Please pass the Sci-Fi

 I was cooking dinner the other night, and thought, yes, why not, I will grab out my almost mint copy of the Jeff Wayne concept album and settle it down onto the turntable, nice and smooth and careful, and drift the needle over into the first groove and listen to the deep silken tones of Richard Burton, before those amazing, never forgotten opening chords ring out from the speakers. It is one of those stories that grab you, hold you, and carry you through to the end when, sorry spoilers, the Martian's get what's coming to them. "No one would have believed ..." And yet they did. They believed when Orson Welles kicked off his now infamous radio programme on October 30, 1938. Welles started the broadcast in similar tones to the Jeff Wayne album. Personally I think Richard Burton's intro is so much smoother. When you listen to the Orson Welles recording, freely available at Archive.org , you wonder why people went into hysteria. However, if you missed the first couple...

 The Egyptians observed it, so did the Chinese. Indeed, the Chinese called it Yinghuo, which means "dazzling and confusing." The Greeks and the Romans went all trippy and invented myths and legends to bring it into line with their understanding of how things worked. It wasn't until Galileo came on the scene and made his own telescope in 1608 or 1609 that things started to get a bit of observational traction. The problem is, and let's be honest, in a small telescope Mars just isn't that interesting. And it seems that Galileo quickly moved on to taking longer ganders at other objects in the night sky. He spent a lot of time gazing at and making drawings of the moon. We know that he used one of his later telescopes to make the now famous discovery of Jupiter's largest four moons. You have to ramp up the aperture before things start to get interesting, and even then, folks, there are heaps more interesting things to turn your telescope to in the night's sky. A...

 In exploring the science fiction of Mars, taking up Arthur C. Clarke's classic, the Sands of Mars, is an interesting place to start. Clarke suggests that it was one of the first novels to abandon what he refers to as the "romantic fantasies" of Percival Lowell, Edgar Rice Burroughs, C.S. Lewis and Ray Bradbury. I think as I go along it is important to visit with each of these writers in turn, once I have listened to Arthur C. for a while that is. I must say, it is difficult not to take Clarke's use of "romantic fantasies" as a bit of a slap, if not entirely derogatory. I'm not sure our mate Arthur meant it that way, but the undercurrent is suggestive. The fact that he follows up with the statement that here are "four gentlemen I admire greatly, though not necessarily for the same reasons," is telling, but it places the work I am about to read at an interesting impasse in terms of the mis en scene and my expectations of it. I admit that I have...

 It intrigues us. It interests us, fascinates us. Some are obsessed by it. It compels us and lures us. Just as it lured John Carter all those years ago.  What am I talking about. Mars. The planet that is, not the chocolate bar. As I start to undertake the research for an upcoming novel, I thought it would be great to launch off some of my reading and explore the idea of Mars through the science fiction lens. Which is easier said than done. What's the problem I hear you ask. Well, we have come a long way since Giovanni Schiaparelli pointed his telescope at the red planet and began to make his now infamous observations. I thought, well, maybe he was using a poor-quality telescope, with shabby optics. But this doesn't prove to be the case. He was using the 218 mm refracting telescope installed at the Brera Observatory in Milan, which at the time would have been state of the art in optics. The telescope was built by a guy named Georg Merz, who was no slouch in telescope makin...

It's interesting to scroll down through the list of what is nominated for and doesn't win Hugo awards. If you didn't know the Hugo awards for Best Novel is given each year for a story that is published in English or translated into English that displays excellence in Science Fiction writing.  The first year it was given was back in 1953 by the World Science Fiction Society. It is presented at the World Science Fiction Convention that has been held each year since its inception back in 1939.  I had the privilege of being at the convention back in 1985, in Melbourne. It was held from the 22 - 26 August.  It was called Aussiecon Two. What a blast. With Gene Wolf as the guest. I remember meeting David Brin, Robert Silverberg, who was very different from how I imagined him, and the big surprise Frank Herbert, who did a signing of Dune. None of us fans were aware that he was going to be there let alone sit and do a signing. He was elderly and not very well. But what an amazing ...

 I read somewhere that Edgar Rice Burroughs began writing to prove that he could write terrible fiction and still make money. It was his protest against all the bad writing that appeared in the pulp magazines of the time. The thing is, he is actually not a bad writer. If he was terrible then he would long have faded into obscurity, and his most famous character, Tarzan, wouldn't be almost a household name. The other character he created who looms large is John Carter or Mars. When the Cosmos series produced and presented by Carl Sagan appeared on television back on the 80s I had never read any Edgar Rice Burroughs. Yes, of course I had heard of him, I knew about Tarzan, and at one time the TV series with Ron Ely as Tarzan was one of my staple shows. But as to reading any of his books, nah. To this day I have not read a Tarzan novel. I should do something about that shouldn't I? Carl Sagan kept referring to the saga of Barsoom, to the sweeping plains of Mars where John Carter c...