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“They All Had Grandfathers” a previously unpublished Martian tale by Ray Bradbury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 a beautiful little gem titled “Jemima True.” This week, I’m highlighting “They All Had Grandfathers,” which, according to Sam Weller's The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury (2005), was “excised” from the working manuscript before The Martian Chronicles was first published in 1950.

“They All Had Grandfathers” (2009) is six-and-a-half page tale about a Western “cowpoke” named Samson Wood (1935-2001), who came to the Red Planet to “find something” and finds something in establishing the first bar, The Milled Buck Saloon (dancing girls, entertainment, good food & liquor), in the first human town on the planet. Here are the opening lines:

IT WAS Wednesday, May 17th, 2001 A.D. on the planet Mars.

The men were stalking across the rough grass with white twine in their big hands, followed by men with steel hammers and wedges they drove into the earth. They tied the white twine into place. All over the land the twine was humming, like a great spider web.

“Here’s the post office, there’s where’ll be the city hall, the grocery, the jail, the dry-goods, the dime store …” Hands swept to all horizons, pointing. Men spat and took hold of their hats in the wind....

The most striking feature of “They All Had Grandfathers” is the concept of the frontier. As the first settlement is staked out on Mars, Samson Wood is reminded of the frontier in American history, how his grandfather went West in 1890, and how “A man could say, I don’t like New York and go to Illinois, and when Illinois got too full he could hit the Oklahoma Territory. And on out through Texas, open spaces and then the sea.” You see, Samson Wood “grew up in an age when you couldn’t ride the rods of a freight train because they took away the rods and you couldn’t hitch-hike the highways because every state passed laws against it. There was nothing for a man to do who just wanted to run away.” Perhaps appropriately, Samson Wood ends up being the first civilian to die on the new Martian frontier.

“They All Had Grandfathers” is the eighth of Bradbury’s "Other Martian Tales" and if reincorporated back into The Martian Chronicles, it would, presumably, be placed after the chapter titled "The Third Expedition" (April 2000/2031) but before the chapter titled "—And the Moon Be Still as Bright" (June 2001/2032).

Gallery of b&w illustrations from Edison’s Conquest of Mars (1898, 1947)

Check out this neat Flickr gallery of 35 black-and-white illustrations that I compiled from Edison's Conquest of Mars, a late nineteenth-century work written by amateur astronomer and newspaper man Garrett P. Serviss that was inspired by H.G. Wells' seminal SF novel The War of the Worlds. The first 25 illos are from the original 1898 serial and the last 10 illos are from the 1947 novel. The quality of the images varies and there is considerable overlap. Here we see the Martians building the Sphinx!

Review: Rick Moody’s new Vonnegutesque novel The Four Fingers of Death

If you can believe this, The Wall Street Journal has devoted even more pixels (a review) to award-winning author Rick Moody and his new Vonnegutesque novel, The Four Fingers of Death (Hachette, July 2010), which “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.” This follows last week’s interview with Moody and excerpt from The Four Fingers of Death.

Short student film to be based on Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1973 story “The Field of Vision”

This is Local London reports that two film students at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, England, have received permission from science fiction author and SFWA Grand Master Ursula K. Le Guin for the rights to make a film based on one of her short stories, “The Field of Vision” (1973). The 20-minute film, also entitled The Field of Vision, has a budget of about £12,000 and will premiere in February 2011. The film’s plot revolves around “a group of astronauts embarking on a mission to Mars, which then goes wrong and some are left psychologically affected.”

According to another source, Le Guin’s story, which was originally published in the October 1973 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine, has a slightly different plot: “After a visit in the mysterious 600 million year old City on Mars, the astronauts experience some strange effects. One of them sees things, and another hears things. After a long struggle, they learn to interpret -- to make sense -- of their sounds and visions. They see the world as it really is, and see God in everything.”

WikiLeaks should leak secret pay packages of Big Publishing’s fat cat CEOs

When WikiLeaks finishes leaking the classified but less-than-shocking cache of U.S. military documents about the war in Afghanistan, it should get to work on obtaining the detailed paperwork for the secret compensation packages that the old line publishing house behemoths down in New York City pay their fat cat CEOs. Seriously, when is the last time Macmillan disclosed the compensation of John Sargent, or Random House the compensation of Markus Dohle. Even, Simon & Schuster, which is a division of the publicly-held CBS Corp., does not disclose the compensation of Carolyn Reidy. Do you think Big Publishing pays Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to ensure that Congress does not pass legislation requiring these companies to disclose executive compensation? Yeah, me too.

