Forthcoming mockbuster film: Princess of Mars, starring Traci Lords and Antonio Sabàto, Jr.

The Asylum, a motion picture studio located in Burbank, California, is scheduled to release a low-budget film entitled Princess of Mars direct-to-DVD in late December 2009. An adaptation of the classic 1912 story written by author Edgar Rice Burroughs, Princess of Mars stars actor and model Antonio Sabàto, Jr. as Civil War Confederate soldier John Carter and former porn star Traci Lords as the Martian princess Dejah Thoris. The film, 90 minutes long, is classified as science fiction.

The guy who plays the character Tal Hajus has even posted a few photos over on Flickr!

University of Liverpool acquires rare first edition of 1905 Gullivar Jones of Mars novel

According to a press release issued by the University of Liverpool on August 18th, the institution's Science Fiction Foundation Collection has acquired a rare first edition of Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation (1905), an influential science fiction novel written by British author Edwin L. Arnold that tells the story of an American soldier’s journey to Mars. The novel was "poorly received upon publication in 1905, but has since earned a reputation as one of the most important works of 20th century science fiction." According to Andy Sawyer, the university's SF librarian, “Due to the lack of interest in the original publication of Gullivar Jones, however, the first edition of the book became rare and collectors have not seen a copy come up for sale for more than 20 years." The university acquired its copy through a bequest from the late British book dealer Ken Slater, who died in February 2008.

While first edition copies of Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation are "extremely rare and have been known to attract valuations of more than £1,000 at auction" ($1,109 on AbeBooks), you can read the novel online or download it as an e-book through Project Gutenberg or ManyBooks.net. Or, if you prefer, you can listen to a reading of the novel thanks to the folks at LibriVox.

Some SF scholars consider Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation to be the inspiration behind Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel A Princess of Mars (1912, 1917).

Pictured: University of Liverpool Science Fiction Librarian Andy Sawyer holding first edition of Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation.

Writer Shawn Scarber aims to complete military SF novel War Dogs of Mars by November

Armed with new clarity about his mission, speculative fiction writer Shawn Scarber aims to finish writing his military science fiction novel War Dogs of Mars by mid-November 2009. Set on the Red Planet, War Dogs of Mars is about a small force of freedom fighters who attempt to “push back the pigs of the USSR who have been seduced by the evils of the black market.” If you’re interested in following Scarber’s “mundane thought process as I work through this thing, I’ve set up a special twitter feed just to blab on about my process."

Shawn Scarber (Shawn Scarber-Deggans) lives in Texas and is a Clarion West graduate (2006) and a founding member of the North Texas Speculative Fiction Workshop. His fiction has appeared in various online venues and a few small press publications.

Review of Frederik Pohl’s 1976 Nebula Award-winning novel Man Plus

Bill the sci-fi guy of the blog From A Sci-Fi Standpoint has a written a nice review of Frederik Pohl's novel Man Plus (1976), which won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in the mid-1970s. As Bill notes, most of the novel takes place in a laboratory on Earth, where a fellow named Roger Torroway is transformed into a cyborg capable of surviving the harsh environment on Mars. “A fairly average reading experience, overall,” Bill gives Man Plus a rating of 3 stars out of 5.

Pictured: Cover of first edition of Man Plus

Mars art: Silhouette portrait of John Carter by ... Rockwell Kent?

Thanks to Jeff Doten of the website Barsoomia, I found this beautiful piece of Mars art depicting John Carter that kind of looks like an Art Deco painting or print created in the early 20th century by American artist Rockwell Kent. Actually, this mock pulp magazine cover was done recently by Pixar artist William Erik Evans. He "designed it to look like an old pulp magazine cover that John Burroughs [son of author Edgar Rice Burroughs] would actually write for."

Author Caitlín R. Kiernan on the future of her writing: “October is all Mars”

In a recent entry in her LiveJournal, author Caitlín R. Kiernan set forth her plan for the next few months:
“Half a day off before I try to write two issues of Sirenia Digest in what remains of August. This is called attempting to get a little breathing room. September will be consumed by the next new novel, getting it up and off the ground, and October is all Mars. This is my plan, though I am reminded that a plan is just a list of things that never happens.”

