As a long-term advocate of space colonization I’ve always been drawn to Mars, not by adventure stories but by the idea that ordinary people may someday live there. So this was the theme of my first novel. I wrote it before we had gone to the moon, though it wasn't published until 1970, after my better-known book Enchantress from the Stars. When in 2006 I revised it for republication, little about Mars needed changing; mainly I removed outdated sexist assumptions and wording. Yet the book still hasn’t reached its intended audience because though meant for girls who aren’t already space enthusiasts, its publishers persisted in labeling it science fiction rather than Young Adult romance.
Robert Zubrin is the foremost authority on how to get to Mars, and in addition to his engineering expertise, he is one of the most prominent advocates of colonizing it. This classic book, now in its updated 25th Anniversary edition, should be read by everyone interested in the future of humankind. It contains more technical detail about space travel than some people will care to learn, but that can be skimmed; the section about colonization, and the concluding chapter explaining why going to Mars is important, are what I chose it for. In Zubrin's opinion and my own, Mars is "the door to an open future, a new frontier on a new world, a planet that can be settled, the beginning of humanity's career as a spacefaring species."
The Case for Marsmakes living in space seem more possible than ever in this updated 25th anniversary edition, featuring the latest information on the planet's exploration and the drive to send humans there.
Since the beginning of human history, Mars has been an alluring dream—the stuff of legends, gods, and mystery. The planet most like ours, it had long been thought impossible to reach, let alone explore and inhabit. But that is changing fast.
In February 2021, the American rover Perseverance will touch down on Mars. Equipped with a powerful suite of scientific instruments—including some that will attempt to make…
I was born where the sun rose in the prairies and set behind the Rockies. Now I live on the West Coast of Canada. I am a picture bookmaker, and from my recommendations, you might think that I also have a thing for thieves: cupcake thieves, underwear thieves, hat thieves, chicken thieves, pie thieves. But I’m really here for the element of surprise and well-earned laughs in children’s picture books. They say comedy is hard, but comedy in picture books is even harder. These five picks are a great place to start if you like smartly silly picture books with a bit of off-kilter humor and a sense of irony. Bonus points for puns.
A hapless astronaut is on a mission to find Life on Mars and explores a seemingly barren landscape. The astronaut is unaware of what is going on -- if only he would turn around! This becomes a source of great entertainment and an early lesson on irony. I enjoyed this book not only for the illustrations, which are well suited to this story, but more importantly for the way that the words do not match what is going on in the illustrations.
A daring young astronaut arrives on Mars, certain he will find life there. He has even brought a gift of chocolate cupcakes. But soon he realises he's made a mistake as the planet seems to be totally barren except for one little flower. However, as only the audience can see, if only he would turn around he would meet the friendly Martian who is always lurking shyly one step behind! As he settles in for the journey home, he cracks open his cupcakes-only to discover that someone has eaten them all! Fans of Oliver Jeffers and Jon Klassen will love…
Growing up, books weren’t just something I read—they were portals to futures filled with wonder, adventure, and possibility. There was something captivating about science fiction in particular: it was more than just space battles and shiny gadgets. It was about what the future could be—our potential, our challenges, and how we might navigate the unknown. Looking back, a few books and authors had a lasting impact on me, not just as a reader but as a writer. I’ll walk you through five that really stood out and shaped the way I see the world and, ultimately, likely inspired my series.
I was completely invested in this story from the first few paragraphs. I have a habit of skimming through words and pages to get the gist of a book before committing to reading it; this book is one of the few that held me from the start.
Heinlein had this amazing ability to make Mars feel alive - not just a backdrop but a character in itself. I love this book for the sense of adventure it gives me, pulling me into a world where young explorers navigate political conspiracies and uncover the mysteries of an alien planet. Heinlein’s writing made me feel like I was right there alongside the characters, sharing their triumphs and setbacks.
What stood out to me was how it combined the excitement of discovery with serious themes about freedom and responsibility. Heinlein’s Mars isn’t just a playground—it’s a battleground for ideas about independence and loyalty.…
Discover the wonders and secrets of a very special Mars alongside Jim and Frank in this thrilling adventure, featuring the first appearance of the Martian elder race by one of the greatest science fiction writers of all.
