I love “A Martian Odyssey” by Stanley G. Weinbaum. The first time I read it was when I bought The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929-1964 from the SFBC in the summer of 1970. I wish I had discovered it sooner, during that golden age of science fiction when we’re twelve. Instead, I was a college freshman. I was a bit older, a bit more knowledgable, a bit more cynical, but it still clinging to my dreams of finding a way to the red planet. Fifty years later, I know better, that Mars is not for me. Yet, I still daydream my science fictional fantasies, not just to forget the pandemic or economic collapse, or even to ignore the nagging pains of my aging body, but to recall something that made me happy a half-century ago. Something that inspired me.

If Donald Wollheim had not snagged “A Martian Odyssey” for his 1943 groundbreaking paperback anthology, The Pocket Book of Science Fiction, I’m pretty sure I would have read “A Martian Odyssey” at twelve or thirteen. Obviously, Healy and McComas, or Groff Conklin would have grabbed it for Adventures in Time and Space or The Best of Science Fiction in 1946. Those two enduring hardback anthologies were still haunting libraries in my early teen years in the 1960s. Unfortunately, I never stumbled upon any Weinbaum collection or later anthology that contained “A Martian Odyssey” before I bought The Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Would 12-year-old kids today discovering this classic in the many anthologies that have published since then feel the kind of sense of wonder I could have felt if I had read “A Martian Odyssey” in 1963? And would my 1970 sense of wonder even be a fifth of what overwhelmed readers who discovered Weinbaum’s first story in the July 1934 issue of Wonder Stories? I can’t say my 2020 pleasure in rereading “A Martian Odyssey” is anything other than just wistful nostalgia. Yet, I did recognize several triggers in that story that made me love science fiction way back when.

I also wish I had read “A Martian Odyssey” before Mariner 4’s flyby of Mars in July 1965. Like I said, 1963 would have been the perfect year, especially if I could have read “A Martian Odyssey” one day and then “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” by Roger Zelazny the next. That’s the last story in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and it was first published in 1963. I consider those two stories perfect bookends for an era in science fiction.

When Mariner 4 flew by Mars in July of 1965 we discovered the planet was a cold cratered world much like the Moon. We had finally opened the lid on the Schrodinger’s Cat of Mars speculation. It was dead! We discovered Mars wasn’t like fiction at all. Before Mariner 4 I had a deep faith in our genre and loved Pre-NASA Science Fiction. I wanted Mars to be like Heinlein’s Mars of Red Planet, The Rolling Stones, Double Star, and Stranger in a Strange Land — and Heinlein wanted Mars to be like Edgar Rice Burroughs and Stanley G. Weinbaum’s stories.

I see “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” as a beautiful farewell salute to Pre-NASA Science Fiction. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame is probably the greatest single science fiction anthology of all time — at least the readers at Goodreads voted it so. We’ve decided to read and discuss the stories from The Science Fiction Hall of Fame at the Facegroup I’m in. You’re welcome to join. “A Martian Odyssey” is our first story. I’m hoping to hear from other Weinbaum fans and learn about how they first discovered “A Martian Odyssey” too.

I don’t know how many times I’ve read Weinbaum’s classic since 1970. I was overjoyed a couple years ago when The Science Fiction Hall of Fame came out on audiobook. Its audio production of “A Martian Odyssey” is pitch-perfect. My inner reading voice couldn’t compete with third-grade actors in a school play. I consider the narration to sound just like how men talked back in the 1930s when “A Martian Odyssey” first appeared in Wonder Stories.

Stanley Weinbaum’s writing career was quite short — his first story came out in 1934 and he died at the end of 1935. Yet, in that short period, a dozen of his stories were published in Astounding Stories and Wonder Stories. A short biography and bibliography can be read at Wikipedia. He had been writing since the 1920s, finishing four works published as novels after his death. However, few people outside his hardcore fans ever read anything other than “A Martian Odyssey.” Even that story’s direct sequel, “Valley of Dreams” from the November issue of Wonder Stories has never been reprinted in a significant retrospective anthology.

If you love “A Martian Odyssey” do yourself a favor and read or listen to “Valley of Dreams.” It picks up where the first story left off and gives us more details about the exotic Martian life Weinbaum introduced in the first story.

Here are the two stories in audio from YouTube. I’ll give you a chance to listen to them because I will talk about the details, and maybe spoil them for you.

Weinbaum wrote science fiction before the general public even knew the term science fiction. Interplanetary tales have been around for a long time, but Weinbaum tried to imagine Mars with the science of his day. Dick Jarvis is part of a four-man mission to Mars when he is stranded in a crash of a survey flyer. Jarvis must cross hundreds of miles to get back to the rocket. Weinbaum tells us Mars has an extremely thin atmosphere in which the Earthmen can be trained to breathe. Humans are protected from eighty-degrees below zero temperature by special suits. Because the gravity is only one-third of Earth, Jarvis is able to make twenty miles a day crossing the Martian landscape. Along the way, he observes several bizarre life-forms and meets an intelligent being called Tweel. They travel together, saving each’s other’s life, becoming fast friends even though their ability to communicate in words is almost non-existent.

Modern readers might find Weinbaum’s prose a bit on the quaint side, and the plot rather simplistic by current-day standards. Jarvis tells the story to his human pals after he is rescued.  This framing device was common in stories from that era and earlier. Readers weren’t used to the immediacy of television reporting, so stories of true adventures were told after they happened. The same framing technique is also used in “Valley of Dreams” where Jarvis gets to meet Tweel again and visit an ancient Martian city.

One of the toughest things science fiction writers have to do is convey alienness. We’re used to movies and television shows where aliens are humans with make-up and costumes. Weinbaum wanted his readers to feel the alienness of aliens and he succeeds, both with non-intelligent lifeforms and a couple different types of intelligent beings. Tweel looks somewhat like an ostrich with arms and hands and can jump a hundred feet into the air and land on its beak. Tweel can mimic some Earth words, and with those few words convey some abstract concepts. Jarvis is unable to learn any of Tweel’s language.

Weinbaum gives us both a first contact story, and a story about alien anthropology and linguistics. I get one of my biggest sense of wonder rushes from stories about humans walking through dead alien cities, and that’s part of “Valley of Dreams.” I first discovered this rush from reading After Worlds Collide by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie when I was in the 7th grade. Weinbaum also throws in a lifeform based on silicon, maybe the earliest I’ve seen of this idea. And he comes up with the idea that some intelligent beings might not use the same logic/math we do.

Probably, all these exciting sense-of-wonder ideas have been discovered by most children today before they start school. I’m old enough to remember the world without all the standard science-fictional ideas that kids now get as soon as they can think. I doubt they can comprehend how delicious “A Martian Odyssey” was to minds before every exciting science-fictional idea was beaten into dullness by pop culture.

James Wallace Harris, 5/5/20