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  “You should kill him,” Lee-la said, nodding at Carson. “He brought all this trouble to you.”

  Romero helped the woman to her feet. Romero’s men surrounded them. “In the heat of anger a moment ago I could have killed you,” he told Carson. “With all my men here it would be easy to kill you now. But not this time. Esteban Romero has his rules too. Adios, amigo.”

  With a wave of the hand, Romero led Lee-la and his crew back to The Black Vulture.

  Carson turned and ran down the trail into the jungle. The path ran a quarter mile to a point where it forked, one way going to the city and the other further into the jungle. Carson stopped to consider which way Jameson might have gone. Then he heard the crack of a tree limb from further back in the jungle. He took off at a run in that direction.

  Several hundred yards further he saw a flash of movement through the trees ahead.

  “Jameson,” Carson shouted. “Stop. Throw that gun away.”

  “No! Romero will kill me.”

  “He’s gone,” Carson yelled. “They’re all gone. You can come out.”

  A plasma blast singed the leaves of the tree next to Carson’s head. He ducked down.

  “I don’t believe you!”

  “Come on out,” Carson said. “I’ll take you back. You won’t be harmed.”

  “Back where? When the League finds Romero gone, I’ll face 20 years in prison for tax evasion. I’ll take my chances in the jungle.”

  “You’re talking crazy,” Carson shouted. “Come on out.”

  “No! Go away!” Another blast broke a tree limb off above where Carson was standing. Carson heard footsteps thumping ahead on the trail. There was a sudden commotion of branches cracking and breaking and then a loud splash. Jameson let out a blood curdling scream that echoed through the trees. Carson heard the growls and grunts and snapping jaws of the Croco-saurs.

  He stood up and holstered his pistol. The screaming stopped suddenly and a terrible silence lay across the dank, tangled jungle. Carson turned around and headed back up the trail. There was no need to find out what had happened at The Pool of Death.

  Carson sat back in the pilot seat of The Corvette, holding an old, beat up looking hard cover book in his lap. The gull wing was on auto pilot, the course set for Tulon. It would be a couple of hours before he got home. He settled back, put his feet up on the dash and opened the worn volume. He began to read:

  “Peter Blood, bachelor of medicine, among other things besides, smoked a pipe and tended the geraniums boxed on the sill of his window above Water Lane in the town of Bridgewater…”

  Carson shifted his weight, and thought, “Now that’s writing.”

  Copyright © 2014 by John M. Whalen. All Rights Reserved.

  Originally published in Ray Gun Revival, January 2009 as The Great Author Affair

  Art Copyright © 2014 by Bob Bello. All Rights Reserved.

  Heavenly Horizon

  by Ricky L. Brown

  Millennia have passed since the journey began. The coffer pod continues to forge ahead on an endless voyage. Cal Wellington’s timelessly preserved corpse lay dressed in the traditional white and blue tunic of a decorated officer. His burnished head rests not upon a plush pillow, but the yielding cotton of an old folded flag he defended to the end.

  A thick titanium shell protects the plush interior and its historic passenger from the harmful elements of space. In his day, the elliptical capsule had once been called a pyre-bullet. That was back when chivalry was the last bonding fiber between morality and the duty of a blood bathed race.

  Even sadder were the days when trodden battle ships resorted to using these majestic caskets as projectiles if missile allotments ran low. The practice was a testament of a fallen civilization for many of them were already full at the time. In retrospect, Cal was one of the lucky ones.

  Cal’s funeral had been more distinguished than most, given his high rank, celebrated lineage and storied battle exploits. But here, this far from home, a heroes journey goes unseen. How many direct descendants have perished? Maybe all of them are long since gone. Had humanity itself followed suit?

  At the speed of light, the shininess of the black pod is never witnessed. A sad thought, for the image would surely be spiritual. Even at its slowest velocity shortly after launch, its chameleon shell softly blended in with the shadowy void between the stars before blinking our forever.

