Pink Noise: A 2010 Posthuman Tale by Leonid Korogodski

Apparently, I’m among the last the realize that Pink Noise: A Posthuman Tale (Silverberry Press, 2010), the recent hard science SF debut novel by Leonid Korogodski, who graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Ph.D. in Mathematics, is set on and around Mars. Here’s the promotional piece from the inside flap of Pink Noise:

One of the best brain doctors of his time, Nathi lost his own brain five centuries ago when he became a posthuman. He is called upon to save a comatose girl. The damage is extensive, so he decides to map his own mind into her brain in order to replace the badly damaged part.

But something unexpected waits for him within the Girl’s brain. She is a carrier of a Wish Fairy, an enigmatic sentient cyber being whose only purpose is to kill the Wish, a virus used by the ruling cyber Wizard Orders to enslave all posthuman minds—including Nathi’s.

Liberated, Nathi forms a symbiotic union—the Dancer—with the Girl, discovers the true cause of her brain injury, and finds a way to break out of the Castle, their high-tech prison, and into the Martian polar night.

But once outside, the real chase begins. They must resist the cyber wizards who are trying to remotely regain control of their minds while also sending a force in pursuit. This battle must be fought both in the physical world and that of the mind.

You can read the first 26 pages (pdf) of Pink Noise for free or listen to Korogodski (mp3), with his funky accent, read some of them to you.

Surprisingly, despite some promotional blurbs penned by prominent science fiction and fantasy writers (Karl Schroeder, Mike Resnick, Joe Haldeman, Kij Johnson) that are printed on the back cover of the novel, Pink Noise does not seem to have generated a lot of noise among fans. Nevertheless, here are some reviews to consider if you’re wondering whether or not to read the novel:

• Jacky Cassada of Library Journal reached this verdict: “Explosive in its approach to language and imaginative in its portrayal of a life lived in cyberspace as well as in the real world, this postcyberpunk adventure injects the genre with a long-awaited freshness. A good choice for both adult and YA fans of hard sf and postmodern fantasy.”

• Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing concluded: “I taught Korogodski at the Viable Paradise sf writing workshop some years ago, and it's always good to see a student doing well. This is a promising debut from a writer who isn't afraid to be as technical as he needs to be in order to tell his story.”

• Antony Jones of SFBook.com wrote, in part: “This book is one of the most impressive works of literature I have read in some time, both utterly original and technologically head-spinning, the pace is relentless and the prose almost poetic in places with a real sense of grace and emotional power. Pink Noise is the explosive birth of a new star in science fiction.”

• Ove Jansson of Cybermage opined: “It is worth reading just for the many ideas but the story has good characters and an interesting universe I wouldn’t mind learning more about. It is on the short side, I prefer books in the 400 plus pages range. It has some good action but it is quite a bit more cerebral than most action novels.”

Lastly, if your interest has been piqued, check out this December 2010 interview with the author of Pink Noise, Leonid Korogodski.

 

Five hotels to consider for your next Rekall vacation to Mars

Summer is a long way off, but it’s never too early to book your next imaginary vacation to Mars through your local Rekall Incorporated travel agent. With Rekall’s patented extra-factual memory implants, courteous customer service and no hidden fees, now is a great time to plan your escape so you can get your ass to Mars! Here are five hotels you should consider for your next virtual vacation to the Red Planet. Consult the suggested readings for more information.

Emerald Star Hotel

This majestic but expensive jewel is staffed entirely with robots that provide efficient and excellent service. The lobby is a half-acre of moss-gray carpeting, tinted green by the light sifting through the walls of Martian copper-glass, offering vistas of beautiful domed gardens framed by arches. Rooms are more than comfortable and many have banks of windows providing startling rubicund views of the Martian hinterland that holds the area’s sacred enzyme-producing fungi. The hotel’s domed-roof restaurant is famous for its broiled halibut with consommé and stunning views of the Martian sky. Guests seeking serious healing are encouraged to seek out the stinking mud-baths! "Hagerty’s Enzymes" by A. L. Haley (1955)

Hotel of the Republic

Visitors in the area of North Tarog should consider Hotel of the Republic. The domed-ceiling rooms are simple but comfortable, and ports on the south side of the structure provide for a spectacular night-time view across Crystal Canal to the jeweled lights of South Tarog. The hotel grounds are well-kept and feature long, luminous tubes, with sloping red lawns and terraces, and geometrically trimmed shrubs and trees. Hotel guards armed with neuro-pistols insure that undesirables stay confined to the banks of the canal. “The Martian Cabal” by R. F. Starzl (1932)

Mars Hotel

A favorite landing pad for space cadets, Mars Hotel in Atom City is noted for its grandeur. The entrance is a cavernous opening, with ornate glass and sparkling crystal. The lobby is equally opulent, with columns constructed of the clearest crystal, and soft, lustrous, deep-pile rugs made of Venusian jungle grass. Don’t be intimidated with the selection of nearly 2,000 rooms spanning more than 200 floors. Photo-slides at the main desk will help you decide which room is best for your visit. Stand by for Mars by Carey Rockwell (1952)

