Retro collection by Scott Edelman includes 2002 story “Mom, the Martians, and Me”

A new retrospective collection of American science fiction, fantasy and horror author Scott Edelman’s best science fiction short stories from the past thirty years has just been published by Fantastic Books. Titled What We Still Talk About, the collection includes “Mom, the Martians, and Me,” which was originally published in British editor Peter Crowther's anthology Mars Probes (2002) and is one of my favorite stories about Martians!

A clever short story in which the owner of a small-town newspaper tries to convince a police officer that his mother, who is obsessed with UFOs and believes her husband was abducted by aliens, was kidnapped by little green men from the Red Planet, “Mom, the Martians, and Me” has a cool passage describing how Mom turned her bedroom into an astronomical museum and space library:

With Dad gone, the bedroom that they had shared for years was transformed into a makeshift astronomical museum. Star maps covered every available inch of wall space, even hiding the bay window that had once cast light over their twin beds. A floor-to-ceiling mosaic of the surface of Mars as seen from space filled one wall of the room, looming like a giant unblinking eye. Mom had planted a silver pushpin where she was sure he was being kept.

Odd books were everywhere. She’d always been an avid reader, but only of nonfiction. She could not stand made-up lives. Science fiction distressed her most of all. It had nothing to do with real life, she said. Now, she might as well have been living in a science fiction novel, for the library she’d built to wall off the world was so fantastic as to make any fiction, however wild, seem mundane by comparison. Until Mom went strange and I lost her, I had not realized that there were so many first-person accounts by people who claimed to have been scooped up by spacecraft and later returned. On the bulging shelves next to these grew scrapbooks of clippings from supermarket gossip rags, stories telling of women who had been impregnated by Martians, teenagers who had been stolen as youths and returned middle-aged, and old men whose end-stage colon cancer had been cured by the touch of alien fingers.

Children’s small windup toys decorated her end table, rocket ships and alien robots that were sometimes left scattered on the floor where I would trip over them. The area around her bed became littered with badly printed newsletters which purported to tell the truth about a government conspiracy to hide from the public the secrets of crashed alien crafts and their inhabitants....

Scott Edelman was the editor of the 1990s magazine Science Fiction Age and is currently the editor of the SF website Blastr. He maintains his own website and a LiveJournal.

[via Ian Randal Strock of SF Scope]

Mission to Mars film actor Gary Sinise gives video tour of Reagan Presidential Library

The not-so-shocking news that two Russian spies were arrested just over the border in the People’s Republic of Cambridge provides a great opportunity to watch Hollywood actor Gary Sinise, who starred in the not-so-bad film Mission to Mars (2000), give a video tour of the majestic Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.



In case you didn’t know, even The Gipper read John Carter of Mars books! Check out this letter Reagan wrote in 1981 to the Dixon Public Library of Illinois.

Freas Martian enjoys Doctorow launch at Merril Collection in Toronto

Dressed in a Gunner Cade shirt, blogger, copyright activist and SF author Cory Doctorow launched his latest novel, Makers (Tor 2009), this past weekend from the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy at the Toronto Public Library. As shown in this photograph posted on Doctorow’s blog, the well-known Martian painted by SF&F artist Kelly Freas seemed to enjoy the show.

Oddly, the Freas Martian is not usually associated with the writings of author Judith Merril, the “little mother of science fiction,” for whom the Merril Collection is named. Rather, it is usually associated with Frederic Brown’s humorous novella, "Martians, Go Home!" (1954), which was later expanded into the novel Martians, Go Home (1955).

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:

Massachusetts prep school to discard books, install $12,000 cappuccino machine in library

Last week, The Boston Globe printed an article about Cushing Academy, an elite prep school located in central Massachusetts, and its plan to embrace a digital future. In short, the academy is spending nearly $500,000 to remove the books, stacks and reference desk from its library so that it can create a “learning center,” complete with 18 e-book readers ($10,000), three large flat screen TVs ($42,000), laptop-friendly carrels ($20,000), and a coffee shop ($50,000) that will include a cappuccino machine ($12,000).

“When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books," said James Tracy, headmaster of Cushing Academy. “This isn’t Fahrenheit 451.We’re not discouraging students from reading. We see this as a natural way to shape emerging trends and optimize technology.”

The most interesting part of the article is the 450+ comments readers posted on The Boston Globe’s website. Outage or jealousy?

