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.

Encycled

I’m delighted and slightly stunned to discover that, with the publication of The Pendragon Protocol, I now merit my own entry in the science fiction readers’ Bible, John Clute et al’s The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.  I owned the first edition from the age of twelve or thereabouts; I still have the 21-year-old second edition (see right) and its sister volume, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, on my shelves, and I’ve been avidly consulting the third edition since it went online in 2011. It’s difficult to express quite how proud I feel of finally warranting an appearance of my own in this arcane compendium.

Admittedly I don’t entirely agree with the details of my entry. (I’d argue, for instance, that while The Pendragon Protocol does indeed mention Christian values, it’s hardly uncritical of them, and that — while I’m delighted if the novel works for a Young Adult readership — that wasn’t actually the demographic I was primarily aiming for. Also, the Encyclopedia doesn't seem to be aware of Peculiar Lives, which I would have thought was pretty much up its street.)

This is scarcely the point, though. Among other things, John Clute (John Clute! The SF critic's SF critic!) thinks Of the City of the Saved is "ambitious". I'm unbelievably pleased about this.

* * *

...Well, anyway. In other, not-at-all anticlimactic news, Iris Wildthyme of Mars now exists in hard copy, and is available to order from Obverse Books:

• Iris Wilthyme of Mars hardback
• Iris Wildthyme of Mars ebook
• Tales of the Great Detectives paperback
• Tales of the Great Detectives ebook

As well as writing the third Devices book (the second having been submitted to Snowbooks at the end of September), I'm talking to Stuart at Obverse about possible future anthologies. Watch this space.

Iris and Sherlock (at last, but not together)

It's rather later than expected, I know, but it's now possible to pre-order the two anthologies I've edited this year, Iris Wildthyme of Mars and Tales of the Great Detectives, from Obverse Books. If you're not of a mind to wait for another couple of weeks, or would rather not pay for the print versions (hardback and paperback respectively), it's also possible to buy and download the ebooks for consumption this very instant.

I'm very proud of both anthologies: a total of seventeen thoroughly talented people have contributed to them, they deal with two of my favourite genre characters (albeit in unfamiliar contexts in both cases), the covers are excellent, and I think they've turned out as really lovely books through and through.

Here are the links to do that ordering you'll be so keen on:

• Iris Wilthyme of Mars hardback preorder
• Iris Wildthyme of Mars ebook
• Tales of the Great Detectives paperback preorder 
• Tales of the Great Detectives ebook

Enjoy.

* * *

I've no particular reason to suppose that these will be the last anthologies I'll be editing for Obverse Books, but I thought it might be interesting at this point to look at who I've published so far (since with the publication of these two books the number nearly doubles). Excluding myself, the list goes like this:

• Helen Angove (Tales of the City)
• Aditya Bidikar  (Iris Wildthyme of Mars)
• Blair Bidmead (Tales of the City and Iris Wildthyme of Mars -- also the cover artist for Tales of the Great Detectives)
• Simon Bucher-Jones (More Tales of the City and Iris Wildthyme of Mars)
• Rachel Churcher (Iris Wildthyme of Mars)
• Mark Clapham (Iris Wildthyme of Mars)
• Jay Eales (More Tales of the City)
• Elizabeth Evershed (Tales of the City and Tales of the Great Detectives)
• Jess Faraday (Tales of the Great Detectives)
• Kelly Hale (More Tales of the City and Tales of the Great Detectives)
• Dave Hoskin (Tales of the City)
• Juliet Kemp (Tales of the City and Iris Wildthyme of Mars)
• Selina Lock (Iris Wildthyme of Mars)
• Stephen Marley (Tales of the Great Detectives)
• Chantelle Messier (Tales of the Great Detectives)
• Lance Parkin (Iris Wildthyme of Mars)
• Ian Potter (More Tales of the City and Iris Wildthyme of Mars)
• Dale Smith (Tales of the City and Iris Wildthyme of Mars)
• Daniel Tessier (Iris Wildthyme of Mars)
• Susannah Tiller (More Tales of the City)
• Richard Wright (More Tales of the City and Iris Wildthyme of Mars)
• Andrew Hickey (Tales of the Great Detectives)

So...