Poem: “The First Artist on Mars” by Tim Jones

New Zealand poet, author and editor Tim Jones recently had his poem “The First Artist on Mars” (2006) published on the website of fellow literary lover Helen Lowe. Comprised of six stanzas, the poem is about an artist's unvarnished reflection on his trip to the Red Planet. Here is the first line: “Well, the first professional artist”

According to Jones, "The First Artist on Mars" was first published in Blackmail Press 15 (May 2006) and was included in his second collection of poetry, All Blacks’ Kitchen Gardens, where it forms part of a Kim Stanley Robinson-inspired sequence about the exploration of Mars called "Red Stone."

Events of Martian Rails: White 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:

White Mars! -- When it is Southern Winter or Northern Winter, it is difficult to move trains through the deep snow and it is impossible to lay track in these conditions.

Martian Rails is loaded with references to Martian SF!

Dynamite to publish John Carter, Warlord of Mars comic book series

The website Bleeding Cool reports that Dynamite Entertainment will publish Warlord of Mars, a comic book adaptation and expansion of beloved pulp author Edgar Rice Burroughs’ fantastical science fiction novel A Princess of Mars (1912), later this year. Written by Arvid Nelson, drawn by Stephen Sadowski and Lui Antonio, with covers by Alex Ross, Joe Jusko, Lucio Parillo, and J. Scott Campbell, Warlord of Mars Issue #1 will have several different covers. Check out the sneak peak, which includes the covers and an awesome illustration of some ancient Martian ruins!

[via JCOM Reader]

Doctor Who television special “The Waters of Mars” wins Constellation Award

British actor David Tennant recently won a 2010 Constellation Award for the Best Male Performance in a 2009 Science Fiction Television Episode for his memorable performance in the BBC’s acclaimed Doctor Who television special “The Waters of Mars” (2009). The Constellation Awards, Canada's annual science fiction awards focused on rewarding excellence in science fiction film and television, were presented at Polaris 24 in Toronto on July 17th, 2010.

[via SF Site]

Rocket Summer: “Jemima True” a previously unpublished piece by Ray Bradbury

In last week’s post focusing on the new, long-awaited, already-sold-out, expanded, limited, signed, 750-page The Martian Chronicles: The Complete Edition (2009), by literary giant Ray Bradbury, I blogged about the little-known bridge “The Martian Ghosts.” This week, I’m looking at another gem: “Jemima True.”

“Jemima True” (2009) is a previously unpublished one-page “dizzying fragment” that begins with the arrival on Mars of a woman, presumably a prostitute, named Jemima True, moves into the building of an Earth-like town, and ends with a child running around with a Halloween mask. Here are the opening lines:

JEMIMA TRUE came to the planet Mars in the spring of the year 2160 and the men of the new town put down their feet and turned to watch her pass. For she was a lovely thing, a thistle, and they stood looking long after she drifted from sight.

It was the sixth building in the town to be hammered together and it had a flight of stairs leading up and a door at the top to be opened, and a long hall beyond the door into which you might peer at women with bodies like mother-of-pearl....

“Jemima True” is the seventh of the "Other Martian Tales" but there is no firm indication as to when it was originally written.

Interestingly, the name “Jemima” has Biblical significance, for she was the first daughter of Job. Also, there were several women in 17th and 18th-century New England named “Jemima True,” one of whom married a fellow named Thomas Bradbury. And, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman, a work written by Mary Wollstonecraft that was published posthumously in 1798, features an abused working-class domestic servant named “Jemima” who ends up turning to prostitution.

Lastly, it's worth noting that Bradbury’s “Jemima True” mentions a man named “Tom Wolfe.” According to The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury (2005), by Sam Weller, writer Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938) “taught me how to throw up. His books were immense upchuckings. Not much plot, but he was wild about life and he tore into it and he jumped up and down and he yelled."

Comments, additions, or corrections are welcome!

Macmillan CEO shits himself over Amazon-Wylie e-book publishing deal

After being silent for more than four months, Macmillan CEO John “Silver Spoon” Sargent finally has something to say over at Macmillan Speaks, the publishing behemoth’s official corporate blog. In short, Sargent shits himself over the recently announced landmark e-book publishing deal between internet retailer Amazon and the firm of literary agent Andrew Wylie, arguing that the deal will be “damaging to the whole book community: authors, agents, publishers, and readers.” In other words, Sargent fears that the deal will further undermine Big Publishing’s antiquated business model.

Update: Birdwatching from Mars comic book

Dark speculative fiction author Barry Napier has provided an update for his forthcoming comic book series, Birdwatching from Mars, which involves artists Luis Puig, Ryan Burt and Keith Draws. In short, Issue #1 is near completion and may be available by the end of the year. Work continues on Issue #2 and Issue #3. Meanwhile, check out these cool character models of Frank Galveston and Colonel Stone that artist Keith Draws created!

