Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast...

I’ve never read Robert A. Heinlein’s 1980 science fiction novel The Number of the Beast, but I am quite familiar with British heavy metal band Iron Maiden’s classic song “The Number of the Beast,” which was released in 1982. Here is the official Maiden video for "the Beast," complete with a clip from the SF film The Angry Red Planet (1959).



Anyone see a link to the Heinlein novel?

Candace Flynn from Disney Channel’s "Phineus and Ferb" sings "Queen of Mars"

The conservative SF blog Republibot has an interesting one-minute video clip from "Phineus and Ferb," a Disney Channel award-winning animated series that I've never even heard of, in which some girl named Candace Flynn teaches the three-eyed, green inhabitants of the Red Planet about music by singing “Queen of Mars.” I don't know, seems like it might be some of that Stalinist commie bullshit. Take a look and tell me what you think.

Off-Broadway: Total Recall: The Musical

Here’s a hilarious three-minute clip of Arnold Schwarzenegger performing "The Mountains of Mars" from Total Recall: The Musical, an off-Broadway production based on the 1990 film.



Music and Lyrics by Jon Kaplan and Al Kaplan.

Breaking bad: Interview with John Carter of Mars actor Bryan Cranston

The entertainment website Collider.com has a recent interview with actor Bryan Cranston, who plays the role of a U.S. Civil War Union colonel in the upcoming, long-awaited Disney/Pixar film John Carter of Mars (2012), starring actor Taylor Kitsch as John Carter, actress Lynn Collins as Dejah Thoris, actor Willem Dafoe as Tars Tarkas, and actor Daryl Sabara as a young Edgar Rice Burroughs. Here is a relevant excerpt from the interview:

Question: Can you talk about who you play in the film and are you excited to be in this huge movie?

Bryan Cranston: Very excited. I liked the script first and foremost. That’s why I went in to meet with Andrew. And then his infectious enthusiasm for the movie and for characters and it just... I caught his bug. And I said, yes, so I’ll be a part of it. I’ll do whatever you want me to do. And so I play, during the Civil War America time... this story takes place part-time Civil War America and Mars, which has no time. So my character is a Northern Colonel who is dogging John Carter to be a part of the government. We need his help. He’s an excellent tracker and marksman and that sort of thing. And in the Arizona Territories, the Apaches are running wild, so I need his help and he won’t do it. He doesn’t want to have anything to do with anything. His family was obliterated during the War. It was horrible and he wants to be a part of no man’s government. So I keep after him and keep after him and track him down and have a conversation with him and have to use some physical force on him and he keeps breaking out and I keep tracking him down. And finally we end up in a cave and in this cave are some magical things that happen. And that transports him and it’s really quite fascinating and I look forward to it.

Apparently, the music for the film will be scored by Oscar Award-winning composer Michael Giacchino.

Queen of the Iron Sands, I'll meet you at the cemetery gates

Queen of the Iron Sands, the “free serial adventure in weekly web installments” written by American fantasy author Scott Lynch and inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic 1917 novel A Princess of Mars, appears to have died after just four chapters. While we wait and hope that Lynch survived the H1N1 virus and that his serial adventure is alive and well, it might be fun to sing a song together.

Do you know “Cemetery Gates,” the 1980s tune by The Smiths? It starts out like this:

A dreaded sunny day
So I meet you at the cemetery gates
Keats and Yeats are on your side

A dreaded sunny day
So I meet you at the cemetery gates
Keats and Yeats are on your side
While Wilde is on mine

BBC podcast of Robert A. Heinlein's 1947 short story "The Green Hills of Earth"

BBC Radio 7’s Seventh Dimension recently broadcast a reading of Robert A. Heinlein’s classic short story “The Green Hills of Earth” (1947), a tale about Rhysling, a poetic radiation-blinded spaceship engineer who travels the solar system writing and singing songs. The 30-minute broadcast will be available for the next few days as a streaming podcast through BBC7’s Listen Again feature.

Here are some lines from "The Grand Canal", a song about Mars, taken from Heinlein’s story:

New Year’s Day: U2 live at Red Rocks

Well, this old music video of U2 playing its classic song New Year's Day live at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Colorado, June 5, 1983, isn't speculative fiction and isn't set on Mars, but it still kicks ass after more than 25 years.



Happy New Year!

The Call of Ktulu

This post has nothing to do with Mars, but I’m learning so much from Tor.com’s Cthulhu Month that I decided to play along with this awesome ten-minute music video of heavy metal band Metallica performing its classic 1984 instrumental tribute to cosmic horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Ktulu,” live with Michael Kamen conducting the San Francisco Symphony, recorded in April 1999 at the Berkeley Community Theatre.



