Reading Barsoom & Llana Jane Burroughs

If you're a fan of pulp author Edgar Rice Burroughs and his fictional red planet Barsoom, here are some recent links worth checking out. The science fiction blog io9 posted a fascinating four-part series called Reading Barsoom by John Marr:

1) How Edgar Rice Burroughs became one of the twentieth century's biggest scifi authors

2) A naked princess and slave rebellions in Edgar Rice Burroughs' first Martian trilogy

3) In Burroughs' second Barsoom series, the right girl winds up in the right body

4) In Burroughs' final Barsoom series, we see urban Mars, synthetic flesh, and Nazis of Jupiter

Also, the blog John Carter of Mars Reader updated its reviews of the Barsoom novels and posted a review of the once-indispensible and still hip A Guide to Barsoom (1976):

• A Princess of Mars (1917)

• The Gods of Mars (1918)

• Warlord of Mars (1919)

• Thuvia, Maid of Mars (1920)

• The Chessmen of Mars (1922)

• The Master Mind of Mars (1928)

• A Fighting Man of Mars (1931)

• Swords of Mars (1936)

• A Guide to Barsoom (1976) by John Flint Roy

Lastly, the Wednesday Journal of Oak Park and River Forest in Chicagoland reported on the recent annual gathering of the Burroughs Bibliophiles, which featured an appearance by the lovely Llana Jane Burroughs, great-granddaughter of Edgar Rice Burroughs!

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

Review: The Four Fingers of Death, new novel by Rick Moody

Charlie Jane Anders of the SF blog io9 has written a passionate review of The Four Fingers of Death (Hachette, 2010), a new novel penned 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.”

While Anders concludes that “It's really only when you get to the end that you can see what this has all been about, and the sometimes rambling epic feels utterly worthwhile, in the final analysis. It's not just a fitting tribute to Vonnegut, but a great love letter to science fiction. And even though death and disease may put an end to love, Moody leaves us feeling as though love will have the last word,” The Four Fingers of Death looks as petrified as the novel’s cover art.

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

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

Martian Rainbow (1991), a hard science fiction novel by physicist Robert L. Forward

Pictured: Paperback (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992), #37772, 308 p., $4.99. Cover art by Jim Burns. Here's the promotional piece from the back cover:

The battle for Mars was brief and almost bloodless. General Alexander Armstrong led U.N. forces to stunning victory over what he considered the Russian usurpers of the red planet. He returned to Earth for a hero’s welcome, leaving the cold, sparsely settled world to the scientists -- and his twin brother, Dr. Augustus Armstrong, new Governor of Mars.

Alex’s Martian conquest was his ticket to the White House. As Infinite Lord and President of the United States, his ambition was complete control of all of Earth -- and of Mars!

Gus wanted only to be left in peace to direct his research programs. But as Alex’s power grew, so did the danger that he and fanatical followers would disband the distant, struggling colony. And Alex wouldn’t hesitate to use force against any who defied him.

Mars must be ready to defend herself, or die.

Gus Armstrong could not know that the slim chance for human independence -- even survival -- on Mars lay with the frozen remains of an ancient Martian creature, dead for more than two billion years!

Martian Rainbow has an interesting 18-page appendix titled “New Colonists' Guide to Mars” (2047), which covers dry facts about Mars, moons, clock and calendar, money, atmosphere, carbon dioxide poisoning, fires, places and normally unoccupied camps.

According to the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Literature (2004), Forward's novel is a “restrained political fantasy” layered with “libertarian rhetoric.”

A brief 1991 review from Library Journal concluded that Martian Rainbow is “not an essential purchase,” while a longer piece from Kirkus Reviews concluded that Forward’s novel is “a sophomoric rehash of standard notions, with cartoon characters and strained plotting, though the accurate, informative Marsology helps.” A more traditional review by Robert B. Schmunk of Rice University concluded that “despite the massive problems I had with Martian Rainbow, I still found much of the book fascinating.”

Review: Rhone, a new dark heroic fantasy novel by John A. Karr

The blog Fantasy Book Critic has a review of Rhone (2010), a new dark heroic fantasy novel set on Mars that was written by eclectic American writer John A. Karr, inspired by legendary writers Robert E. Howard, Michael Moorcock, Karl Edward Wagner and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and published as a trade paperback by UK-based Wild Wolf Publishing. In short, the review concludes: “Give Rhone a try if you have like dark sword and sorcery tales or heroic fantasy, as for me this was another highly enjoyable book and John A. Karr becomes another addition to my list of authors to watch out for."

Review: Liz Williams’ 2008 novel Winterstrike

Niall Harrison of Torque Control, a blog affiliated with the British Science Fiction Association, has posted an extensive review of British SF&F author Liz Williams’ 2008 novel Winterstrike, which features the blustery city of Winterstrike on a colonized Mars governed by matriarchs. Winterstrike is on the reading list of the Science Fiction Foundation’s fourth annual Masterclass in Science Fiction Criticism, to be held later this week at Middlesex University in London.

Review of new John Carter of Mars: The Jesse Marsh Years comic book collection

The website First Comics News has a nice review of the new Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars: The Jesse Marsh Years (Dark Horse Comics, May 2010) reprinted 1950s comic book collection, concluding: “Editor Samantha Robertson, Designer David Nestelle and Digital Restorer Andy Fisher have lovingly brought this collection to life without putting too much of their own stamp on it. They’ve just reproduced it as faithfully and beautifully as they could, so the work could go right ahead and speak for itself. The ability to know when to get out of the way and just let that happen is one of the best qualities of this Dark Horse team […] fine example of the comics medium which I give a well-deserved 9 out of 10.” I bought this hardcover book a few weeks ago. No regrets!