WSJ on author Rick Moody and his new novel The Four Fingers of Death

The Wall Street Journal has devoted more than a few pixels to award-winning author Rick Moody and his new novel, The Four Fingers of Death (Hachette, July 2010), which “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.” First, there is an interesting interview in which Moody states that legendary SF writer Robert Heinlein “is not line-by-line a great writer.” Here’s the relevant excerpt:

WSJ: What do you make of those who see the work of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and other science-fiction writers as genre fiction and not literary?

Rick Moody: I think he's unfairly shunted into a commercial spot in the food chain by literary writers. I think his books are really beautiful. They're simple, and they're simply told but they're also strange and emotionally complex and much worthy of attention. The genre stuff, which I did read, is challenging if you're really into literary writing. I think Robert Heinlein is not line-by-line a great writer. But I feel great affection for the way in which those books were important to younger people back in the '70s when I read them.

Next, there is the lengthy introduction to Moody’s new novel, The Four Fingers of Death. The opening lines:

People often ask me where I get my ideas. Or on one occasion back in 2024 I was asked. This was at a reading in an old-fashioned used-media outlet right here in town, the store called Arachnids, Inc. The audience consisted of five intrepid and stalwart folks, four out of the five no doubt intent on surfing aimlessly at consoles. Or perhaps they intended to leave the store when instead they were herded into a cluster of uncomfortable petrochemical multi-use furniture modules by Noel Stroop, the hard-drinking owner-operator of the shop in question. I'd been pestering Noel about a reading for some time, months, despite the fact that Arachnids was not celebrated for its calendar of arts related programming...

Finally, there is a short piece in which Moody discusses his favorite classic horror films.

The Four Fingers of Death crawls onto bookstores shelves July 28th.

So, how much money is in the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund?

Source: IRS Form 990s
as filed by the
Comic Book Legal Defense Fund

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

Menance Under Marswood (1983), a science fiction novel by Sterling E. Lanier.

Pictured: Paperback original (New York: Ballantine Books, 1983), a Del Rey book, $2.95. Cover art by Darrell K. Sweet. Set on a terraformed Mars in the 23rd century, here’s the promotional piece from the back cover of the book:

For centuries the human outcasts of Mars have lived wild, independent lives in the Martian outback called the Ruck. But then the mysterious men of the “New Clan” came to preach total rebellion against the Mother Planet -- and that Earth's U.N. Command could not allow. So it sent a team of its best officers to learn the secrets of the “New Clan.” Unfortunately, to do the job right, the Terrans would have to cooperate with their worst enemies -- the Ruckers!

A more detailed description of the novel is at Jakedog.org and reader reviews are posted on Amazon.com.

Interestingly, Menace Under Marswood was included on a syllabus for a recent course about imagination and the “Quest for Meaning” at Tusculum College in Tennessee.

A man of many accomplishments, Sterling E. Lanier is perhaps most well-known for his stint at Chilton Books in the early 1960s, where he championed the publication of Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965). Lanier’s death in July 2007 was widely reported and science fiction critic John Clute wrote an obituary for The Independent, a British newspaper.

Nation's oldest botanical garden has greater financial transparency than EFF

Despite a board of directors that includes prominent entrepreneurs, technologists and revolutionaries such as John Gilmore, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a San Francisco-based non-profit organization founded in 1990 that defends the digital rights of consumers, probably will not win any Best Practices awards for financial disclosure and transparency (D&T) in the near future. Here is EFF’s digital commitment to D&T, for all of you counter-revolutionaries who are plotting along at home:

• 2008-2009 Annual Report

• 2007 Annual Report

• 2006 Annual Report

Contrast that with these documents, all posted on the website of the Missouri Botanical Garden, a non-profit organization founded in 1859 and the nation's oldest botanical garden in continuous operation:

• 2009 Annual Report

• 2008 Annual Report

• 2007 Annual Report

• 2008 IRS Form 990

• 2007 IRS Form 990

• 2006 IRS Form 990

• 2008/2009 Audited Financial Statements

• 2007/2008 Audited Financial Statements

Pictured: Missouri Botanical Garden founder Henry Shaw, proud of his organization's commitment to D&T.

2005 Japanese anime film: Negadon: The Monster from Mars

Here’s a cool tokusatsu-style 25-minute CG-animated anime film from Japan titled Negadon: The Monster from Mars (2005). According to Wikipedia, the storyline is set in the year 2025 and revolves around a rock formation that is found buried beneath the surface of Mars during a terraforming project. When the seemingly-harmless object is brought back to Earth, it grows into a colossal crustacean life form, Negadon, and promptly attacks Tokyo.

Commodities of Martian Rails: Iron

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 -- This is the Red Planet. The red color comes from rust – iron oxide, in other words – chemically bonded iron and oxygen. It lies everywhere under and on the surface of the planet. However, certain areas, particularly the desert regions, have higher concentrations of iron ore.

Martian Rails is loaded with references to Martian SF!