Both Inkwell Foundation and Authors Guild need teachable moment on nonprofit governance

One of the sad things about some well-educated and successful professionals in the nonprofit world is their ignorance about industry “Best Practices.”

The Boston Globe reports that the Inkwell Foundation, a charity controlled by distinguished African-American scholar and Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., plans to file an amendment to the organization’s 2007 IRS Form 990, after questions were raised about “research grants” awarded to staff members.

Meanwhile, the Authors Guild has neglected to post on its website a biography or photograph of attorney Paul Aiken, the organization’s longtime Executive Director. Aiken is one of the key players in the proposed Google Book Search Settlement, an agreement which “may be the biggest book deal in U.S. history.”

Best Practices? Nope. Time for a couple of teachable moments? Yep!

Take the University of Maryland's 1997 "Mars in Science Fiction Quiz"

Want to test your knowledge of science fiction books and films about Mars and Martians? Take the University of Maryland’s “Mars in Science Fiction Quiz,” which was created in the Fall of 1997 as part of the university’s Mars in Fact and Fiction exhibit. Housed in “The Mars Room” at the Hornbake Library, the exhibit displayed items such as the U.S. postage stamp honoring NASA's Pathfinder, miniature models of Pathfinder and Sojourner, and old paperback versions of H. G. Wells' seminal novel The War of the Worlds (1898). In addition, the walls of the exhibit area were decorated with Hollywood movie posters, a NASA poster of Mars, 3-D photographs
of the Martian surface, a cardboard model of the planet's Valles Marineris, illustrations from the original serialization of The War of the Worlds in Pearson's magazine, newspaper articles, and copies of script pages from the famous 1938 Orson Welles radio broadcast.

Ready? Here’s the quiz:

1. What well-known American writer, in a series of novels, referred to Mars as "Barsoom"?

2. In the 1938 Orson Welles radio program where did the fictional Martian invasion of the USA begin?

3. In what novel did a noted science-fiction writer have a colony named "Port Lowell"?

4. What was the name of the 12-year-old boy-hero of the 1953 movie Invaders from Mars?

5. In what 1984 science-fiction movie was the Orson Welles 1938 radio play suggested to be a cover for a real invastion of the Earth by aliens?

6. What famous short story about Mars, written by Stanley Weinbaum, featured a Martian named "Tweel"?

7. Who played the scientist Dr. Clayton Forrester in the 1953 movie The War of the Worlds?

8. What famous English novelist and essayist called Mars "Malacandra"?

9. Who is the author of the trilogy, Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars?

10. In what famous science-fiction novel was the Martian verb "to grok" introduced? What does "to grok" mean?

Although no answers to the quiz are provided, I’ve figured out the answers and posted them in the comments section. I answered most, but not all, of the questions correctly. Good luck!

Pictured: Cover of 1976 Andor Classic paperback edition of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds.

F is for Fiction: Law school's Public Index to $125m Google Book Search Settlement

With each passing week, New York Law School’s highly anticipated “The Public Index” to the proposed $125 million Google Book Search Settlement seems more and more like a solid piece of Information Age fiction. According to an increasingly humorous press release of May 5, 2009, announcing the launch of the school’s Public Interest Book Search Initiative:

Later this May, the Law School will introduce The Public Index, a Web site that will feature discussion forums, a comprehensive archive of settlement documents and related commentary, and a tool for users to insert their analysis and commentary on individual paragraphs of the proposed settlement.

“The Public Index will respond to the enormous public interest in the lawsuit by providing both high-quality information about the issues and a forum for the public to the make their own voices heard,” Professor Grimmelmann said.

The Public Index will feature an “open source amicus brief” -- a wiki that provides site users with the opportunity to edit and discuss a draft of the Institute’s brief to the court explaining the benefits and risks of the proposed settlement from a public-interest perspective.“This will be a legal brief of the people, by the people, and for the people,” Professor Grimmelmann said.

Professor James Grimmelmann is an expert on the Authors Guild v. Google lawsuit and author of “How to Fix the Google Book Search Settlement.”

Hopefully, "D is for Digitize," a conference on the Google Book Search Lawsuit to be held at New York Law School, October 8 through October 10, 2009, is not fictitious.

