The Guns of Mars: 2010 poli-SF novel by Martin T. Ingham about Scientific Fundamentalism

Here’s an interesting poli-SF novel that I recently stumbled across: The Guns of Mars, penned by American speculative fiction writer Martin T. Ingham and published in April 2010 by Pill Hill Press, a small, independent publisher located in Nebraska that specializes in horror, suspense, dark fantasy and science fiction. Here’s the promotional piece:

As science-worshipping totalitarians seek to overtake Mars, a defiant patriot stands alone against a corrupt system in The Guns of Mars.

Morgan Asher never wanted to be part of the Martian colonization effort, but agrees to leave Earth for Mars to fulfill his wife's lifelong dream. After arriving on the Red Planet, Morgan discovers a sinister plot: Scientific Fundamentalists (Scifes) have infiltrated all levels of colonial society, and they hold a deadly weapon in their arsenal-one capable of rewriting a person's thoughts and desires.

Out of time and out of luck, Morgan must find a way to expose the enemies of liberty before their conquest of Mars is complete.

Martin T. Ingham is a writer, stonemason and family man whose life ambition is to become a commercially successful author in the field of speculative fiction. He has been known to collect coins, repair antique watches, and play with firearms. Ingham lives with his wife and three children Down East in Maine.

Yes, Virginia, women really did read SF in the 1930's: Letter # 7

Dear Editor:

Well, I have so much to say, or rather would like to say for your magazine. I like it in every detail but one, which is waiting a whole month for the rest of my stories.

I wish you would give us the third sequel of "Out of the Ocean's Depths." Let the young scientist discover a way to perform matrimony between the girl of the ocean and the man, and then let their child live either in or out of water. There could be two more good stories or sequels of "Out of the Ocean's Depths." I like them all.

I liked "Murder Madness," too. It seems as though it is really real, and not fiction. I wish you would get the book out twice a month.

Mrs. B. R. Woods, Cotte, Arkansas.

Astounding Stories of Super-Science (November 1930)
 

1950’s BBC telly: Quatermass and the Pit

Here's the opening segment of Quatermass and the Pit, a British science fiction television serial originally broadcast live by BBC in December 1958 and January 1959. Set in London in late 1950’s, the storyline revolves around a mysterious archaeological dig, five-million-year-old apemen, an unexploded Nazi bomb, a haunted house, black magic, ancient Latin manuscripts and... Martians! Starring British actor André Morell as rocket scientist Professor Bernard Quatermass, Canadian actor Cec Linder as paleontologist Doctor Matthew Roney, and British actress Christine Finn as Barbara Judd, Dr. Roney’s assistant.

Written by British screenwriter Nigel Kneale, Quatermass and the Pit was published as a novel by Penguin Books in 1960 was published in script form by Penguin Books in 1960.

"Probably the most effective blending of the supernatural with science-fiction themes, Kneale brilliantly explains the roots of magic and superstition via an ancient Martian invasion of Earth.” The Guardian (October 2001).

Comic book review round-up: Warlord of Mars #3

Reviews of Warlord of Mars #3 (December 2010), Dynamite Entertainment’s new comic book series adaptation of beloved pulp author Edgar Rice Burroughs’ fantastical science fiction novel A Princess of Mars (1917), are starting to trickle down. Written by Arvid Nelson with artwork by Lui Antonio and four variant covers by artists Joe Jusko, Lucio Parillo, Patrick Berkenkotter and J. Scott Campbell, here are some snippets from various reviews of Warlord of Mars #3:

1) MCR of JCOM Reader: “So we finally get the good stuff. And the next issue finally promises the arrival of the most beautiful woman of two worlds (just in time for her own series to start). About time!”

2) Greg Burgas of Comic Book Resources: “Nelson is still feeling out the characters and the overall plot, so there’s still an anticipatory quality about this comic, as if we’re just waiting for something big to happen. I don’t think the ending is that “something,” but we’ll see. I still don’t love Warlord of Mars, but I’m still seeing what Nelson does with it all, so I’m sticking with it for a while.”

3) DS Arsenault of Weekly Comic Book Review: “Conclusion: I cannot, cannot wait for the next issue. You *must* pick this up. This is gold. Grade: A.”

Pictured: Cover art by J. Scott Campbell.

Lords of Atlantis by Wallace West (1960)

Lords of Atlantis (1960), a science fiction novel by Wallace West.

Pictured below: Paperback (New York: Airmont Publishing Co., 1963), #SF3, 128 p., 60¢. Here’s the blurb from the back cover:

In the dim past, men had fled to Mars for refuge, but now the red planet was a dying world, and the Martians returned to colonize Earth and rule over the Titans -- descendants of those who had stayed behind at the time of the now-legendary catastrophe.

But the rulers of the Titans, retained by the conquerors on their ancestral thrones, grew restless under the benevolent progress of the Lords of Atlantis, looked back to a so-called “golden age,” and plotted rebellion.