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

Thanks to the industrious folks at Project Gutenberg and ManyBooks.net, you can read or download "Stamped Caution,” a novelette penned by American science fiction writer Raymond Z. Gallun (1911-1994). Originally published in the August 1953 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine, the story is a tale of peaceful first contact and cultural exchange between humans and Martians. Here are the opening lines:

TEN MINUTES after the crackup, somebody phoned for the Army. That meant us. The black smoke of the fire, and the oily residues, which were later analyzed, proved the presence of a probable petroleum derivative. The oil was heavily tainted with radioactivity. Most likely it was fuel from the odd, conchlike reaction-motors, the exact principles of which died, as far as we were concerned, with the crash....

I haven’t had a chance to read “Stamped Caution" yet, but Tinkoo Valia of the blog Variety SF rates it a "B".

Review of James Blish’s 1967 young adult novel Welcome to Mars

College student and literature major Luke Forney has received a free review copy of Flights of Eagles (2009), a recent collection of science fiction works written by James Blish (1921-1975) and published by NESFA Press. In a refreshing review of one of those works, Blish’s 1967 young adult novel Welcome to Mars, Forney concludes, “All-in-all, this one is definitely a worthwhile read (more so than most YA science fiction out there today, I would wager), and a very nice start to the Blish collection.”

“The Martian Ghosts” a previously unpublished short story by Ray Bradbury

In last week’s post focusing on the new, long-awaited, already-sold-out, expanded, limited, signed, 750-page The Martian Chronicles: The Complete Edition (2009), by Ray Bradbury, I blogged about the vignette “Dead of Summer.” This week, I’m looking at another previously unpublished piece: “The Martian Ghosts.”

“The Martian Ghosts” (2009) is a fractured three-page short story in which the ghosts of dead Martians, presumably killed by the disease, spook the human settlers. The opening lines:

“I FOR ONE don’t believe it,” said the mother.

“Come see for yourself, then,” said Eem, and ran.

Well, she waddled down to the cellar into sandy dark and moistness, along a corridor or two past some old prison cells, for their house had been founded on an ancient seaport gaol, and when she reached the end of the stone passage she threw her hands to her bosom and said “Ah!”

“Get us out of here!” cried the Ghost.

“Unlock the door!” shouted the second Ghost, paler than his mate.

The mother fled upstairs and vomited straight off….

Interestingly, the mother and her husband are accused of being “witches” and after their house is demolished, they are “cut into a thousand pieces and buried in a thousand towns.” “The Martian Ghosts” is the sixth of the "Other Martian Tales" but there is no indication as to when it was originally written.

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

Here's a cool eco-sustainable catamaran yacht named Marvin the Martian. Designed by Maria Malindretou-Vika, an architecture firm in Thessaloniki, Greece, this 50-foot concept boat is both autonomous and energy self-sufficient. The fiberglass hull employs vacuum infusion epoxy resins and Kevlar laminates, so it’s both lightweight and inexpensive. The deck has 35 square meters of photovoltaic panels and hatches throughout the yacht allow for natural air conditioning. With a kitchen, dinette and living room, eight people can fit comfortably aboard!

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

The Huffington Post recently trumpeted an interesting story that was originally posted over at The Consumerist: “Macmillan Publishing Writes Happy Ending for Damaged Thrift Shop Book.” In short, an anonymous reader picked up a hardcover copy of Ben Bova's (stellar) novel Mars Life (2008) from a Salvation Army thrift shop without realizing that it was missing thirty-two key pages. When the reader contacted the publisher, Macmillan, via the internet, and explained the situation, the reader received a free mass- market paperback edition of the novel. Sounds like an urban myth!

Homemade index to Kim Stanley Robinson’s 1992 novel Red Mars

The Internet Archive has a sweet Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that serves as a homemade index to Kim Stanley Robinson’s award-winning novel Red Mars (1992). Created by a fellow named Trint Williams back in 2004, the index has nearly 600 entries and covers characters, locations, events, vessels, ideas, technologies and more!

“The Martian Women” 2002 novella written by Tyree Campbell

“The Martian Women,” a novella written by Tyree Campbell that was originally published in the January 2002 issue of Sam’s Dot Publishing’s The Martian Wave, is now available for purchase as a print-on demand stand-alone work. Here’s the promotional piece:

Five generations of humans have settled on Mars. Society has passed through various stages: pioneer, settlement, and now industrial. Women, equals in society if not by law at the onset of colonization, are once again subservient.

Except Teresa Minerva Timberlake.

Born during a hellacious sandstorm, raised by a legendary woman, impulsive to a fault, Traci Timberlake discovers a way to travel to the distant stars, to free humanity to explore and seek its destiny. The corporations of the Inner Solar System are willing to kill Timberlake and her apprentice, Allan O'Toole, to suppress publication and prevent dissemination of this discovery.

