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.

Book collector’s magazine goes in search of John W. Campbell and unknown worlds

The June 2010 issue of Firsts: The Book Collector’s Magazine features an intriguing article (“In Search of Unknown Worlds") about legendary science fiction & fantasy editor John W. Campbell and unknown worlds. Here’s the promotional blurb:

"During the 1930s, the magazine Weird Tales dominated fantasy and horror fiction. In 1939, a new and different magazine appeared in the field: Unknown (later Unknown Worlds). Under the leadership of John W. Campbell, who also edited Astounding Science-Fiction, the magazine propelled fantasy a quantum leap forward."

I’ve purchased single issues of Firsts in the past. Awesome magazine if you’ve never flipped through a copy.

Pictured: First issue of Unknown (March 1939)

ERB on war, citizenship and deportation

The unrivaled but labyrinthic ERBzine has a fascinating piece about World War II, American citizenship and the deportation of Japanese-Americans that pulp fiction author and United Press correspondent Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote for his May 1945 “Laugh It Off!” column in Hawaii Magazine. Burroughs’ column was “originally started shortly after Pearl Harbor at the request of army authorities in the Hawaiian department as a civilian morale booster.”