Meet the Martians

In the event, only one reader entered the competition to identify the types of fictional Martian mentioned in my short story "Green Mars Blues", and that was in fact another of the contributors to Iris Wildthyme of Mars.

I said that I thought there were nineteen types of Martian in the story. I have to admit it depends heavily on how you count.

From the beginning...

1. The Green Man (first appearance p227): A Green Martian from Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom sequence.
2. Jenah Pharis (p229): A Red Martian from Barsoom.
3. The Tripods (p232): Obviously, the war machines from H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds.
4. The Coy Stripper and Her "Snake" (p234): An adult and juvenile of the species described in Philip José Farmer's short story "My Sister's Brother".
5 & 6. The Fake Charlatan and the Incompetent Ghost  (p234): One of the telepathic Martians, and one of the slightly different shapeshifting telepathic Martians, from Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles.
7. The Locusts (p236): The evil insectile Martians from Quatermass and the Pit, with accompanying aerial psychic projection.
8. The Angels of Pavonis Mons (p238): The Eldila from C.S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet.
9, 10 & 11. The Spindly Men, the Otters and the Froggy Things (p238): The Sorns, Hrossa and Pfifltriggi from Out of the Silent Planet.
12. The Blue (or Possibly Green) Giants (p240): Either the Argzoon from Michael Moorcock's Kane of Old Mars sequence, or the Ice Warriors from Doctor Who.
13. Great Octopus Things (p240): From Men, Martians and Machines by Eric Frank Russell (though other answers would probably have been acceptable).
14. Merpeople (p240): From Doctor Omega by Arnould Galopin.
15. The Blue Lightning (p240): A Fire Balloon from The Martian Chronicles.
16. The Christmas Visitor (p240): Either Dropo from Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, or the Alien Super-Being from Christmas on Mars.
17. The Flashing Eyes in the Dark (p241): The Man from Mars in the Blondie song "Rapture". (The biggest clue's in what he eats.)
18. The Laughers at Potatoes (p241): The robotic Martians from the 1970s Smash adverts. (I wouldn't have thought of including these Martians in the story without the input of Andrew Hickey, to whom thanks.)
19. The Armoured Reptile (p250): Definitely an Ice Warrior.

For bonus points, the title of Marcie's proposed talk "Grokking Vulthoom: The Role of Indigene Legends in Modern Cult Formation" (p242) references Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land and "Vulthoom" by Clark Ashton Smith.

To his credit, our entrant Simon Bucher-Jones identified twelve of those (fourteen including the bonuses). He also pointed out several texts that identify Jesus (mentioned on p226) as a Martian, and made a valiant effort to name eighteen works which include Martian tripods (on the basis that Marcie has encountered eighteen variants of the story). Simon wins the signed copy of The Pendragon Protocol by default, but it's certainly deserved.

Competition Time

Right. I have a signed copy of my urban fantasy thriller The Pendragon Protocol to give away, to someone who can demonstrate their close reading abilities and knowledge of obscure science fiction.

To win this you'll need to find a copy of the anthology Iris Wildthyme of Mars. This may sound like a large investment, but a) the ebook version is currently only £5.99 in the Obverse sale, b) The Pendragon Protocol paperback costs £7.99 at Amazon, and c) you'll be getting to buy and keep an anthology I'm very proud of with stories by lots of talented authors that you'll really enjoy. And if you're lucky and win, you'll end up with £13.98 worth of book for £5.99.

The prize will go to anyone who can identify all the types of fictional Martian who are referred to in my story 'Green Mars Blues' in Iris Wildthyme of Mars. There are (I believe) nineteen to identify altogether.

Rules:

1. Email entries to me at martians@infinitarian.com. Please don't post identifications as comments here. 
2. If nobody identifies all nineteen types of Martian, whoever makes the most correct identifications wins. 
3. Some references are deliberately ambiguous, so I'll accept more than one answer. (Identifying both my intended answers will count as an extra point for the purposes of rule 2.) 
4. The closing date will be Sunday 15 February.

Feel free to post any queries here or on Twitter.

Iris Wildthyme of Mars Open Subs: Supplemental

Further to this post, and this webpage which it links to, discussions with potential entrants to the Iris Wildthyme of Mars open submissions competition have thrown up a few points of clarification.

1. I'd like the competition (and I really should have been clear about this) to be for unpublished authors. If you're a published author of fiction, you're very welcome to pitch a story for the anthology, but it'll go through a rather different route, to keep the field clear for the newcomers. Contact me at irisonmars@infinitarian.com for further instructions.

2. Multiple entries per person are allowed, though not especially encouraged. They'll make my life a bit of a pain, but I didn't explicitly rule them out when I had the chance, and it would be unfair to now. Don't say I never do anything for you.

3. While using anyone else's copyrighted characters or settings is a definite no-no, fiction which is in the public domain in the UK (where Obverse operates) is fair game for inclusion in the anthology. The UK's copyright laws are specific, though, that all works remain in copyright for 70 years after the author's death, so some material which is in the public domain in the USA is off limits -- most notably HG Wells's (1866-1946) The War of the Worlds. (The two most significant early Mars texts which are out of copyright in the UK are probably Gulliver of Mars and Edison's Conquest of Mars.)

Hope that all makes sense. Happy typing...

Iris Wildthyme of Mars

This actually isn't one of the three exciting things I was mentioning yesterday, but it ought to have been. (And yes, I'm editing the book.)

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Open Submissions Competition for Obverse Books

The short version: We’re looking for stories of 6,000 to 8,000 words, featuring the ‘Barbarella’ incarnation of Iris Wildthyme, and set on Mars – any version of the Red Planet you feel like (provided it doesn’t infringe copyright).  Please send a 600-word synopsis and a similar-length sample of your story to opensubs@infinitarian.com.

Click for the long version.