Interzone # 196
01/03/2005 . Source: Rod MacDonald 

magazine: UK publisher/editor address: Andy Cox, TTA Press, 5 Martins Lane, Witcham, Ely, Cambridgeshire CB6 2LB. Price: £ 3.50 (UK), $ 6.00(US).

check out website: www.ttapress.com

Another issue of 'Interzone' to entertain our passion for fiction of a scientific nature! Disappointing it wasn't except perhaps for a lack of stories from the British end of the pond. No doubt the editors, being fair-minded people, accept fiction only on literary merit which suggests, population imbalance notwithstanding, Brits should try a little harder in the future.



The cover depicts a sexy lady in a tight-fitting space suit walking on the surface of Mars (you're getting it right at last, Interzone - more boobs and bums is what we need!). Nice art by Josh Finney depicting the cover story, 'Winning Mars' by Jason Stoddard and this is what I'd like to discuss next.

Set just over ten years from now, we have a reality TV show where several teams are set loose on Mars with the objective of travelling across the surface by various methods to reach a station which will take them into orbit and safely home. The winner receives $30 million. Cameras follow their every movement and their words are relayed to a TV audience numbering a billion or so.

Finance comes from advertising and sponsorship: the girls even have logos on their bums. Hardware comes from Russia and the brains behind the operation belong to a shifty father and son pair. As far as I could count, there were almost twenty people on Mars with others in the orbital station who directed camera movements.

Characterisation was good. It was so good that you soon knew who was who, which, for me represents no easy task. Going through the story, we learn that one group become involved in an accident and will surely die if not rescued by the others but, with money dangling in front of them, there's a general reluctance to do so.

These are the first humans on Mars. Elsewhere, the Chinese got as far as the Moon and now exhibit bits of Apollo artefacts in their museums. NASA is virtually useless. Only the power of television and advertising can get people to Mars. One of the contestants is really there to look for signs of life, a rather difficult task considering his limitations at the time.

Regardless, the teams (one team consists of only one person, a selfish prat of a guy who wants to be first at all costs) travel across the surface by motor vehicle, flying kites and huge rolling wheels. However, entertaining as this story surely is, to me it didn't add up especially where the science was concerned.

First point of many: they blast off on a Russian rocket. No rocket could carry all these people, the supplies, the equipment and the resources for a trip to Mars. As described in the story, twenty rockets wouldn't have been enough. Further, the teams apparently land on the surface inside bouncing balls in the same way that Pathfinder did last decade. It's highly dubious if humans could survive such a landing.

The environment suits were skin-tight, revealing every contour of the body. This was supposed to stop them exploding in the very thin Martian atmosphere. Although apparently temperature controlled, such a suit would probably kill someone within a few hours. Even if a device like this could be engineered, the technology isn't here now and it probably won't be here a decade from now.

Valles Marineris, the large canyon on Mars, doesn't have huge vertical cliffs. 3-D representations may show this to be the case but the scale has been amplified to allow elevation to appear more than it really is. Then there's the instantaneous communication. This takes several minutes to occur, especially from Earth to Mars. The orbital station could lessen the time the signal needs to travel but we're told that it only takes about three minutes to get from the surface via the rescue rockets.

Such a time is ridiculous. Even if only ten miles high, the orbital station wouldn't be reached so quickly. It also wouldn't stay in orbit very long. Further, at low altitude, communication with the teams, which were spread all over Mars, would be impossible unless a huge series of relay satellites had been orbited as well. Twenty Russian rockets? More like a hundred to transport all this stuff.

Finally, travelling through Martian atmosphere in a kite is questionable, especially if several people and supplies need to be carried, too. Studies have already been carried out on proposed Martian aeroplane vehicles but to be viable, they must be light and very large. Landing would be by a crash but taking off on a huge plane larger than a football pitch, which is what would be required to carry people, is just a step too far in this tale of scientific inaccuracies.

The cost? Financed by advertising? It would take the entire capital resources of IBM, Coca-Cola and Crowsnest (we could only afford to pay for the coat buttons!!!) just to get them off the ground.

There's a twist to the story. Maybe difficult to discern perhaps, but the reader is left with the suggestion that this isn't really happening. Maybe this is a huge con? To rake in millions the two jokers created a computer-generated illusion! If this is the case, it's a good story. If not, it's impossible implausible nonsense. Read for yourself, my friends.

Well, enough of Mars. What about the rest? Non-fiction included a couple of interviews. Very well done, especially the one with writer China Miéville. The columns were the usual stuff - sometimes controversial but never boring. The rest of the fiction was varied.

'The Emperor Of Gonwanaland' was well written, even classy you could say, but I didn't like it at all. I'm sorry, Mr. Paul di Philipo, but I can't take any more stories to do with the Internet and computers and people with plugs in their heads and funny chat lines and...you know what I'm getting at! 'Matrix' ruined this for anybody and everybody for at least the next twenty years.

'Totems' by Will Macintosh caught you right from the start and carried you through to a conclusion which wasn't disappointing. Nice twists in this. Of the others, 'The Face Of America' from David Ira Cleary was something I couldn't understand or get my head around. While unable to discern continuity or relevance to the story, it was nevertheless written with literary skill. It's not my fault that I'm stupid and can't comprehend things any higher than a demented ferret's level.

Finally, a little gem of a story. 'Ducks In Winter' by Neal Blackie wasn't what I expected from the title. It was on Earth, yet far removed from it in time and space. Now, this story doesn't have to be believable or scientifically accurate but if you place a story a decade from now on a planet we know much about, then surely accuracy is essential. Point made.

Not a bad issue at all. Plenty to keep you occupied and plenty to make you think which is what it's all about when everything is said and done.

Rod MacDonald