Red Thunder Hotel

Twenty stories high, Red Thunder Hotel is the tallest and most impressive freestanding building in Thunder City. It’s a first-class establishment, built by the family that use to manage the old Marineris Hyatt, the first hotel on Mars, before it was converted into a museum. Most of the rooms provide a nice vista of hotel row, which is a long line of whimsical towers and attached pleasure domes that reminds a lot of visitors of the Las Vegas Strip back on Earth. There is also a large gym, where guests are encouraged to exercise to offset low gravity. Like most hotels on Mars, Red Thunder Hotel has an underground pressure shelter as the last line of defense against blowouts. One notable policy among many: Red Thunder Hotel does not allow groups of vacationing college students to share a single room. Red Lightning by John Varley (2006)

The Empress of Mars

For the finest in Martian hospitality, the tourist has only one real choice: Ares’ premiere hotel -- The Empress of Mars in Mars Two, founded by turn-of-the-century pioneer Mary Griffith and still managed by her family today. Enjoy five-star cuisine in the Empress’s unique Mitsubishi Room, or discover the delights of a low-gravity hot spring sauna! “The Empress of Mars” by Kage Baker (2003)

Events of Martian Rails: Secret of Sinharat!

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:

Secret of Sinharat! – Rumors of ancient, lost cities abound on Mars. The planet has a huge, largely unexplored surface. Ancient civilizations lived there. Supposedly these races mastered space and time, matter and energy, nature and chaos to an extent humans have yet to learn. Sometimes they left records of their wisdom.

Martian Rails is loaded with references to Martian SF!

Yes, Virginia, women really did read SF in the 1930's: Letter # 8

Dear Editor:

I've just finished reading the October issue of Astounding Stories and am convinced that the magazine is getting better and better.

I'd like to take back what I said in my first letter about interplanetary stories being ruled out, because I notice they are improving. They seem more realistic and true.

I like "Jetta of the Lowlands." Something different, don't you think? Seems strange to imagine what the ocean bottoms might be like.

And how can "Stolen Brains" help but be good when Captain Meek brings his Philo Vance to the rescue—that intelligent Dr. Bird. (This may sound like sarcasm, but it's meant to be praise.) I always read Dr. Bird first of all.

"Prisoners on the Electron" is just what I like. Somewhere I read a story similar to it—that of life on an electron. I don't doubt one bit that there can be life on such minute surfaces, which also gives me an idea that the earth may be an electron to some gigantic planet which is so large that we cannot comprehend its size. Couldn't that be possible?

I still find that among the contributors there is only one girl besides myself. Letters sent to me from readers are all from men or boys. Am I so different from other girls? Or what have you?

Gertrude Hemken, 5730 So. Ashland Ave., Chicago, Illinois

Astounding Stories (March 1931)

And now, a word from our sponsor: H. & S. Sales Co.

Lars of Mars #10 (April-May1951)

back cover
 

SyFy channel announces cast for movie Red Faction: Origins, draws on Battlestar Galactica, Stargate Universe

The SyFy television network and video game developer THQ have announced the cast for Red Faction Origins, a two-hour, action-drama, made-for-TV movie based on the popular science fiction first-person shooter video game franchise Red Faction (2001-), in which players assume the role of militant rebels battling against a large corporation on a 21st-century colonized Mars.

Red Faction: Origins follows the children of rebel hero Alec Mason and is set during the years after Red Faction: Guerrilla (2009) -- the third installment of the video game franchise -- and Red Faction: Armageddon (2011) -- the upcoming fourth installment. The cast includes faces that should be familiar to fans of 21st-century science fiction television, including Brian J. Smith (Stargate Universe), Robert Patrick (Terminator 2: Judgment Day), Kate Vernon (Battlestar Galactica) and Gareth David-Lloyd (Torchwood).

Red Faction: Origins will debut on the Syfy channel in May 2011. If the project is successful, it could serve as a springboard to a multi-episode television series.

LibriVox dies Martis: 1961 novel Rebels of the Red Planet by Charles L. Fontenay

LibriVox, the website dedicated to the acoustical liberation of books in the public domain, has freed many important literary works, including Rebels of the Red Planet, a science fiction novel written by American journalist and author Charles L. Fontenay that was published as a paperback original by Ace Books back in 1961. Read by seasoned voice actor Mark Nelson, Rebels of the Red Planet has a total running time of about 5 hours and is downloadable in several formats, including MP3. Here’s a description of the novel:

Dark Kensington had been dead for twenty-five years. It was a fact; everyone knew it. Then suddenly he reappeared, youthful, brilliant, ready to take over the Phoenix, the rebel group that worked to overthrow the tyranny that gripped the settlers on Mars.