Review of new John Carter of Mars: The Jesse Marsh Years comic book collection

The blog JCOM Reader has an insightful review of the new Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars: The Jesse Marsh Years (Dark Horse Comics, May 2010) reprinted 1950s comic book collection, concluding: “In the end the book is probably going to split John Carter fans. Some will probably enjoy it and some will probably not like it for differing reasons. The presentation by Dark Horse is pretty good though -- a nice hardcover binding, original covers and inside art showing the different creatures of Barsoom -- and a nice introduction by Love and Rockets co-creator Marco Hernandez at least gives it an A for effort for B material.” I bought the book but haven't had a chance to look at it closely.

Mars Crossing, 2000 novel by Geoffrey A. Landis

Mars Crossing (2000), a science fiction novel by scientist and award-winning author Geoffrey A. Landis.

Pictured: Paperback (New York: Tor Books, 2001) 434 p., $7.99. Here’s the promotional piece from the back cover:

By the middle of the 21st century, humanity has finally landed men on Mars -- only to watch helplessly as the first two missions end in catastrophe and death.

With resources running out, a third -- and perhaps final -- mission to Mars is hastily mounted, with a crew of four men and two women. But from the moment of their arrival on Mars, everything begins to go wrong. The fuel tanks that were to have supplied their return trip are found corroded and empty. Their supplies are running out and their life support systems are beginning to fail. And any rescue mission won't reach them for months, or even years -- if at all.

The crew's only hope for survival lies in a desperate plan: an agonizing trek halfway across the surface of Mars to a ship designed to carry only half their number. Torn by conflict and dissent, and troubled by secrets that endanger them all, they must embark on an ordeal that will test them to the limits of endurance.

Mars Crossing has received quite a few positive reviews and many kind words over the past decade, including these by the late Mac Tonnies:

Geoffrey Landis' deceptively breezy Martian odyssey just might be the best "mission to Mars" novel ever written. Panoramic and insightful, Landis' story of a crew of stranded astronauts forced to circumnavigate an alien world is presented in short chapters of one or two pages. Fortunately, the whole is much more than the sum of its parts. Landis accomplishes a taut adventure peopled by interesting characters. And the rigorous portayal of Mars itself is top-notch; never has the stark landscape of another world been rendered with such subtlety and narrative savvy. As with the best of near-future science fiction, Mars Crossing reads with a forbidding -- and exhilerating -- sense of inevitability.

Less complimentary are these concluding words from a review by James Sallis published in the August 2001 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction:

While certainly interesting enough, Landis's characters never quite come alive or register quite true. His approach is reductive, so that too often they're rendered as little more than their quirks: this one out for revenge, this one living a lie, this one ... I found myself longing to know what they were eating. And to hear from one of them just how badly those suits stank.

Mars Crossing was nominated for a Nebula Award and won the Locus Poll Award for Best First Novel.

Monster Model Review: Rat bat spider from 1959 film Angry Red Planet

In 2007, a geek named Rob Mattison presented a cool three-minute video review of Angry Red Spider, a resin model kit inspired by the Cold War American science fiction film Angry Red Planet (1959). Manufactured by Ultratumba Productions and sculpted by Paul Schiola, you can buy the kit off of eBay for about $50.

Review of Alexander Jablokov’s 1996 Mars novel River of Dust

Fan Tim Martin has an informative review of a work that’s new to me: River of Dust (1996), by American writer Alexander Jablokov. In short, Martin concludes that this science fiction novel, set largely on Mars, exhibits “Great world development and vivid setting but confusing plot and characters.” River of Dust was also reviewed in Locus, Analog, Asimov's and The New York Review of Science Fiction.

Pyr reprints Ian McDonald's 2001 magic-realist novel Ares Express

The Pyr reprint of award-winning British author Ian McDonald’s 2001 novel Ares Express has landed on bookstore and library shelves. The follow-up to Desolation Road (1988, 2009), McDonald’s acclaimed debut novel, Ares Express is set on a terraformed Mars and stars fusion-powered locomotives.

A Mars of the imagination, like no other, in a colourful, witty SF novel; Taking place in the kaleidoscopic future of Ian McDonald's Desolation Road, Ares Express is set on a terraformed Mars where fusion-powered locomotives run along the network of rails that is the planet's circulatory system and artificial intelligences reconfigure reality billions of times each second. One young woman, Sweetness Octave Glorious-Honeybun Asiim 12th, becomes the person upon whom the future -- or futures -- of Mars depends. Big, picaresque, funny; taking the Mars of Ray Bradbury and the more recent, terraformed Marses of authors such as Kim Stanley Robinson and Greg Bear, Ares Express is a wild and woolly magic-realist SF novel, featuring lots of bizarre philosophies, strange, mind-stretching ideas and trains as big as city blocks.

SF&F critic Rich Horton reviewed Ares Express for the SF Site in 2002, concluding, "This may not be the most serious or the most significant SF novel of the past year, but it just might be the most fun. I loved it wholeheartedly."

More recently, Publishers Weekly gave the Ares Express reprint a positive review, concluding “McDonald’s fantastic Mars is vividly detailed and owes much to Bradbury’s Martian stories. Despite a bit of hand waving around technology that is glibly indistinguishable from magic, this sequel is entirely worthy of its rightly lauded predecessor."

Pat's Fantasy Hotlist has three copies of Ares Express that it is giving away. The announcement was posted on April 14, 2010, but I'm not sure when the deadline is.

Pictured: Ares Express (2010), with artwork by Stephan Martinière.