Martian literature.

E

erikafour

Science fiction fantasy
Joined
Nov 4, 2016
Messages
2
I was more of a fantasy chick than a scifi babe till i saw Matt Damon in the Martian. So I decided to try the book and it was ACE. Really enjoyed it. Now I want to try more books about Mars and see if they're as good. I don't mean oldies, but new stuff. Can anyone suggest some titles to start building my red library?

Erika
 
I'm not very well read, so i'm sure others will come along shortly and help you out much better than i can.

But for now, i know its not fitting your bill exactly, as it is fairly old, Ray Badbury's 'Martian Chronicles', I thought was spectacular. Personally I think I'd be hard pressed to find better prose.
 
I really recommend Mars (1992), by Ben Bova. It has sequels and I didn't care for the second anywhere near as much (still okay) but the first was great.

Greg Bear's Moving Mars (1993) is also excellent.

Joe Haldeman's Marsbound (2008) has a couple of significant problems and its sequels also aren't so good, but it also has some excellences.

Allan Steele's Labyrinth of Night (1992) is "A Novel of Mars." It isn't his very best, but it's decent.

I haven't even read Geoffrey Landis' Mars Crossing (2000) but it is in the Pile and I have read many superb stories by him and have heard good things about the novel, so I feel pretty confident (hopeful, at least) about it.

One of the more famous and popular ones is the Mars trilogy, beginning with Red Mars (1992), by Kim Stanley Robinson but I don't care for them. Red Mars was the best of the set, though.

An outlier both in time and perhaps main focus is Frederik Pohl's Man Plus (1976) but it's a book I recall very favorably about adapting a man for life on Mars. It does deal with our modern conception of Mars, at least, vs. the Bradbury/Brackett/etc. Old Mars.
 
It's TV rather than book, but there is a new series starting on Sky Atlantic on Sunday (at least in the UK, it could already have aired in the States and elsewhere) at 9pm called Mars, which appears to be about the colonisation of Mars, so that might be interesting: Mars | Sky.com
https://www.sky.com/watch/channel/watch/mars
I can't think of any contemporary Martian SF books beyond what's already been mentioned, but if there's room in your red library for older Martian fiction, I'd suggest Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian series, beginning with A Princess of Mars. It's very different to The Martian, but still great fiction with a Martian theme.

When I saw the thread title, I had a moment where I thought, They've done it! People have finally started writing niche fiction as though they're Martians. In my head it became a whole cottage industry with a rich literary history...:)
 
No oldies? How sad:
planet-stories-featuring-war-maid-of-mars.jpg
 
Oldies is anything published before 1900, like Chaucer, Aphra Ben, or Cyrano de Bergerac. Any author who died during my lifetime i.e. since the beginning of the 60s is positively contemporary.

I mean, just look at the cover of that magazine. Clearly anticipating the future technology of aesthetic surgery.
 
J-Sun said:
I really recommend Mars (1992), by Ben Bova... was great.
Click to expand...
Agree - suggest you prioritise this. (Even though I have a problem with one plot point).

J-Sun said:
One of the more famous and popular ones is the Mars trilogy, beginning with Red Mars (1992), by Kim Stanley Robinson but I don't care for them. Red Mars was the best of the set, though.
Click to expand...
I loved these books and think they are the best of the modern Mars novels (esp. Red Mars).
 
Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars Trilogy is recommended.
 
I came here expecting to learn about what those Martians have been publishing lately.

Dang it, I guess I'll have to wait for that! :p :p :p :p
 
It's YA, but A Wizard of Mars by Diane Duane is great fun. She manages to pastiche all the different genres of films about Mars during the book, which is part of her Young Wizards series.
Also, Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy is awesome.
 
I was looking at this a second time and wondering if Martian literature might have to be literature written by Martians.

That said perhaps literature about Martians does work::
Stranger in a Strange Land
is about a Martian--sort of. Born and raised on Mars.
 
I would also recommend the Kim Stanley Robinson Mars series, it's heavy going hard SF, maybe a little less digestable than The Martian, but much grander in scope also.
 
The new national geographic series MARS- based on Stephen L. Petranek's How We'll Live On Mars has the same flavor as the movie Martian. I can't speak for the book because I haven't read it; but I'd recommend the mini-series if it's available to you.

It's sort of a blend of docudrama meets Martian.
 
I would look at Moving Mars by Greg Bear. I think this is the same general setting as SLANT (may be wrong, been a while).

KSR's mars trilogy is the most popular/mentioned almost always on mars threads, so I read it. My impression was I was skipping more and more monologue each book, and probably skipped 1/3 of the last book and wished I had just read a cliff notes version. The first one was by far my favorite.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread starter Similar threads Forum Replies Date
Stephen Palmer Martians & Earthers SFF Lounge 15
Elckerlyc Have the Martians just opened the door for us? Science & Nature 6
Don Human thoughts drive mind reading Martians mad. Book Search 3
F (Found) Astronaut / Explorer assumes Martian body to locate lost predecessors, and chooses not to return? Book Search 3
Serendipity Martian Night-time Pulses with Ultraviolet Science & Nature 3

Similar threads


Back
Top