ok, this is a long shot - I have been trying for ages to track down a book which is set on Mars - only I don't remember the title, or the author - only that it was different, and I found it interesting. Read it at uni many, many years ago.
Plot of the book is that humans have landed on mars and started exploring some pyramids there, and there are traps in the pyramids meant to test teh intelligence of the explorers so that the supposedly long dead martians can determine if the explorers are intelligent enough to make it worth them reviving themselves.
The book starts off with the team having passed the intelligence type tests but the final one is based on music, and the guy exploring the pyramid is trapped and dies. So the team recruits this guitarist / muso character from earth called Ben, for the next mission, and he jams with the music that the pyramid puts out, which gets past the test. Then ... that's all I can remember.
if anyone knows what the heck I'm talking about, I'd be very grateful for a title and author so I can go look it up!
cheers
Sean
Hi!
That's "LABYRINTH OF NIGHT" by Allen Steele
http://www.amazon.com/Labyrinth-Night-Allen-Steele/dp/0441467415
Take care.
Doug
P.S.
"Lord of the Spiders" arrived last week!
To be honest, it's just what I remembered from the 1970's. 2nd rate Moorcock/3rd rate ERB
Duck Dodgers version of Mars FTW! :D
They remind me of totalitarian Drow, especially the Queen.
The RPG Space:1889 had some interesting stuff on Mars, and that game is what 'inspired' TSR to create Spelljammer.
Although that game won the Game of the Year award, and Spelljammer was VERY hit-or-miss.
You know, I have never gotten around to the John Carter stuff - perhaps I should look into them.
I also liked the mutated people in the Schwarzenegger movie Total Recall - the Midget Prostitute was just so cute. <evil Grin>
Looked like a Halfling....
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Erik and I are apparently the same age. Probably helps explain our similar tastes.
I discovered John Carter when I was 15. Found the whole collection sitting on a shelf in a friend's house. They were his dads, he'd never read them, but I got to borrow them. I knew I had to read them when i saw the Frazetta covers. I think I read all ten of them in a week. Great stuff, very influential on a lot of my games.
Plus, I'm pretty sure that "A Princess of Mars" is the book that gave the world the chainmail bikini, so, that's praiseworthy.
Erik and I are apparently the same age. Probably helps explain our similar tastes.
I discovered John Carter when I was 15. Found the whole collection sitting on a shelf in a friend's house. They were his dads, he'd never read them, but I got to borrow them. I knew I had to read them when i saw the Frazetta covers. I think I read all ten of them in a week. Great stuff, very influential on a lot of my games.
Plus, I'm pretty sure that "A Princess of Mars" is the book that gave the world the chainmail bikini, so, that's praiseworthy.
Hi,
"Princess of Mars" actualy gave the world the "BBOEB"= Bare Bussomed Oviparous Euro Babe!!!LOL
Take care.
Doug
P.S.
Here are the Barsoom covers I had as a kid way back in the early 70's
http://www.tarzan.org/art/dachille.jpg
I know it's been close to twenty years since I read them, but I don't remember Dejah Thoris laying eggs. Maybe I just blocked it out of my memory.
I remember the green Martians laid eggs...
Hi,
all Barsoomian babes lay eggs. Even the Red Barsoomians. Dejah Thoris, Thuvia ect.Here's the wiki link...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barsoom
Barsoom is definately my favorite Mars, but Bracket's Mars is a pretty close second. Too bad it was described so scattershot.
Sadly, I think Moorcock's Mars books are absolutely terrible. I read them a few years ago in the White Wolf collection Kane of Old Mars and they were absolutely dreadful.
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Rehashing the Classics are all well and great but how about squeezing new works out of the people who frequent this board. Grab ten, slap um around in a dark room and get new tales set on Mars.
- Did you know that the Vallis Marineris formed as an evaporation zone on a Planet sized Glacier and every fifty thousand years it cycles up with the solar cycle to achieve molecular fision of Ice assisted by free Iron into Iron Oxide. Consequently taking another 8 billion unassisted years to loop Mars and divide it into two Glaciers?
- Did you know it will take the orbital dumping of Coal for a hundred Years (at the rate of fifty tons an hour - without error) to bring Martian Air pressure and temperatures up to Plant supporting?
- Did you know that you would have a planet size equatorial swamp and the ideal Plants for that are sugarcane - for Methane Production to supply colonists with power?
- Did you know the most efficient Colonization method is to dump coal until it can support plants, grow a planet covering Bayou of Sugarcane and send ten million Women (with Genetic supplies) in the second hundred year cycle to live like third world Colonials in a firewood economy?