Robert A. Heinlein's Red Planet features the first appearance of the Martian elder race and tells the story of Jim and Frank's journey to the Lowe Academy boarding school on Mars.
On their way to school, the boys meet Gekko, a sentient Martian, and join in a ritual called "growing together," learning about the planet and the Martians' protective nature towards Jim's pet,…
I am a book publicist and President of Westwind Book Marketing, a public relations and marketing firm that has a special knack for working with authors to help them get all the publicity they deserve and more. I work with bestselling authors and self-published authors promoting all types of books, whether it's their first book or their 15th book. I’ve handled publicity for books by CEOs, CIA Officers, Navy SEALS, Homemakers, Fitness Gurus, Doctors, Lawyers, and Adventurers. My clients have been featured by Good Morning America, FOX & Friends, CNN, ABC News, New York Times, Nightline, TIME, PBS, LA Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Woman's World, and Howard Stern.
In my
years as a book marketer and book publicist I have found the real experts in this
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selling books. This is not a hobby for David Gaughran, being an author is how
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authors.
The
fact that he is a bestselling author himself and has taken the time to analyze
Amazon in every way conceivable way is reason enough to buy this book. I highly
recommend Let’s Get Visible and consider it a must-read for all authors.
Take your sales to the next level! The author of the award-winning, bestselling Let's Get Digital is back with an advanced guide for more experienced self-publishers.
There are over 4 million books in the Kindle Store, with thousands more added every day. How do you get yours noticed? Visibility isn't a challenge that can be bested once - it requires continual work. But there are tools and strategies to do much of the heavy lifting for you.
In Let's Get Visible: How To Get Noticed And Sell More Books, you'll discover how to:
* Leverage Amazon's famous recommendation engine to…
Hadrian Marlowe, a man revered as a hero and despised as a murderer, chronicles his tale in the galaxy-spanning debut of the Sun Eater series, merging the best of space opera and epic fantasy.
It was not his war.
On the wrong planet, at the right time, for the best reasons, Hadrian Marlowe started down a path that could only end in fire. The galaxy remembers him as a hero: the man who burned every last alien Cielcin from the sky. They remember him as a monster: the devil who destroyed a sun, casually annihilating four billion human lives--even the…
I didn’t know anything at all about meteorites (or, really, space in general) until I took a cosmochemistry class during my first semester of a PhD program in geology. As soon as I learned that meteorites captured information about the start of the Solar System – the material we started with, hints about how planets evolve, and how meteorites changed the course of Earth – I was hooked. At the end of that class in 2007, I switched the main topic of my PhD research to studying meteorites and what they can tell us about the past, and I have been doing it ever since.
I went to see Mary Roach in person at an event held in the town where I live, and the interview was nothing short of hilarious. Roach’s curiosity and zest for life are infectious, and her storytelling style made me feel like I was the one (or, often, wishing I was the one) in the wacky situations she seems to find herself.
For me, her book is no different; it covers a lot of the wild, captivating stories involved with space travel. It is just such a fun book about a fun topic.
Space is a world devoid of the things we need to live and thrive: air, gravity, hot showers, fresh produce, privacy, beer. Space exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be human. How much can a person give up? How much weirdness can they take? What happens to you when you can't walk for a year? have sex? smell flowers? What happens if you vomit in your helmet during a space walk? Is it possible for the human body to survive a bailout at 17,000 miles per hour? To answer these questions, space agencies set…
I was never going to hack it as a scientist. So I became a journalist instead. After all, bothcareers stem from a sense of wonder about the world and asking questions, looking for answers, and accepting that there might not be any. In 2018, I started my narrative podcast Wild Thing,whichlet me explore some of our weirder collective fascinations (like aliens) using science, history,psychology, and humor. I’d never aimed the podcast at kids, but I realized that all those bigopen-ended questions that I had about everything were the same kinds of questions that kidshad - which really set me up to write the Wild Thing book series.
That discovery would shake ourworld, change our outlook on the universe, and answer the question of whether we’realone.
Sarah Stewart Johnson, a planetary scientist, has spent her life thinking about thispossibility and delves into both her and our obsession with the Red Planet in this beautifully written book. Part memoir, part historical account, and part scientific exploration, thisbook made me want to ditch a career in journalism and take up astrobiology. You’ll never look atMars the same way again.