But Traci is a fifth-generation Martian woman, and she has the history and the accomplishments of four female ancestors to call on for help, courage, and inspiration. The courtroom trial scene of Traci Timberlake is one you will never forget.

Tyree Campbell is a retired U.S. Army translator with some 90 stories and two dozen poems (including a 2003 Rhysling finalist) published to date. He is also the managing editor of Sam’s Dot Publishing.

New York senatorial bitches still swallowing gobs of Big Pub’s money

According to OpenSecrets.org, a website maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics, United States Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) & Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) are still the Books, Magazines & Newspapers industry’s top two bitches, having swallowed $102,500 and $92,200, respectively, in industry campaign contributions for the 2010 federal election cycle. Assuming they are publisher agnostic, I wonder how Schumer & Gillibrand feel about the one-year boycott SFWA just slapped on Night Shade Books.

Author James P. Hogan (1941-2010)

British science fiction author James P. Hogan (1941-2010), who held some controversial views on the Holocaust and climate change, has died. Hogan wrote the humorous Martian Knightlife (2001) and the introduction to the Edgar Rice Burroughs omnibus Under the Moons of Mars (2003), as well as many other works.

[via SF Site]

25 weird words in Clark Ashton Smith’s 1932 horror tale “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis”

In re-reading one of my favorite Martian archaeological stories, Clark Ashton Smith’s horror tale “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis,” which was heavily gutted before it was published in the May 1932 issue of Weird Tales magazine but was restored in 1988 with nearly two thousand words of original atmospheric description, I suddenly realized how many weird words it contains. Here are 25 of those words, all of which I don’t know the meanings of, and many of which I’ve never even seen before!

1. munificent
2. teocallis
3. lethiferous
4. noxious
5. irrespirable
6. prestigitation
7. cerement
8. petrific
9. ebon
10. beetled
11. fantasmagoric
12. adumbrations
13. incubi
14. miasmata
15. effluvia
16. vicissitudes
17. sepulchral
18. miasmal
19. tumescence
20. fetor
21. putrescence
22. turgescent
23. pallid
24. cinerary
25. stertorous

Presumably, all of these words are in some dictionary!

Cover for new YA anthology Life on Mars: Tales from the New Frontier

Australian editor Jonathan Strahan has revealed the cover for Life on Mars: Tales from the New Frontier, a new Young Adult science fiction anthology of stories that is being published by Viking and is scheduled to be released in April 2011. The artwork is by French artist Stephan Martiniere, who recently won a British Science Fiction Association award for the cover art on the Pyr reprint of Ian McDonald’s 1988 novel Desolation Road. Rockets and trains never go out of style!

[via SF Signal]

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

The Fine Books Company, a rare, fine and collectible book dealer in Michigan, has an intriguing listing on AbeBooks: Large archive of manuscripts, typescripts and letters by science fiction, fantasy and mystery author Fredric Brown (1906-1972), “being mostly fiction with a bit of poetry & essay, ranging from 1932 through 1972 with many unpublished. The only such archive in existence.” Price: $31,000.

“Big Chair” a 1992 Desolation Road story by Ian McDonald

Thanks to the generosity of award-winning British science fiction author Ian McDonald, you can read his short story “Big Chair” (1992). Set in the vicinity of the town of Desolation Road on a future colonized Mars, this story of magical realism revolves around two boardrunners, Jammer and Safarside, who ride the winds across a vast Martian desert, each on his/her own pilgrimage. Here are the opening lines:

THEY WAKE in the morning to dust. Red dust, drifted in long plumes behind the upright windboards in the lee of which they lay down to sleep the night before. Dust in the desert bags. Dust in the ear, dust in the corner of the eye, in the corners of the mouth. Dust clinging to the sweat of the night like a red crust. As he prepares breakfast, she surveys the forward horizon with her scanshades. The sun is well up, already the heathaze is flowing and running and filling the land with illusions and uncertainties. She thinks she sees a darkness in the liquid haze, dark discordant shapes, sharp and thrusting. About a day's sail, she thinks. Surely they must be getting close, she thinks....

“Big Chair” was written for ConFuse 92 and later published in Interzone #66 (December 1992).

Google CEO’s private family foundation has greater financial transparency than EFF

Despite a board of directors that includes prominent computer science professors such as Lorrie Faith Cranor and David Farber, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a San Francisco-based public charity founded in 1990 that defends the digital rights of consumers, probably will not win any Best Practices awards for financial disclosure and transparency (D&T) in the near future. Here is EFF’s digital commitment to D&T, for all you geeks who are keeping score at home:

• 2008-2009 Annual Report

• 2007 Annual Report

• 2006 Annual Report

Contrast that with these documents, all posted on the website of the Schmidt Family Foundation, a private foundation established in 2006 by Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy, whose mission is to “advance the creation of an increasingly intelligent relationship between human activity and the use of the world’s natural resources”:

• 2008 Annual Report

• 2008 Audited Financial Statements

• 2008 IRS Form 990–PF

• 2007 Annual Report

• 2007 Audited Financial Statements

• 2007 IRS Form 990–PF

• 2006 Annual Report

• 2006 Audited Financial Statements

• 2006 IRS Form 990–PF

Pictured: EFF celebrates 20 years of lack of D&T.