Here is a thrilling novel of what might have been the basis of the Great Legends that have come down to us: of the “gods,” of Atlantis, of Zeus, Hermes, Hephaestus, Hera, Athena, Aphrodite, Jason, Medea -- and of a mighty empire which was weighed in the balance and found wanting!

Surprisingly, Lords of Atlantis was mentioned in a 2003 Space.com article about getting close to Mars with books, film and music: “Hardly a classic in any sense of the word, West's story is still one of my personal favorites. The pulp novel was first published in 1963 [1960] and details the last days of a Martian colony on Earth during early human history. Included in the story's campy plot: the tale of humans who fled to Mars to avoid an ice age and have returned to reign over the Earthlings that stayed behind, the death of Mars, Greek mythology and the legend of Atlantis.”

Cities of Martian Rails: Hellasport

Martian Rails (2009), the crayon board game manufactured by Mayfair Games about railroading on the Red Planet in which players build tracks and haul freight in sleek trains with names like Spirit, Tweel and Viking, has a long list of interesting cities that players can capitalize on to generate revenue for their rail companies. For example:

Hellasport – A large city in the southeast section. One of the original cities and spaceports. It is named for the albedo feature noted by Schiaparelli. Once terraforming began to show results, Hellasport developed a temperate climate. The air here was the first to reach livable pressure.

Martian Rails is loaded with references to Martian SF!

Merry Christmas!

Interview with Allen Steele and podcast of his 2010 novelette "The Emperor of Mars"

Thanks to the No. 168 issue of UK-based award-wining StarShipSofa: The Audio Science Fiction Magazine you can listen to at least two aural delights. First, a fascinating 34-minute interview with award-winning American science fiction author Allen Steele. Second, an excellent 47-minute podcast of “The Emperor of Mars,” a novelette by Steele that was published in the June 2010 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine.

Narrated by Nathan Lowell with cool cover art by Andreas Rocha, “The Emperor of Mars” revolves round Jeff Halbert, a roughneck stationed on a near-future Mars, who, after suffering severe emotional trauma, develops some unusual reading habits, which lead to some rather erratic behavior as he evolves into Emperor Jeffery the First, sovereign monarch of the Great Martian Empire, warlord and protector of the red planet!

 

Allen M. Steele is also the author of several other pieces of Martian SF, including “Live from the Mars Hotel” (1988), “Red Planet Blues” (1989), Labyrinth of Night: a Novel of Mars (1992), “A Letter from St. Louis” (1996), “Zwarte Piet's Tale” (1998), and “A Walk Across Mars” (2002).

LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired has greater financial transparency than Electronic Frontier Foundation

Thanks to Canadian science fiction author, blogger, and copyright activist Cory "Boing Boing" Doctorow, I learned that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently helped restore sign-language music videos created by ASL Ally for deaf and hard-of-hearing people to YouTube after music industry titans had them removed.

While this is wonderful news and an important cause, EFF, a San Francisco-based non-profit organization founded in 1990 whose mission includes fostering and promoting the creation and use of digital tools to allow “the public to more closely examine government and corporate entities, and to hold them accountable for deception, censorship and corruption,” should continue its literacy campaign and help restore public confidence in itself by publishing its IRS Form 990's and Audited Financial Statements on its website.

You see, after twenty years of activity but increasing public concern over its relationship to WikiLeaks, here is the suspicious shallowness of EFF's commitment to digital financial disclosure and transparency, as posted on its website:

• 2008-2009 Annual Report
• 2007 Annual Report
• 2006 Annual Report

Contrast that with these documents, all posted on the website of the LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, a non-profit organization founded in 1902 and “the largest agency providing direct service, advocacy and information to the blind and visually impaired community of Northern California”:

• 2009 Annual Report
• 2008 Annual Report
• 2007 Annual Report
• 2006 Annual Report
• 2005 Annual Report
• 2004 Annual Report

• 2009 IRS Form 990
• 2008 IRS Form 990
• 2007 IRS Form 990
• 2006 IRS Form 990
• 2005 IRS Form 990

• 2009 Auditor's Report
• 2008 Auditor's Report
• 2007 Auditor's Report
• 2006 Auditor's Report
• 2005 Auditor's Report

Perhaps 2011 will be the year when the geeks at the Electronic Frontier Foundation join the transparency movement!

Illustrated summary of classic 1923 Soviet SF novel Aelita

SovLit.com, the “World’s Best Russian Literature Website,” presents a neat detailed summary of Aelita (Russian: Аэлита, 1923), the classic Soviet science fiction novel written by Aleksei Tolstoy, with eleven beautiful illustrations by artist V.A. Bylinkina.

Perhaps I’ll read the original novel some day!

