Victorians on Mars. Any recommends?

[Bibliovore]

Please recommend me some gripping "Victorians on Mars" type Scifi. You know the stuff I mean, Stiff-Upper-Lip Gentlemen Adventurers with pith-helmets and pressure-suits battling tentacled monstrosities with rayguns and cavalry sabres, rescuing scantily-clad minxes while navigating the canals and re-discovering the lost secrets of an ancient Martian civilisation...

You know - Literature. :)

[Evil Captor]

Please recommend me some gripping "Victorians on Mars" type Scifi. You know the stuff I mean, Stiff-Upper-Lip Gentlemen Adventurers with pith-helmets and pressure-suits battling tentacled monstrosities with rayguns and cavalry sabres, rescuing scantily-clad minxes while navigating the canals and re-discovering the lost secrets of an ancient Martian civilisation...

You know - Literature. :)

Have you read Burroughs' John Carter of Mars series? They're kinda what you're talking about, except think more Tarzan on Mars. Some of them are in the public domain and are available online for free.

I'm currently working on an addition to the series, "Dancing Slavegirls of Mars."

[CalMeacham]

I just recently finished reading two authentic Victorian-era "travelers to Mars" stories (and i know there are others) --


A Plunge Into Space by Robert Cromie. The introduction is supposed to be by Jules Verne, but it's been speculated that it was really by his son. Explorers use a sphere with anti-gravity material to travel to Mars (years before H.G. Wells used the same means to get men to the Moon) and discover a Utopian civilization there. The enmd of the book anticipates Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations" eerily closely:

http://www.amazon.com/Plunge-into-Space-Robert-Cromie/dp/1589636007/sr=8-1/qid=1166800995/ref=sr_1_1/104-1662500-7428747?ie=UTF8&s=books



Two Planets, the English translation of Kurd Lasswitz' auf Zwei Planeten. Lasswitz was one of the most influential SF writers from the earkly years, but his stuff has almost never been translated into English. The only translation of a complete book of his was published only in 1971 (and heavily abridged, at that). But it's impressive as asll heck. It feels far more modern than Cromie or Verne or Wells -- not lik a Victorian novel at all, in fact. This book was immensely popular with the crowd that grew up to man Peenemunde -- they went so far as to name their rocket systems after the ones in this book.


http://www.amazon.com/Two-Planets-Kurd-Lasswitz/dp/0809305089/sr=1-7/qid=1166801355/ref=sr_1_7/104-1662500-7428747?ie=UTF8&s=books

http://www.amazon.com/Auf-zwei-Planeten-Kurd-La%C3%9Fwitz/dp/3453139747/sr=1-9/qid=1166801355/ref=sr_1_9/104-1662500-7428747?ie=UTF8&s=books

Lieutenant Gulliver Jones, His Vacation, published in paperback by Ace Books in the 1960s as Gulliver of Mars, by Edwin Arnold -- swashbuckling adventures on Mars. Richard Lupoff claimed that it was the inspiration for Edgar Rice Burroughs' "John Carter, Warlord of Mars" stories. Not scientific at all (Jones gets to Mars by flying carpet), and not really as exciting as the Marvel Coomics version (brought out to compete with DC's John Carter comic in the early 1970s), or later comic incarnations (including the next item), but lotsa fun.

http://www.amazon.com/Gulliver-Mars-Lieut-Jones-Vacation/dp/B000EM2EC6/sr=1-1/qid=1166801407/ref=sr_1_1/104-1662500-7428747?ie=UTF8&s=books


The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. II, issue #1 -- set on Mars, with Gulliver Jones and John Carter, and H.G. Wells' Martians hints from other period writers and stories (Wells' "The Crystal Egg"), and from later writers as well. It might actually be the closest to what you want, since it features Victorian-era Earthmen on Mars.

[CalMeacham]

Oh, yeah -- once you get past Gulliver of Mars and John Carter of Mars (and Carson of Venus), you might try Otis Adelbert Kline's books -- Swords of Mars and others. Virtual ripoff of John Carter, but I encountered them first, so I've got a soft spot in my head for them.


http://www.amazon.com/outlaws-Mars-Ace-book/dp/B0007HQWRQ/sr=8-1/qid=1166801923/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-1662500-7428747?ie=UTF8&s=books

http://www.amazon.com/Swordsman-Mars-Ace-SF-D-516/dp/0441045162/sr=1-15/qid=1166801960/ref=sr_1_15/104-1662500-7428747?ie=UTF8&s=books

http://www.amazon.com/prince-peril-adventures-worlds-mysterious/dp/B0006AL3AU/sr=1-24/qid=1166801960/ref=sr_1_24/104-1662500-7428747?ie=UTF8&s=books



Anfd there's always FRobert E. Howard's take on this, Almuric:

http://www.amazon.com/ALMURIC-Robert-E-Howard/dp/B000E6S7LY/sr=1-2/qid=1166802021/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/104-1662500-7428747?ie=UTF8&s=books

http://www.amazon.com/Almuric-Robert-E-Howard/dp/0441017509/sr=1-6/qid=1166802021/ref=sr_1_6/104-1662500-7428747?ie=UTF8&s=books

[Bibliovore]

Thanks for all the great leads so far. Are there any modern takes on this theme? Any titles that sort of spoof or mimic Burroughs et al? I read the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen II and loved it - that's exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for.

