Lost In Space, But Not Forgotten In Tucson

Mars Underground
by: Randy Garsee

Lost in space. Not the old TV program but the newest label to be placed on the mission of the 10-year-old Mars Global Surveyor. It's been two weeks since Surveyor has phoned home. Maybe its interstellar free minutes simply ran out.
Uh, okay. Maybe not.
It was the oldest of five NASA foil-wrapped gizmos currently orbiting the red planet. Surveyor surveyed via high-resolution photos of the planet's surface. Now it's quiet. Certainly it was abducted by the Gwarbles, those rejects of Orion who have a fascination with shiny space things. I don't know for certain, but I was recently drilled with a root canal and given painkillers, therefore many universal mysteries now have a certain clarity, like the Hubble Telescope after a Windex attack.
The Mars Global Surveyor's mission was to map the entire Martian surface. You know, freeways, city grids, the Great Wall of, well, the Chinese Martians, stuff like that.
But an old pal of mine I haven't seen in years because he won't give me his cell phone number, Tucson author and scientist Bill Hartmann, knows more about Mars than Martians themselves. At the moment, I fear he's weeping the demise of his eyes above the red sky, curled in a fetal position and whimpering, "Why didn't I give Randy Garsee my cell phone number?"
Weep not, dear Bill, for you are still the Red Sage of the Fourth Orb.
William "Bill" Hartmann is (or was) a member of the Surveyor's imaging team. His job is (or was) to read those hi-res photos to decipher the ages of volcanoes, river channels, and the Iranian-North Korean Conspiracy to re-plant Israel in the red sand. Okay, maybe not the last thing. Hartmann, unlike me, is serious about his work. He's a senior scientist with the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson and he's been fascinated by Mars since he was a boy.
Hartmann is also multi-talented. As an artist, he paints the red planet. One painting shows a stark desert-like landscape with mountains on the horizon and an igloo-shaped research station in the foreground. He paints as if he's sitting on the surface looking at the horizon.
As a writer, his acclaimed book, "Mars Underground," was compared to Arthur C. Clarke's legendary novel, "2001: A Space Odyssey."




In fact, Clarke himself read the book and wrote a blurb for it:

"Mars Underground"... "conveys...a realistic feeling about the future development of Mars." "...personally gratifying, as it seems to be like an extension of my own two books on the subject."
It's no wonder Hartmann knows his subject so well. As a scientist, he's been part of four Mars-related missions:

*** The Mars mapping mission of Mariner 9 in 1971
*** The ill-fated Mars Observer mission in 1992. (It disappeared in space after taking only one photograph which Hartmann keeps on his desk.)
*** There was also a failed Russian Mars mission in 1996.
*** And the Mars Global Surveyor. Oh, Surveyor! How little we knew ye.

To put it clearly, there is no one on planet Earth better qualified to write about planet Mars. Hartmann believes we'll have humans on Mars soon. Hopefully those pioneering astronauts will be able to fend off the Gwarbles by not wearing anything shiny. I understand the color of rust will repel those Gwarbelian scavengers, but I have no proof. Just take my drug-induced word for it, ALL RIGHT! Uh-hmm. Back to Mr. Hartmann.
"There will be this continuation of missions to Mars every couple of years," He told me before my root canal. "Gradually, they will explore different aspects of Mars with different instruments and put more and more packages down onto the surface until we understand the surface environment."
Hartmann believes we'll put people on the red planet before the end of the next decade. "I think the question is when do we get to Mars and when will we start all of that."
And before you start thinking this is all about spending billions of your tax dollars for nothing, Hartmann explains why this is really all about Mother Earth. "We go to this planet, Mars. It's frozen. It's extremely dry. It has almost no atmosphere. And yet there are dry river beds that look like the [rivers in the Arizona desert]. Nobody knows why those rivers were running. Where did the water come from? Why did the frozen water on Mars melt? I think what we're beginning to learn is planets are much less stable than we thought they were."
(A Randy Note: I didn't have the heart to tell Bill you won't find a lot of frozen river water in Arizona.)
Nevertheless, his novel "Mars Underground" is dipped so many times in projected scientific fact it's a wonder the fictional characters were able to penetrate the surface and worm their way into the storyline. Hartmann, however, is no Gwarbelian. "I think that will be a reality. The base will be something like the ones we have in Antarctica today. The environments are not that terribly different except the air is a lot thinner on Mars. Socially and scientifically, there will be bases like [the ones in the book]."
Great, I think, urban sprawl in outer space. Bill continues, "I have 5,000 people either on Mars or up on the satellite of Mars. There's a little moon of Mars called Phobos and I have Phobos University. It's a staging area for a lot of the expeditions. Some of the people are up there and some are on the surface of Mars."
(A Randy Thought: Why do I feel like if you don't pass enough Phobos University pop quizzes your Pho-bottom is plopped down on the cold red planet?) This is starting to sound Machia-gwarbelian and it's frightening me, so I cleverly change the subject to another alien force: Hollywood.
"Are you getting any nibbles from movie studios?" I ask him nonchalantly. "Will we see 'Mars Underground' as a movie?
Bill laughs, "If Martin Scorsese calls up and wants to do something, I'm willing to talk."
Martin?
Martian?
Get it?
Me either.
The Gwarbles, however, I get.