Interview with Gareth-Michael Skarka, contributing author of 2009 RPG MARS: Savage Worlds Edition

Damon Orrell of the blog Savage Worlds chatted recently with Gareth-Michael Skarka, director of Adamant Entertainment, a design studio that makes role-playing games (RPGs) and related products, and contributing author of the Sword-and-Planet RPG campaign setting MARS: Savage Worlds Edition (2009), about the past, present and future of MARS. Perhaps not surprisingly, Skarka is a big fan not only of Edgar Rice Burroughs, but of Otis Adelbert Kline, Michael Moorcock and Lin Carter, too!

Check out the interview!

Retro review: 1889 Mars novel Mr. Stranger's Sealed Packet by Hugh MacColl

A JOURNEY TO THE PLANET MARS

Mr. Stranger's Sealed Packet. By Hugh MacColl (London: Chatto and Windus, 1889)

A work of fiction, founded upon scientific facts, is interesting to us, inasmuch as it may extend, to no inconsiderable degree, the scientific knowledge of its readers. Such attempts, however, to assimilate science with fiction may have an injurious effect, unless treated by one having an intimate knowledge of the phenomena which he describes, and we have to congratulate the author of this work upon his acquaintance with the Cosmos, exhibited in this account of an imaginary journey through interplanetary space.

The many means devised by that clever author, Jules Verne, for such a journey, are too well known to need any comment here. Mr. MacColl lacks the minuteness of description peculiar to Jules Verne, but nevertheless fabricates a "flying machine" that may rank with the best products of that author's ingenuity.

The principle employed is stated as follows :—

The attracting force residing in every particle of matter, and drawing it towards other particles, is capable of conversion into a repelling force.

A body, half of whose mass lias had its attracting tendency converted into a repelling tendency, will have a specific gravity of zero, and if placed in a vacuum will neither rise nor fall.

If more than half the mass of a body has had its attracting tendency converted into a repelling tendency, it will rise into the air, and, passing the limits of the atmosphere, will continue moving away from the earth with a velocity for a time accelerated by terrestrial repulsion, but tending more and more towards uniformity as it proceeds.

The "flying machine" was constructed of a substance that had undergone such a conversion. By means of a regulator the resultant of the attracting and repelling tendencies could be turned in any direction, and so the velocity of the machine could be increased or diminished ad libitum.

It was in this machine that Mr. Stranger made his journey to the planet Mars, and the work mainly deals with Martian history, the customs of the inhabitants, and adventures and incidents en route. The two satellites of Mars were met, and their diameters, distance from their primary, and period of revolution are supposed to have been approximately measured by the adventurer. Having reached the planet in safety, a long description is given of the startling difference one would observe on attempting to walk upon a globe where the surface gravity was only three-eighths that of the earth.

The Marsians, Martians, or Marticoli, as Prof. Young would call the inhabitants of our ruddy brother, were, according to the author, living very happily under a form of Socialism; and food was almost as free and plentiful among them as the air which they breathed, because they had learnt to manufacture it from its chemical elements—oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen—which existed in abundance on their planet as on the earth. In this Utopia, not only were electric lights in every house and street, and the phonograph an instrument in common use, but the sound-figures drawn upon the revolving cylinder were used as the representation of speech, such characters being truly phonetic. It appears strange, however, that although the Martians had attained such a high degree of civilization, yet they had no knowledge of gunpowder or any explosive whatever, or of any kind of telescope, a circumstance which seems contrary to our ideas on the evolution of inventions.

The inhabitants of Mars were supposed to have come from the earth, and their transference was effected in the following manner. A sun, accompanied by satellites, in revolving at an immense distance round a larger sun passed very near to Mars and the earth, and caused them to approach one another. In the words of the writer, "The common centre of gravity of the four bodies must have been so situated as to have almost neutralized the resultant of the attraction of the earth and Mars towards their respective centres, so that on one part of the earth's surface the attraction of Mars would overcome that of the earth, and gently and slowly draw a body from its surface to its own; while in other parts the attraction of the earth would be more powerful and prevent this. The two planets must also have been so near that their atmospheres were mingled, and hence the transference did not result in the death of those who had thus to emigrate against their will."

Such an explanation as this, of some perplexing phenomena, shows an intimate knowledge of the laws of gravitation. Again, whilst on a visit to one of the small Martian satellites, a fragment of rock was broken off, and instead of at once falling down on the ground, as it would have done on the earth or Mars, it sailed slowly and gracefully away, until it came in contact with another rock several yards off, when it descended softly and gently to the ground with the motion of a falling flake of snow in a perfect calm—an imaginary incident in perfect accordance with the laws of gravitation. Many similar incidents are just as ably treated, and the description of a meteor is worth repeating here :— "Its general shape was globular, and before we had got close to it, it seemed a perfect sphere, but at this near distance it looked like a round mass of incandescent liquid covered all over with bubbling and boiling protuberances, which every now and then emitted huge jets of flaming gas, or, detaching themselves from the general mass, shot forth as globules of white shining liquid. We were, in fact, the spectators of the early formation of a little world, a sun in miniature, but resembling the sun rather as it was many ages ago than as it is now."

