XPost: alt.usage.english, rec.arts.books, rec.arts.sf.written
From: petertrei@gmail.com
On 2/2/2026 4:03 PM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
>
>
> On 2/2/26 12:05, The True Melissa wrote:
>> Verily, in article <20260202105936.0000758d@gmail.com>, did
>> commodorejohn@gmail.com deliver unto us this message:
>>>
>>> On Mon, 2 Feb 2026 12:25:41 -0500
>>> The True Melissa wrote:
>>>
>>>> I love short stories from the Golden Age. I recently reread Isaac
>>>> Asimov's collected short stories, and I enjoyed it very much.
>>>
>>> Definitely =^_^= Finally crossed "The Martian Chronicles" off my to-do
>>> list last year; "There Will Come Soft Rains" has long been a favorite,
>>> but there's just a *pile* of other good stuff in there.
>>
>> The one I can't forget is "Dark They Were, And Golden-Eyed." "Mars Is
>> Heaven!" was also pretty memorable.
>>
>> It's interesting that they're not all set on the same Mars, or at least
>> they don't appear to be.
>>
>
> That is because Mars was like Africa was for Burroughs, unexplored
> and possibly
> full of various peoples and polities. A fine place for unknown
> civilizations and alien
> peoples possibly immortals and Roman survivals, intelligent apes or
> hominids.
> Look at the stories about Venus. Tropical with oceans and maybe
> 'saurians.
> When a place is completely unknown then writers are free to impose
> multiple
> realities.
> Once the terrain is known Mars is barren and cold, Venus is barren
> and hot,
> writers are constrained to the known conditions, unless they posit
> alternate
> universes or realities. \
The 1968 anthology 'Farewell Fantastic Venus!" was a nostalgic
adieu to old Venus, put together after the first atmospheric
probes showed the reality.
Niven's "Rainbow Mars" does a similar thing for the Red Planet,
with different SF-Mars concepts all jumbled together in a fun
mish-mash.
pt
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
|