  When the funeral arrangements were made, the random trajectory was based on the infinity of space—the simplest quixotic version of heaven one could imagine. It was to be a never ending ceremonial trip forged in a romantically gallant time. Some believed it was a way of allowing the soul’s perpetuity to continue. Cal believed this too. Would he feel this way today?

  The heavens were dark except for a few glistening embers during his interment launch. The band played the classic battle hymn as the pod left the flight deck, its silent glowing contrail dissipating into the void of space. Who could have imagined that the then distant universe of Circinus would end up being along its route?

  In life, Cal was boisterous and full of life. In death, he kept silent. His memory, his legacy, his mere existence compressed into the few trinkets his friends and comrades discreetly placed alongside him before the heavy lid was sealed forever. A medal of valor from one of his many grateful subordinates, the last known letter from his estranged wife full of tears and hatred, a frayed photo of a group of soldiers with raised tankards in the dark corner of a pub, and a golden whale broche from the one woman who truly loved him lay at his side. This was all that told his story. Cal’s story was monumental and tragic. Like humanity itself, it was a story that may never be discovered in the silence of space.

  Like a whisper, the pod continues on. Circinus’ monstrous wheel spins ahead like a child’s sparkling firework display. The one time magenta streamers of the universe flailing outward now look pallid in their growing closeness.

  A dedicated student of the sciences, Cal would have been captivated by the raw mathematics behind his journey. The complex calculations of an object skimming so fast along the thin fabric of time while continuing to pick up speed would have been a welcomed challenge. Even as the pod reaches the gaseous V-shaped shroud engulfing the violent center, even as the radioactive temperatures increase to absurd magnitudes, the pod continues to accelerate toward the swirling nothingness that beckons it.

  Everything happens instantaneously; a million reactions in less than a blink. The pod stretches across the event horizon, elongating into a long thin wisp. Its momentum curves into the spiral as it sinks deeper and deeper into the hungry black hole. Just like the life that winked out so long ago, Cal Wellington is gone…again.

  End?

  Copyright © 2014 by Ricky L. Brown. All Rights Reserved.

  Artwork ‘Wellington’ Copyright © 2014 by Derek Benson. All Rights Reserved.

  Review

  The Martian by Andy Weir

  The Martian by Andy Weir

  Crown, February 11th, 2014

  384 pages

  $24.00

  Mars. It looms in our imagination. From Edison’s counterattack following Well’s chronicling of the late 19th century invasion, to Burroughs’ thoroughly unique Barsoom, to Brown’s annoyingly sarcastic green denizens, Paul’s furry-chested natives, Brackett’s and Kline’s swashbuckling, Robinson’s terraforming, Pohl’s Cybermen and NASA’s continued delays, we don’t seem to be able to escape the lure of the red planet.

  It was therefore with some small degree of fannish cynicism and great doubt that I approached Andy Weir’s The Martian; true it was receiving tremendous reviews and managed to make the NY Times Best Seller list, but as many of us have come to realize, such things often represent exceedingly minor mitigation.

  Will it surprise you to learn that I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend this novel? Perhaps not, but I can say that it greatly surprised me. So much so that I can give it no greater accolade than to note that it is the first novel in several dec
ades that I have not been able to put down. Sleep did reluctantly intervene and broke my reading sessions into two marathoners, time I do not regret giving up to a novel that takes what we’ve come to call the Heinleinian school of science fiction story telling by the throat, gives it a thorough throttling, adds a few 21st century filigrees, spot on scientific extrapolation and an adventurous, cliff-hanging pull.

  In short, Andy Weir has made the genre his own—carefully straddling the no-nonsense, let’s get to the big idea old school sensibilities of classic SF and our new found (long brooding) desire for greater characterization and more literary sensibility. But do not mistake that last as suggesting that The Martian is full of florid prose and time wasting sensory embellishment. The Martian is an aerodynamically optimized dragster that gets all the character it needs from the roar of its engine.