Interview with author Jack Williamson about the 1947 UFO crash near Roswell, New Mexico

The book Little Gray Men (2000), by Toby Smith, has
a neat interview with author Jack Williamson, the godfather of science fiction, about the UFO crash in early July 1947 near Roswell, New Mexico, and the influence it has had on science fiction writers. Williamson grew up in eastern New Mexico and had just moved to
the small city of Portales as a middle-aged man when the UFO crashed, about 90 miles away. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

Question: You lived in Portales when the incident occurred. Any recollections of it?

Jack Williamson: Not really. Oh, I don't doubt that something fell out of the sky. A high-altitude glider or a parachute maybe.

Question: Ever been to the crash site?

Jack Williamson: I didn’t go to Roswell much as a young man. And I had no reason to go there on the fiftieth anniversary. I’m not sure I know where the site is. TV and the newspapers gave me enough. People made a lot of money off that; it was commercially a big success. But people are people. I’m interested in people; I’ve spent my life writing about them --
as a spectator and an observer.

Question: Harlan Ellison, another colleague of yours, is terribly critical of Roswell, particularly because on the very day we landed a robot on Mars after two decades of preparation, people in southeast New Mexico were, Ellison said, buying hot dogs and saucer souvenirs and looking around for space garbage in a rancher’s field. Any thoughts?

Jack Williamson: [Laughs.] It takes all kinds, I suppose. Most of what we know about Mars has already been put into books. But you know some of those books, take the Mars one by Edgar Rice Burroughs, they didn’t do very well after NASA sent its Viking probes to Mars in 1976. What’s interesting to me is that the photos of Mars look a great deal like the landscape of New Mexico. By the way, in the early 1950s, I wrote a syndicated comic strip for a while that originated in the New York Daily News. It was called Beyond Mars. Still, the two things happening at the same time -- landing on Mars and celebrating Roswell -- do put things into perspective. It makes you pause to consider what truly is important.

Jack Williamson taught at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales for more than 40 years. The university's Jack Williamson Science Fiction Library is named after him and the local public Library has a wing devoted to him and his writings. Williamson died at his home in Portales in November 2006 at the age of 98.

Proponents of $125 million Google Book Search Settlement post some easy summer reading

Proponents of the proposed $125 million Google Book Search Settlement have undertaken an early summer public relations campaign to convince authors, publishers and readers that the settlement is to the benefit of all. The material is a bit dry and not as exciting as Leigh Brackett’s novel The Sword of Rhiannon (1953), but at least the reading is easy:

• Letter to “Dear Fellow Authors,” from Roy Blount Jr., president of the Authors Guild, dated June 24, 2009, urging them not to lose their heads over the possibility of a Google monopoly of orphan books.

• Document titled “Unlocking a Vast Archive of Out-of-Print Books: An Outline of Google Book Settlement Benefits,” prepared by the Authors Guild, posted on its website June 24, 2009.

• Letter to the editor of Britain’s Financial Times, from David Balto, antitrust expert and former U.S. Federal Trade Commission official, published June 24, 2009, explaining why booklovers should cheer Google’s plan.

• Letter to “Dear Industry Colleague,” from Tom Allen, president of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), dated June 25, 2009, informing them that if the proposed $125 million settlement is not approved by a federal court in October 2009, the litigation between AAP, the Authors Guild and Google may continue for years.

Can hardly wait to see what happens in October 2009!

In an age of Kindle-able books, Ray Bradbury tells Yahoo to go to hell

I never tire of listening to Ray Bradbury talk about his love for and the importance of books, reading and libraries. Approaching age 90, the timeless guy of Sci-Fi has a raging fire of passion inside him that will probably never be extinguished. The latest example is from an interview between Bradbury and artist Michael O’Kelly that was just published in California's Ventura County Reporter. Here’s an excerpt:

Michael O’Kelly: Today, in the schools, the English literature departments are encouraging children and teenagers to spend more and more time using the computer, and it seems to be a bit of a battle between using computers and reading books. How do we encourage kids and why is it so important for kids to be reading books instead of reading on a string?

Ray Bradbury: My answer to that is, Yahoo called me a few months ago and they wanted to put my books on the Internet, and I said, “Yahoo, listen to this, to hell with you! Go away! To hell with you! I believe in books!” So parents should say to the teachers, “Forget computers.” Put a book in their hands, it’s important; and they can carry it with them anywhere.

Ray Bradbury will kick off the H. P. Wright Library author series in Ventura, CA, on Saturday, June 20, 2009.

Ventura artist Michael O’Kelly is owner of California Pottery and Tile Works in Los Angeles and director of the Ray Bradbury Theater and Film Foundation.