Does this mean that Caitlín R. Kiernan's long-dormant, stand-alone novella The Dinosaurs of Mars is roaring to life again?

10 things Ray Bradbury and musician Nikki Sixx have in common: #9 - Didn't attend college

#9. Neither SF&F author Ray Bradbury nor Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx attended college.

Ray Bradbury graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1938 but didn’t attend college because he couldn’t afford it. However, he has received honorary degrees from several schools, including Columbia College Chicago, Woodbury University in Burbank, CA, and National University of Ireland, Galway at Los Angeles.

Nikki Sixx was expelled from Roosevelt High School in Seattle in the mid-1970s and did not attend college.

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

Should Hollywood turn Ian McDonald’s 1988 novel Desolation Road into a film?

Tired of all the damned Hollywood remakes, the geeks over at the Den of Geek have drawn up a list of the “Top 10 potential sci-fi franchises Hollywood ignored.” The novel Desolation Road (1988, Pyr 2009), by British SF author Ian McDonald, is #6 on the list. Here’s what the geeks have to say:

“Since this debut novel spans several generations of Martian colonists, focusing on a town growing beside the cross-planet railroad, I'm not sure how it would work. But the image of impossibly vast steampunkish trains hurtling across the boundless Martian desert, with whole families of engineers and drivers living and dying onboard, is too impressive to not want to see on the big screen. Perhaps the sequel, Ares Express, would work better as a film with a human narrative -- but it might be best produced in Japan where the idea of reality being altered at the whim of godlike entities is less outré.”

The geeks haven't persuaded me, but both Desolation Road and Ares Express (2001) are worth reading. John DeNardo of SF Signal recently reviewed the new Pyr reprint of Desolation Road.

I'd rather see a spin on Frederik Pohl's 1976 Nebula Award-winning novel Man Plus: Woman Plus, starring Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos.

Pictured: Cover of 1988 British first edition of Desolation Road

Graphic novel adaptation of Ray Bradbury's classic The Martian Chronicles coming down the canal

In a wide-ranging, 13-minute video interview entitled "Ray Bradbury: The Illustrated Man", posted on the website of publishing house Macmillan, the timeless guy of Sci-Fi talks about cartoons, comic strips, carnivals, graphic novels, Mars, Disney, flying, and his classic novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953). Although the interview is really part of a promotional campaign for the new authorized graphic adaptation of Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury also reveals that a graphic novel adaptation of The Martian Chronicles (1950) will be coming down the canal in the near future!

Pictured: Descent (1989), by artist Michael Whelan

“The Waters of Mars”: Doctor Who has a problem with older women in authority

A recent interview with Doctor Who actor David Tennant and writer Russell T. Davies on the BBC’s forthcoming television special “The Waters of Mars” reveals that the Time Lord feels threatened by his new companion, an older woman named Adelaide, played by actress Lindsay Duncan. Here's an excerpt from the interview:

Q: The Doctor has had pretty steady companions for a few series, and then for the specials the Doctor has been solo with new companions. How was it to shoot those specials? How did that change the dynamic on the set for you?

David Tennant: It's been slightly different in each one. In the first one, we had Michelle Ryan who, for all intents and purposes, was the companion, and she was fantastic. Although she was a very distinct character, she was in the mold of the traditional young, beautiful woman, who is also feisty. But, in the next special, the closest thing we have to a companion is Lindsey Duncan, who is an older woman, which is not something the show has done before. And, she probably thinks she's more in charge than the Doctor is. In many ways, she is, actually. So, that's a different dynamic.

Pictured: Actress Lindsay Duncan as Adelaide.

“Sunrise,” a new vignette written by a Martian

The blog Barsoomian Dreams has an interesting new vignette entitled “Sunrise” (2009), written by a Martian and translated into English by Jennifer Johnson. It’s about a human who sees the sunrise break over the outer rim of the Valles Marineris. Here’s the opening line: “The ice from last night was melting on the rocky plateau that lay before him.”