[RealityChuck]

Some of the Steampunk novels might qualify: try James Blaylock (The Digging Leviathan, Homunculus and Lord Kelvin's Machine), K. W. Jeter (Morlock Night, Infernal Devices], Tim Powers ([b]The Anubis Gates, The Stress of Her Regard, On Stranger Tides), Esther Freisner (Druid's Blood), and Mark Frost (The List of Seven, The Six Messiahs

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

Lieutenant Gulliver Jones, His Vacation, published in paperback by Ace Books in the 1960s as Gulliver of Mars, by Edwin Arnold -- swashbuckling adventures on Mars. Richard Lupoff claimed that it was the inspiration for Edgar Rice Burroughs' "John Carter, Warlord of Mars" stories. Not scientific at all (Jones gets to Mars by flying carpet), and not really as exciting as the Marvel Coomics version (brought out to compete with DC's John Carter comic in the early 1970s), or later comic incarnations (including the next item), but lotsa fun.


I agree. Not much actually happened in the book, and the comic series was much better in fleshing out a pretty sparse story line.

Also, Richard Lupoff, as I understand, discovered this book after half a century of being out of print, which led to the reprints in the 1960s and 1970s. As a tip of the hat to him, the Marvel comic writer named the hapless unamed-in-the-book flying carpet rider "Lu-Pov."

And John Carter was "Phra," but that's another story. . . .

[CalMeacham]

There's a long tradition in SF of adventures on a desert, dying mars with weird creatures, going back to before the Cromie book that I cite above. You could wallow in such books for a long time, if that's what you're after.

Bearing in mind that it's not all Victorian swordplay, there's:

Catherine L. Moore's "Northwest Smith" stories (I always suspected this name influenced "Indiana Jones"), especially "Shambleau"


Leigh Brackett's Mars stories. see especially The Sword of Rhiannon andf the collection The Best of Leigh Brackett. Brackett was not only a Golden Age SF veteran, but also a screenwriter. Her only SF screenplay was The Empire Strikes Back. She was married to Golden Age SF writer Edmond Hamilton.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leigh_Brackett

Stanlet G. Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey" and its lesser-known sequel "Valley of Dreams"


Larry Niven's recent Rainbow Mars, like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, brings together lots of different Nartians from classic fiction and throws them together in a single setting. Interesting.



See this page, but most of the stories aren't the type you're looking for:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_in_fiction




Of course, not all stories of this type are set on Mars. The ancestor of most of the kind of adbventurers you're looking for, I think, is P.F. Nowlan's Armageddon 2419 A.D.. They turned it into a comic strip the next year after it was published, changing the hero's name from Anthony Rogers to "Buck" Rogers. And so a legend was born. "Buck" Rogers, in turn, inspired "Brick" Bradford and "Flash" Gordon, who later eclipsed Buck.


There were others of the same type besides Rogers and Carter -- Find, if you can, Ralph Milne Farley's The Radio Man, The Radio Beasts, and The Radio PLanet -- Electrical genius gets teleported to Venus and has to fend for himself against Burroughs-esque dangers. WEhat makes it interesting is that Farley describes his hero, Cabot, building radio equipment from freakin' scratch on Venus, in some detail.

[Meurglys]

You could try the graphic novel, Scarlet Traces (pub. by Dark Horse):
A Scientific Adventure by Messrs Ian Edginton & D'Israeli. Purveyors of fantastic fiction for young gentlefolk and the mentally deficient. A decade after the Martians' abortive assault on the Earth and their attempt to establish an invasion bridgehead on the British Isles, the industrious Victorians have assimilated the Martian technologies into their everyday lives. Hansom cabs now scuttle along the Capital's streets on multi-limbed crab legs and the terrible monopoly of the Martian heat-ray has assured the dominance of the British Empire over two thirds of the Earth's surface and whose benign tyranny looks to continue to do so far into the next century. However, there is something rotten at the heart of empire
And in the sequel - The Great Game - (currently being issued in a comic mini-series), they actually get to Mars!