The Phoenix had been destroyed not once, not twice, but three times! But this time the resurrected Dark had new plans, plans which involved dangerous experiments in mutation and psionics.

And now the rebels realized they were in double jeopardy. Not only from the government’s desperate hatred of their movement, but also from the growing possibility that the new breed of mutated monsters would get out of hand and bring terrors never before known to man.

The cool cover art by Ed Emshwiller is what got me in the mood!

Cache of classified docs dubbed The Mars Manuscripts leaked

What if everything you knew about the space program was wrong? What if mankind had set foot on Mars long before the first unmanned probes reached it? What if our solar system was full of intelligent life, humans just like us, only far, far more advanced?

The Mars Manuscripts presents the might-be history of America’s black-project involvement on Mars in an artistic, found document masterpiece that will leave you wondering, imagining, and watching the skies just a little more closely at night.

Free read and NYT review of 1919 radio novel Station X by George McLeod Winsor

Thanks to the industrious folks at the Internet Archive, you can read or download an old obscure novel titled Station X (1919) by a (British?) fellow named George McLeod Winsor. Set against the backdrop of an interplanetary struggle between Mars and Venus, the storyline revolves around “Station X,” an isolated British radio station located on a lonely coral island in the Pacific Ocean where intelligences from both Mars and Venus have made mental contact with members of the human crew stationed there.

A review of Station X appears in the January 4, 1920 issue of The New York Times.

Station X was republished as a serial in Amazing Stories magazine, starting with the July 1926 issue. According to the nonfiction book The Gernsback Days (2004), by Michael Ashley, Station X was the greatest radio story pulp editor Hugo Gernsback ever read.

Interesting, American science fiction author Raymond Z. Gallun read Station X as a teenager. According to Starclimber: The Literary Adventures and Autobiography of Raymond Z. Gallun (1991):

During the hot months of 1926 I made a truly important discovery. I saw a large-sized magazine displayed in the window of the local book and stationery shop. There was a picture of an enormous housefly on the brightly colored cover. And there was the name of the publication spelled out in letters of declining size, large-to-small: Amazing Stories.

I bought that issue at once, fairly gobbling its contents. I did the same with succeeding issues. Station X by G. McLeod Winsor really grabbed me. I think it was a reprint. It was about a Martian invasion of Earth accomplished by radio contact—a transfer of mind, intellect, and know-how, to the bodies of living Earthlings. It was as spooky as all get-out; you never knew which of your friends had been transformed into super-intelligent Martian monsters, who had left their alien forms back on Mars. You could only tell an invader by the amazing speed, efficiency, logic, and precision with which he worked, using the big guns of battleships far more effectively than the trained human crew ever could; and improvising super-advanced equipment from parts of terrestrial devices. But these invaders—originally from the moon—were a decadent, robber-kind; ages ago they had stolen the forms of the native Martians, and now they were bent on making another switch, to Earth forms. They had to lose. Another gentler kind of beings from Venus, who had not corrupted themselves into loss of the capacity to improve, defeated them in the end.

Looks like I should consider adding Station X to my reading list!

Commodities of Martian Rails: Rayguns

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:

Rayguns – Generic name for various beam weapons. Over the years, technology has produced the following type of rayguns: paralo-ray pistols and rifles / paralysis ray gun, heat-rays / heat-beam ray-guns, death rays, tickle rays, green disintegrator-ray projectors, baridium pistols, Nihilist Disintegrating Ray, phasers, and atomic blasters.

Martian Rails is loaded with references to Martian SF!

Auction records: Frank Frazetta’s original art for 1974 edition of Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Mastermind of Mars

Frank Frazetta – Original art for Mastermind of Mars (Doubleday, 1974). Offering a rare look inside the laboratory of Ras Thavas, one of the foremost scientific geniuses of Barsoom, Frazetta succeeds in rendering another minor masterpiece. Originally published as the frontispiece to the Doubleday edition of The Mastermind of Mars, this richly textured work is at once amazingly subtle and starkly powerful, revealing the full depths of Frazetta's prodigious talents. The caption that ran with this illustration reads, "An attendant appeared bearing the body of the beautiful girl." Signed by the artist in the upper right, this piece has an approximate image area of 8" x 10.5" and is in excellent condition. A wonderful piece for any fan of Frazetta, Burroughs, or great illustrative art in general.

