Short Stories - 2000s, 2010s

2000's

A Message Home 
Stuart Atkinson (2000)

A Tree Grows Up on Mars 
Ken Rand (2000)
If Ian Beleri of the powerful BeleriCorp mining operations wanted to plant a tree on Mars, a tree would be planted on Mars.

The Love Affair
Ray Bradbury
Mars Probes anthology (2002)
A Martian develops an infatuation with a beautiful Earth woman who has settled near his cave on Mars.

The Real Story
Alastair Reynolds
Mars Probes anthology (2002)
A journalist receives a mysterious invitation from the captain of the first Martian expedition to hear the real story of his strange mission.

Out of the Blue, Into the Red
James Lovegrove
Mars Probes anthology (2002)
An epistolary story, as a father and son try to reconcile their differences as the son heads off to Mars.

The Me After the Rock
Patrick O’Leary
Mars Probes anthology (2002)
A dialogue-only story. Two astronauts are speaking, one who has had a mystical encounter of some kind with Mars itself, and the other who is dubious.

Under Mars
Paul J. McAuley
Mars Probes anthology (2002)
Imagine a huge theme park entirely focused on all the Mars visions of SF writers, from the Barsoom of Edgar Rice Burroughs to H.G.Wells's belligerent tripod-running Martians of The War of The Worlds and Bradbury's Martian Chronicles.

Ulla, Ulla
Eric Brown
The Mammoth Book of Science Fiction (2002)
About an expedition to Mars, finding the truth behind H. G. Wells’s novel.

Falling Onto Mars 
Geoffrey A. Landis
Analog Science Fiction and Fact (July-August 2002)
A story told from the point of view of the great-great-grandchild of a prisoner exiled to Mars. Won Hugo Award for Best Short Story!

It Takes a Town 
Stephen V. Ramey (2002)

The Empress of Mars 
Kage Baker (2003)

First Contact 
E. S. Strout (2003)

Steep Silence
Lena DeTar
Asimov's Science Fiction (June 2004)
A female Ph. D. researcher studies the relationship between the Martian poet Shira Ghibli's stanzas and the geography of the Tharsis Plateau.

Field Trip
Stuart Atkinson (2004)

Green Fields of Mars 
Jörn Grote (2004)

Jailhouse Rock 
James P. Hogan (2004)

Comet Night 
Stuart Atkinson (2005)

Identity Theft 
Robert J. Sawyer (2005)
A hard-boiled detective novella set on Mars. Finalist for the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

La Malcontenta
Liz Williams
Online (2005)
An imprisoned woman known as the Malcontent of Calmaretto is let out for the festival of Ombre in the city of Winterstrike on Mars.

Where the Golden Apples Grow
Kage Baker
Escape from Earth: New Adventures in Space (anthology, 2006)
The stark, inhospitable terrain of Mars almost comes alive as two stranded young colonists struggle to get home.

Bartlett Goes to Mars 
Stuart Atkinson (2006)

The Winter Astronaut 
Mark Patrick Lynch (2006)

Yo-Yo: The Gift 
Rebecca K. Rowe (2006)

The Only Sky I'll Ever Know 
Patrick Walts (2006)

The Clone-Wrangler’s Bride 
Camille Alexa (2007)

Zombies of Mars 
James Gordon Bailie (2007)

Marsdog 
Beth Bernobich (2007)

The Water Thief
Ben Bova
Online (2007)
On Mars, where wasting water is strictly forbidden, three youths try to catch a water thief.

The Haunted Airlock 
Michael Carroll (2007)

Weredragons of Mars 
Carl Frederick (2007)

Knowing Mars 
Tycho Garen (2007)
“A quasi-cyberpunk story about a group of exiled telepathic people arriving on Mars to get away from a sticky political and social situation on Earth.” “A reluctant queer superhero story.”

Fire in the Sky 
Tom Hill (2007)

Coyote Discovers Mars 
Emily Mah (2007)

Zora and the Land Ethic Nomads
Mary A. Turzillo
online (2007)
Set on Mars, a strong adventure about how a radical Land Ethic Nomad tries to drive off-planet all settlers by seemingly sabotaging their nuclear plants.

Mars Ain’t No Place For Ladies 
Filamena Young (2007)
Space Western. Frontier life is difficult when the homestead is over 200 million miles away!