Or The Sky People by S.M.Stirling may fit the bill:
Marc Vitrac was born in Louisiana in the early 1960's, about the time the first interplanetary probes delivered the news that Mars and Venus were teeming with life--even human life. At that point, the "Space Race" became the central preoccupation of the great powers of the world. Now, in 1988, Marc has been assigned to Jamestown, the US-Commonwealth base on Venus, near the great Venusian city of Kartahown. Set in a countryside swarming with sabertooths and dinosaurs, Jamestown is home to a small band of American and allied scientist-adventurers.
But there are flies in this ointment - and not only the Venusian dragonflies, with their yard-wide wings. The biologists studying Venus's life are puzzled by the way it not only resembles that on Earth, but is virtually identical to it. The EastBloc has its own base at Cosmograd, in the highlands to the south, and relations are frosty. And attractive young geologist Cynthia Whitlock seems impervious to Marc's Cajun charm.
Meanwhile, at the western end of the continent, Teesa of the Cloud Mountain People leads her tribe in a conflict with the Neanderthal-like beastmen who have seized her folk's sacred caves. Then an EastBloc shuttle crashes nearby, and the beastmen acquire new knowledge... and AK47's.
Jamestown sends its long-range blimp to rescue the downed EastBloc cosmonauts, little suspecting that the answer to the jungle planet's mysteries may lie there, among tribal conflicts and traces of a power that made Earth's vaunted science seem as primitive as the tribesfolk's blowguns. As if that weren't enough, there's an enemy agent on board the airship...

[Typo Knig]

How about the Heinlein juveniles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinlein_juveniles) that are set on Mars? Space Cadet, Red Planet, The Rolling Stones. Between Planets, Podkayne of Mars. No quite "Victorian", but close.

[BMalion]

I'm currently working on an addition to the series, "Dancing Slavegirls of Mars."

You misspelled "Gor". :)

[Polycarp]

You misspelled "Gor". :)

We've been carefully avoiding mentioning the Gor series around Evil Captor. Despite his fetish, he's a contributing member, and you know he'll never be seen again once he discovers them! :D

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

A friend of mine runs a lovely one-shot game at roleplaying conventions called Sky Galleons of Mars. I think it's adapted from a decades-old gaming system; 19th-century England and France are fighting their imperial wars in the Martian skies, aided and resisted by various indigenous factions. It's a hoot.

Daniel

[Sean Factotum]

Or The Sky People by S.M.Stirling may fit the bill:
Is this out? I just finished the two trilogies ending with A Meeting At Corvallis, and have run out of his stories.

Also, while not on Mars, Stephen Baxter wrote a sequel of sorts to H. G. Well's The Time Machine. It's called The Time Ships, features the same cast of Victorian-era people, and is available in paperback.

[CalMeacham]

Oh, by the way, if you want Victorian Gentlemen Battling Martians here on earth, besides the above, you might consider Manly Wade Wellman's Sherlock Holmes' War of the Worlds, which is exactly what it sounds like. It has Professor Challenger in it, too.

And there's the little-known sequel to War of the Worlds written by Garret . Serviss in 1898, Edison's Conquest of Mars, in which Thomas Edison mounts a retaliatory strike against Mars!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edison's_Conquest_of_Mars , which links to a copy of the book on-line.

[Evil Captor]

You misspelled "Gor". :)

Nope, this is straight outta Burroughs. The entire plotline is based on one of the incidents in "A Princess of Mars."

(OK, OK, there'll be slavegirls. And they'll dance. But theyll also be 16 times as ....

Oh, no, I'm not giving that plotline away ... heh heh heh.

[Evil Captor]

We've been carefully avoiding mentioning the Gor series around Evil Captor. Despite his fetish, he's a contributing member, and you know he'll never be seen again once he discovers them! :D

Well, that's very kind of you. I had thought of mentioning them myself. They are widely described as a Burroughs pastiche. However, they're hardly Victorian.

[Boulter's Canary]

Tha Space Machine (http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/christopherpriest/smrev.htm) by Christopher Priest - Wellsian pastiche.

Harm's Way (http://www.amazon.com/Harms-Way-Colin-Greenland/dp/0380768836) by Colin Greenland - I'm not sure if it's quite what you're looking for, but I love it. Space opera in the style of Charles Dickens.

[Meurglys]

Is this out? I just finished the two trilogies ending with A Meeting At Corvallis, and have run out of his stories.
It was a November hardback from Tor... and is A Meeting at Corvallis the last in that set? I assumed it would run and run!

[tanstaafl]

A friend of mine runs a lovely one-shot game at roleplaying conventions called Sky Galleons of Mars. I think it's adapted from a decades-old gaming system; 19th-century England and France are fighting their imperial wars in the Martian skies, aided and resisted by various indigenous factions. It's a hoot.

Daniel
Sky Galleons of Mars was a boardgame put out by GDW back in their heyday. Basically it was aerial combat between flying ships on Mars.

The background for the game was used for the RPG Space: 1889 (in which Edison discovers the "etheric propeller" and the colonial powers expand into space. It was great fun for a couple of adventures. Some nice extrapolations of Victorian era technology though. (Steam power for spaceships came from solar boilers and communication between Earth, Venus and Mars was maintained by "His Majesty's Orbiting Heliograph Service". That sort of thing.)

[Bibliovore]

I've just started reading "Princess of Mars" by Burroughs as an e-book on my Palm and will be working my way through the rest of your suggestions. Fantastic stuff.

[NicePete]

Well, Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age has Victorians, but they're not on Mars...

[Baldwin]

I'd also recommend Anti-Ice by Stephen Baxter.