Sold for: $20,700 (includes Buyer’s Premium)

Date: March 7, 2003

~

1930's short story: "Exiles of Mars" by Frank K. Kelly

Thanks to the blog Crosseyed Cyclops, I just finished reading "Exiles of Mars," a romantic Hard SF health sciences short story penned by American reporter Frank K. Kelly, who later served as a speech writer for President Harry Truman, that was originally published in the Summer 1932 issue of Wonder Stories Quarterly magazine. Set on the Red Planet, the storyline revolves around two humans and two local inhabitants who labor in a subterranean complex beneath the Martian desert of En-o-Dah processing eca-radium in the fight against Cancer Four, the dreaded scourge of the solar system. The opening lines:

THE sun sank slowly down beneath the crest of razor-backed hills, its last long rays spilling out over the desert in a golden flood of light. Great piled dunes of scarlet sand took up the faint crimson beams and cast them back and forth in flashing cascades of eery brightness ... They faded, vanished. Night, sudden and complete, dropped with soundless speed over the desert. Over the edge of the distant hills the racing moons of Mars swiftly rose, spilled pale light down over the sand. A faint wind came, and brushed along the dunes with light fingers, whispering ...

"Exiles of Mars" is a free read, but you have to download the whole pulp magazine in CBZ format in order to read it. Thanks to Tinko Valia of Variety SF for the tip!

Libertarian review of late Kage Baker’s 2009 novel The Empress of Mars

Geoffrey Allan Plauché of the blog Prometheus Unbound recently posted a lengthy libertarian review of The Empress of Mars (2009), a novel penned by the late American science fiction and fantasy author Kage Baker that revolves around The Empress of Mars, a bar run by character Mary Griffith on a colonial Red Planet controlled by the British Arean Company.

In short, Plauché, an Aristotelian-Liberal political philosopher and an adjunct instructor for Buena Vista University in Iowa, focuses his review on the “rugged individualism and pioneer spirit” of the early Mars colonists like Mary Griffith, the “bureaucratic incompetence” of the British Arean Company, and the “bleak, progressive, collectivist, near-totalitarian hellhole” known as Earth. Both the review and the novel are worth reading!

Retro Redneck cinema: The Alpha Incident (1978)

Here's a deadly serious clip from The Alpha Incident, a griping but almost-forgotten 1978 science fiction-horror film directed by Bill Rebane in which the United States government quarantines four rural strangers as it tries to contain an extraterrestrial microorganism brought back to Earth from Mars by a space probe. Starring Stafford Morgan as the hero Dr. Sorensen, Ralph Meeker as Charlie, Carol Irene Newell as the lovely Jenny, John F. Goff as Jack Tiller, and George "Buck" Flower as hillbilly Hank.

So horrifyingly close to the truth, it will blow your mind!

The website Bleeding Skull presents a nice crisp review of The Alpha Incident, while the blog From Beyond Depraved has a detailed summary, analysis and photos of the film.

Watch the entire film in 10 parts on YouTube, or as a single gigantic file deposited in the Internet Archive!

Meet the authors: 1941 Leigh Brackett autobiographical essay

Meet the Authors: Leigh Brackett

Amazing Stories magazine (July 1941)

Review: 1989 novel The Barsoom Project by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes

Jessica Strider, a bookseller at the World's Biggest Bookstore in Toronto and proprietor of the blog Sci-Fi Fan Letter, just posted a solid review of The Barsoom Project (1989 / 2010), an older novel written by American science fiction authors Larry Niven and Steven Barnes that was recently reprinted by Tor Books and made available for the Kindle e-reader. First, the latest product description:

The Barsoom Project is the direct sequel to 1981's Dream Park. Eviane's first visit to the-state-of-art amusement arena Dream Park ended in disaster: the special effects had seemed more real than life... until the holograms she was shooting with live ammunition turned out to be solid flesh and blood... and very, very dead.

Haunted by the past, rebounding from a lengthy spell in a mental hospital, she has returned to Dream Park to exorcise a nightmare that has become reality.  But in Dream Park, nothing is what it seems. The Inuit mythology controlling the images is part of a "Fat Ripper Special" designed to implant new behavioral memes. The players are struggling against the game master, one another, and their own demons. And there is a killer who wants to ensure Eviane never regains her memory...noo matter what it costs.

Blending together hard science fiction with topical RPG-like fantasy games, The Barsoom Project is SF at the cutting edge and a classic creation from two of the genre's most beloved writers.

In short, reviewer Jessica Strider concludes that “The Barsoom Project is pure science fiction […] The climax and conclusion provide a satisfying ending, tying up all the plotlines.”

Together We Thrive: Ronald Reagan heals predecessor in Jimmy Carter, Warlord of Mars (1980)

Cover of comic fanzine BOMBASTIUM #51 (December 1980), by Alan Hutchinson, parodies Edgar Rice Burroughs’s character John Carter, Warlord of Mars.

Cities of Martian Rails: Hinkston Creek

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:

Hinkston Creek – A medium sized canal along a dry canal in the southwest section. This was one of many areas where the rockets from Earth landed. Many rocket crews named the new towns after themselves or places on Earth that they remembered. The old Martian names for these places were forgotten.

Martian Rails is loaded with references to Martian SF!

Should Ray Bradbury replace "niggers" in Martian Chronicles?