Addendum: The June 20, 2009, issue of The New York Times has an article titled “A Literary Legend Fights for a Library,” which describes Ray Bradbury’s effort to raise money for the Ventura County public library system.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos criticizes Google Book Search Settlement; Public Index not on the shelf

CNET News reports that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos criticized the proposed Google Book Search Settlement at yesterday's Wired Business Conference in New York.

In related news, New York Law School has yet to shelve its The Public Index project in response to the proposed settlement. According to a NYLS press release dated May 5, 2009, The Public Index will consist of a website that features "discussion forums, a comprehensive archive of settlement documents and related commentary, and a tool for users to insert their analysis and commentary on individual paragraphs of the proposed settlement.” The project, which is being undertaken by students and overseen by renowned Professor James Grimmelmann, was scheduled to be launched “later this May.”

Looking ahead, the highly anticipated “Fairness Hearing” on the proposed Google Book Search Settlement will be held in U.S. federal court in New York on October 7, 2009.

Turning a page, Germany expresses concern about Google Book Search project

According to a recent news article by Reuters, the European Union will study Google’s Book Search project and the proposed $125 million Google Book Search settlement after Germany raised concerns that intellectual property is being stolen from German authors. Germany also said Google's book project could increase media ownership concentration and affect cultural diversity.

Students of the history of the printed word might recall German media conglomerate Bertelsmann A.G.’s historic 1998 acquisition of American publisher Random House, a transaction which was opposed by the Authors Guild but approved by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. "It's as if the New York Yankees were sold," said Paul Aiken, the executive director of the Authors Guild, at the time.
"We're losing one of the major players at a time when there's been a great deal of concern about consolidation and fear of book contract cancellations."

In 2002, a group of scholars revealed that Bertelsmann tried to
cover up its ties to the Nazi regime during World War II, links which allowed it to transform itself from a provincial Lutheran printing company into a mass-market publisher and the largest supplier of books (some filled with anti-Semetic themes) to the German Army. The scholars also concluded that Bertelsmann had probably profited from the use of Jewish slave labor at several printing plants in Lithuania.

Head librarian at University of Michigan supports $125m Google Book Search settlement

Google’s Good Deal for Libraries
The Washington Post, May 24, 2009
By Paul N. Courant

In his May 19 op-ed, "A Book Grab by Google," Brewster Kahle said that a court settlement involving Google, if approved, "would produce not one but two court-sanctioned monopolies. Google will have permission to bring under its sole control information that has been accessible through public institutions for centuries. In essence, Google will be privatizing our libraries."

As the steward of one of those libraries, a library that has had some 3 million of its works digitized by Google, let me assure readers that Google will not have a monopoly on the information [...]

Read the entire op-ed piece in The Washington Post.

Paul N. Courant is university librarian and dean of libraries at the University of Michigan.

The Nation: The book business and its woes

The Long Goodbye? The Book Business and its Woes
The Nation, May 20, 2009
By Elisabeth Sifton

Humanity has read, hoarded, discarded and demanded books for centuries; for centuries books have been intimately woven into our sense of ourselves, into the means by which we find out who we are and who we want to be. They have never been mere physical objects -- paper pages of a certain size and weight printed with text and sometimes images, bound together on the left -- never just cherished or reviled reminders of school-day torments, or mementos treasured as expressions of bourgeois achievement, or icons of aristocratic culture. They have been all these things and more. They have been instruments of enlightenment. [...]

Read the entire article in The Nation.

Pictured above: Johannes Gutenberg in the Age of Information.

Director of Internet Archive pens op-ed piece opposing $125m Google Book Search settlement

A Book Grab by Google
The Washington Post, May 19, 2009
By Brewster Kahle

A court in the Southern District of New York will soon make a decision that could determine our digital future.

A ruling is expected shortly on a proposed settlement of lawsuits filed against Google in 2005 by groups representing authors and publishers claiming that Google's book-scanning project violated copyright. When Google announced its project in 2004, the company said its goal was simple yet far-reaching. Like its search engine, which points people to Web sites, Google's book search product would help people find information in books and direct them to volumes in libraries and bookstores. [...]

Read the entire op-ed piece in The Washington Post.

Brewster Kahle is founder and director of the Internet Archive and the Open Content Alliance.