1. That's 22 authors, eight of whom I've commissioned twice, two of whom co-wrote a single story, thus contributing a total of 29 stories (mine excluded). 
2. Of these authors, if I'm remembering correctly, nine hadn't previously been published by Obverse Books or their online wing Manleigh Books; six were making their debuts as professionally published writers. 
3. Of those 22 authors, 16 are British (and I believe in fact English), three American, two Australian and one Indian. However, two of the Brits are based in the USA, and one returned to the UK from India between their first and second commission. The book with the highest concentration of non-UK authors is Tales of the Great Detectives, half of whose contributors are American. 
4. Nine of the authors are women, 13 men; of the stories, 12 are by women and 17 by men. (Those aren't great statistics, admittedly, but they're better than many genre anthologies manage.)  Of the individual anthologies, Tales of the Great Detectives has a majority of female authors, and Tales of the City at least achieves parity (although only if you exclude my contributions).
5. To the best of my knowledge without having actually met them all (see 6), all but one of these people are white. 
6. Eight of the authors are people I've met in real life: five of them I'd never interacted with prior to commissioning them. The rest, predictably, I knew online. (Only three of them are people I went out with, went to university with or invited to my wedding.) 
7. Between us to date (counting co-author credits, and including my own titles this time), the contributors to these anthologies are responsible for 15 Doctor Who novels, four Bernice Summerfield novels, four Faction Paradox novels (with more in the works), four Señor 105 novellas, three Time Hunter novellas and something like 65 short stories for Obverse Books.

Those, then, are the facts. Suggestions as to what any of this might mean, or other ways in which I could (feasibly, and within the bounds of decency and good taste) break that list down, will be received with interest.

Duck and Cover

Did I mention that the cover design for Iris Wildthyme of Mars (created by Cody Quijano-Schell around Paul Hanley's outstanding artwork) has now been finalised?

No? Well, it has.

I'm amused that, of the three covers of books which are out this year with my name on them...

...two have union jacks on them, two have city skylines, and the other pair have something more unusual in common, which I'll leave it to you to discover. (One instance of it isn't at all easy to spot on the version above.)

I must say, I'm really very pleased with all of these. I'd say Iris Wildthyme of Mars and The Pendragon Protocol are easily the two best covers for books I've been published in, and Tales of the Great Detectives is great too.

Mars (Your Enjoyment)

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.

Four for 2014

Where have we got to, you may well ask, with the various writing and editing projects of mine which are due out this year?

Here's a rundown.

Further Encounters of Sherlock Holmes, the anthology of new Holmes stories edited by George Mann which opens with my "The Adventure of the Professor's Bequest", is out now from Titan Books, and has received at least one review (although it doesn't mention my story specifically).

Tales of the Great Detectives, the anthology I've edited about the adventures of the Sherlock Holmes remakes in the City of the Saved, featuring stories by Stephen Marley, Jess Faraday, Chantelle Messier, Kelly Hale, Andrew Hickey and Elizabeth Evershed, is finished and sent off to Obverse Books. I can't show you a cover for that one yet, but I've already posted the blurb here. The current plan is for an Easter release.

Iris Wildthyme of Mars, the anthology of stories I'm editing about the adventures of Paul Magrs' character Iris Wildthyme on the red planet, is still in progress, due out from Obverse Books in the summer. It already has some truly excellent cover art, courtesy of Paul Hanley:

Finally, The Pendragon Protocol, my original novel from Snowbooks which is the first in the Devices Trilogy, is finished (indeed, the sequel's half written) and due out in July. The cover for that, by the highly talented Emma Barnes, also looks fantastic, but I can't share a final version of it yet. I'll keep you posted.

Competition winner

I can now announce that the open submissions competition for Iris Wildthyme of Mars has been won by Daniel Tessier's story, "Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Bad Weekend". If you've been paying attention, you may realise that this is a sequel to the out-of-copyright Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation, aka Gulliver of Mars. It's a lovely idea for a story, and one I'm really looking forward to editing.

Congratulations Daniel!

Gullivar's Trousers

It's often difficult to know whether Edwin L Arnold's Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation, known more pithily as Gulliver of Mars, is meant satirically, as its even more cumbersomely titled predecessor was.

Then Arnold throws in a passage like this:

     What had they done with her? Surely they had not given her to the ape-men -- cowards though they were they could not have been cowards enough for that. And as I wondered a keen, bright picture of the hapless maid as I saw her last blossomed before my mind's eye, the ambassadors on either side holding her wrists, and she shrinking from them in horror while her poor, white face turned to me for rescue in desperate pleading -- oh! I must find her at all costs; and leaping from bed I snatched up those trousers without which the best of heroes is nothing, and had hardly got into them when there came the patter of light feet without and a Martian, in a hurry for once, with half a dozen others behind him, swept aside the curtains of my doorway.

...which (I hope, at least) rather gives the game away.

The open submissions competition for Iris Wildthyme of Mars is now closed. Many thanks for all your submissions, and a winner will be announced to appearing in the anthology by the end of the month.

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.)

* * *

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.