If you're shopping for a younger metalhead with classical music training this holiday season, consider buying him/her the CD or DVD of Metallica's monumental S&M live album (1999).

Psychedelic animation of the Grateful Dead from the Mars Hotel

Although the building mentioned in the title of the Grateful Dead’s 1974 album Grateful Dead from the Mars Hotel is a shabby hotel that once stood in a neighborhood in San Francisco, the art on the front cover of the album seems to depict a hotel on the planet Mars, while the art on the back cover seems to portray the band members as some kind of aliens. In any case, check out this 6-minute sequence of psychedelic animation that I believe was created by Gary Gutierrez for The Grateful Dead Movie (1977).



Presumably, award-winning science fiction author Allen Steele is a big Dead fan, as his first published piece was a short story entitled “Live from the Mars Hotel” (1988), reprinted in the anthology Isaac Asimov’s Mars (1991).

10 awesome The War of the Worlds items for bibliophiles listed on AbeBooks

1) The War of the Worlds (1897)
By H.G. Wells
Bound volume of the 1897 Cosmopolitan serialization, published simultaneously with the Pearson Magazine serialization in Great Britain. This is the first appearance of the work in the United States and predates the 1898 first edition novel; illustrated. $5,000

2) The War of the Worlds: A Newly Illustrated Digest of H.G. Wells' Famous Story (1939)
Dell Publishing's 48-page digest adaptation with comic-book style cover and b&w illustrations; tied to the famous 1938 radio broadcast by Orson Welles; front cover touts “When they told it on the radio … It terrified the whole country"; rear cover displays headlines from The New York Times and New York Post. $225

Is the Queen of the Iron Sands dead, boys?

Chapter 5 of Queen of the Iron Sands, a “free serial adventure in weekly web installments” written by fantasy author Scott Lynch and inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic novel A Princess of Mars (1912), has been missing for more than 30 days. While we wait and hope that Lynch and his serial adventure are alive and well, it might be fun to have a sing-along.

How about “The Queen is Dead,” a 1980s tune by The Smiths:

Oh! Take me back to dear old Blighty,
Put me on the train for London Town,
Take me anywhere,
Drop me anywhere,
Liverpool, Leeds or Birmingham
But I don't care,
I should like to see my ...

10 things Ray Bradbury and Nikki Sixx have in common: #1 – Fascination with fire

#1. Both SF&F author Ray Bradbury and Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx have a fascination with fire.

Ray Bradbury is the author of the gloomy 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451, the quintessential work of fiction about censorship, the destruction of knowledge, and the burning of books. Here are the opening lines of Bradbury’s fiery magnum opus:

10 things Ray Bradbury and musician Nikki Sixx have in common: #2 - Opposed to censorship

#2. Both SF&F author Ray Bradbury and Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx are strongly opposed to censorship.

Ray Bradbury has been a longtime opponent of censorship, which he once defined as “when government controls things, and you cannot publish or sell or find in a library the books that you want.” His classic novel Fahrenheit 451 is perhaps the quintessential fictional work about censorship and is read more widely today than when it was first published in 1953.

Bradbury discussed his views on the First Amendment, freedom of expression, and censorship in a 1991 interview with Gauntlet, a publication devoted to the subjects. Here are two excerpts from the interview:

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

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


Almost forgot: It's Banned Books Week!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#9. Neither attended college

#8. Both are intimately familiar with Playboy magazine

#7. Both created an illustrated man

#6. Both have exploded on stage

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

10 things Ray Bradbury and musician Nikki Sixx have in common: #5 - Horrible car accident

#5. Both SF&F author Ray Bradbury and Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx have had their lives impacted by a horrible car accident.

Ray Bradbury has never had a driver’s license or driven a car. Here’s how he explained it in the instrumental 1996 interview with Playboy magazine:

"Playboy: Were you surprised when, after the [1994 Northridge] earthquake, the freeways were rebuilt within a few months?

Bradbury: And almost before anything else? No. Here a human without a car is a samurai without his sword. I would replace cars wherever possible with buses, monorails, rapid trains - whatever is takes to make pedestrians the center of our society again, and cities worthwhile enough for pedestrians to live in. I don't care what people do with their cars, as long as they give them up three quarters of the time - roughly the amount of time people spend every week superfluously driving places they don't want to go to visit people who don't want to see them.

Playboy: That's easy for you to say; you have never driven a car.

Bradbury: Not a day in my life.

Playboy: Why not?

