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!

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.

Black Hole Sun - new YA SF novel written by David Macinnis Gill

Black Hole Sun, a new Young Adult science fiction novel written by American author David Macinnis Gill and published by Greenwillow Books, an imprint of behemoth HarperCollins, is scheduled to be released today, August 24, 2010. Billed as a "future-dystopia kick-ass action novel set on Mars," here is the promotional piece from the publisher:

Durango will take on any mission -- as long as it is dangerous, impossible, and hopeless. As long as it pays enough for him and his crew to get by. He doesn’t have a death wish, exactly, but he’s got a lot to run from and a whole lot to forget. Fortunately for Durango, he’s also got Mimi, a symbiotic nano-implant, to keep him on the straight and narrow (and to keep readers laughing along with the adrenaline rush), and a crew of loyal buddies -- male, female, and other. Readers of The Hunger Games and Pratchett’s Nation -- from casual fans of future dystopia to hardcore gamers who like fiction with depth -- will enjoy this action-jammed, cinematic saga set on a terraformed Mars.

HarperCollins has posted about the first 70 pages of Black Hole Sun and Gill has created a mock video trailer that is even more cheesy than the cover art for his novel. On a more positive note, Black Hole Sun received a starred review from Booklist.

Trailer: 1968 film Mission Mars, starring Darren McGavin

Trailer for Mission Mars, a 1968 science fiction-horror film that revolves around three American astronauts who land on Mars and discover the frozen body of a Russian cosmonaut... and a man-eating sphere! Starring Darren McGavin as Colonel Mike Blaiswick.


The men stake their lives on the unknown…Their women gamble their love on their return!

Happy 90th Birthday, Ray Bradbury!

Ray Bradbury, the timeless guy of Fantasy & Science Fiction, turns 90-years-old today, August 22, 2010. In honor of the man and this milestone, here are a few links:

• It’s Ray Bradbury Week in Los Angeles, August 22 to 28.

• Flickr has some handsome photos from a recent birthday party for Mr. Bradbury held at Mystery & Imagination Bookshop in Glendale, California.

• UCLA has put together a short but fascinating online tribute, including the title page of The Martian Chronicles (1950) when it was first mocked up by a layout artist.

• AbeBooks has a neat webpage commemorating some of Mr. Bradbury’s greatest achievements.

• Some young lady stars in a hilarious, if juvenile, music video titled “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury” (2010).

Pictured: President George W. Bush and Laura Bush present the National Medal of Arts award to Ray Bradbury (2004).

Trailer: 1964 film Robinson Crusoe on Mars, featuring Adam West

Trailer for Robinson Crusoe on Mars, a 1964 Techniscope science fiction film that retells the classic 18th-century novel penned by Daniel Defoe, starring Paul Mantee, Victor Lundin, Adam West and Mona the monkey.

I Love Lucy: Lucy and Ethel are paid $500 to dress up as Martians

Here’s a hilarious clip from the classic 1950s American television show I Love Lucy in which Lucy and her friend Ethel are paid $500 to dress up as Martians and scare some tourists in New York City. The clip is from a third season episode called “Lucy is Envious,” which aired March 29, 1954.


Love the ray gun!

2005 Japanese anime film: Negadon: The Monster from Mars

Here’s a cool tokusatsu-style 25-minute CG-animated anime film from Japan titled Negadon: The Monster from Mars (2005). According to Wikipedia, the storyline is set in the year 2025 and revolves around a rock formation that is found buried beneath the surface of Mars during a terraforming project. When the seemingly-harmless object is brought back to Earth, it grows into a colossal crustacean life form, Negadon, and promptly attacks Tokyo.

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.

Richard C. Hoagland: BP oil well could trigger fatal tsunami

Radio host and best-selling author Richard "Cydonia" Hoagland, who wrote the infamous science SF book The Monuments of Mars: A City on the Edge of Forever (1987), is warning Gulf Coast residents that the rising pressure inside BP’s problematic Deepwater Horizon oil well could end in a huge underwater methane gas explosion, triggering a massive tsunami that could kill millions of people from Texas to Florida.


Hoagland said, "Think Mount St. Helens -- underwater. Depth recorders have detected a gas bubble growing under the ocean floor, around the well head. If this potential bubble does not get controlled ASAP before it explodes, impending disaster could be awaiting millions of residents in the Gulf states."

Trailer: Red Faction: Armageddon video game

Video game company THQ has released the trailer for Red Faction: Armageddon, the fourth installment in its popular science fiction, third-person, open-world, action-shooter, destruction-based series set on Mars. Scheduled to land on shelves in March 2011, Red Faction: Armageddon is set in the late 22nd century, about 100 years after events in the original Red Faction game, and infuses an element of horror as the physics-based combat moves to the lava tubes and ice caves beneath the Martian surface, where hero Darius Mason discovers that humans are not alone on the Red Planet.



Red Faction: Armageddon will be accompanied by a comic book, a downloadable arcade-style game, and a two-hour, action-drama SyFy channel movie that could possibly serve as the pilot for a full-blown Red Faction television series.