We might quote many other descriptions of phenomena all agreeing with acknowledged facts and rigid scientific principles. We refer to observations of the extreme blackness of the shadows cast by the rocks of the Martian satellite which was supposed to have been visited, the noiseless explosions of the meteor above described, the apparent motionlessness in space of the flying machine, in spite of its enormous velocity, the inferior attraction of Mars and its satellites, and the explanation of how men got transferred from the earth to Mars. Indeed, the work is as interesting to us as to the general reader, and as a means of disseminating scientific knowledge may be eminently useful.

FYI: Hi man earth, if you want to search Android games, also free Android APK application. Can visit download game mod apk Android. Hopefully it is useful to make your day happy and joyful.

R. A. Gregory

Nature: A Weekly Illustrated Journal of Science

Volume 40 (July 25, 1889)

New short story: "Frontier Minerva" by Anne Spackman

The December 2010/January 2011 issue of Aphelion: The Webzine of Science Fiction and Fantasy has an interesting new short story titled “Frontier Minerva” (2010), written by Anne Spackman. Set in the Minerva colony on Mars, the story revolves around cops and curfews. Here are the opening lines:

THERE was no possibility of making it to the residential dome before curfew. I had been working late going over some videowork in my regulator's office, decomposing falsified video evidence being used in the highly-publicized case of Minerva Corps versus Dr. Mezzini, once a prestigious member of Minerva Corps before his criminal incarceration and on-going trial, when the curfew announcement descended upon the business dome. Some people welcome the sound of the curfew announcement, that same collection of saccharine words delivered at the end of every work day in a female monotone by the colony's automated city center. Me, I hate it...

Anne Spackman taught science fiction and fantasy writing at the Writing Center at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City before the school closed the center in June 2010.

Events of Martian Rails: The Wizard of Mars!

Martian Rails (2009), the crayon board game manufactured by Mayfair Games about railroading on the Red Planet in which players build tracks and haul freight in sleek trains with names like Spirit, Tweel and Viking, has a long list of events to which players can respond in order to generate revenue for their rail companies. For example:

The Wizard of Mars! – Science and technology are encouraged and supported by the Martian government. However, in the wide open areas of Mars, sometimes research goes bad. Often the innocent train crews are the first victims of this misguided experimentation. Afterwards, discard the demand card that determine the Wizard’s location.

Martian Rails is loaded with references to Martian SF!

Rex Mars Space Port toy set advert from 1953 Montgomery Ward catalog

Click to enlarge!

David Macinnis Gill’s new YA novel Black Hole Sun wins LJ Best Cannibal Award

Congrats to American science fiction author David Macinnis Gill, whose new Young Adult book Black Hole Sun (HarperCollins / Greenwillow, August 2010), a "future-dystopia kick-ass action novel set on Mars,” just received a Best Cannibal Award from Library Journal:

"You read that right. Cannibals made their way into many books for teens and adults this past year. Gill's cannibals -- the Dræu -- are on Mars, led by an evil queen with her own bloody appetites. These beasties plague an outcrop of miners who seek aid from Durango, the chief of a small crew of disgraced Regulators, now working as mercenaries for hire. The snappy wit of Durango and his sexy second-in-command, Vienne, paired with the bloodthirsty joy with which the Dræu go about their work makes for delightful reading-so much so that it can be easy to overlook Gill's masterly world-building." 

Invisible Sun, a sequel to Black Hole Sun that continues the adventures of hero Jake "Durango" Stringfellow on Mars, is scheduled to be published in the winter of 2012.

Dynamite to publish Warlord of Mars: Dejah Thoris comic book

The website Comic Book Resources reports that Dynamite Entertainment is spinning off a comic book series titled Warlord of Mars: Dejah Thoris from its recently launched but highly successful John Carter, Warlord of Mars (#1, November 2010) series.

While Warlord of Mars is an adaptation of beloved pulp author Edgar Rice Burroughs’ fantastical science fiction novel A Princess of Mars (1912), Warlord of Mars: Dejah Thoris will be a prequel to events in the novel, focusing on Barsoom in the centuries before John Carter arrives.

"Burroughs left so many tantalizing breadcrumb trails in the first few Mars novels, but he never followed most of them," said writer Arvid Nelson. "This series is going to follow some of those trails. We're going to see how Dejah Thoris' kingdom of Helium rose to preeminence. We're going to see her first suitor. And we're going to see Dejah herself kick some ass. She's a great character, totally deserving of her own series. It's great having her in a more active role."