In light of the latest literary shit storm over the use of the n-word in Mark Twain's classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), do you think the timeless guy of science fiction & fantasy Ray Bradbury should replace the word "niggers" in his classic collection, The Martian Chronicles (1950)? Here are two passages from the racially charged story "Way in the Middle of the Air" illustrating how the word is used in the book:

June 2003: Way in the Middle of the Air

Did you hear about it?”

“About what?”

“The niggers, the niggers!”

“What about ‘em?”

“Them leaving, pulling out, going away; did you hear?”

“What you mean, pulling out? How can they do that?”

“They can, they will, they are?”

“Just a couple?”

“Every single one here in the South!”

“No.”

“Yes!”

“I got to see that. I don’t believe it. Where they going–Africa?”

A silence.
“Mars.”

“You mean the planet Mars?”

“That’s right.”

The men stood up in the hot shade of the hardware porch. Someone quit lighting a pipe. Someone else spat out into the hot dust of noon.

“They can’t leave, they can’t do that.”

“They’re doing it, anyways.”

“Where’d you hear this?”

“It’s everywhere, on the radio a minute ago, just come through.”

Like a series of dusty statues, the men came to life.

Samuel Teece, the hardware proprietor, laughed uneasily. “I wondered what happened to Silly. I sent him on my bike an hour ago. He ain’t come back from Mrs. Bordman’s yet. You think that black fool just peddled off to Mars?” [...]

[…] Samuel Teece wouldn’t believe it. “Why, hell, where’d they get the transportation? How they goin’ to get to Mars?”

“Rockets,” said Grandpa Quartermain.

“All the damn-fool things. Where’d they get rockets?”

“Saved their money and built them.”

“I never heard about it.”

“Seems these niggers kept it secret, worked on the rockets all themselves, don’t know where–in Africa, maybe.”

“Could they do that,” demanded Samuel Teece, pacing about the porch. “Ain’t there a law?”

“It ain’t as if they’re declarin’ war,” said Grandpa quietly.

“Where do they get off, God damn it, workin’ in secret, plottin’?” shouted Teece.

“Schedule is for all this town’s niggers to gather out by Loon Lake. Rockets be there at one o’clock, pick ‘em up, take ‘em to Mars.”

“Telephone the governor, call out the militia,” cried Teece. “They should have given notice!"

So what do you think? Should Ray Bradbury replace “niggers” in The Martian Chronicles?

NYC art exhibition – Mars: Adrift on the Hourglass Sea

The longtime collaborative art team of Nicholas Kahn & Richard Selesnick recently unveiled Mars: Adrift on the Hourglass Sea, a new exhibition of photographs and sculpture at the Yancey Richardson Gallery, down in the heart of New York City’s Chelsea art district. According to the official press release:

"the artists present a dark and powerful visage of a collapsed civilization on the red planet. Integrating actual photo-mosaics of Martian landscapes taken by NASA space rovers, with their distinctive brand of sci-fi mysticism and art historical contexts, the artists offer a salient version of what constitutes the contemporary sublime landscape.

Recalling the visual sublimity of Casper David Friedrich and the existential wanderlust of Mary Shelley, Kahn & Selesnick weave together a narrative of human survival amidst the crumbling vestiges of a once inhabited landscape. The exhibition features two female protagonists and a child (whose birth on the rocky terrain is also documented), as they negotiate a path through a civilization’s ruins. A curious combination of stone-age monuments and high-tech devices litter the landscape – simultaneously ancient and futuristic – at turns resembling Stonehenge or the design of Buckminster Fuller, though largely devoid of visual clues that place the story within a recognizable time period.

Poignant issues of technology, economic and societal collapse, environmental disaster and existential philosophy are explored under the guise of a fantastical journey through the deserts of our neighbor planet. Additionally, the notion of Earth and Mars as planetary twins is advanced through repeated visual mirroring devices: the figure of Janus – two-faced god of portals – appears, as do the motifs of dividing cells and the recurrence of hematite rock clusters that appear, almost identically, on the surface of Mars and the deserts of Utah, a location used by Kahn & Selesnick for this project."

Mars: Adrift on the Hourglass Sea runs from January 6th to February 19th, 2011.

Pictured above: “Airmaker” by Kahn & Selesnick, courtesy of the artists and Yancey Richardson Gallery.

Brainwashing in Frederik Pohl’s 1958 story "Mars by Moonlight"

According to Brainwashing: The Fictions of Mind Control: A Study of Novels and Films since World War II, by David Seed (Kent State University Press, 2004):

Frederik Pohl's 1960 story "Mars by Moonlight" uses the same convention of a planetary penal colony, this time on Mars, where Earth’s government practices a method of “mind-washing.” As one character explains, “instead of putting someone in jail and keeping them there . . . they wipe out the parts of the mind that has the criminal pattern in it. They go back erasing memory, until they come to a past that is clean and unaffected." Pohl applies the by now traditional aspect of brainwashing as purification but gives it an ironic twist in that memories of crimes are erased and with them any specific explanation of why characters are on Mars. The second twist turns the story into a dramatization of reality management when the protagonist discovers that “Mars” is an illusion maintained by posthypnotic suggestion. The dystopian fiction actually screens an alien invasion by the “skulls,” an intelligent life form who have set up a test farm on Earth to simulate Martian living conditions.