Pioneer SF&F writer Leslie F. Stone

SF&F author Sandra McDonald has created an awesome three-minute video (and a cool chart) entitled “75 Years of Fabulous Writers: A Periodic Table, 1933-2008,” highlighting the contributions of more than one hundred female writers, publishers and editors to the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror:



Sadly, pioneer SF&F writer Leslie F. Stone (pseudonym of Leslie F. Silberberg, nee Leslie Francis Rubenstein) didn’t make the cut, so here’s a nice biographical sketch of "Miss Stone" from Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965 (2005), by Eric Leif Davin:

Leslie F. Stone, (1905-1991): Born in Philadelphia, Stone’s family moved to Philadelphia when she was eight. She began selling fairy tales to newspapers at age fifteen. Perhaps for this reason she studied journalism in school. She was married to William Silberberg from 1927 until his death in 1957. They had two sons. In the late 1940s they moved to Kensington, Maryland, where she became a prize-winning ceramicist and gardener. In the 1960s she worked at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda.

Along with Clare Winger Harris, Stone was one of the first women writers to appear in the science fiction magazines, debuting in 1929. Her science fiction was most popular in the Thirties. She also published two SF novels. In addition to her science fiction, she published fantasy fiction in Weird Tales between 1935-1938. Her last story appeared in 1951.

Leslie F. Stone is the author of the Mars novella/novel Out of the Void (1929/1967) and the short story "The Human Pets of Mars" (1936).

Thanks to editor, publisher and longtime SF fan Andrew Porter for the photograph of Leslie F. Stone!

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?

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.

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.

Creepy 1924 animated Soviet propaganda film vanquishes all the capitalists on Mars

I just watched Interplanetary Revolution (1924), a creepy 8-minute animated Soviet propaganda film replete with evil capitalists and dancing swastikas. A tale starring Comrade Cominternov, the Red Army Warrior, who vanquishes all of the capitalists on Mars, Interplanetary Revolution is "an event very likely to happen in 1929."


Check it out!

Clip from 1918 Danish silent film Himmelskibet

Here’s a short but fascinating clip from Himmelskibet (1918), a famous Danish silent science fiction/fantasy film in which an astronomer named Professor Planetaros travels to Mars, where he finds a race of mystic vegetarians, enlists the services of the daughter of the local High Priest, converts to pacifism, and returns to Earth to spread a message of peace, love and harmony. Apparently, the film is a commentary on the horrors of World War I.



Adapted by filmmaker Ole Olsen from a work written by Sophus Michaëlis, the film was restored by the Danish Film Institute and re-released on DVD in 2006.

Could higher e-book prices spark book burnings?

At least two SF/F fans who own Kindle e-book readers and are following the growing conflagration over e-book pricing say that an increase in overall prices could ignite old-fashion book burnings. Lisa, a forty-something slacker who lives with her parents in the Connecticut River Valley, hates her job as a teacher’s aide, and wishes she had more time to read fantasy novels on her Kindle, says: “The big publishing companies have been gouging us for years. In high school, my parents paid hundreds of dollars to buy me English Lit. books because neither the school nor public library had enough copies. In college, I had to pay thousands of dollars for overpriced textbooks. Now, publishers are trying to make us pay more for e-books? Bullshit! If they’re going to do that, I might be tossing a few books on the hibachi this summer.” Asked to name a few titles, Lisa replied: “Whatever will get people’s attention. Bestsellers, probably. My mother reads all that crap.”


Bruce, a fifty-something, over-educated technology geek and science fiction fan who lives in an apartment in the Bucktown neighborhood of Chicago and drives a taxi for a living, says: “In this day and age, there is no reason why the cost of an e-book should be going up. People say, ‘Oh, you can afford to buy a Kindle, so you must be able to pay $15 for an e-book.’ I say, ‘Oh, you can afford to buy a car, so you must be able to pay $6 for a gallon of gas!’ I’m old enough to remember the riots of 1968 and the Disco Demolition gag in the late 70s. Maybe that’s what we need. An old-fashion book burning down at Comiskey Park. That ought to get the attention of those greedy bastards who run the publishing houses.” Asked to name a few titles worth burning, Bruce said: “Mike Royko’s biography of Mayor Daley is on the top of my list."

Animated SF rom-com movie Mars to premiere at SXSW Film Festival

Texas filmmaker Geoff Marlett’s animated science fiction romantic-comedy movie Mars will premiere at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin in mid-March. A Swerve Pictures production told in the style of a graphic novel, the film stars Mark Duplass, Zoe Simpson and Cynthia Watros as three astronauts on the first manned mission to Mars, during which they experience “life threatening accidents, self doubts, obnoxious reporters, and the boredom of extended space travel.” Here’s the trailer:

MARS - The Movie [HD Trailer] from Geoff Marslett on Vimeo.

Popeye the Sailor in “Rocket to Mars”

Here’s a hilarious episode of the classic cartoon series starring Popeye the Sailor: “Rocket to Mars” (1946). It starts with Popeye and Olive Oyl visiting a technical museum on Earth and ends with our spinach-eating hero battling hostile natives on Mars.



Love the war plants on Mars: Bayonet Grass and Grape Shot!