Written by Arvid Nelson, with interior art by Carlos Rafael and five variant covers by Arthur Adams (pictured above), Paul Renaud, Joe Jusko, Sean Chen and Alé Garza, Warlord of Mars: Dejah Thoris #1 is scheduled to hit comic book shops in March 2011.

1897 Punch cartoon confirms dragons read books on Mars

A Message from Mars.

(A mysterious meteorite is reported to have fallen lately, on one side of which are cabalistic characters supposed to constitute "A Message from Mars." Mr. Plinth has deciphered it, and gives herewith a free translation and pictorial illustration.)

Manage things better here? We do, my boy!

We know how to exist and to enjoy;

Which you do not. Men call me god of war,

But there's no fighting in my blood-red star...

Read the rest of the poetic commentary in Punch’s Almanack for 1897
 

New poetry collection: A Woman of Mars by Helen Patrice

The monthly e-newsletter of UK-based science fiction, fantasy and horror publishing boutique PS Publishing reveals that A Woman of Mars, a hardcover signed limited edition poetry collection by writer, poet, Reiki Master, teacher of Middle Eastern dance, tarot consultant, witch and yogini Helen Patrice with cool cover art by award-winning SFF&H artist Bob Eggleton, will be published by its poetry annexe, Stanza Press, in January 2011.

According to literary giant Ray Bradbury, "Helen Patrice's poems are little love letters not only to the Red Planet but also to the sense of alien wonder that is so often missing from imaginative fiction and poetry. Bravo to her! And Bravo to Stanza Press for providing a platform for her work!"

Yes, Virginia, women really did read SF in the 1930's: Letter # 6

Dear Editor:

I have been wanting to write to you for a long time but only now am I able to do so. When I first got a copy of your magazine I just grabbed it and started reading it. That magazine had the first installment of "Brigands of the Moon" in it. Now, after one magazine has been read I nearly burst until the next one comes.

As for the writers, I like Ray Cummings, Harl Vincent, Sewell Peaslee Wright, and Murray Leinster best. I like interplanetary stories best. I also like stories of the Fourth Dimension and those of ancient races of people living in uninhabited parts of the earth. So far I have liked especially well "The Ray of Madness," "Cold Light," "From the Ocean Depths" and its sequel "Into the Ocean's Depths," "Brigands of the Moon," and "Murder Madness." Of course, I like the others too. I am only a mere girl (that accounts for this poor typewriting)—only ten years old—but I know my likes and dislikes.

Ellen Laura Nightingale, 223 So. Main St., Fairmont, Minn.

Astounding Stories of Super-Science (October 1930)
 

Book review round-up: Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds

Somehow, I failed to realize that Terminal World (Gollancz, March 2010; Ace Books, June 2010), the most recent hard science fiction novel written by award-winning Welsh author Alastair Reynolds, is set on the planet Mars. So, that’s why I’m doing this book review round-up so late after the release of the novel. According to a statement on Reynolds’s website,” My latest novel, Terminal World,” appeared in March 2010. It's a far future, steampunk-influenced planetary romance about the adventures of an exiled pathologist, and a city in need of medicine...” Here’s the cover art and the formal promotional blurb:

Spearpoint, the last human city, is an atmosphere-piercing spire of vast size. Clinging to its skin are the zones, a series of semi-autonomous city-states, each of which enjoys a different -- and rigidly enforced -- level of technology. Horsetown is pre-industrial; in Neon Heights they have television and electric trains... Following an infiltration mission that went tragically wrong, Quillon has been living incognito, working as a pathologist in the district morgue. But when a near-dead angel drops onto his dissecting table, Quillon's world is wrenched apart one more time, for the angel is a winged posthuman from Spearpoint's Celestial Levels -- and with the dying body comes bad news. If Quillon is to save his life, he must leave his home and journey into the cold and hostile lands beyond Spearpoint's base, starting an exile that will take him further than he could ever imagine. But there is far more at stake than just Quillon's own survival, for the limiting technologies of the zones are determined not by governments or police, but by the very nature of reality -- and reality itself is showing worrying signs of instability...

Now, links to some reviews:

• 50 customer reviews at Amazon UK (6 five-star reviews)

• 41 customer reviews at Amazon (11 five-star reviews)

• Brit Paul Kincaid of the SF Site concluded: “There's a lot of hand-waving at the end that really makes no sense, but you don't get the impression that this story needs to continue. It's just that this is a half-formed, not fully thought-out novel that never comes close to achieving what it promises.”

• Liviu Suciu of the blog Fantasy Book Critic concluded: “An A- and a moderate disappointment but a novel that should be read even only for the glimpses of awesomeness that are scattered everywhere.”

• Swedish-run Cybermage concluded that Terminal World “is steam punk with ‘real’ science and a brilliant explanation will be given by the end of the story. I am still thinking about the characters and the big idea here, two weeks after finishing the book.”

