THE DEEP ONES: "The Film-Makers of Mars" by Geoff Ryman

"The Film-Makers of Mars" by Geoff Ryman

Discussion begins June 24.

First published in 2008 (online at TOR.com). First print publication in Year's Best Fantasy 9 (2009).



ONLINE VERSIONS

http://www.tor.com/stories/2012/03/the-film-makers-of-mars

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1174831

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

Year's Best Fantasy 9
Paradise Tales

MISCELLANY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoff_Ryman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Princess_of_Mars
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/62/62-h/62-h.htm
https://www.edgarriceburroughs.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_based_on_works_by_Edgar_Rice_Burrou...
http://preview.tinyurl.com/nlfbjs9

Online for me.

And online for me.

I'll buy the Kindle edition.

Reread the Kindle edition (http://amzn.com/B003V4B57Y) last week.

Online for me, o boy.

Bruce Bennett (aka Herman Brix (referred to as Herman Blix in the story)) as Tarzan:



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Bennett

Well, we have had a couple of John Carter films come along since this story was published. If only they were remotely like the one detailed here! Ryman succeeds in making Blix and Jahde Isthor into dangerous, otherworldly beings. Blix's appearance at the end really conveys a savage, undeniable power.

I really enjoyed the film historian's point of view being used:

Eight reels of a film about Santa Claus from 1909. Filmed in Lapland. And forty reels of a film it says was produced by Edgar Rice Burroughs. In 1911?.

It's enough to make one drool.

That was certainly a surprising twist at the end!

I liked having the "real" versions of the oviparous Red Martians more thoroughly avian, and the Green Martians more quadrupedestrian.

It's been 30 years or more since I read through the first 10 or 15 of the Barsoom novelettes, and while I've never been much inclined to revisit they were enjoyable enough. Having that background made the story's perspective fabulously enjoyable. Clearly an homage, but not fawning, and certainly more menacing than my impression of Burroughs originals!

I also didn't expect the ending at all, and as quick and suitable as it was, it imbues the story with an edge it would not have had were Ryman to have emphasized the isolation of the film historian, after discovering the footage was real but unable to persuade anyone else of it. That's where I was expecting him to go: what else could he do, given the film's principals were adults almost 100 years before? They must all be long gone! Bringing in a space vampire was a clever solution to that puzzle, and fits the weirdness of the tale, too.

>9 paradoxosalpha:, >10 elenchus:

Blix's sudden overwhelming supernatural menace at the end nicely echoes the same kind of effect that Laird Barron achieves so easily in his stories. The average human just doesn't stand a chance. In a way this makes for a nice coda to last week's "Old Virginia".

As I've stated elsewhere, I liked this story a lot. A lot of my enjoyment of it comes from my affection for Burroughs' Barsoom series (which I'm still reading, btw - on book #8 at present) and for film history, so I didn't know if my admiration of it would necessarily be shared by other members of the group; I'm glad to see that it has (thus far, anyway).

I like the way the central conceit of the story resembles that of the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society's 2005 film version of "The Call of Cthulhu" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478988/) - that cinematic adaptations of these old pulp fiction tales would be much more interesting if they were filmed contemporaneously with the stories. Ryman, in the story's masterstroke, does the HPLHS' idea one better by imagining A Princess of Mars done as a documentary. My only complaint about this tale is that it's not longer - I would love to see what other cinematic treasures are waiting to be discovered in this story's world.

>9 paradoxosalpha: I agree. This version of Dejah was weird, ominous, and creepy.

>8 gwendetenebre: By sheer coincidence, I had just finished Elizabeth Hand's Available Dark which also played with ominous variants of our current Christmas myths, so this weird take on Santa's helpers was the story's highpoint for me.

Read the Paradise Tales version. Thanks to artturnerjr for alerting me to this discussion.

I enjoyed the attention to film technology - that the scenes had to be real-world because special effects were not up to the job of simulating these images in 1911.

My main complaint is that the story ends too soon. "Mars was only the beginning." Well, what happened next? Room for an entire novel there. I'm wondering if this may be characteristic of Ryman. His novel Was ended fairly quickly, and on an unresolved note. The King's Last Song left some threads loose too. Maybe it's an esthetic choice?

>9 paradoxosalpha:
>13 RandyStafford:

I think there is a much more science fictional feeling in the way the Red Martians are depicted is this story that sort of reveals the ERB books for the wish-fulfillment fantasies that they mostly are.* Ryman's depiction proceeds logically from from the fact that they are (a) extraterrestrial and (b) oviparous, rather than ERB's more fantastical approach ("Hey! These female Martians look just like hot Earth women!")

>14 dukedom_enough:
>15 dukedom_enough:

Thanks for joining us!

The abrupt ending does seem to be a deliberate choice on Ryman's part - he really seems to want the reader to feel unsettled after reading this. Having said that, I would really like to see this developed into a novel, too - it seems to have the potential to be a pretty great one.

*I'm not offering that as any sort of qualitative judgement, btw - I mean, they're great wish-fulfillment fantasies, and I don't think ERB intended them to be much beyond that.

>16 artturnerjr:

That was my feeling too - that there's a barbed comment on the cosiness of that strain of science fiction running through the story. I think creepy Santa Claus footage sort of sets up and reinforces that idea.

>17 housefulofpaper: Be careful what journeys to exotic worlds you wish for; you might get them.

i love romance books I'm i the only one who does