Bradbury: When I was 16, I saw six people die horribly in an accident. I walked home holding on to walls and trees. It took me months to being to function again. So I don't drive. But whether I drive or not is irrelevant. The automobile is the most dangerous weapon in our society - cars kill more than wars do. More than 50,000 people will die this year because of them and nobody seems to notice."

Nikki Sixx was nearly killed in a 1983 car crash while driving home from a party in a drunken stupor. Here's how he described the accident in the book The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band‎ (2002):

"I ran to the wall and scaled it, completely naked. As I dropped down on the other side, I noticed that the stones had cut up my chest and legs, which were trickling blood. Outside, two girls who couldn’t get into the party were waiting in a ’68 Mustang. “Nikki!” they yelled. Fortunately, I always left my keys in my car then – I still do. So I hopped into my Porsche and gassed it down the hill. The Mustang screeched on the gravel and took off after me. I floored it to ninety, looked back to see if I had lost them, and, as I did so, was suddenly thrown against the dashboard. I had crashed into a telephone pole. It was sitting next to me in the car in a decimated passenger seat. If anyone had been sitting there, their head would have been smashed flat. I stepped out of the car, in shock, and stood in front of the steaming mess that was once my true love. It was totaled, useless. The girls who were chasing me were gone, probably more scared than I was. And I was alone – naked, bloody, and dazed. I tried to raise my arm to hitch a ride, but a sharp pain raced from my elbow to my shoulder. I walked to Coldwater Canyon, where an older couple picked me up and, without saying a word about the fact that I was butt-naked, drove me to the hospital. The doctors put my shoulder in a sling – it was dislocated – and sent me home with a bottle of pain pills. I spent the next three days unconscious, whacked out on painkillers. […]

The car crash, combined with everything else creepy and dangerous that had happened to us, brought me back to reality and Lita talked me into backing off my flirtation with Satanism. Instead, heroin began to consume me, first to kill the pain of the shoulder then later to kill the pain of life, which is the pain of not being on heroin.”

Pictured: Cover of Volume 1 of Mötley Crüe’s two-volume CD box set entitled Music to Crash Your Car To (2003-2004). The brainchild of Nikki Sixx, the picture and title are indirect references to lead singer Vince Neil’s 1984 drunken driving accident that killed his passenger, Hanoi Rocks drummer Nicholas “Razzle” Dingley. In response to criticism of the “tasteless and murderous gimmick,” Sixx explained that Music to Crash Your Car To was a "sarcastic statement towards a lifestyle."

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

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

#9. Neither attended college

#8. Both are intimately familiar with Playboy magazine

#7. Both created an illustrated man

#6. Both have exploded on stage

10 things Ray Bradbury and musician Nikki Sixx have in common: #6 - Exploded on stage

#6. Both SF&F author Ray Bradbury and Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx have exploded on stage.

Ray Bradbury exploded on stage in 1993 when he spoke to a gathering of the country’s leading editors and publishers about the abysmal state of the magazine industry. Here’s a 1996 interview with Playboy magazine in which Bradbury describes the explosion:

"Let's say the slow burn grew hotter the more I thought about what a chance I had. So I took along my props - copies of Forbes, Fortune, Good Housekeeping, McCall's, Vogue and People. I went up onstage and said, "Let's talk about the real problems with your magazines." I held up Good Housekeeping, flipped through the pages and said, "Find the articles -- you can't." I held up McCall's and Vogue and said, "Look, the same thing." I held up Forbes and Fortune -- "Look at this," I said. "You've got a half-page article here, you've got the start of an article on the left, then you look to the right and it's a full-page ad." I threw them off the podium. Then I held up an issue of People and said, "Do you really want to read a magazine like this? To hell with Time Inc.!" and threw it down. I paused and lowered the boom, saying, "The magazines of this country have to take over education -- even more than the corporations -- because you want readers in the future, don't you? Can you keep downgrading people's intelligence and insult them with the shit you're publishing? You should make sure the schools teach reading, or you're out on your ass in a couple of years. You won't have any readers -- doesn't that scare you? It scares me. Change your product and invite me back to talk to you again." I stopped and waited, figuring that maybe they would do something if I managed to scare them enough."

Nikki Sixx has exploded on stage many times, most notably at an October 1997 Mötley Crüe concert in Greensboro, North Carolina, in which he hurled profanity and racial slurs at an African American security guard from the stage and encouraged the audience to attack the guard (watch a two-minute video of the incident posted on YouTube). Claiming he was provoked when he saw the guard roughing up some fans, Sixx and bandmate Tommy Lee were arrested after the concert. Sixx was charged with a felony count of riot with ethnic intimidation, assault, and disorderly conduct. After pleading no contest, Sixx was given a 30-day suspended jail sentence and placed on probation. The security guard filed a $75,000 civil suit against Mötley Crüe. The matter was settled out of court.