The novella “Mars by Moonlight” was written by Frederik Pohl under the pseudonym Paul Flehr and first published in the June 1958 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine.

Sexy killer vigilante nun Evangeline helps tone down rhetoric on Red Planet in 1980's comic book Guns of Mars

Here’s a timely free read: Evangeline: Guns of Mars, a 1980’s science fiction comic book created and written by the then-husband-and-wife team of Chuck Dixon & Judith Hunt, in which Sister "Blondie" Evangeline is dispatched to the Red Planet by Cardinal Szn to help tone down the rhetoric following the savage massacre of defenseless nuns and orphans at a remote Catholic mission.

According to Wikipedia, co-creator Judith Hunt stated that the short-lived Evangeline comic book series "lost its original complexity and feminist standpoint and became just another excuse for depictions of gratuitous sex and violence."

Thanks to Australian SF mega-fan Blue Tyson for the link!

Threshold: 2010 SF thriller by Eric Flint and Ryk E. Spoor

Thanks to Australian science fiction fan Christine Hawkins and her awesome bibliography of Martian SF, I just learned about Threshold, a recent novel written by The New York Times best-selling American author Eric Flint and American technical writer Ryk E. Spoor. Part of Flint & Spoor’s Boundary series, Threshold was published in June 2010 by Baen Books. Here’s the official promotional piece:

When the strange fossil she'd discovered had ended up giving her a trip to Mars, Helen Sutter thought she'd gone about as far as any paleontologist would ever go in her lifetime. But when you've also married A.J. Baker, overconfident super-sensor expert for the only private agency in space – the Ares Corporation – and your best friend Madeline Fathom Buckley is a former secret agent who's just signed on as the chief of security for the newly created and already embattled Interplanetary Research Institute of the United Nations, there's always somewhere farther to go.

The newest discoveries will take her, A.J., and their friends Jackie, Joe, and Madeline to the mysterious asteroid Ceres – and beyond, in a desperate race to Jupiter's perilous miniature system of radiation- bombarded moons. The next gold rush is on – for alien technology, hidden in lost bases around the system. And there are people willing to do anything to get it – even plan the first interplanetary war, four hundred million miles from home!

According to Publishers Weekly, “This genial, fast-paced sci-fi espionage thriller is light in tone and hard on science and a fine choice for any collection. Despite a character list in the front, full enjoyment of this volume will depend on having already read the first.”

Read the first 9 chapters of Threshold for free!

Perspective: Why combatants on Barsoom don’t use firearms

Yesterday’s tragic shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment and a gun owner, reminds me of "A Fighting Manual of Mars" (1996), a fascinating ten-page nonfiction essay written by stuntman, swordsman, actor and teacher T. J. Glenn that explains the weapons and combat techniques employed in the Martian novels penned by beloved science fiction and fantasy pulp author Edgar Rice Burroughs. Here’s a snippet that explains why combatants on Barsoom don't use firearms:

[John] Carter, then, is a man with an unknowably vast store of practical fighting man's tricks and techniques before he comes into our sphere of vision in these stories. He will need them, for Mars (or Barsoom to use the local name) is a violent, barbaric world.

Once on the red planet he encounters the fifteen-foot tall barbarian race of greenmen who inhabit the great dried up sea bottoms of the dying planet. They are four armed and equipped with an awesome array of weaponry. They carry a great forty-foot metal shod spear to fight from thoat-back (a Martian horse-like transport animal), a long sword, which is single edged, and five or more feet long, a shortsword, a dagger (or two), and a radium rifle and/or pistol. "These rifles which were of a white metal stocked with wood, which...was a very light and in tensile, hard, growth much prized on Mars....The metal of the barrel is an alloy composed principally of aluminum and steel which they have learned to temper to a hardness far exceeding that of the steel with which we are familiar....The theoretic effective radius of this rifle is three hundred miles, but the best they can do in actual service when equipped with their wireless senders and sighters is but a trifle over two hundred miles." (A Princess of Mars) These Radium rifles and pistols are sparingly used in the stories and with good reasons both dramatic and (to the characters) practical. Dramatically, nothing is ever made of this long distance shooting after mentioning it once, as it would make face-to-face confrontations virtually unnecessary and destroy the romance of the whole story.