Man O' War 1996 novel by William Shatner

Man O’ War (1996), a science fiction novel by William Shatner, set on 21st-century Mars.

Pictured: Paperback (New York: Ace Books, 1997), 304 p., $6.99. Cover art by Bob Eggleton. The blurb from the back cover:

Beloved as Captain James T. Kirk of Star Trek, then respected as a film director and as the bestselling author of the Tek series, William Shatner has become one of the most popular entertainment figures in the world. Now he brings his readers an all-new hero, a man trapped in a world of revolution, mind-games, and murder...

Benton Hawkes is a career diplomat, the best in his field. But his maverick ways have angered some very powerful people, and nothing can prepare him for his next assignment: a Martian mining colony on the verge of all-out revolt.

Reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist and Kirkus Reviews are posted on Amazon. In short:

• Publishers Weekly concluded that “The plot and the speculative concepts grounding it are shaky at best, resulting in a novel that distinguishes itself as neither science nor fiction."

• Booklist concluded that Man O’ War “is a workmanlike, highly readable tale that will doubtless please Shatner's substantial audience.”

• Kirkus Reviews concluded that “Shatner will have to do better than stock situations, hackneyed plotting, and such ludicrous Trekkisms as spaceships with built-in gravity and instantaneous communications between Mars and Earth.”

“Dead of Summer” a previously unpublished Martian vignette by Ray Bradbury

In last week’s post focusing on the new, long-awaited, already-sold-out, expanded, limited, signed, 750-page The Martian Chronicles: The Complete Edition (2009), by Ray Bradbury, I blogged about “The Disease,” one of four tales excised from the manuscript before The Martian Chronicles was first published in 1950. This week, I’m taking a look at another previously unpublished work: “Dead of Summer.”

“Dead of Summer” (2009) is a beautiful, five-sentence vignette. The setting is the Martian month of August and Bradbury sketches a simple but vivid picture of the dead of summer on the Red Planet. Here’s the opening:

IT WAS the time of the burning in the air and the ground, the glassy yellow burning of the wheat fields and the corn meadows and the white burning of the houses and the red burning of the barns. It was the time of the sun…

“Dead of Summer” is the fifth of the "Other Martian Tales" but there is no indication as to when it was originally written.

Cities of Martian Rails: Burroughs Landing

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:

Burroughs Landing -- A large city in the southwest section. One of the original cities and spaceports. It was, of course, named for Edgar Rice Burroughs. Carl Sagan, the noted 20th century space scientist and science populist, claimed that Burroughs’s stories inspired many scientists that worked on the Viking spacecraft program.

Martian Rails is loaded with references to Martian SF!

IAU reinforces glass dome on Mars, names another crater for male SF writer

Well, the Task Group for Mars Nomenclature at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has just reinforced the glass dome on the Red Planet by naming another crater in honor of a male science fiction writer. Crater Greg, about 68 km in diameter and located east of Hellas Planitia basin, is named for 19th-century science fiction author Percy Greg (1836-1889), who wrote the influential Mars novel Across the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked Record (1880).

We now have eight Martian craters named in honor of male SF writers: Burroughs Crater (1973), Weinbaum Crater (1973), Wells Crater (1973), Lasswitz Crater (1976), Alexey Tolstoy Crater (1982), Heinlein Crater (1994), Asimov Crater (2009) and Greg Crater (2010).

And zero craters named in honor of female SF writers! Leigh Brackett (1915-1978), the Queen of Space Opera and of Martian Science Fiction, got screwed, again!

[via SF Scope via SF Site]

TOC for new YA anthology Life on Mars: Tales from New Frontiers

Australian editor Jonathan Strahan has announced the table of contents for Life on Mars: Tales from New Frontiers, a new Young Adult science fiction anthology of futuristic stories that "takes as its leaping off point that we do go to Mars in 2040”:

• “Attlee and the Long Walk" by Kage Baker
• “The Old Man and the Martian Sea” by Alastair Reynolds
• “Wahala” by Nnedi Okorafor
• “On Chryse Plain” by Stephen Baxter
• “First Principle” by Nancy Kress
• “Martian Chronicles” by Cory Doctorow (novella)
• “Goodnight Moons” by Ellen Klages
• “The Taste of Promises” by Rachel Swirsky
• “Digging” by Ian McDonald
• “LARP on Mars” by Chris Roberson
• “Martian Heart” by John Barnes
• “Discovering Life” by Kim Stanley Robinson

Solid line-up of authors! Let's hope the cover, which has not yet been revealed, looks as good!