• Brit Mark Chitty of Walker of Worlds, a blog of sci-fi and fantasy, concluded: “All in all I thought Terminal World was a great novel and would heartily recommend it to any SF fan -- the points I felt disappointed with are more to do with my personal tastes rather than a badly written story. Alastair Reynolds shows once again why he's one of Britain's top science fiction writers and is well deserved of the recent £1 million book deal he has signed with Gollancz. Pick it up! 8/10.”

 Interestingly, author Alastair Reynolds was just interviewed by Australia’s Cosmos Magazine, in which he discusses his science fiction and why we need a colony on the Moon.

Living on Mars can be murder: D.B. Grady discusses his 2009 novel Red Planet Noir

Here’s a nice video clip of writer D.B. Grady, whose debut novel Red Planet Noir (Brown Street Press, 2009) won the 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Award in the science fiction category, discussing his book at the recent Austin Comic-Con 2010. A hard-boiled detective tale written in the pulp tradition of the 1930's, Red Planet Noir is described as “a Raymond Chandler mystery in a Robert Heinlein world.”

  Read Chapter 1 (pdf) of Red Planet Noir for free! 

Dark comic book Birdwatching from Mars delayed until 2011

Dark speculative fiction author Barry Napier recently announced that the first issue of Birdwatching from Mars, his forthcoming comic book series about an asteroid which strikes Earth and “the secret operation to transport the world’s elite population to a secret base on Mars," will not be available for purchase until early 2011. For details and insight into some of the setbacks the project has faced over the last year, read the Birdwatching from Mars blog. Thanks for the update, Barry!

1949 Dell "map back" Mars anthology depicts "The Million Year Picnic" by Ray Bradbury

Invasion from Mars: Interplanetary Stories

Selected by Orson Welles

(U.S.: Dell Publishing, 1949) #305, paperback

Cover art by Malcolm Smith

Commodities of Martian Rails: Quintitriticale

Martian Rails (2009), the crayon board game manufactured by Mayfair Games about railroading on the Red Planet in which players build tracks and haul freight in sleek trains with names like Spirit, Tweel and Viking, has a long list of cool commodities that players can transport to generate revenue for their rail companies. For example:

Quintitriticale – Genetically engineered grain developed on Earth from a five-lobed hybrid of wheat and rye. It is of northern Canadian or, possibly, Russian origin. The high-yield grain will grow well on Mars in protected locations – in the domed cities, Hellas and Argyre Basins, and near the Equator.

Martian Rails is loaded with references to Martian SF!

Stories from David Langford’s The Sex Column: Sherlock Holmes cracks "The Case of the Red Planet" (1996)

Sexy NCIS actress Pauley Perrette to star in romantic Sci-Fi film The Girl from Mars

A company called The Work Room Productions recently announced that Pauley Perrette, the sexy forensic scientist in the top-rated CBS television series NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service, will star in the romantic science fiction film The Girl from Mars. Written and directed by DIY auteur James Felix McKenney, The Girl from Mars tells the story of a lonely geek whose life is transformed when he meets the girl of his dreams (Pauley Perrette), who claims to be a visitor from another planet.

Production is scheduled to begin in Los Angeles in May 2011. The film's official website is http://www.thegirlfrommarsmovie.com.

Comic book review: Warlord of Mars #2 (2010)

JCOM Reader, a blog devoted to news from Barsoom, Mongo and other planets, has a nice review of Warlord of Mars #2 (November 2010), Dynamite Entertainment’s new comic book adaptation and expansion of beloved pulp author Edgar Rice Burroughs’ fantastical science fiction novel A Princess of Mars (1917), concluding, “So in the end this issue is a vast improvement over the first issue. The only complaint-again Dejah Thoris gets prominent placement on most of the covers [...] even though she's nowhere to be seen. She better be one hot Martian babe when she shows up!”

Written by Arvid Nelson and illustrated by Stephen Sadowski, Warlord of Mars #2 has four variant covers by artists Patrick Berkenkotter, Joe Jusko, Lucio Parrillo, and J. Scott Campbell. The Campbell cover is pictured here.

Poem: "Trouble on the Planet Mars" by Samuel Ward Loper

Trouble on the Planet Mars

There was trouble on the planet Mars,

Great disturbance and commotion,

Some fearful influence spreading

Over continent and ocean.

All the Martians were excited

And wildly hurrying to and fro,

Looking anxious and despairing

O'er some overwhelming woe.

Odor awful and mephitic

Was penetrating everywhere,

Worse than any combination

The skill of chemists can prepare.

What could be this stifling odor—

So unaccountable and strange,

Coming thus upon the planet

With such an universal range?

Learned Martians, men of science—

Seeking the source of all this woe,

Through all space exploring

Came at last, the truth to know.

From the earth came all this trouble,

From a beauteous world disgraced;

To the habits of its people

They this curse mephitic traced.

