Day 10: You can't trust Mars
Jun. 22nd, 2012 08:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impy I think everyone who reads a fair bit at any point in their young life comes across a book they read too soon. In some cases this just means jokes and innuendo go right over your head. In other cases this means you are now freakin' scarred for life, usually by things that people will later mock. Mercilessly.
For me that book was The Season of Passage by Christopher Pike. If you've never read this (gasp! shock! horror! Remedy this situation immediately!) most fantastic of books, let me give you the incredibly simple summary:
In the year 2002, cosmonauts land on Mars. Things are great for all of about a minute when they disappear, including the guy left out in space. Two years later, America sends their own astronauts to find out what happened to the Russians. Oh, and also to explore Mars.
Things quickly go horribly, horribly wrong.
If I'm allowed an irrational (and I do mean completely and utterly irrational) fear, it's got to be any manned expedition to Mars. Why? This freakin' book. Nothing good comes from Mars, people. (Sailormars excluded) There's never any "hey, we went to Mars and the aliens loved us!" in Sci-fi, you've got to look to kid's cartoons for that. (This may not actually be true, but any time I stumble across an expedition to Mars, it ends HORRIBLY.)
See, it turns out that Mars used to be populated a gazillion years or so ago, only not by anything you'd ever want to run into even in broad daylight, let alone in the harsh, cold reality of space. They're pretty much vampires, but you run that risk when you go the blood borne way of infection. So. The Americans find a survivor of the Russian exploration and instead of running the fuck away from the obviously insane should be dead dude, they ask him if he knows where the rest of his team is. Of course he does and they follow.
Fucking scientists.
Annnnnnnnnnnd the bodies hit the floor.
I've been re-reading it and I've forgotten a fair bit (like the fact that it takes place in the past now! Whoa.) but I still vividly remember them finding the Russian in space, with the floating blood and the eyeball. I also vividly (and accurately) remember the girlfriend rubbing herself rather inappropriately against a wooden door and getting a splinter somewhere not all that fun.
But mostly I remember the story-within-a-story format. I'm sure this wasn't the first book I read to utilize it (if only because Pike himself is rather fond of it, with mixed results) but it's one that stuck. Through our heroine's little sister, we learn the history of Mars (and Earth, to an extent) and why you listen to the gods. When they tell you "stay on your side of the cursed lands" you stay on your side. If it looks like a goddamned trap, it is a goddamned trap only it's worse than you can imagine.
And most of all: ALWAYS pay attention to exactly what the villain says. If he doesn't say, "yes, I killed X" then do not assume X is dead. But also? Your villain is, y'know, a villain. They are going to lie to you. Probably even if they aren't allowed to lie, but most especially if they don't have anything keeping them from doing so. I feel this is a pretty important life lesson, truth be told.
So, yes. Mars creeps me out more than it has any right to and this is one of the few books I've read so many times and let so many people borrow that I've had to buy quite a few copies without complaint. Martian vampires, people! Old school vampires, even!
Even Martians here have issues.
For me that book was The Season of Passage by Christopher Pike. If you've never read this (gasp! shock! horror! Remedy this situation immediately!) most fantastic of books, let me give you the incredibly simple summary:
In the year 2002, cosmonauts land on Mars. Things are great for all of about a minute when they disappear, including the guy left out in space. Two years later, America sends their own astronauts to find out what happened to the Russians. Oh, and also to explore Mars.
Things quickly go horribly, horribly wrong.
If I'm allowed an irrational (and I do mean completely and utterly irrational) fear, it's got to be any manned expedition to Mars. Why? This freakin' book. Nothing good comes from Mars, people. (Sailormars excluded) There's never any "hey, we went to Mars and the aliens loved us!" in Sci-fi, you've got to look to kid's cartoons for that. (This may not actually be true, but any time I stumble across an expedition to Mars, it ends HORRIBLY.)
See, it turns out that Mars used to be populated a gazillion years or so ago, only not by anything you'd ever want to run into even in broad daylight, let alone in the harsh, cold reality of space. They're pretty much vampires, but you run that risk when you go the blood borne way of infection. So. The Americans find a survivor of the Russian exploration and instead of running the fuck away from the obviously insane should be dead dude, they ask him if he knows where the rest of his team is. Of course he does and they follow.
Fucking scientists.
Annnnnnnnnnnd the bodies hit the floor.
I've been re-reading it and I've forgotten a fair bit (like the fact that it takes place in the past now! Whoa.) but I still vividly remember them finding the Russian in space, with the floating blood and the eyeball. I also vividly (and accurately) remember the girlfriend rubbing herself rather inappropriately against a wooden door and getting a splinter somewhere not all that fun.
But mostly I remember the story-within-a-story format. I'm sure this wasn't the first book I read to utilize it (if only because Pike himself is rather fond of it, with mixed results) but it's one that stuck. Through our heroine's little sister, we learn the history of Mars (and Earth, to an extent) and why you listen to the gods. When they tell you "stay on your side of the cursed lands" you stay on your side. If it looks like a goddamned trap, it is a goddamned trap only it's worse than you can imagine.
And most of all: ALWAYS pay attention to exactly what the villain says. If he doesn't say, "yes, I killed X" then do not assume X is dead. But also? Your villain is, y'know, a villain. They are going to lie to you. Probably even if they aren't allowed to lie, but most especially if they don't have anything keeping them from doing so. I feel this is a pretty important life lesson, truth be told.
So, yes. Mars creeps me out more than it has any right to and this is one of the few books I've read so many times and let so many people borrow that I've had to buy quite a few copies without complaint. Martian vampires, people! Old school vampires, even!
Even Martians here have issues.