Listen to a reading of Gulliver of Mars, a classic novel by Edwin L. Arnold

Thanks to a recent post by the blog QuasarDragon,
I’ll have to make some time to listen to fan James Christopher read Gulliver of Mars (1905), a long-lost classic of Martian SF adventure written by Edwin L. Arnold that predates Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel
A Princess of Mars (1912), which starred character John Carter of Mars. The audio files of Christopher’s reading of Gulliver of Mars, which is more than 6 hours, can be downloaded for free from LibriVox.

Here’s a synopsis of Gulliver of Mars, taken from LibriVox’s website:

This escapist novel first published in 1905 as Lieutenant Gullivar Jones: His Vacation follows the exploits of American Navy Lieutenant Gulliver Jones, a bold, if slightly hapless, hero who is magically transported to Mars; where he almost outwits his enemies, almost gets the girl, and almost saves the day. Somewhat of a literary and chronological bridge between H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jones’ adventures provide an evocative mix of satire and sword-and-planet adventure.

Interested in old libraries? Checkout “The Library in Edwin Lester Linden Arnold's Gulliver of Mars (1905)", a piece which I posted on this blog back in October 2008.

Pictured above: Cover of the 1964? Ace paperback, with artwork by Frank Frazetta.

Libraries support $125 million Google Books Search settlement, whisper concerns

Libraries Ask Judge to Monitor Books Settlement
The New York Times, May 4, 2009
By Miguel Helft

Three groups representing libraries, including the American Library Association, the largest such group in the United States, have asked a federal judge to exercise “vigorous oversight” over a class-action settlement between Google, authors and publishers.

The two other groups are the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Association of Research Libraries. The groups did not oppose the settlement, but in a court filing they asked Judge Denny Chin of Federal District Court to provide continuing oversight of it, to ensure that the prices Google charges for subscriptions to its digital library aren’t artificially high because of a lack of competition. They have also asked Judge Chin to ensure that the privacy of readers of books made available online by Google is protected. [...]

Read the entire article in The New York Times.

Justice Dept. opens antitrust inquiry into $125 million Google Books Search settlement

Justice Dept. Opens Inquiry Into Google Books Deal
The New York Times, April 28, 2009
By Miguel Helft

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Justice Department has begun an inquiry into the antitrust implications of Google’s settlement with authors and publishers over its Google Book Search service, two people briefed on the matter said Tuesday.

Lawyers for the Justice Department have been in conversations in recent weeks with various groups opposed to the settlement, including the Internet Archive and Consumer Watchdog. More recently, Justice Department lawyers notified the parties to the settlement, including Google, and representatives for the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild, that they were looking into various antitrust issues related to the far-reaching agreement. [...]

Separately on Tuesday, Judge Denny Chin of Federal District Court in New York, who is overseeing the settlement, postponed by four months the May 5 deadline for authors to opt out of the settlement and for other parties to oppose it or file briefs. The decision follows requests by groups of authors and their heirs, who argued that authors needed more time to review the settlement. [...]

Read the entire article in The New York Times.

Philip K. Dick Trust joins call for more time to gubble through 334-page, $125 million Google Books Search settlement

Google Agrees to Settlement Delay
The Bookseller, April 28, 2009
By Philip Jones

Google, the US Author's Guild and the Association of American Publishers have acceded to a two-month delay to the resolution of the Google Settlement to allow those affected "more time to consider [their] rights and options". It follows a request made last week by a number of authors, including representatives of the estate of John Steinbeck, to the New York judge presiding over the Settlement to delay the agreement by four months. Google and the plaintiffs have asked the judge to deny the request for a four-month delay.

If the judge agrees to the delay the opt-out date could be be moved from 5th May 2009 to the 6th July, or even later, with the Fairness Hearing (at which the Settlement will be rejected or passed) postponed until the end of August, or even later. Any delay will be relief to many who are just coming to terms with the 300-page Settlement, which was agreed between Google and the US Author's Guild and the American Association of Publishers in October last year. [...]

Lawyers acting for seven authors and their heirs, including heirs to both the John Steinbeck and Philip K Dick estates, sent their letter to the New York judge Denny Chin on 24th April, saying that "more time [was] required simply to understand the complex terms of the agreement" and that "substantial defects in notice of the Settlement undermine authors' ability to assess their rights". [...]

Read the entire article in The Bookseller.

SF author Philip K. Dick wrote the novels Martian Time-Slip (1964) and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), as well as the short story Martians Come in Clouds (1953). He died in 1982.