Old Mars

Howard Waldrop is widely considered to be one of the best short-story writers in the business, having been called “the resident Weird Mind of our generation” and an author “who writes like [a] honkytonk angel.” His famous story “The Ugly Chickens” won both the Nebula and the World Fantasy Awards in 1981. His work has been gathered in the collections: Howard Who?, All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past: Neat Stories by Howard Waldrop, Night of the Cooters: More Neat Stories by Howard Waldrop, Going Home Again, the print version of his collection Dream Factories and Radio Pictures (formerly available only in downloadable form online), and a collection of his stories written in collaboration with various other authors, Custer’s Last Jump and Other Collaborations. Waldrop is also the author of the novel The Texas-Israeli War: 1999, in collaboration with Jake Saunders, and of two solo novels, Them Bones and A Dozen Tough Jobs, as well as the chapbook A Better World’s in Birth! He is at work on a new novel, tentatively titled The Moone World. His most recent book is a big retrospective collection, Things Will Never Be the Same: Selected Short Fiction 1980–2005. Having lived in Washington State for a number of years, Waldrop recently moved back to his former hometown of Austin, Texas, something that caused celebrations and loud hurrahs to rise up from the population.

Historical re-creations are popular on Earth, with thousands reenacting Civil War battles and scenes from other conflicts, but here Waldrop shows us a historical re-creation taking place on Mars, one that takes us on a voyage on a historically accurate reconstruction of a slimshang out across the Martian deserts to the source of all life itself.

The Dead Sea-Bottom Scrolls (A Re-creation of Oud’s Journey by Slimshang from Tharsis to Solis Lacus, by George Weeton, Fourth Mars Settlement Wave, 1981) HOWARD WALDROP

SO I AM STANDING HERE ON A COLD MORNING, BESIDE THE best approximation of a slimshang of which Terran science is capable—polycarbonates and (Earth) man-made fabrics instead of the original hardened plant fibers and outer coverings of animals long extinct. It looks fast, probably faster than any native-made slimshang, but it will have to do.

One thing it’s missing is the series of gears, cogs, plates, and knobs with which a sort of music was made as it rolled. Martians spoke of “coming at full melody”—since the reproduction was mechanical, like a music box, the faster the slimshang went, the louder and more rackety the tune.

Instead, I have a tape deck with me, on which I have chosen to put an endless loop of the early-1960s tune “The Martian Hop.”

It’s appropriate and fitting.

What I am doing is to set out in the re-created slimshang to follow the route (if not the incidents and feelings) of Oud’s famous journey from Tharsis to Solis Lacus.

It’s the most famous Martian travelogue we have (for many and varying reasons).