  The Martian took the unconventional path to traditional publication, first having been released by Mr. Weir as a self-published work on his blog. It received quite a bit of attention (though managing to bypass the SF circles I travel in) before being picked up by Crown. It’s publishing history (self-pubbed in 2011, re-pubbed in 2014 with a new copyright that’s presenting the Hugo Awards committee no small amount of rumination—but only because if eligible, this work will be a serious contender for the Best Novel Award) is a by now not unfamiliar pattern and a testament to the work that traditional publishers do, despite the attacks they’ve been subjected to recently.

  The Martian is exactly the kind of hard science, near-future adventure tale that many of us have been waiting for. Taking place within the context of NASA’s manned exploration woes and the ambitious efforts of private space ventures, it promises the kind of future that Baby-Boomers and older fen grew up with: humankind triumphant, though not without hard won victories; a believable story of ingenuity and pluck, not to mention humanity’s vaunted will to survive.

  There have been many plans—serious, hard science plans—put forth for the exploration of Mars. One quite promising method, known as the Mars Direct scheme, forms the initial background to this tale.

  Mars Direct promulgates the idea of sending Earth Return Vehicles to the red planet ahead of astronaut explorers; a lander with an ascent vehicle attached is remotely piloted to the Martian surface (presumably put down in an area of interest) and after landing the ascent vehicle begins a long but reliable process of manufacturing its own fuel for the return ascent.

  Some months later a crewed vehicle with an attached Mars Decent Vehicle arrives in Mars orbit. The crew remotely pilots another ERV to the surface (insurance), descends to the target area (close by the ERV), sets up a base, explores, investigates and collects and then, at a pre-determined time they board the fully fueled ERV, ascend, rendezvous with the orbiting vehicle and return to Earth.

  The rest of the formal Mars Direct plan involves sending minimal supplies and equipment as missions are designed to ‘live off the land’ as much as possible, thus making the trip far more economical than conventional approaches (manufacturing your fuel in situ is pretty economical).

  In The Martian, Weir utilizes the Mars Direct profile with only a few tweaks (like giving us an Ion Propulsion system that reduces trip time through constant acceleration). You can read the full Mars Direct Mission Profile here for comparison. You’ll discover just how deeply Weir dug in order to present a scientifically accurate, entirely plausible adventure—one that has virtually no hand-waving in sight. Except maybe for the potatoes. (I won’t give that one away except to say that even here, Weir manages to deliver an acceptable excuse for sending potatoes to Mars.)

  The story centers on astronaut Mark Watney, mission botanist, a member of the third manned mission to Mars. Just a few short days after their initial landing, with the crew busily setting their camp in order (while taking the occasional pause to remark on how thoroughly cool it is to be standing on Mars—which it entirely would be), Mission Control aborts the mission in the face of an approaching sand storm; wind velocities are predicted to be high enough to endanger the integrity of the return vehicle.

  Forecasting storms across interplanetary distances has its failings. As the crew departs their Hab for the ascent vehicle, the storm increases in power; there is a catastrophic event that apparently kills Watney; so far as the remainder of the time-pressured crew are concerned, all of his vital signs have stopped. Reluctantly, the crew of Mission Three departs the Martian surface.

  It is at this point that the novel reveals the breakneck speed and tension that it will deliver throughout; the mission abort, Watney’s seeming death and the last minute escape of the rest of the mission’s astronauts all take place in the space of the first seven pages, delivered in a relatively unconventional manner, at least insofar as science fictions puritan tendencies are concerned: The Martian’s opening line is “I’m pretty much fucked.”

  But of course Watney hasn’t died. The accident that befalls him renders him unconscious and destroys his Mars suit’s tele-metering equipment. Awakening on the Martian surface, Watney comes to realize that he is well, well and truly fucked.

  A fact that Mark notes to himself via both spoken and internal monologue on quite a few occasions. Weir has stated that Watney’s sense of self-deprecating humor is his own, while Watney’s survival instinct is the character’s own. It’s a tremendously powerful combination: it won’t be long before you’ll be cheering him on and gripping the arms of your chair hoping against all hope that he continues to survive.