Other books by William K. Hartmann:

Laurell K. Hamilton: "Come Play"

"Come Play"
From Vampires To Fairies:
The Literal Transformation of
Author Laurell K. Hamilton
by Randy L. Garsee


    She's wanted to write since she was 14 and it's all she's ever wanted to do. Laurell K. Hamilton has written her way into the hardened hearts and maniacal minds of horror readers everywhere through her “Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter” series. If you haven't been there it's a surreal place where monsters and humans share an uncomfortable, bloody and, often, murderous co-existence.
   "It's like if you got up tomorrow and everything that went bump in the night was real: vampires, zombies, ghouls," Hamilton explained, describing the modern day setting of the Anita Blake series. "The vampires have rights. They're people. You can't just shoot them, or stake them, because they're vampires."
   The zombies, in particular, create some constitutional quandaries that would leave most of America's judicial authorities giggling in straitjackets.
   "They are fighting things in court, like, 'Do you have to give back the money now that Daddy's declared legally alive? Are you a widow or a bigamist now?'" Hamilton said and smiled, clearly having fun injecting our reality with her dark imaginings. "When you see zombies shambling down the street in Anita's world, you call the police department. They believe you and they send someone."
   Anita's world is mostly set in St. Louis, where Hamilton lives. "St. Louis is an underused location for both books and movies," she said. Hamilton is originally from Minneapolis and lived for a while in California before settling down in St. Louis. "I sort of fell in love with the town. It's got a city feel and yet you're never 20 minutes away from the country. I have the best time driving around and saying, 'Okay where are the bodies going to be in this book?'"
   Hamilton has full, dark, red wavy hair that drapes over her shoulders and she wears very red lipstick. Blood red, you might say. A Celtic cross clings to her throat. A second necklace also has something hanging on it, but it's hiding somewhere behind the low-cut blouse and will remain a mystery. Hamilton, who is in her early 30's, is not exactly a bombshell, but she's certainly not unatrractive either. She carries a certain sensuality. And when she talks about her work, she peers at you with dark golden eyes through round, wire-rimmed glasses.
   "I'm an eye contact junkie," she confesses. "Usually the first thing I notice is the color of a person's eyes."
   I blink.
   Hamilton has found immense success with the Anita Blake series as well as the Dark Fey series, but it's sometimes been a long drive on the publishing autobahn with roadblocks along the way.
   "When I originally marketed the [Anita Blake] series, I had at least one editor reject it because she said the monster being out of the closet made it not horror, made it not scary," she said, explaining just one in a long string of editorial confrontations in her career. Another involved a location for one of the Anita Blake novels.
   "One [of the novels] is set in Albuquerque and another is set in Branson, Missouri, which is much more rural. On that one I had one scene where I describe how black it gets at night without city lights. My copy editor, who had literally never been out of New York, wrote in the margin, 'It never gets that dark,'" Hamilton said and laughed. "Of course it doesn't get that dark in the city. It was very fun to explain to her that, without electricity, yes, it does get dark."
   Still, behind those wire-rimmed glasses and dark golden eyes, a transformation took place in the writing mind of Laurall K. Hamilton. If you haven't read it already, then brace yourself, dear reader, for the Dark Fey series.
   "The first book is called 'A Kiss of Shadows,'" she said. "I'm doing with the Fey, the fairyfolk, what I do with the vampires."

   Hamilton explained the story behind the series. "For me, it is again, altered history. It's modern, set now and today. The fey were kicked out of Europe at the end of the last great fairy-human war. [After their defeat], they were given the choice of mainstreaming into the culture or inter-marrying with humans and losing their identity as a culture. Some of them didn't want to do that. [Then-U.S. President Thomas] Jefferson was a fairy-phile and he invited them to come to America. They moved into the Cahokia Mounds in Illinois."
   The Dark Fey series is divided between Los Angeles and Cahokia, Illinois, which is near St. Louis. Hamilton describes the series as mystery, romance and political intrigue. Also in the series, another strong female character with a knack for detective work. "We have the main character who is actually Princess Meredith Nicessus who is in line to both the good and bad thrones. Princess Meredith is hiding from her relatives, who are plotting to kill her. She's a detective when the series begins in L.A."
   It may sound like the Dark Fey series slides easily on the fantasy shelves at the bookstore, but categorizing the series became an exasperating experience for Hamilton.
   "It's going to be marketed as dark fantasy and, uh," she said, then her eyes darted down to the tabletop, she hung her head for a second, and said, "And, actually, erotic fantasy."
   "Really," I said.
   "Really," she replied. "And I debated with them on this word. I said, 'What do you mean by erotic fantasy?' To me that sounded a bit more than I sent the book in as. And they said erotic meant a high sensual content. And I thought about it for a few days and I said, 'Okay, I'll give you that one. By your definition, it is [erotic fantasy.]'
   "I'm a very sensory-oriented writer," she said as she fidgeted and gave a couple of deep nods. "But I am kind of wondering what my grandmother's going to say about 'erotic' above the title."
   "You're not comfortable with the erotic label, are you?" I asked.
   "No, I'm not," she admitted. "But I think [the publisher] sees it as tittillating, that it's going to get other readers, but it's always a double-edged sword. If you put something like erotica above the title, some people aren't going to pick it up just because of that."
   As for her choice of subjects, Hamilton said, "I am writing it the way I want to see it. If other people would write the way I want to read it, I wouldn't feel compelled."
   Hamilton still finds writing "fun" and encourages readers to join her, whether in vampire tales or erotic fantasy.
   "I love what I'm doing," she said. "It's still very much 'Come. Come join me. Come play.' And that sense of play and fun I think still comes out in the writing. It shows that I'm still having a great time."
   A few of Hamilton's books are listed below. But keep an eye for this amazing talent. Her novels often debut high atop the New York Times' list of bestsellers.

A Poet in the Wilderness

Drum Hadley’s
Voice of the Borderlands
by Randy Garsee

“Wash me along the rims of arroyo rocks,
Carry the dust, carry the sands,
Carry these words, my seeds,
Down these blue desert valleys, away.”

I had to travel deep into southern Arizona, to the very edge of the borderlands of New Mexico, Arizona and Mexico, before I could introduce you to a man who is many things: a conservationist, a cowboy and a writer of the land he loves.
He no longer pens up cattle. Now he pens the prose and poetry of a vanishing way of life.
When we begin our interview, Drum Hadley sits in a metal patio chair, sets his well-worn, white felt cowboy hat on the table and sips a cool glass of water.
I ask him if he would mind reading some of this poetry aloud. I offer to retrieve a copy of his book, “Voice of the Borderlands.” His smile beams past his graying beard and his eyes twinkle. He doesn’t need the book, he tells me, and he begins to recite from memory as well as from his heart:

“Old earth, we are gathering these borderlands together,
Mesas, arroyos and valleys, as far as the eye can see.”

Now in his sixties, Drum Hadley spends more time roping words than cattle. Before our interview, I pull out a video camera and he pulls out a rope. It’s a riata, a rope made of cowhide. He spins it overhead, a cowboy’s halo, and easily snatches a couple of ancient fenceposts.
Next, he directs me into a dusty barn where spider webs cling to old saddles like strings of memories.
He taps a saddle horn with a rough hand. “I did team roping on this,” he says.
I ask him, “How can a cowboy write if he’s on a horse?”
As a rider of horses and a writer of books, Hadley shows me how, in a pinch, he can combine the two. He reaches for a pair of chaps and holds them out. “A bullet can write on chaps, because a lead bullet is like a lead pencil.”
Hadley lives far away from everything. We are deep in the borderlands. Mexico is a gunshot away. This is where Drum Hadley gets his inspiration. This is where he makes his home. Life here is reflected in “Voice of the Borderlands.” It’s a poetry collection combining numerous issues, from the environment to drug smuggling on the border.
I ask him what he hopes people get from his work.
He leans back in the metal chair and adjusts his glasses. “I wanted to give people the gift of laughter and the gift of sadness,” he explains, “and I wanted to carry them and to carry their hopes away.”
It’s something he accomplishes in many poems, including these lines about a man searching for work.

“Always the way is before me, Juan said.
Only the tips of my feet know where I will go.”