Los Angeles Times on original book dust jackets and the counterfeiting market

Allison Hoover Bartlett has written an awesome article in today’s Los Angeles Times entitled “Intrigue, ingenuity and controversy in the library world.” It’s about the value of original book dust jackets and the counterfeiting market. On a positive note, Bartlett's article mentions a reputable company called Facsimile Dust Jackets of San Francisco. Check out these cool facsimiles of first edition dust jackets that you can buy for just $22 each:

• A Princess of Mars (1917), by Edgar Rice Burroughs

• The Gods of Mars (1918), by Edgar Rice Burroughs

• The Warlord of Mars (1919), by Edgar Rice Burroughs

• Thuvia, Maid of Mars (1920), by Edgar Rice Burroughs

• The Chessmen of Mars (1922), by Edgar Rice Burroughs

• The Master Mind of Mars (1928), by Edgar Rice Burroughs

• A Fighting Man of Mars (1931), by Edgar Rice Burroughs

• Planet Plane (1936), by John Beynon

• Swords of Mars (1936), by Edgar Rice Burroughs

• Synthetic Men of Mars (1940), by Edgar Rice Burroughs

• A Martian Odyssey and Others (1949), by Stanley G. Weinbaum

• Red Planet (1949), by Robert A. Heinlein

• The Martian Chronicles (1950), by Ray Bradbury

• The Sands of Mars (1951), by Arthur C. Clarke

• Marooned on Mars (1952), by Lester Del Rey

• The Martian Way and Other Stories (1955), by Isaac Asimov

Allison Hoover Bartlett is the author of The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession, which is scheduled to land on bookstore shelves in September 2009.

Pictured: Marooned on Mars (1952), by Lester Del Rey

Issac Asimov’s Mars, a 1991 anthology edited by Gardner Dozois

Issac Asimov’s Mars (1991), an anthology of nine stories set on Mars that originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Edited by Gardner R. Dozois.

At left: Paperback original (New York: Ace Books, 1991), 225 p. Cover art by Bill Binger. Featuring nine fantastic journeys to the Red Planet, here’s the blurb from the back cover:

Destination: Mars. Your Tour Guides: Today’s Masters of Science Fiction. Gregory Benford attempts to drink “All the Beer on Mars.” Allen M. Steele reviews the future of rock-and-roll-and-mankind, playing “Live from the Mars Hotel.” George Alec Effinger reveals the startling reason why “Mars Needs Beatniks.” Brian W. Aldiss sets the focus on fear and explores “The Difficulties Involved in Photographing Nix Olympica.” Plus: Other brilliant tales from the pages of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine – exciting stories by Robert Frazier, Ian McDonald, Kim Stanley Robinson, Eric Vinicoff, Lawrence Watt-Evans.

Here’s the table of contents, with comments by Gardner Dozois:

• “Live from the Mars Hotel” (1988), by Allen Steele. A “hard-edged, yet gently ironic story ... which takes us traveling very far indeed to hear the music of home.”

• “The Difficulties Involved in Photographing Nix Olympica” (1986), by Brian W. Aldiss. “He takes us along to a military base on a future Mars, and shows us that what’s most important is not so much what you see, but how you see it.”

• “Windwagon Smith and the Martians” (1989), by Lawrence Watt-Evans. A “whimsical story of a journey to a Mars that ought to have been.”

• “Retrovision” (1988), by Robert Frazier. “He shows us that the old saying about how we live on only in the memories of those who loved us may be a good deal truer than we think.”

• “The Great Martian Railroad Race” (1988), by Eric Vinicoff. A “clever and suspenseful story of entrepreneur Timothy Lo, who thinks that he knows just what the developing Teran colonies of the Red Planet need - a railroad!”

• “All the Beer on Mars” (1988), by Gregory Benford. “He takes us along on a near-future expedition to the Red Planet - one that’s going to run into a few surprises.”

• “The Catharine Wheel” (1983), by Ian McDonald. An “evocative dream-vivid portrait of everyday life on a future Mars.”

• “Mars Needs Beatniks” (1983), by George Alec Effinger. “In the remarkably silly story ... he takes some of the Beat Generation On the Road to a brand-new destination.”