My favorite fictional Mars would have to be the Burroughs/Brackett one, with ancient cities, flashing swords, near-magical forgotten technology, and half-naked princesses. ;)
My favorite fictional Mars would have to be the Burroughs/Brackett one, with ancient cities, flashing swords, near-magical forgotten technology, and half-naked princesses. ;)
Yeah. If you want a cool new take on this sort of thing, though, check out S. M. Stirling's In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, which is Mars, and way cool. The first book in the series is the Sky People - Venus, with astronauts and dinosaurs.
I was very pleasantly surprised by these.
My favorite fictional Mars would have to be the Burroughs/Brackett one, with ancient cities, flashing swords, near-magical forgotten technology, and half-naked princesses. ;)Yeah. If you want a cool new take on this sort of thing, though, check out S. M. Stirling's In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, which is Mars, and way cool. The first book in the series is the Sky People - Venus, with astronauts and dinosaurs.
I was very pleasantly surprised by these.
I've been meaning to read them. Hopefully Stirling can avoid his more common excesses.
I've been meaning to read them. Hopefully Stirling can avoid his more common excesses.My favorite fictional Mars would have to be the Burroughs/Brackett one, with ancient cities, flashing swords, near-magical forgotten technology, and half-naked princesses. ;)Yeah. If you want a cool new take on this sort of thing, though, check out S. M. Stirling's In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, which is Mars, and way cool. The first book in the series is the Sky People - Venus, with astronauts and dinosaurs.
I was very pleasantly surprised by these.
Yeah. There's a couple of badly written character puppet political rant line pieces in the Sky People. They same to be happily absent in general from the second book.
Yeah. There's a couple of badly written character puppet political rant line pieces in the Sky People. They same to be happily absent in general from the second book.
Actually, I meant the at-time sadosexual tone of his writing. As someone once told me, "There's a reason why the fans call him S&M Stirling..."
Anyone remember an old RPG called Space 1889? Victorian-era early steampunk setting with Mars at the center of most of the published materials. If this type of setting is to your taste there are plenty of RPG supplements as well as fan and third-party material available (web sites, eBay, etc.) that make great reading - or you can create your own stories.Though I never played the game, I own the vast majority of the "1889" stuff. Just really great steam-punk. As for the original topic, my preference would be:
Burroughs
Brackett
Stirling
(CAS' Mars tales were awesome as well)
A touch OT, but "Space 1889" was the first "steampunk" spin-off I ever saw, though I'd read Harry Harrison's "A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!" before that. Obviously it sparked a fire in Greg Broadmore's brain:
http://www.wetanz.com/holics/index.php?catid=4
Clark Ashton Smith was a heckuva writer, and his Mars tales paint as weirdly wonderful a picture of The Real Mars as anyone.
"It was the Martian hour of worship, when the Aihais gather in their roofless temples to implore the return of the passing sun. Like the throbbing of feverish metal pulses, a sound of ceaseless and innumerable gongs punctured the thin air. The incredibly crooked streets were almost empty; and only a few barges, with immense rhomboidal sails of mauve and scarlet, crawled to and fro on the somber green waters."
-- from 'Vulthoom', Weird Tales, 1932
All Leigh Brackett's Mars ones,all C L Moore's,Clark Ashton Smith,Robert Moore Williams' 'The Bell From Infinity',Charles Fontenay's 'Rebels of The Red Planet',ERB,O A Kline's 'Swordsman' and 'Outlaws',John Wyndham's 'Stowaway to Mars' and 'The Sleepers of Mars'...and hundreds more!
I should've mentioned Bradbury's 'The Silver Locusts'...brilliant!
im new to reading books set on mars
the two iv read so far is War of the Worlds i found it to be vary creepy
the second was Shambleau featured in Northwest of earth
i am looking to get into the John Carter stuff
i am looking to get into the John Carter stuff
By all means read John Carter! You’ll not regret it.
The series starts off with A Princess of Mars, which is one of my favorite books.
Cheers!
i am looking to get into the John Carter stuff
By all means read John Carter! You’ll not regret it.
I heartily second that endorsement!
well i found a e text editon of the first John carter book
on Tarzan.com iv read the first chapter its great
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Duck Dodgers version of Mars FTW! :D
They remind me of totalitarian Drow, especially the Queen.
The RPG Space:1889 had some interesting stuff on Mars, and that game is what 'inspired' TSR to create Spelljammer.
Although that game won the Game of the Year award, and Spelljammer was VERY hit-or-miss.
You know, I have never gotten around to the John Carter stuff - perhaps I should look into them.
I also liked the mutated people in the Schwarzenegger movie Total Recall - the Midget Prostitute was just so cute. <evil Grin>
Looked like a Halfling....
Did someone say Space 1889?
well what can i say im loving the John carter series it brings back the memories of when i was 7 and i got to read tarzan
Yeah, I'll always feel a certain nostalgia for the Whelan covers.
Hey, where did Kirth's post I was responding to go?