Lavie Tidhar is the World Fantasy Award winning author of Osama, of The Bookman Histories trilogy and many other works. He won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novella, for Gorel & The Pot-Bellied God, and a BSFA Award for his non-fiction. He grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and in South Africa but currently resides in London. His 2013 novels are the just-released Martian Sands and forthcoming The Violent Century.

by Lavie Tidhar

My new novel, Martian Sands, is out now from PS Publishing in the UK. It builds on my fascination with the novels of Philip K. Dick, which had such an impact on me when I was reading them as a teenager – the only American novels, it felt to me, to describe a future in which I had a place. Dick wrote about kibbutzim on Mars, and I grew up on a kibbutz (a sort of Socialist commune in Israel). He also wrote about time travel and the Holocaust, obsessing in the way I too obsess over that enormous psychic wound. My mother was born in a refugee camp in Germany after the war: the majority of my family died at Auschwitz.

Pulp fiction, it seemed to me when writing my World Fantasy Award winning novel, Osama, and seems to me still, allows us a way to look at truly unbelievable, implausible things, things that look like, that feel as though they should belong in the pages of cheap, disposable literature.

In many of my recent short stories I have been exploring a vast future history, one in which humanity has populated the solar system. Martian Sands takes place roughly in that same universe, or at least adjacent to it. It is a novel about pulp – the Martian pulps of Philip K. Dick as well as Edgar Rice Burroughs – and it is a novel about time travel, which is impossible, and the Holocaust, which should have been impossible.

Think of it as Total Recall meets Schindler’s List…

It is a very strange book.

Here, I wanted to explore five other weird journeys to Mars. The usual suspects may be missing, but each of these, in their own way, has contributed to Martian Sands.
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George R.R. Martin has posted the table of contents for the upcoming all-original retro-SF anthology he co-edited with Gardner Dozois, Old Mars, coming om October:

1. “Martian Blood” by Allen M. Steele
2. “The Ugly Duckling” by Matthew Hughes
3. “The Wreck Of The Mars Adventure” by David D. Levine
4. “Swords of Zar-tu-kan” by S.M. Stirling
5. “Shoals” by Mary Rosenblum
6. “In The Tombs of the Martian Kings” by Mike Resnick
7. “Out Of Scarlight” by Liz Williams
8. “The Dead Sea-Bottom Scrolls” by Howard Waldrop
9. “A Man Without Honor” by James S.A. Corey
10. “Written In Dust” by Melinda Snodgrass
11. “The Lost Canal” by Michael Moorcock
12. “The Sunstone” by Phyllis Eisenstein
13. “King Of The Cheap Romance” by Joe R. Lansdale
14. “Mariner” by Chris Roberson
15. “The Queen Of Night’s Aria” by Ian Mcdonald

Book info as per Amazon US:

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (October 8, 2013)
• ISBN-10: 0345537270
• ISBN-13: 978-0345537270

Diane Turnshek is an astronomer whose short fiction has been published in Analog Magazine and elsewhere. She teaches astronomy and experimental physics lab at Carnegie Mellon University and at the University of Pittsburgh “The Physics of Science Fiction” as well as astronomy. She’s a contributing author of Many Genres/One Craft, a 2011 award-winning book on writing. She has taught college writing classes, helped organize science fiction conferences, founded Alpha, the genre workshop for young writers, and ran the 2007 SFWA Nebula Awards in NYC. Diane has four stellar sons and an out-of-this-world boyfriend.

I am on Mars, at least that’s what it looks like here in the high desert of Utah. Six of us are living in the Mars Desert Research Station, a two-story cylindrical habitat 30 feet across with steep ladder stairs between floors. Our bunks are 4 by 11 feet and we share one bathroom. Why am I here for Christmas instead of home with my four children? For science.

We are pioneers, studying how humans could live on another planet. We’re in full sim. We eat rehydrated/dehydrated food, suffer a 20-minute lag time with communications, travel outside the Hab in spacesuits and ride ATVs in the red desert. We each pay for our travel and a flat fee for food and lodging, but what we get back is invaluable. We have forwarded the progress of science, taking humanity one small step closer to striding onto the surface of Mars.

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Today at Kikrus, I conclude my survey of Mars in science fiction. (Continued from Part 1 and Part 2.)

Part 3 focuses on young Martian colonies, humor, and good old-fashioned adventure. Stop by and check out Part 3 of Mars in Science Fiction.

Today at Kikrus, I continue with my survey of Mars in science fiction. (Part 1 is here.)

Part 2 focuses on young adult books, realistic sf, religion and short fiction. Stop by and check out Part 2 of Mars in Science Fiction.

In episode 117 of the SF Signal Podcast, Patrick Hester asks a panel of SF Signal Contributors: Is Mars cursed?

This week’s panel:

• Fred Kiesche
• Jeff Patterson
• Jay Garmon
• Scott Cupp
• Paul Weimer
• Patrick Hester

^© 2012 SFSignal.com
Featuring original music by John Anealio
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• Adam Roberts reviews Sam Merwin, Jr.’s sexy time travel classic, The Time Shifters. Ack! That painful prose reminds me of Pel Toro!
• Interviews & Profiles:[some via Bibliophile Stalker]
  • Rick Kleffel podcast-interviews Kage Baker.
  • Darryl Whetter interviews Margaret Atwood.
  • Mur Lafferty podcast-interviews Jay Lake, Felix Gilman, Jim Kelly, John Kessel, and Pat Cadigan.
  • Suvudu interviews Chris Evans.
  • Jeff VanderMeer interviews Caitlin R. Kiernan.
  • Stargate Producer John G. Lenic answers reader questions at Joseph Mallozzi’s blog.
  • Suite101.com interviews Linnea Sinclair
  • If You’re Just Joining Us podcast-interviews SciFi Literary Agent Ginger Clark
• Pyr Books announces a handful of intriguing new forthcoming titles:
  • The Buntline Special: A Weird West Tale by Mike Resnick. “Picture a fractured America, steampunk technology, cowboys, rayguns, Native American shamans, and, drum roll please, zombies!”
  • The Greyfriar by Clay and Susan Griffith, the first book in the new Vampire Empire series. Elevator pitch: Alternate-History Steampunk Vampire.
  • Shadow’s Son by Jon Sprunk, the first in a trilogy that continues with Shadow’s Lure and Shadow’s Master. A swordplay story of “an assassin thrust into the middle of a political and religious upheaval that threatens to topple the last bastion of civilization.”
• Website Facelift of the week: Manybooks.net. [via MobileRead]
• The Daily P.O.P. looks at Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius and the Final Programme.
• Walter H. Hunt lists his 5 favorite Webcomics.
• SCI FI Wire lists 5 new things you don’t know about Tron Legacy.
• Here’s a fun SF Novel Crossword. [via Science Fiction Brewed Fresh Daily]
• Words that need no further explanation: Indiana Jones Giant R/C Ant.
• 1 Thing you can’t watch: Defying Gravity. Canceled! [UPDATE: Or not.]
• 2 Things you Should Watch Right Now:
  • Disney’s Mars and Beyond. Awesome.
  • Doctor Who: Planet Of The Dead – Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre. Hilarious!