Nauseous fumes from pipe and bowl—

In varied forms of usage known,

Through long centuries uprising,

To space-pervading power had grown.

Stench of liquor and narcotics,

Worse than all bi-sulphides known,

And foully tainting everything

On the planet Mars was thrown.

Odor awful and mephitic—

Spreading horror and despair,

Naught could save the strangling Martians

Or neutralize that deadly air.

~

Echoes from the Home of Halleck and Other Poems

By Samuel Ward Loper (1834-1910)

(Boston: Richard G. Badger / The Gorham Press, 1904)

Remember December 7th

1950’s El Mundo Futuro comic: "Los Seres Buenos de Marte"

Thanks to the amazing French website Mars & SF, you can read crisp black-and-white jpegs of “Los Seres Buenos de Marte” (1956), the first chapter in the 1950’s Spanish science fiction comic series El Mundo Futuro, which was created by cartoonist Guillermo Sánchez Boix (1917-1960), who signed his work simply “Boixcar.”

Here’s a description of the Spanish “Los Seres Buenos de Marte," as provided by the French Mars & SF:

En 1980, une expédition humaine va se poser sur la Lune. Une étape étant nécessaire pour refaire le plein de carburant à un réservoir spatial, la fusée est alors endommagée par des météorites ce que l'équipage ignore. Au même moment sur la Lune, un couple de martiens, Strael et Moukia, font du tourisme. Les moteurs de la fusée terrestre explosent en orbite lunaire, les terriens sont perdus. Les martiens interceptent le message de détresse et décident d'intervenir malgré l'interdiction du grand conseil martien d'interférer avec la Terre. Ils endorment l'équipage en le gazant (!) et le transporte à bord de la soucoupe. Direction la Terre ou nos aimables martiens déposent prés de chez lui, le commandant Kinley et ses deux compagnons, et ils s'en repartent vers Mars, heureux de leur bonne action.

Thanks, Doc Mars!

Clare Winger Harris wins third prize in 1920’s Amazing Stories contest with "The Fate of the Poseidonia"

Here’s a beautiful piece of science fiction history showing pioneering female science fiction writer Clare Winger Harris winning third prize in a late 1920’s Amazing Stories contest with her romantic tale “The Fate of the Poseidonia.” Published in the June 1927 issue, the story revolves around a Martian spy named Martell, who helps his home planet steal water from Earth’s oceans in order to save its dying civilization.

Note editor Hugo Gernsback’s remarks!

Trailer for animated Disney family film Mars Needs Moms (2011)

Here the official trailer for Mars Needs Moms, an upcoming 3-D computer-animated science fiction family film scheduled to be released by Walt Disney Pictures in March 2011. Based on the 2007 children’s book by Berkeley Breathed, the film stars voice actor Seth Green as a kid named Milo and Joan Cusack as his mom, who is kidnapped by Martians and taken to the Red Planet to help raise alien children.

 Looks like good clean family fun.

Scathing review of Robert Rankin’s humorous new novel The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions

The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions (Gollancz, Sept 2010), the new Steampunkish novel written by British humor novelist Robert Rankin, just received a scathing review by Jonathan McCalmont over at Strange Horizons.

The pickled Martian's tentacles are fraying at the ends and Professor Coffin's Most Meritorious Unnatural Attraction (the remains of the original alien autopsy, performed by Sir Frederick Treves at the London Hospital) is no longer drawing the crowds. It's 1895, nearly a decade since Mars invaded Earth, chronicled by H.G. Wells in The War of the Worlds. Wrecked Martian spaceships, back-engineered by Charles Babbage and Nikola Tesla, have carried the Queen's Own Electric Fusiliers to the red planet, and Mars is now part of the ever-expanding British Empire. The less-than-scrupulous sideshow proprietor likes Off-worlders' cash, so he needs a sensational new attraction. Word has reached him of the Japanese Devil Fish Girl; nothing quite like her has ever existed before. But Professor Coffin's quest to possess the ultimate showman's exhibit is about to cause considerable friction amongst the folk of other planets. Sufficient, in fact, to spark off Worlds War Two.

In short, reviewer Jonathan McCalmont concludes that "To read The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions is to see the most vibrant and culturally important SFnal sub-genre since cyberpunk being broken on the wheels of me-too economics." In other words, "To read The Japanese Devil Fish Girl is to be beset by the kind of malaise one would normally associate with the onset of Lyme disease." Or, to put it another way, The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions “is an utterly lamentable piece of writing and Robert Rankin should be thoroughly ashamed of himself.”

Jonathan McCalmont lives in the United Kingdom, where he writes, teaches, and edits Fruitless Recursion, a journal devoted to discussing works of SF criticism.

