10 Stories Worth Reading From “Old Mars”

Once upon a time there was a planet called Mars, a world of red sands, canals, and endless adventure. I remember it well, for I went there often as a child.

The first paragraph to George R. R. Martin’s introduction of Old Mars. It seems like every pre-New Wave SF author went to Mars sooner, or later. From Burroughs to Zelazny, from War of the Worlds to Martian Time-Slip, the fourth planet from the sun fired the imaginations of storytellers, be they novelists, filmmakers or musicians. If we were to make a list of every novel, novella and short story set on Mars, that could take hours, maybe even days.

And then we learned, thanks to multiple Mariner probes, that the Angry Red Planet was not suitable for life, alien or otherwise.

Yet Mars has seen something of a revival in recent years. The first that comes to mind is Kim Stanley Robinson’s award-winning Mars Trilogy – Red Mars (1992), Green Mars (1993) and Blue Mars (1996). The 2008 novel In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, by S.M. Stirling, uses alternate history to imagine another universe where intelligent life is discovered on Mars. Then there was the more recent The Martian (2011) by Andy Weir, which was made into a movie starring Matt Damon.

And then in 2019, for the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, NASA announced the Artemis Project, with the goal of landing the first person on Mars. Think of the slogan “Occupy Mars.”

The very anthology you see before you, was published in 2013, but like it’s companion piece, Old Venus (which I reviewed previously), it’s inspired by stories of a Mars, that had watery canals, red deserts and inhabitants that resembled insects or squid. From the 15 stories in the anthology, I chose 10 that I found enjoyable and I hope you enjoy them too, if you ever get your hands (or mandibles, or tentacles) on this book.

“Martian Blood” – Allen M. Steele: An Earth scientist enlists the help of a tour guide with a very ambitious theory that may change human/Martian relations forever.

“The Ugly Duckling” – Matthew Hughes: An archaeologist discovers a Martian relic – and gets more than he bargained for.

“The Wreck of the Mars Adventure” – David D. Levine: What if Captain Kidd was hired by King William III to lead an expedition to Mars?

“In the Tombs of the Martian Kings” – Mike Resnick: Private gun-for-hire Scorpio and his telepathic buddy, Merlin, help a Martian find an ancient, sacred text in…The Tombs of the Martian Kings (note: Scorpio and Merlin’s adventures continue in the follow-up anthology, Old Venus.)

“Out of Scarlight” – Liz Williams: Disguised as a man, a former dancing girl-turned-bounty hunter searches for a fellow dancer on the deserts of Mars. But the bounty has other plans.

“The Dead Sea-Bottom Scrolls” – Howard Waldrop: A story that’s kinda confusing but is still worth reading because it’s the shortest story in the anthology. Plus it gives a shout-out to “The Martian Hop” by the Ran-Dells, so, bonus points for that.

“The Sunstone” – Phyllis Eisenstein: The Martian-born son of an Earthling archaeologist, inherits his father’s sunstone – a precious gem only worn by native Martians. And I mean only.

“King of the Cheap Romance” – Joe R. Lansdale: Angela King, must deliver a vaccine to a Martian city, no matter the cost. Even if it means life and death.

“Mariner” – Chris Roberson: Pirate Captain Jason of the Argo (no, not that Argo) must rescue a group of refugees from slavery using the Pirate’s Code. But in the end, the decision will be made with a good old fashioned duel with a rival captain.

“The Queen of the Night’s Aria” – Ian McDonald: Who’s the number one fan of a flamboyant Earth opera singer sent to Mars to entertain the troops? The answer is in the title – and the story.

I’m pleased to learn that Old Mars won the Locus Award for Best Anthology. I’m saddened to learn that there were no follow ups to Old Venus and that co-editor Gardner Dozois passed away in 2018. But oh, how great it would’ve been to see titles like Old Moon or Old Mercury, with stories that imagined thriving civilizations of yesteryear and the humans that encountered them. I could always ask Mr. Martin if there’s still a chance he could edit more anthologies…

… But Mr. Martin is not my servant.

