owner of a small-town newspaper tries to convince a police officer that his mother, who is obsessed with UFOs and believes her husband was abducted by aliens, was kidnapped by little green men from the Red Planet, “Mom, the Martians, and Me” has a cool passage describing how Mom turned her bedroom into an astronomical museum and space library:

With Dad gone, the bedroom that they had shared for years was transformed into a makeshift astronomical museum. Star maps covered every available inch of wall space, even hiding the bay window that had once cast light over their twin beds. A floor-to-ceiling mosaic of the surface of Mars as seen from space filled one wall of the room, looming like a giant unblinking eye. Mom had planted a silver pushpin where she was sure he was being kept.

Odd books were everywhere. She’d always been an avid reader, but only of nonfiction. She could not stand made-up lives. Science fiction distressed her most of all. It had nothing to do with real life, she said. Now, she might as well have been living in a science fiction novel, for the library she’d built to wall off the world was so fantastic as to make any fiction, however wild, seem mundane by comparison. Until Mom went strange and I lost her, I had not realized that there were so many first-person accounts by people who claimed to have been scooped up by spacecraft and later returned. On the bulging shelves next to these grew scrapbooks of clippings from supermarket gossip rags, stories telling of women who had been impregnated by Martians, teenagers who had been stolen as youths and returned middle-aged, and old men whose end-stage colon cancer had been cured by the touch of alien fingers.

Children’s small windup toys decorated her end table, rocket ships and alien robots that were sometimes left scattered on the floor where I would trip over them. The area around her bed became littered with badly printed newsletters which purported to tell the truth about a government conspiracy to hide from the public the secrets of crashed alien crafts and their inhabitants....

Scott Edelman was the editor of the 1990s magazine Science Fiction Age and is currently the editor of the SF website Blastr. He maintains his own website and a LiveJournal.

[via Ian Randal Strock of SF Scope]

I Love Lucy: Lucy and Ethel are paid $500 to dress up as Martians

Here’s a hilarious clip from the classic 1950s American television show I Love Lucy in which Lucy and her friend Ethel are paid $500 to dress up as Martians and scare some tourists in New York City. The clip is from a third season episode called “Lucy is Envious,” which aired March 29, 1954.


Love the ray gun!

Commodities of Martian Rails: Iron Rations

Martian Rails (2009), the crayon board game manufactured by Mayfair Games about railroading on the Red Planet in which players build tracks and haul freight, has a long list of cool commodities that players can transport to generate revenue for their rail companies. For example:

Iron Rations -- All intrepid explorers, frontiersmen, and military men have depended on these concentrated, emergency food items to sustain themselves. This is the standard adventurer survival food. Isn’t it curious how Iron Rations are produced in cities that also have Iron Ore?

Martian Rails is loaded with references to Martian SF!

“The Wheel” a previously unpublished Martian bridge by Ray Bradbury

In last week’s post about the new, sold-out, expanded, limited, signed, 750-page The Martian Chronicles: The Complete Edition (2009), by literary giant Ray Bradbury, I blogged about the historical “They All Had Grandfathers.” This week, I’m highlighting “The Wheel,” a bridge which, according to Sam Weller's The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury (2005), was “excised” from the working manuscript of The Martian Chronicles before that work was first published in 1950.

“The Wheel” (2009) is a short bridge that describes how “the black people” missed Mars and ended up landing upon Venus, where “they were happy.” Here is the opening line:

THEY SANG on their way. They sang Joshua Saw the Wheel, and they sang Go Down, Moses, and they sang a lot of other songs. They sang songs of all kinds, but they missed Mars....

“The Wheel” is the twelfth of Bradbury’s "Other Martian Tales" and if reincorporated back into The Martian Chronicles, it would, presumably, be placed after the racially-charged chapter “Way in the Middle of the Air” (June 2003/2034). Interestingly, “Way in the Middle of the Air” was scrubbed from the 2006 William Morrow/Harper Collins reprinting of The Martian Chronicles and is only included in The Martian Chronicles: The Complete Edition (2009) as an "other Martian tale."

New short fiction: “How to Become a Mars Overlord” by Catherynne M. Valente

The third (August 2010) issue of Lightspeed Magazine, a new, free, online science fiction publication edited by John Joseph Adams, has several pieces related to Mars. First, is “How to Become a Mars Overlord,” a sweeping short story written by Catherynne M. Valente that features some stellar writing and casts Mars in a brilliant metaphorical light. Here are the opening lines:

WELCOME, Aspiring Potentates! We are tremendously gratified at your interest in our little red project, and pleased that you recognize the potential growth opportunities inherent in whole-planet domination. Of course we remain humble in the face of such august and powerful interests, and seek only to showcase the unique and challenging career paths currently available on the highly desirable, iconic, and oxygen-rich landscape of Mars....

Interestingly, “How to Become a Mars Overlord” is also available as a podcast, narrated by Robin Sachs (mp3, 32 minutes).

Second, is an excellent interview with Valente in which she discusses the specifics of “How to Become a Mars Overlord.” Indispensable for simpletons like me who have difficulty seeing beyond the literary glare of stories.

Third, a nice piece of nonfiction titled “Dead Mars” by Pamela L. Gay.

All worth reading!

Podcast of Mike Resnick’s 2004 short story “A Princess of Earth” nominated for Parsec

A recent podcast of seasoned SF&F writer Mike Resnick’s ERB-inspired, Hugo Award-nominated short story “A Princess of Earth” by audio fiction magazine The Dunesteef has been nominated for a 2010 Parsec Award. The story, in which an aging widower is visited by John Carter of Mars, was originally published in the December 2004 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. The Parsec Awards recognize excellence in speculative fiction podcasting and will be announced at Dragon*Con in Atlanta on Labor Day weekend.

[via SF Site]

Star-Begotten, a 1937 biological fantasia by H.G. Wells

Star-Begotten: A Biological Fantasia (1937), by H.G. Wells.

Pictured: Paperback (North Hollywood, CA: Leisure Books, 1970) 75¢. Cover art by George Barr depicts “Nightmare Child,” which won first place at the 23rd Annual West Coast Science Fantasy Conference in 1971. A short science fantasy novel, here is the promotional piece from the back cover:

It has been said that the only real difference between a sociologist and a novelist is a matter of unbiased statistics. In Star-Begotten, H.G. Wells weaves a narrative of a time when all earthlings will have been biologically altered by the maneuverings of an unseen, extraterrestrial race. A time when men shall no longer fight wars, will resist established orders, when compromises and consolations will make way for a new order of man. Wells predicted a future when the world of human beings would go totally sane … and a period of transition amazingly like the headlines of today!

Several reviews of Star-Begotten were written in the wake of the Wesleyan University Press 2006 reprint. One, posted at SciFiDimensions, in which Carlos Aranaga concluded that “Star Begotten is a tale of Wells’ second Martian invasion, one from within. Read it. You will be privileged with a view from inside the mind of a man ahead of his time, who challenged society, with questions still valid today." Another, posted at Strange Horizons, in which Paul Kincaid concluded that “This excellent new edition […] is an often forgotten novel that really deserves a much wider audience.”

The full text of Star-Begotten is available online at Project Gutenberg Australia.

New university anthology includes four classic Martian SF stories

Weslayan University Press has posted the table of contents for its mammoth new anthology: The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction (August 2010). Among the 52 short stories are these four Martian classics: “Shambleau” (1933) by Catherine L. Moore; “A Martian Odyssey” (1934) by Stanley G. Weinbaum; “There Will Come Soft Rains” (1950) by Ray Bradbury; and “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” (1966) by Philip K. Dick. Also, it’s refreshing to see that the anthology includes a story by early 20th-century SF writer Leslie F. Stone.

[via SF Signal]

Cory Doctorow: Amazon has revolutionized my life

Canadian science fiction author, blogger and copyright activist Cory Doctorow’s latest nonfiction column has been published over at Publishers Weekly. Titled “Doctorow’s First Law,” here's one of the more interesting passages:

“Amazon is a retailer that has literally revolutionized my life, my go-to supplier for everything from toilet brushes to used DVDs for my toddler. And in addition to selling my own works, I also sell upwards of 25,000 books a year through Amazon affiliate links in my online book reviews. This makes me a one-man, good-sized independent bookstore, with Amazon doing my fulfillment, payment processing, stocking, etc.”

It’s nice to see a prominent SF writer praise Amazon instead of denigrate it.

Top 10 Marooned posts for July 2010

The Top 10 Marooned posts for July 2010:

1. “The Martian Women” 2002 novella written by Tyree Campbell

2. After years of gouging consumers, has Macmillan acted like a Good Samaritan?

3. Interview: Pulp Sci-Fi author Joel Jenkins on his Dire Planet series

4. Man O' War 1996 novel by William Shatner

5. Public Knowledge: Open-access nonprofit that won’t open its financial books to public

6. Eco-sustainable catamaran is so green that it's Martian

7. For Sale: Archive of manuscripts, typescripts, letters by Fredric Brown

8. The Dark Intruder & Other Stories written by Marion Zimmer Bradley

9. “Stamped Caution” 1953 first contact story by Raymond Z. Gallun

10. Menace Under Marswood, a 1983 novel by Sterling E. Lanier

Cities of Martian Rails: Charax

Martian Rails (2009), the crayon board game manufactured by Mayfair Games about railroading on the Red Planet in which players build tracks and haul freight, has a long list of interesting cities that players can capitalize on to generate revenue for their rail companies. For example:

Charax -- A medium town in the southeast section. The name was first used by Percival Lowell on his maps and was adopted by human colonists. In the early days, the climate here was too harsh for permanent settlement. The early colonists only lived here during the southern hemisphere’s summer.

Martian Rails is loaded with references to Martian SF!