Droidtown Blues 
Camille Alexa (2008)

The Full Story of the Firstborn Assault on Mars 
Stephen Baxter and Arthur C. Clarke (2008)

Catherine Drewe
Paul Cornell
(2008)
A blend of alternate history and steampunk, this story follows a British military officer on a clandestine mission to a partially terraformed Mars dominated by the Russians. The goal: to assassinate a woman named Catherine Drewe.

Noah's Ark 
Narendra Desirazu (2008)
Set in the 2060s and featuring NASA’s fourth Mars Lander, this is a “tale of global warming and microbes from Mars with unusual properties. It's heavy on telling rather than showing, and doesn't have much action, but it centers on an interesting idea.” Won the Scian Science Fiction Short Story Contest 2008.

The Eventful Career of Dr. Kevin Pearson, Astronomer 
Edward A. Laag (2008)
A tripod story. One leg rests on Kevin Pearson, an ambitious astronomy student who believes he has discovered a distant Earth-like planet but cannot confirm its existence. Story then shifts to Pearson as a top young scientist on a two-week mission to Mars, in which a colleague fabricates her discovery of Martian cyanobacteria. Third piece of the story leans backward and extends the reader to an astronomical outpost in the Andes Mountains, where Dr. Pearson re-discovers his “lonely planet.” Won the First Annual Student Science Fiction Short Story Contest at the 2008 J. Lloyd Eaton Science Fiction Conference.

The Ambassador 
Mark Lawrence (2008)

Mars: A Traveler's Guide 
Ruth Nestvold (2008)
A clever story told through a rover computer system's responses to queries from a desperate tourist on the Red Planet. Nominated for a Nebula Award.

Evergreen and Always 
Alice M. Roelke
Ray Gun Revival #49 (December 2008)
A wonderfully touching holiday short story.

Message to Mars 
Alice M. Roelke (2008)

The Film-makers of Mars 
Geoff Ryman (2008)
If you have ever wondered what the folks at Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., have locked up in the vault in Tarzana, California, you’ll enjoy this story!

Mars's Gift 
Jonathan Schlosser
Aphelion: the Webzine of Science Fiction and Fantasy (December 2008)
A sad tale about Marines returning from Mars with a plague, it’s a nice blend of biology and romance. There’s even a prop that could be a classic, and appropriately titled, Stephen King book: The Stand.

Sanctuary Mons 
Phred Serenissima (2008)

Willpower 
Jason Stoddard (2008)

First Contact 
E. S. Strout (2008)

Private Eye
E. S. Strout (2008)

A Man Called Mister Brown
A.R. Yngve (2008)

Gone
Stuart Atkinson (2009)

Hunters
Stuart Atkinson (2009)

Rover Hugger
Stuart Atkinson (2009)

Curtain Call on Mars 
Bob Bolin
Planetary Stories (July 2009)
Space Opera that revolves around an acting gig and a female robot named Tolly.

Mars-side
C.B. Calsing
Published online in 2009 at Crossed Genres.
Set in the decaying mining colony of Coronae Scopulus on a bleak red planet, the story revolves around a young Marsbred seamstress named Brig and her desire to live Earthside.

Mars Rescue
James H. Dawdy (2009)

Six Bullets for John Carter
Chad Eagleton (2009)

[untitled]
Alireza Fotoohi (2009)

First Words
Mark J. Howard (2009)

Three Revolvers on Mars
Kristen Lee Knapp (2009)

Red Dust
Amanda Lord (2009)

A Tulip for Lucretius
Ken MacLeod (2009)

Planet Killer
Ges Seger and Kevin Grazier (2009)

Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs
Leonard Richardson (2009)

Winds of Mars
Bud Sparhawk 
Jim Baen's Universe (June 2009)
A novella about a sailing race on the Red planet.

Paulo on Mars
Guy Stewart (2009)

Stepan on Mars
Guy Stewart (2009)

Footnote
Mel Trent (2009)
Published online in 2009 on website of Piker Press.
Rated PG-13 but with frequent use of the F-word.
“They came to Mars from Gurstock as the latter planet disintegrated in waves of nuclear blasts.”

Fields of Mars
Scott Wilson
Published online in 2009 at Well Told Tales.
A pulpy, well-told tale of seduction in the Gas Fields of Mars.



No Child of Mine
Filamena Young (2009)


2010s

Another Museum
Stuart Atkinson (2010)

Freeing Spirit
Stuart Atkinson (2010)

The Mole Rats of Mars
Alex Hernandez (2010)

Lucy in the Sky
Bent Lorentzen (2010)


Amazon Arena of Mars
Tara Loughead (2010)

Queen of the Martian Catacombs Engraved
Lee Brackett (2010)

Frontier Minerva
Anne Spackman (2010)


How to Become a Mars Overlord
Catherynne M. Valente (2010)

The Hubbard Continuum
Lavie Tidhar (2011)

Kevin P. Breen
Planetary Stories Issue #22 (2011)
A Space Opera with space pirates!