  Having lived through (and watched with rapt attention) the Apollo 13 ‘successful failure’, I can honestly say that Weir has managed to capture that same breathless hope-against-all-hope feeling experienced by NASA and the rest of the world. It is a testament to his skill as a writer that 7/8ths of the way through the novel I began to seriously doubt whether Mark Watney would survive long enough to be rescued—and I won’t give that away.

  Weir’s attention to technical detail is fodder for a whole separate review; the entire story reads like an extended version of that scene from the film of Apollo 13 where NASA engineers are tasked with making an adapter for the CO2 scrubbers aboard the LEM. Assembled around a table, the lead engineer dumps a box of odds and ends—gear and equipment stowed in the spacecraft—onto the table. Holding up a square Command Module scrubber with one hand and a round LEM scrubber with the other, he says “we’ve gotta find a way to make this (square box) fit in to the hole made for this (round cylinder) using nothing but that (the random collection of gear).”

  Mark Watney has a very small parts box to work with and many, many more problems to overcome; air generation, power generation, water, food, communications, navigation and, perhaps most important of all for a lone human being on the surface of Mars, entertainment. (You can only talk to yourself acerbically for so long….). Fortunately for Mark, his crewmates ditched most of their personal gear during their evacuation and, among other things, Mark can avail himself of hundreds of hours of 70s sitcom fare. The novel doesn’t lack for humor as a critique of Threes Company comes wafting at us from the Martian surface. And I didn’t even mention the disco music.

  The story greatly reminded me of an old-time fave by none other than John W. Campbell Jr., himself—The Moon Is Hell (about an expedition to the Moon that gets stranded); Weir claims no knowledge of that story (and in truth the similarity ends at humans stranded on an alien world and left to their own resources for survival); for me, it represents a continuation of human triumphalism through science and engineering that is the hallmark of a truly classic science fiction tale.

  Crown has done us a nice turn as well; the hardback edition is first rate, features a very compelling cover from NASA, a nice, crisp font and a map of the region of Mars the story takes place in. A well-turned out package that more than compliments the story itself.

  Andy Weir’s The Martian will leave you as breathless as if you’d been dropped on the Martian surface without a suit; Weir’s skilled writing will pull you along from page to page a
t breakneck speed—but you’ll need to take frequent breaks to marvel at Weir’s and Watney’s fortitude and ingenuity. Don’t miss this one—we’re going to be talking about it and Andy Weir for YEARS to come.

  The Pixie

  by Steven M. Long

  Paul clutched his jacket and passport against his chest, blinking away rough vines that sprouted through the tiles and snaked around the metal legs of the hospital bed. He flattened himself against the wall by the door, trembling.

  Flee!

  He dropped his hands to his stomach, unsure if he was hearing the pixie’s thoughts or his own.

  Flee!

  If he waited, perhaps—but his body was already moving: a marionette worked by a master puppeteer as it slipped through the door. He glanced furtively down the hallway half-hoping, half-dreading that he would catch a glimpse of Anna, Grace, or the monstrous Dr. Kluka. Like a criminal he slunk towards the elevator, only to duck down a hallway as it opened.

  It’s them.

  Did it matter whose thoughts they were? He knelt behind a soda machine whose cool, metal side bristled into tree bark against his back and smelled like freshly tilled soil.

  The click of Anna’s heels echoed in the corridor, mixing with the raspy swish of Grace’s tennis shoes and Dr. Kluka’s heavy hoofs. Their backs appeared as they headed towards his empty room, doubtless to reassure him that the prognosis was good: that the operation would save his life.

  Part of him wanted to run to them. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth that died as he tasted hot cinnamon and saw superimposed on their frames thick shoulders, mottled skin the color of mud and cement with bony protrusions that rode up the backs of their necks like studs: agents of the Goblin King. The thing that wore Dr. Kluka’s skin paused and turned his way, sniffing like a hound. Paul dropped against the vending machine in a tight ball, sweat dripping into his eyes. He held his breath until he sensed as much as heard Dr. Kluka hurry after Anna and Grace. It would be a matter of seconds until they reached his room.