• “Green Mars” (1985), by Kim Stanley Robinson. “One of the classic Mars stories of the eighties - perhaps the classic Mars story - it was the first story I thought of when I began to assemble this anthology, and clearly the one story that had to be in the book. You’ll soon see why, as Robinson sweeps us along with him to a vividly realized future Mars, for an exciting and evocative story about a band of men and women determined to climb the tallest mountain in the Solar System - Olympus Mons.”

“Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs,” a new speculative fiction story by Leonard Richardson

Strange Horizons, a web-based weekly magazine of and about speculative fiction, recently published
“Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs” (2009), a new speculative fiction story written by Leonard Richardson. On the surface, the story is about two talking dinosaurs from Mars. I'm a big fan of dinosaurs, but all I could think about was the PBS children's television series Dragon Tales. In any case, here are the opening lines of “Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs”:

"I want to buy a gun," said the Thymomenoraptor. He moved his foreclaw along the glass case of pistols, counting them off: one, two, three, four. "That one." He tapped the case; the glass squeaked.

"Why would a dinosaur need a gun?" asked the shop owner.

"Self-defense." ...

According to a biographical piece at the end of the story, “Leonard Richardson became a programmer because paleontology involved too much outdoor work. He writes prose and open source software from his home in New York.”

Shh! Conversion story of SF author John C. Wright mentions Man from Mars but not Jesus Christ

As a lifelong Roman Catholic who frequently sins by coveting my neighbor's wife and worshipping the money changers on Wall Street, I found a lot of humor in science fiction and fantasy author John C. Wright’s written account of his recent conversion to Roman Catholicism from atheism. The funniest thing is that Mr. Wright’s conversion account mentions the Man from Mars, Tolkein, Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, Nietzsche, Sartre, Caesar, Scrooge, Bishop Berkeley and Mr. Johnson, but doesn’t mention Jesus Christ.

Letter from Paul to Mr. Wright: If Pope Benedict XVI finds out, he'll excommunicate you from the Church!

Pictured: Saint Paul, author of the original conversion story.

10 things Ray Bradbury and musician Nikki Sixx have in common: #10 - Motley crew in L.A.

#10. Both SF&F author Ray Bradbury and Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx are Angelenos who once palled around with a motley crew doing crazy things.

Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, in 1920 and moved to Los Angeles as a teenager with his family in the mid 1930s. Initially living “about four blocks from the Uptown Theater,” he has lived in the City of Angels ever since. As a young man, Bradbury palled around with members of the now legendary Clifton’s Cafeteria Science Fiction Club: Forrest Ackerman, Leigh Brackett, Fredric Brown, Ray Harryhausen, Robert Heinlein, Henry Kuttner, Emil Petaja, and Jack Williamson. According to a 1975 interview published in Conversations with Ray Bradbury (2004), he and Ray Harryhausen “became fast friends. I used to go out to his house. He made a life mask of me and put together a liquid latex horror-mask for me to wear on Halloween back in 1938. And I went to the Paramount Theatre with Ray Harryhausen and Forrest Ackerman, wearing this liquid latex green Martian sort of mask, and had a wonderful time. So you see how crazy we all were.”

Nikki Sixx was born in San Jose, California, in 1958 and lived in Los Angeles as a child with his mother, “on the ninth floor of the St. James Club -- then known as the Sunset Towers -- on Sunset Boulevard.” After moving around various states, Sixx moved back to L.A. from Seattle as a teenager in the late 1970s. He has lived in and around L.A. ever since. As a young man, Sixx palled around with the other three members of the now legendary band Mötley Crüe: Vince Neil, Tommy Lee, and Mick Mars. According to The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band‎ (2002), Sixx “bought my first real car, a Porsche, after landing a publishing deal with Warner/Chappell. It was my pride and joy. Tommy [bandmate Tommy Lee] and I would drive down Sunset Boulevard with the pedal to the floor at 2 A.M., swigging off fifths of Jack. We didn’t realize how stupid drunk driving was until a year later.”

Pictured: Photograph of Ray Bradbury & Forrest J Ackerman, in Los Angeles, 1938. Ackerman is wearing the mask Ray Harryhausen made for Bradbury.