10 Stories Worth Reading From: “Old Venus”

Ah, Venus, the Morning/Evening Star. Once called Isis by the Egyptians, Ishtar by the Babylonians, Aphrodite by the Greeks and Venus by the Romans, storytellers looked to the 2nd planet in the Solar System and imagined Earth’s sister planet as one of swampy, humid jungles, yellow skies and saurian inhabitants. The natives of Venus came in all shapes, sizes and skin colors, but were always amphibious in origin. Sometimes Venus herself would occupy the planet ruling over beautiful, nubile all-female subjects hungry for love.

Then in 1962 a killjoy named Mariner 2 passed over Venus and revealed that the planet was a nightmare.

From the Introduction:

On December 14, 1962, the American Mariner 2 probe passed over Venus, and the readings from its microwave and infrared radio-meters were dismaying for anyone holding out hope for life on the planet’s surface, showing Venus to be much too hot to support life. These findings were later confirmed by the Soviet Venera 4 probe, and the picture they painted of Venus was very far from salubrious. In fact, far from being a planet of world-girdling oceans or vast swamps and jungles, far from being a home for mysterious alien civilizations, Venus was revealed as being one the places in the solar system that was most hostile to life: with a surface temperature averaging 863 degrees Fahrenheit, it was the hottest planet in the solar system, hotter even than the closest planet to the Sun, Mercury; the famous permanent cloud cover was composed of clouds of sulfuric acid, not water vapor; the atmosphere was composed of 96.5 percent carbon dioxide, and the atmospheric pressure at the planet’s surface was ninety-two times that of Earth, as severe as on the bottom of the Earth’s oceans.

There couldn’t possibly be any life on Venus…It was just a ball of baking-hot rock and scalding poisonous gas, duller than a supermarket parking lot.

Almost at once, science-fiction writers lost interest.

Instead, writers turned to inner space, the Space Race and the social turbulence of the mid-to-late sixties for inspiration and New Wave was born. If any writer was going to write about life on other planets, he or she turned to planets outside the solar system – or just made up new planets on the spot like Arrakis, Vulcan or Tatooine.

But then in 2015, George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois got together with some friends and decided to publish an anthology that would bring readers back to the days of C.S. Lewis, C.L. Moore, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Leigh Brackett, when Venus was a fertile backdrop for adventure and romance. Of the sixteen stories in Old Venus, I chose ten that stood out to me. They are:

“Frogheads” – Allen M. Steele: A private detective stationed on Venus searches for the missing son of a wealthy family – and discovers something more sinister. There are quite a few “Venus detective” stories reminiscent of Raymond Chandler in this anthology.

“Planet of Fear” – Paul McAuley: There is a monster running amok in a Russian-owned mining station on Venus – or is it? (Another common trait in this anthology is American-Russian relations.)

“Greeves and the Evening Star” – Matthew Hughes: This story harkens back to the Edisonades of the 19th and early 20th centuries, where a gregarious Englishman (“right ho!”) and his faithful Butler, Greeves, must travel to Venus to rescue a fellow colleague from his newt obsession.

“Living Hell” – Joe Haldeman: A pilot returns to Venus on a rescue mission and learns that on Venus, death is only temporary…

“Bones of Air, Bones of Stone” – Stephen Leigh: Not even the natives of Venus dare to explore the “Great Darkness”, which is why Tomio, despite his feelings for Avariel, refuses to join her in her one last attempt at exploring the region.

“Ruins” – Eleanor Arnason: A professional photographer explores the ancient ruins of a Venusian city for an issue of National Geographic.

“Pale Blue Memories” – Tobias S. Buckell: Some things never change, not even on Venus, as an American soldier with black heritage learns the hard way.

“The Heart’s Filthy Lesson” – Elizabeth Bear: The heart wants what it wants, which can prove to be deadly on Venus, even in the name of science.

“The Wizard of the Trees” – Joe R. Lansdale: In the spirit of Burroughs, a man is transported from certain death in 1912 to a deadly battle on Venus. Will he survive?

“The Godstone of Venus” – Mike Resnick: Another detective story, in this one the detective has a telepathic alien partner. They are hired as “escorts” to a man and mysterious woman, who are looking for the titular Godstone of Venus. What powers does it hold? Does it even exist? Or is it a trap for our protagonists?

So that was ten stories worth reading from Old Venus. Have you read this book? Did you enjoy reading it? Did you agree with my choices? What were some of your favorite stories from the anthology? Let me know in the comments and stay tuned for the next installment of…Solar System Sci-Fi.