#old mars

[andioverman-blog]

Old Mars. Fun little landscape, I like how the warm colors came out cold in this.

[theladyfromplanetx]

This anthology won the Locus Award in 2014. I’m surprised no one has posted anything about this anthology on Tumblr.

[howlingreviews]

Publisher Spotlight: Titan Books

Publisher Spotlight: Titan Books

Titan Books are a publisher that I have had the pleasure of working with on multiple occasions and I want to start showing more of the works from publishers who I believe are making amazing books available! I might not have time to read them all straight away but I want to share them with the world! So without further ado, here are a few books by Titan that I think you should try and their…

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[captainkatchronicles]

Mars Invasion.

Mars is everywhere.  The announcement that flowing, briny water has been discovered on the ‘red planet’ coincided perfectly with the release of The Martian,  based on the book by Andy Weir and starring Matt Damon, in our cinemas; whilst George R R Martin writes a stirring homage to Mars’ literary history and enduring captivation in the Guardian today (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/01/george-rr-martin-mars-game-of-thrones-martians).  We are being invaded by Mars, our imaginations stimulated by the possibilities of life on the fourth planet, whether it is its own home-grown version or one of our native life forms surviving its hostile environment.  Yet, Mars has been here before.

One of the original five planets, burning red in the heavens, named after the god of war by the Romans; its curious fascination has been probing our celestial borders for millennia.  In the late 19th Century, the prospect of life on Mars captured our imaginations, leading to a full scale literary invasion of fantastical alien races, creatures and cities.  Science launched a semi-successful counter attack in the 1960s thanks to hard facts sent back by the Mariner missions.  Romance and adventure quashed by the reality that there was no possibility of alien races colonising the red planet.  Mars returned to its place in the night sky, over 33.9 million miles away from our reality.

Fortunately, for all lovers of romance and adventure, the red planet is back.  Advances in space exploration have shown us that rivers and lakes once flowed freely on its surface and that’s before we get onto the discovery that water in some form flows there even now.  The understanding that it was once a much more hospitable environment places the tales we all love so much into the realm of historical fiction, maybe they couldn’t happen now but back then... maybe, just maybe.  Science fiction writers have got over their disillusionment of the Mars reality and returned to the planet’s romantic side, creating new tales to capture our imaginations and win us to its cause.  Books like Old Mars, edited by George R R Martin and Gardner Dozois, take us back to the time when our closest neighbour harboured fascinating civilizations and absorbing characters.  The Martian in literary and visual form brings us the knowledge that adventure and pioneering survival can exist on the planet’s surface even within the boundaries of that kill-joy hard science.

Whether it is in its guise as instigator of romantic, fantasy, historical or science fiction or as the planet we are most likely to set foot on in the foreseeable future; it has captured our imaginations.  Allowing us to look outward, bringing space adventure onto our doorstep, opening our minds to possibilities free of our gravitational pull.  Mars has staged a successful invasion of us earth-bound humans and I, for one, hope it’s here to stay.

[recursionary-blog]

Mars of the imagination

Old Mars is presented in The Strange corebook as a recursion created by fictional bleed, based on Barsoom from the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

I like this idea as a seed, but for my game I want to expand the premise.

Old Mars is a recursion based on Mars as it existed in the popular imagination at the dawn of the Space Age. Wikipedia lists many examples of Mars in fiction dating back to the late 1800's, and separates the list before and after Mariner. The first space probe to Mars makes a fitting demarkation point as those early photographs revealed a dead world and put to rest the dreams of Martian civilization.

Before Mariner, writers were inspired by astronomers who observed linear features on the surface of Mars, which were often described as water canals. This was enough to paint visions of an advanced civilization, clinging to life on a dying world through world-spanning feats of engineering.

Old Mars is this early vision of Mars. A dying planet and ancient civilizations. Barsoom to some, but the Burroughs' stories are just a fraction of what can be found on Old Mars. The creatures from H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds come from Mars. Looney Tunes character Marvin the Martian is a pre-Mariner invention; it might seem absurd to include a cartoon character, but many of his schemes involved destroying Earth, so he easily makes an appropriate villain. Old Mars is heavily influenced by the pulp adventure stories of the 1920's, a world of sci-fi westerns, damsels in distress, and heart-pounding action.

There also exists the possibility that Edgar Rice Burroughs was an early recursion miner, and the John Carter of Mars character was based on his adventures there. The plot of the stories supports this notion.

[ben-wah-b4lls]

[ianfrommars]

Cannes, France (May 20, 2002)

[llanolyn]

...Who weeps for Mars?