A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Reviewed.

English: Cover art by Frank E. Schoonover from A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, McClurg, 1917. Uploaded by User:BPK2. Español: John Carter y Dejah Thoris en la cubierta de la primera edición de Una Princesa de Marte por Edgar Rice Burroughs. Illustrador: Frank E. Schoonover. Bajada por User:BPK2. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This classic, which I mistakenly thought I’d read in my youth, came up amongst some free books on my iPad. Once I started to explore, to see whether I had, in fact, read it, I was hooked.

The story is typical of the author, of course, and the style is dated, as you’d expect. But there is a quality to the writing that keeps the reader engaged. Full of what modern readers would perceive as politically incorrect attitudes, bursting with out-dated ideas about the Red Planet, it may be, but the story moves at a pace, with plenty of action to keep the reader interested.

There’s a good deal of imagination displayed in the solutions to various envisaged problems of living on a dying planet. And the wonderful exaggeration of an Earthman’s prowess on a planet with lower gravity is entertaining rather than irritating.

Written almost entirely as narrative, telling rather than showing and therefore breaking umpteen ‘writing’ rules, this story relies on its powerful plot and strong characters for its success. It may well be dated, but it still entertains. And I love the way the author refuses to be deflected from his tale by the sheer incredibility of his hero’s passage from Earth to Mars and back again. No explanation is given for this remarkable feat, and it’s simple acceptance as an inexplicable happening fits well with the story.

There are some wonderful examples of mixed moral stances, with all sexual references dealt with indirectly and under the covers. The violence and war, however, is accepted as perfectly normal. A reflection, perhaps, of the times and the land in which the author lived at the point of writing? Have things changed very much, I wonder.

I enjoyed this piece of old science fiction and recommend it to those who have grown up with the genre over many years. Younger readers might find the nature of the telling and the idiosyncrasies of the story a little too difficult to take, however.

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Short Fiction: The Dilemma of Length.

English: Atmosphere of Mars taken from low orbit The Galle "smiley" crater can be seen to the left (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Are you plotter or pantster? I’m the latter, whether writing long or short fiction. This morning, with no thought in mind, other than that I wanted to write a science fiction short story, I sat at the keyboard and turned out 1,000 words, set on Mars, before breakfast. It was a little slower than normal, as I needed to search for international names for my characters (I make this easier by using a table I’ve developed over the years. It holds 10,000+ first names from all over the world, colour coded for gender, and noted with countries of usage for the names listed. It’s easy to search for names for a specific nationality by doing a search on that country. You can access a free copy on my blog, here.)

Later this morning, my wife and I took a longish walk in the local countryside: we enjoy regular fresh air and exercise for mental as well as physical wellbeing). This sort of gentle activity is an excellent opportunity for rumination. I carry a voice recorder to catch those ideas that pop to the surface as we walk, often in companionable silence.

The story I’d started was jostling with the natural landscape for attention. And, as so often happens when relaxed, a sudden idea struck me. The story is more suited to a greater length than the short story I’d envisaged. It’s an obvious candidate for a novelette; I guess at around 30-40,000 words. Now, because of the way I write, this isn’t a problem for me. I’ll have to re-write the beginning, since I no longer have to introduce 8 characters in such a short space, but that’s all to the good. It was the character numbers, an essential element of the story, that had caused me to pause in the writing. The solution was simple. Write a longer story.

And the purpose of this piece? Simply to illustrate that you don’t have to fence yourself in with story length if an idea isn’t working as expected. Examine it at leisure and decide whether it’s simply the chosen length that’s forming a barrier to creativity. My other sci-fi novelette, The Methuselah Strain, started out as a short story but it soon became clear I needed more space to examine the themes and develop the characters. So, don’t let word numbers confine you. Instead, allow the story to find its natural length and then find the suitable market for it. The current sci-fi novelette I’m developing will become a self-published ebook initially instead of the magazine-bound short story I’d started. Be flexible. It works. And the magazine story I’d intended? No matter: I’ll write another when the idea strikes.