Cities of Martian Rails: Helium

Martian Rails (2009), the crayon board game manufactured by Mayfair Games about railroading on the Red Planet in which players build tracks and haul freight in sleek trains with names like Spirit, Tweel and Viking, has a long list of interesting cities that players can capitalize on to generate revenue for their rail companies. For example:

Helium – A medium sized town in the Noachis Desert (south central section). This is the capital and prime city of the ancient Red Martians. It includes Greater and Lesser Helium. With the coming of the Terrans, the population of Red Martians has markedly decreased until they are only found in significant numbers in or near Helium.

Martian Rails is loaded with references to Martian SF!

1950’s Ace Double novel: The Mars Monopoly by Jerry Sohl

The Mars Monopoly (1956), a science fiction novel by Jerry Sohl.

Paperback original (New York: Ace Books, 1956), #D-162, 183 p., 35¢. Cover art by Ed Valigursky. There is no promotional piece on the back cover because this is an Ace Double novel, bound with R. De Witt Miller and Anna Hunger’s The Man Who Lived Forever. So, here’s the blurb from the inside of the front cover:

A guy's gotta earn a living somewhere – and if it isn't on Earth, it might as well be on Mars. That is if the Syndicate would let you live on the red planet. Bert Schaun found himself washed-up as a round-the-world rocket racer, blacklisted by Thornton McAllister. He tried to make a new life for himself prospecting for uranium in the lonesome vastness of the asteroids.

But McAllister’s fury hunted him even to Mars; the issue became a struggle to stay alive against the dangers imposed by McAllister’s interplanetary power. And then Bert found that he was not only fighting for his own survival, but for the survival, too, of a whole race of Martian outcasts.

Singlehandedly, he had to combat genocide on the planet Mars!

Perhaps best known as a script writer for The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits and Star Trek, Jerry Sohl died November 4, 2002, in Thousand Oaks, California. His obituary appeared in the Los Angeles Times and his death was reported by several online sources, including Locus Online. The Jerry Sohl papers (1958-1983) are located in the archives of the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming.

Encounters Magazine reprints Jack MacKenzie’s 2005 short story "Father Mars"

The November/December 2010 (Vol. 1, No. 4) issue of Encounters Magazine, published by Black Matrix Publishing of Oregon, reprints a science fiction short story called “Father Mars” (2005), which was written by a fellow named Jack MacKenzie. I haven’t read or purchased the story, but here is a blurb about it provided by the website SFRevu:

“Neko is a young woman living on a terraformed Mars that had been at war with Earth before she had been born. Life is fairly primitive but her all-female community still survives. There are signs in the sky. Is Earth attacking again? Neko is one of those sent out. She finds out what is happening in a somewhat unsatisfying story.”

According to Fictionwise, “Father Mars” was also published in Rage Machine Magazine #1 (December 2005), edited by G. W. Thomas.

Peddling liquid peptonoids through The Mars Gazette

About two years ago, I stumbled across several references to The Mars Gazette: News from Another World, an eighteen-page advertising booklet published in the early 1900s by the Arlington Chemical Company, a manufacturer of patent medicines located in Yonkers, New York.

Here’s how Science-Fiction, the Early Years: A Full Description of More Than 3,000 Science-fiction Stories from Earliest Times to the Appearance of the Genre Magazines in 1930 (1990) describes The Mars Gazette:

An advertising shape book purporting to be a copy of a Martian newspaper. Printed in black, green, and brown, it simulates a charred booklet, edges suitable browned and chipped away (as later explained) by an electrical storm the document passed through on entering the earth’s atmosphere. The Martian newspaper, translated into English, tells of the landing on an oblong spaceship (a medicine package?) from which emerges C. B. Hustler, M. D., the sales representative of the Arlington Chemical Co. Hustler explains the wonders of the patent medicine Liquid Peptonoids to the Martians (who eat all sorts of indigestible substances and accordingly suffer greatly from indigestion.) He lectures to the king and assembled physicians, cures several moribund patients, and is appointed royal physician to His Most Malignant Majesty, King Flammarion.

At a thanksgiving banquet Liquid Peptonoids are served as a dessert to the main course ... Before leaving ... Hustler projects a gigantic advertisement for Liquid Peptonoids into the sky. The booklet is illustrated with many amusing drawings of Martian life, personalities, airships, scientific devices, canals. ... The Martians are humanoid, but smaller than earthmen. ... The reference to Flammarion probably points to Camille Flammarion’s two-volume work La planete de Mars rather than to his science-fiction. Internal evidence -- a fairly sophisticated Martian X-ray machine, a Lowellian canal, a reference to a great Marsquake of 17897 (San Francisco, 1907?) suggest that the booklet was issued during the first decade of this century. A very amusing piece of ephemera that deserves to be reproduced.

Now, just last week, a SF&F fan who was cleaning out his attic came across an original copy of The Mars Gazette and was kind enough to send me a couple of scans (click for detail!), which I’ve embedded above. Thank you, Tom!