As a new wave of interplanetary exploration unfolds, a talented young planetary scientist charts our centuries-old obsession with Mars.
'Beautifully written, emotive - a love letter to a planet' DERMOT O'LEARY, BBC Radio 2
Mars - bewilderingly empty, coated in red dust - is an unlikely place to pin our hopes of finding life elsewhere. And yet, right now multiple spacecraft are circling, sweeping over Terra Sabaea, Syrtis Major, the dunes of Elysium and Mare Sirenum - on the brink, perhaps, of a discovery that would inspire humankind as much as any in our history.
I thoroughly enjoyed this mind-spinning portrayal of a seismic shift in reality and how we, as fallible humans, respond to a new reality.
The premise of the book borders on unbelievable, but Wilson carries it out in a spectacular and ultimately believable fashion. How would humans respond to a fundamental change in how we view ourselves in the universe? It is a great “what-if” piece of writing that will captivate you on multiple levels.
After witnessing the onset of an astronomical event that has caused the sun to go black and the stars and moon to disappear, Tyler, Jason, and Diane learn that the darkness has been caused by a time-altering, alien-created artificial barrier and that the sun will be extinguished in less than forty years. Reprint.
Growing up, books weren’t just something I read—they were portals to futures filled with wonder, adventure, and possibility. There was something captivating about science fiction in particular: it was more than just space battles and shiny gadgets. It was about what the future could be—our potential, our challenges, and how we might navigate the unknown. Looking back, a few books and authors had a lasting impact on me, not just as a reader but as a writer. I’ll walk you through five that really stood out and shaped the way I see the world and, ultimately, likely inspired my series.
I love this book for its poetic, dreamlike quality. Bradbury’s writing pulled me in and didn’t let go, painting a picture of Mars that was both beautiful and tragic. As a pre-teen and a teen, in my imagination, I had red dust stuck to my feet, and I was there with the characters. What captivated me was the way the stories felt timeless—each one was like a snapshot of a moment layered with meaning.
I felt like I wasn’t just reading a book about colonizing Mars; I was exploring humanity’s deepest fears, hopes, and regrets. We have companies only today working on getting to Mars, I feel so upset that I know I will likely never set foot on those dusty red shores, but I am thrilled to know it may still happen for others.
Bradbury’s work made me think about the consequences of exploration—how, in our quest to conquer…
The Martian Chronicles, a seminal work in Ray Bradbury's career, whose extraordinary power and imagination remain undimmed by time's passage, is available from Simon & Schuster for the first time.
In The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury, America’s preeminent storyteller, imagines a place of hope, dreams, and metaphor— of crystal pillars and fossil seas—where a fine dust settles on the great empty cities of a vanished, devastated civilization. Earthmen conquer Mars and then are conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race. In this classic work…
While doing a college humor column I was hoping to be the next Art Buchwald, but instead ended up first as a lawyer, then a film critic and college professor. When I finally got around to writing fiction, the blending of science fiction and comedy was a natural fit (with occasional forays into horror and fantasy). I’ve done four novels and a couple of dozen published stories to date and when readers tell me they’ve enjoyed them I answer, “If it made you laugh, I did my job.” When I came up with the mashup title of “Father of the Bride of Frankenstein” I said, “I have to write this.”
Brown was another author who mixed SF and humor. Here he stood the alien invasion premise on its head. Instead of spaceships from an advanced civilization laying waste to our great cities, Brown wonders how we’d react if the invaders weren’t interested in mass murder or enslaving humanity but simply annoying the hell out of us. His little green men from Mars enjoy insulting and pestering Earthlings. After a while, “War of the Worlds” might be a preferable encounter.
THEY WERE GREEN, THEY WERE LITTLE, THEY WERE BALD AS BILLIARD BALLS AND THEY WERE EVERYWHERE!
Luke Devereaux was a science fiction writer, holed up in a desert shack waiting for inspiration. He was the first to see a Martian - but he certainly wasn't the last.
It was estimated that one billion of them had arrived - one to every three human beings on Earth. Obnoxious green creatures who could be seen and heard (but not harmed) and who probed private sex lives as shamelessly as they exposed government secrets.