For practicality's sake the guns were seldom used because of the problem with the ammo. They fired small caliber explosive charges filled with a powder, which Carter calls by a Martian term but which Burroughs, editing the manuscript for Carter, calls radium. They have the annoying habit of only exploding when light hits the burst shells, so that if they fall in shadow or are fired at night, they will function as duds until a ray of light hits them at sometime later. This makes the aftermath of a battle sometimes as dangerous as the actual conflict with random explosions taking out noncombatants. For this reason, the cutlery is preferred by most fighting men.

"A Fighting Manual of Mars" was originally published in Edgar Rice Burroughs' Fantastic Worlds (1996) and recently reprinted in Thrilling Adventures, Vol. 14, #141 (Summer 2009).

Events of Martian Rails: Earth Attacks!

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:

Earth Attacks! – The free-minded Martian people have become too independent for the likes of the Earth government. Am armada from Earth is en route to Mars to rectify this situation. Word of this attack has reached Mars and preparations are being made.

Martian Rails is loaded with references to Martian SF!

Poetry: "Carthage: Reflections of a Martian" by Frank Herbert

Best known for his monumental six-book Dune saga, Frank Herbert also wrote an obscure poem titled "Carthage: Reflections of a Martian," which was published first in the anthology Mars, We Love You: Tales of Mars, Men and Martians (1971) and later in Songs of Muad’Dib: The Poetry of Frank Herbert (1992). Here are the first five stanza’s of Herbert's "Carthage: Reflections of a Martian," which is comprised of about 450 lines:

  Thy expected alien

  Am I.

  Weird of shade

  And doomfire face:

  All thy senses

  Cry to my

  Mourning mysteries

  Which yesterday

  Were commonplace.

  We sit at Sunday breakfast

  And I smell the dust of Carthage.

  It drowns the spang

  Of our automatic toaster.

  That strange woman across from me

  Smiles, butters two slices.

  Her smile arouses a multitude in me!

  Her smile . . .

  Frightens us.

For the full text of "Carthage: Reflections of a Martian" and the editor’s introduction to it from Mars, We Love You: Tales of Mars, Men and Martians, check out CaveofBirds.com, a website devoted to Frank Herbert.

"Machine of Klamugra" – 1950 short story by Allen K. Lang

Thanks to the industrious folks at the Internet Archive, you can read or download "Machine of Klamugra," a short story penned by American science fiction writer Allen Kim Lang (1928- ) and illustrated by an artist known as Mayan. Originally published in the November 1950 issue of Planet Stories magazine, the storyline revolves around the trial of two Earthmen, Captain Jan Barnaby and Lieutenant Kim Teajun of the Extraterrestrial Service, who are accused of murdering a Martian priest named Klaggchallak. Here are the opening lines of the story:

KLAGGCHALLAK, his fur nose-flaps pulled tight against his nostrils, stumbled up to the gleaming pinnacle of steel that seemed to offer shelter against the night. He felt a dust-storm gathering in the west, and knew that not even the tough skin of a Martian priest could withstand the angry whippings of sand lashed up by the wind-warlocks of the desert.

The old priest drew a tiny, folded mal-skin tent from his back-pack. Without haste, for he knew that the elder gods of Mars were watching his safety, Klaggchallak pitched the tent against the west stabilizer of the rocket, drawing the tough hide down to form a floor-flap and fastening it to the steel of the stabilizer with tough mal-hoof glue, which would hold fast in the fiercest winds of Mars. He looked for the sun and found it low in the evening sky, then crawled leisurely into the yurt, pulling the door-flap down after him and gluing it to the floor. He had for himself a secure cocoon into which the sand-devils could not force their probing fingers. Before he slept, the old priest fingered his beads, reciting his evening invocation to various benevolent and protective gods...

Thanks to Tinkoo Valia of the blog Variety SF for the tip!

Rebels of Mars RPG non-player character: Captain Zeb Reed

Thanks to the role-playing game blog Savage Barsoom, I capitalized on Adamant Entertainment’s new pricing model and purchased a small sack of stuff, including Rebels of Mars (2009), an RPG campaign setting that revolves around a Confederate unit plucked from the American Civil War and transported to the Green Wastes of Mars. Check out this non-player character from the dramatis personae:

Captain Arthur Zebulon "Zeb" Reed

Captain Arthur Zebulon "Zeb" Reed is the captain of the "Louisiana Lightning" cavalry troop. A horse breeder before the war, Zeb has suddenly lost his family, his horses, and his cause in one fell swoop. A practical man and a born leader, Zeb has managed to maintain discipline and keep his men safe and sane.

Zeb’s family did not own slaves and he is quick to point out that the war is not over slavery but the right to be left alone. The slaver attack, reds preying on reds, is strengthening his personal conviction that slavery is morally wrong. Zeb is an honorable man, chivalric toward women, and a good leader.

Unfortunately, Lt. Jefferson doesn’t share Zeb’s views and the two have been clashing (civilly, of course, or else Zeb would strip him of rank). Zeb fears that his lieutenant’s ambition is going to get them all killed, but he understands that a significant number of his men, perhaps the majority, are sympathetic to Lt. Jefferson. Zeb would rather keep the troop strong and unified rather than play out a miniature version of the war they left.

