I imagine you've all been on tenterhooks (which look
like this, apparently) for months now, waiting for the announcement of the author and title lineup for the utterly fabulous forthcoming anthology
Iris Wildthyme of Mars.
Please now unhook yourselves from whichever
tenter you've been occupying, because the time has now arrived when such an announcement can be made, and it looks like this:
Wandering Stars – Ian Potter
Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Bad Weekend – Daniel Tessier
Iris: Chess-Mistress of Mars
– Simon Bucher-Jones
Death on the Euphrates – Selina Lock
And a Dog to Walk – Dale Smith
Talking with Spores – Juliet Kemp
Doomed – Richard Wright
The Last Martian – Rachel
Churcher
Lilac Mars – Mark Clapham
and Lance Parkin
City of Dust – Aditya Bidikar
The Calamari-Men of Mare
Cimmerium – Blair Bidmead
Green Mars Blues – Philip
Purser-Hallard
Dale, Juliet and Blair will be familiar to readers of the
City of the Saved anthologies as the respective authors of
'About a Girl',
'Lost Ships and Lost Lands' and
'Happily Ever After Is a High-Risk Strategy' in
Tales of the City; as will Ian, Simon and Richard, who wrote
'The Long-Distance Somnambulist',
'Double Trouble at the Parasites on the Proletariat Club' and
'The Mystery of the Rose' for
More Tales of the City.
People who like reading the kind of stuff I write (or who just follow
Obverse Books' output) may also be aware of Selina through her
Señor 105 e-novella
Green Eyed and Grim, and of Aditya through his outstanding short story
'Dharmayuddha' in the
Faction Paradox anthology
Burning with Optimism's Flames. Both have also written and done other things with comics.
Rachel is a brilliant unpublished author who I've been trying to persuade to write for an anthology since I started editing them. Daniel is the winner of the
open submissions competition to choose a new contributor for
Iris Wildthyme of Mars: his story is a wonderful sequel to
Edwin L Arnold's early, out-of-copyright planetary romance
Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation, also known as
Gulliver of Mars.
Finally, Mark and Lance are prolific novelists and authors whose respective most recent works are the zombie novel
Dead Stop and the acclaimed biography
Magic Words: The Extraordinary Life of Alan Moore. Mark has written for Iris before (in
The Panda Book of Horror), but this is Lance's first work for Obverse. 'Lilac Mars' is a sequel to their earlier collaboration,
Beige Planet Mars, published in 1998 (and therefore now 15% of the age of
Gulliver of Mars).
I'm honoured and proud to have accumulated such a portfolio of talent for my first full-length anthology, and I'm terribly pleased with the stories they've all submitted. The book is designed as a tour of Mars as it appears in fiction, from the classical conception of the Ptolemaic heavens, through early scientific romances, the heyday of the pulps and the later vogue for 'hard SF', to the genre-blending of the 21st century. Along the way you'll find nods to a great many familiar names, plus more poetry, illustrations and maps than you might imagine.
We also have an updated blurb:
The
Red Planet.
Everyone agrees about the colour, at
least. The rest is up for grabs.
Is Mars a dead and sterile desert, or
teeming with life?
Are Martians red, green or blue? Nubile and
lithe, or monstrously tentacular?
Are they long gone, or waiting still? How
do they feel about visitors?
Will we become the Martians? What kind of
a world might we build on Mars? What myths, new or old, might we create there?
Oh – and how many different colours can
you put in front of ‘Mars’ to make a clever title?
These Marses are of course incompatible,
contradictory, and in many cases quite impossible. And Iris Wildthyme has
visited them all.
Iris Wildthyme of Mars is due out in the summer. I'll keep you posted when it's ready to pre-order.