Tourists
James Patrick Kelly
Eclipse 4: New Science Fiction and Fantasy anthology (Night Shade Books 2011)
Piece “about Mariska Volochkova, the cloned daughter of a starship pilot who keeps trying to escape her mother’s legacy. Now she comes to Mars, and ends up involved with a rebellious Martian boy, whose only wish is to escape his culture and go to the stars--the same fate Mariska has been avoiding.”

The Vicar of Mars
Gwyneth Jones
Eclipse 4: New Science Fiction and Fantasy anthology (Night Shade Books 2011)
“The eponymous clergyman is an aging Shet, the Reverend Boaaz Hanaahaahn, High Priest of the Mighty Void. His real reason for coming to Mars is rock collecting, but he is a conscientious cleric, so he reluctantly undertakes a pastoral visit to the human Isabel Jewel, who has been suggested as perhaps being in need of his spiritual guidance.”

Attlee and the Long Walk
Kage Baker
Life on Mars: Tales from the New Frontier anthology (Viking 2011)
It’s about a human girl named Attlee Bonser, who takes a long walk on a partially terraformed, colonized Mars in order to prove her courage and improve her status in the Martian Shadowcats, a YA social organization.

The Old Man and the Martian Sea
Alastair Reynolds
Life on Mars: Tales from the New Frontier anthology (Viking 2011)
It’s about a human girl named Yukimi, who runs away from her home in Shalbatana City on a partially terraformed Mars with rising seas. She meets an old man named Corax, who lives alone in a giant obsolete terraforming machine.

Wahala
Nnedi Okorafor
Life on Mars: Tales from the New Frontier anthology (Viking 2011)
Set in the Sahara desert in the years after The Great Change ravaged Earth, the story is about a sixteen-year-old, mind-reading, shadow-speaking Nigerian girl named Fisayo, who, in the process of running away from home, witnesses the landing of a shuttle of Mars Earthlings returning from the Red Planet for the first time in two generations.

On Chryse Plain
Stephen Baxter
Life on Mars: Tales from the New Frontier (Viking 2011)
Set on a colonized, frontier Mars about 150 years after the landing of NASA’s Viking One spacecraft, the story revolves around two old-fashioned, historically-ignorant Mars-born boys (Jonno and Vikram) who accidentally meet a spunky, innovative, field-tripping British school girl from Earth (Natalie Rivers) on the dusty, desolate plain of Chryse.

First Principle
Nancy Kress
Life on Mars: Tales from the New Frontier (Viking 2011)
Set on a Red Planet that has been colonized for several generations, the story revolves around a Mars-born “bug” named Gina Mellit and her complex relationship with a dying xenophobic Earther immigrant named David Hansen.

Martian Chronicles
Cory Doctorow
Life on Mars: Tales from the New Frontier (Viking 2011)

Goodnight Moons
Ellen Klages
Life on Mars: Tales from the New Frontier (Viking 2011)
A cute story, the plot revolves around an accomplished female scientist who unexpectedly gives birth to a baby girl, Podkayne, during the long journey of the first human expedition to Mars.

The Taste of Promises
Life on Mars: Tales from the New Frontier (Viking 2011)
Rachel Swirsky
The plot revolves around two teenage brothers, one human and the other a “lifted” human who has no body but whose soul lives inside a computer, each in search of his own identity.

Digging
Ian McDonald
Life on Mars: Tales from the New Frontier (Viking 2011)
Set on a partially terraformed Mars, the plot revolves around a young girl named Tash Gelem-Opunyo, who lives in the excavating city of West Diggory on the slope of the Big Dig.

The Emperor of Mars
Allen Steele
Asimov's Science Fiction magazine (June 2010 issue)
After suffering severe emotional trauma, a roughneck stationed on a near-future Mars develops some unusual reading habits, which leads to some rather erratic behavior, as he devolves into Emperor Jeffery the First, sovereign monarch of the Great Martian Empire, warlord and protector of the red planet!

C.R. Hodges
On the Premises #14 (July 2011).
"The first man to walk on the moon was a hero to five generations. The first woman to walk on Mars was forgotten even before her boots plunked into the red dust."


Undated

Martian Mice
Marianne J. Dyson

Ghost Story
Brian Enk