Life on Mars: Tales from New Frontiers is being published by Viking and, according to Amazon, is scheduled to be released in April 2011. Meanwhile, listen to Cory Doctorow read a working draft of his novella “Martian Chronicles,” which he deposited in the Internet Archive several months ago.

Pictured: Cover art of the August 1953 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine, depicting "Dome repairs on Mars." Artwork by Mel Hunter.

[via Tinkoo Valia of Variety SF]

“Emergency Rebuild” a new SF short story by David Conyers

Australian speculative fiction author David Conyers recently had his new short story “Emergency Rebuild” published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine Issue #43 (April 2010). Set on a colonized Mars, the story revolves around a family man who barely survives a horrible spaceport shuttle crash in the rocky, subzero desert. The opening lines:

HOT METAL SHARDS pierced the red sand. Dust stirred in the thin atmosphere as it mixed with burnt wisps of propulsion fuel. Broken and bloody people screamed and thrashed where they had fallen.

Liam Richter woke into this fury. Pain surged from the void where his legs should have been.

“What happened to me?” he bellowed.

“You’ve been in an accident,” explained the ambulance robot meticulously attending his wounds....

David Conyers resides in Sydney. His fiction has appeared in Jupiter, Book of Dark Wisdom, Midnight Echo, Antipodean SF, and several anthologies. He is the co-author of the novel The Spiraling Worm and editor of the horror anthology Cthulhu’s Dark Cults. He won the Australian Horror Writers Association’s Flash Fiction Award in 2007.

Lowell Observatory in Arizona hosts Mars Mania Film Festival

Lowell Observatory, a private, non-profit astronomical research institution founded in 1894 by Percival Lowell and located in Flagstaff, Arizona, kicked off its summer Mars Mania Film Festival last week with Invaders from Mars (1953). Other titles that will be shown throughout the summer include Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964), the original War of the Worlds (1953), Mars Attacks! (1996) and Plan Nine from Outer Space (1959). Tickets and identification are required.

I would have chosen a different line-up: Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars (1938), the original The War of the Worlds (1953), The Day Mars Invaded Earth (1963), Capricorn One (1978) and Red Planet (2000).

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

Pulp science fiction author Joel Jenkins was interviewed recently on The Book Cave Podcast (7:30 min., mp3) about his Dire Planet trilogy of novels and the future of the series. Inspired by legendary authors Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard, this sword & planet collection chronicles hero Garvey Dire and his swashbuckling adventures on the planet Mars. The series consists of three books to date, all of which were published by Pulpwork Press:

• Dire Planet (2005) "Thrust into the savage Martian past, Garvey Dire must solve the mystery of time in a world of alien monsters and brutal violence, or see his own world destroyed by war!"

• Exiles of the Dire Planet (2006) "In the savage Martian past, Garvey Dire discovers an old nemesis gathering vicious killers beneath his banner to conquer, crush and build a new empire on the blood and bones of the innocent!"

• Into the Dire Planet (2007) "To defeat his bloody nemesis and free an enslaved people, Garvey Dire explores the depths of the Martian planet to uncover the hideous secrets of the lost city of Caladrex!"

Listen to the interview to find out what’s next!

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

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) isn’t the only cutting-edge, open-access, non-profit organization that refuses to open its financial books to the public by posting them on the Internet. Public Knowledge (PK), a public-interest advocacy group in Washington D.C. “working to assure the future remains open, and that democratic principles and cultural values -- openness, access and the capacity to create and compete -- are given new embodiment in the digital age,” also refuses to post its IRS Form 990’s and audited financial statements on its website, even though PK professes to be “dedicated to fortifying and defending a vibrant information commons" and invites consumers and the public to donate money to it online.

Dr. Von Otten and airship Minotaurus depart for Mars, July 4th, 2003

A Trip to Mars: Herewith follows the brief preliminary report of the first successful attempt to reach the planet Mars, as conducted by Dr. Von Otten in the airship Minotaurus on the 4th of July 2003; Together with hurried glances at progress in general during the past century. (The Summary, July 4th, 1903)

Events of Martian Rails: Mars Fever!

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:

Mars Fever! -- An outbreak of Mars fever has transmitted fear throughout the land. To halt the spread of the plague, the government prohibits movement to or from the jungles and to Small or Medium Cities. No track laying crews may enter these areas.

Martian Rails is loaded with references to Martian SF!