Zeb Reed is a dashing man in his late thirties, with straight blonde hair and a goatee. He keeps his uniform in immaculate condition although he has added a second holster for his radium pistol. Zeb also keeps his regular revolver, a cavalry saber, and a knife on him at all times. Zeb is aware of Carina’s affection for him but he still hasn’t given up on hope of seeing his wife and children again. For now, he plays her protective guardian.

Attributes: Agility, Smarts, Spirit, Strength, Vigor

Skills: Fighting, Guts, Intimidation, Knowledge (Tactics), Notice, Riding, Shooting, Stealth, Survival

Pace, Parry and Toughness, but no Charisma

Hindrances: Code of Honor

Edges: Alien Mind, Mighty Thews, Command, Natural Leader

Gear: Two Starr Model 1863 Double-action Army Revolvers, Radium Pistol, Cavalry Saber

Note that the core Savage Worlds rules and a copy of MARS: Savage Worlds Edition are required to play Rebels of Mars.

Star Winds: 1978 novel by Barrington J. Bayley

Star Winds (1978), a novel by the late British science fiction writer Barrington J. Bayley about the ship that sailed to Mars…and beyond.

Pictured below: Paperback original (New York: DAW Books, 1978), #UE1384, No. 294, 191 p., $1.75. Cover art by David Bergen. Here’s the blurb from the back cover:

The sails were the product of the old technology, lost long ago in the depleted Earth, and they were priceless. For with those fantastic sheets of etheric material, ships could sail the sky and even brave the radiant tides between worlds and stars.

The alchemists who had replaced the scientists still sought the ancient secrets...and Rachad, apprentice to such a would-be wizard, learned that the key to his quest lay in a book abandoned in a Martian colonial ruin long, long ago.

But how to get to Mars? There was one way left – take a sea vessel, caulk it airtight, steal new sails, and fly the star winds in the way of the ancient windjammers.

Here is an intriguing, unusual and colorful novel of ships that sail the stars riding before the solar breeze that blows between the worlds.

A positive review posted by Dave Hardy on his blog Fire and Sword in 2007 begins: "So you’re an SF fan. You want all the crazy, swashbuckling action of Dan Dare and the Intergalactic Squid Invasion but the intellectual challenge of A Canticle for St. Squidbert. Oh yeah, and the outlandish fantasy of The Unicorn Chronicles Part XLIV. Whatcha gonna do, read The Economist? How about you try Barrington Bayley, the best-kept secret of SF."

A highly critical fan review posted on Amazon in 2009 concludes: "Hopefully Bayley's other works are more interesting since I've heard him many times referred to as a lost great. All in all, this book was a terrible disappointment."

"Hard to tell whether it's sf or fantasy, but it's certainly one of the eccentric Mr Bayley's more engaging works." – David Pringle.

Advertisement for Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles from 1950 New York Science Fiction Conference program

Advertisement for Ray Bradbury’s classic collection The Martian Chronicles (1950)

as printed in the program of the 1950 New York Science Fiction Conference.

Radical Muslim brother constructed play of Martian Utopian fiction to make political point about imprisonment in Egypt

According to "Fictional Islam: A Literary Review and Comparative Essay on Islam in Science Fiction and Fantasy," written by Texas A&M librarian Rebecca Hankins and originally published in the journal Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction (Vol. 105, Spring 2009):

Christian Szyska's "On Utopian Writing in Nasserist Prison and Laicist Turkey" [1995] tackles the use of utopian fiction, "fiction that goes beyond reality in order to depict an imaginary community in its ideal form as an opportunity to reflect upon the present situation." The article presents the activity of writing as a coping mechanism for Muslims incarcerated in an Egyptian prison and as a plot device for a Turkish writer's quest for an Islamic utopia. The essay opens with a discussion of writings by Egyptian political prisoners and their use of the narrative to build an Islamic utopian world that allows them to escape the persecution and alienation they experience within their present societies. These stories are transmitted as plays and dramas that take their inspiration from the writings of one of Islam's more controversial figures, Egyptian political prisoner, the late Sayyid Qutb, a leader within the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that has consistently fought against the secularization of Egypt. The play Szyska critiques is titled Al-bu'd al khamis (1987), written by Ahmad Ra'if, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a political prisoner. The story revolves around three characters, two men and a woman, who become disillusioned with planet Earth and decide to emigrate to planet Mars. On Mars they find a utopian system run by the tolerant, intelligent, and non-violent Martians who are undergirded with a moral and religious framework similar to Islam. Szyska notes, "The Martian system mirrors the concept of Islamic government as proposed by Sayyid Qutb and expressed in the concepts of tawhid [oneness of God] and hakimiyya [governance]."

Thanks to World SF for the link.