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

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

#9. Neither attended college

#8. Both are intimately familiar with Playboy magazine

#7. Both created an illustrated man

10 things Ray Bradbury and musician Nikki Sixx have in common: #7 - Created an illustrated man

#7. Both SF&F author Ray Bradbury and Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx created an illustrated man.

Ray Bradbury is the author of The Illustrated Man (1951), a collection of eighteen unrelated science fiction short stories that deal with love, madness, and death. Inspired by a “Tattoo Man” that Bradbury met at a carnival as a youngster, the stories are tied together by a literary framing device, “the Illustrated Man,” a tattooed vagrant whose illustrations come alive to tell their stories. Five of the stories are set on or involve the planet Mars.

Here’s how Ray Bradbury's website describes his The Illustrated Man (1951): “a collection of tales that breathe and move, animated by sharp, intaken breath and flexing muscle. Here are eighteen startling visions of humankind's destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin -- visions as keen as the tattooist's needle and as colorful as the inks that indelibly stain the body.”

Nikki Sixx is an illustrated man, with tattoos inked on his chest, back, arms, and at least one of his legs. According to excerpts from Sixx’s autobiographical book The Heroin Diaries (2007) that were published in the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper, he believes “Tattoos are a great way to keep people away who you wouldn't want to know anyway. I was 21 when I got my first tattoo. I have always loved the idea of the body being covered. We all had a few tattoos but after the Girls, Girls, Girls tour I came into rehearsal with a full sleeve. Then Tommy Lee [Mötley Crüe bandmate] got a back piece, and I got one, too. We'd go into hotel lobbies with stage make-up on and our tattoos; people thought we were a freak show.”

More Bradbury-esque are these lines that Nikki Sixx wrote about a near-death experience in The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band (2002): “I tried to sit up to figure out what was going on. I thought it would be hard to lift my body. But to my surprise, I shot upright, as if I weighed nothing. Then it felt as if something very gentle was grabbing my head and pulling me upward. Above me, everything was bright white. I looked down and realized I had left my body. Nikki Sixx -- or the filthy, tattooed container that had once held him -- was lying covered face-to-toe with a sheet on a gurney being pushed by medics into an ambulance.”

The last I heard, Nikki Sixx was dating tattoo artist Kat Von D. Check out this 10-minute video from October 2008 on YouTube in which Kat inks Nikki with a portrait of Mötley Crüe bandmate Mick Mars! Thanks TLC. Love the educational programming!

Pictured: Nikki Sixx

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

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

#9. Neither attended college

#8. Both are intimately familiar with Playboy magazine

10 things Ray Bradbury and musician Nikki Sixx have in common: #8 - Familiar with Playboy

#8. Both SF&F author Ray Bradbury and Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx are intimately familiar with Playboy magazine.

Ray Bradbury has had fiction, essays, and poetry published in Playboy since the magazine was first launched in 1953. Fahrenheit 451 (1953), his SF masterpiece, was published in the magazine as a three-part serial in 1954. Bradbury was one of several prominent SF authors who participated in “The Playboy Panel: 1984 and Beyond,” published in the summer of 1963. A wide-ranging 1996 interview with Playboy is considered one of Bradbury’s most important, and not just for the author’s views on the magazine:

“Playboy is in fact one of the best magazines in history, simply because it has done more than any other magazine. It has published the works of most of the important short story writers of our time, as well as some of the most important novelists and essayists -- and just about every important American artist. The interviews have included just about everyone in the world with something important to say. Nowhere else can you find such a complete spectrum, from the semivulgar to the highfalutin [laughs]. I have defended Playboy since the beginning. Its editors were brave enough to say, "The hell with what McCarthy thing" when they ran excerpts from Fahrenheit 451. I couldn't sell that to any other magazine because they were all running scared. And I must add another important point -- one I'm sure that many other guys growing up in the sorry years before Playboy existed will agree with -- which is that there would have been a lot fewer problems if Playboy had been around back then. I wish I'd had Playboy when I was 14.”

The timeless guy of Sci-Fi even had time to visit Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills in 2002!

Nikki Sixx’s first wife was model and actress Brandi Brandt, Playboy’s “Playmate of the Month” for October 1987. His second wife was model and Baywatch actress Donna D'Errico, Playboy’s “Playmate of the Month” for September 1995. Sixx has visited the Playboy Mansion on several occasions, including a 2007 charity event benefiting the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Belated Happy Birthday, Mr. Bradbury!

Pictured: Dolores Del Monte, Playboy's Miss March 1954.

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

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

#9. Neither attended college