Mock cover art for The War of the Worlds

Graphic art student Tim Phelan has created some interesting mock cover art for a series of novels by seminal science fiction author H.G. Wells to be published by the fictitious house Spine Publishing. Phelan adopted the Franklin Gothic family of typeface and faced some unique challenges in completing the project. Here’s how he describes his cover for The War of the Worlds, pictured above:

“I drew inspiration from the Orson Welles' radio adaptation that panicked America in 1938. As extracts of the novel are written in a formal journalistic style, my starting point referenced torn newspapers and half-tone patterns. The looming radio mast on the front cover is also a slight homage to the tripods, indicating the controversy and terror created by the broadcast was purely concocted by man and not Martian.”

Rocket Summer: “The Disease” a previously unpublished Martian Tale by Ray Bradbury

As I mentioned in a previous post, one of the unique things about the new, long-awaited, already-sold-out, expanded, limited, signed, 750-page The Martian Chronicles: The Complete Edition (2009), by Ray Bradbury, is the inclusion of seven previously unpublished and fifteen previously uncollected “Other Martian Tales.” One of the previously unpublished tales is “The Disease” (2009), which, according to The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury (2005), by Sam Weller, was “excised” from the manuscript before The Martian Chronicles was first published in 1950.

“The Disease” is a sad two-page piece that chronicles the death of Yll from “a fever and black disease” brought to Mars by Nathaniel York and the other “men from the stars.” Yll's wife, Ylla, has already died, and she lies next to her husband in the sleeping area of their home. Here are the opening lines:

In the night, the Martian awoke.

“I am dying,” he thought, and after a short while of terror, he became immediately calm, lying there. “My name; what is my name? I am dying and must know my name, for if I can’t remember it, no one ever will. I can’t remember. I am dead. Part of me is dead already. My legs. I cannot move them. My left hand, it is like wood.”

He turned his head to look upon his wife where she lay....

Although “The Disease” is not dated, if reincorporated back into The Martian Chronicles, it would have to come at some point after the chapter titled “Ylla” (February 1999/2030).

According to Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction (2004), by Jonathan R. Eller and William F. Touponce, “there is evidence that he [Bradbury] was considering yet another race of Martians. This material includes “The Disease,” a four-page story identified in all chronologies but deleted from the first edition prior to publication. The story is told from Yll’s (husband of Ylla) point of view and reflects the ravages of chicken pox on the Martian population. Since the disease happens after the third expedition (it is dated “March 2001”), Yll reflects on the 'funny story' of that mission: 'another ship from the stars and the men from it landing among the Shapers of Dreams. And finding a small town devised of their own memories. And being buried with music and speeches and cheers. A good joke, surely.' Apparently, only some Martians -- here called Shapers of Dreams -- are telepathic or can project dreams. The irony that Yll reflects on in the story is that he killed Ylla’s dream; now the dream is killing him.”

Top 10 Marooned posts for June 2010

The Top 10 Marooned posts for June 2010:

1. 1931 fan letter from 14-year-old student Forrest J Ackerman to Edgar Rice Burroughs

2. Polling problems: The Martian Chronicles: The Complete Edition giveaway

3. Dire Planet Compendium: Hilt has Turned

4. 1952 copy of The Sands of Mars has limerick penned by Arthur C. Clarke

5. “Monsoons of Death” 1942 short story written by Gerald Vance

6. SyFy Channel to air 2009 film Princess of Mars starring Traci Lords

7. Martian Rainbow, a 1991 hard SF novel by Robert L. Forward

8. 1964 My Favorite Martian magic trick set

9. “The Old Martians” 1952 short story written by Roger Phillips Graham

10. Cover revealed for forthcoming The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson

The Dark Intruder & Other Stories written by Marion Zimmer Bradley

The Dark Intruder & Other Stories (1964), a collection by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Pictured: Paperback original (New York: Ace Books, 1964), 124 p., #F-273, 40¢. Cover art by Jack Gaughan. An Ace double novel, bound with Bradley’s Falcons of Narabedla. Here’s the blurb from inside the front cover:

Xanadu was a name to chill men's blood -- that is, all but Andrew Slayton's. For him discovering the lost city of Xanadu on the planet Mars was an exciting challenge. His ardor to find this solitary remnant of a Martian civilization long vanished was only the more increased by the knowledge that all those before him in the search had returned insane.

But even his indomitable courage faltered when, one day while out searching alone, a disembodied voice suddenly announced quite clearly, “I am Kamellin.”

"The Dark Intruder," the unforgettable story of Slayton’s quest, is but one of the seven exciting science-fiction adventures included in this new collection.

The short story “The Dark Intruder” was originally published under the title “Measureless to Man” in the December 1962 issue of Amazing Stories magazine. An excerpt from the story is available at Fictionwise.

The collection The Dark Intruder & Other Stories was reviewed by noted SFF critic Rich Horton.

Also of interest: The website of the Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust.