The Crimson Courts and My Martian Dreams

by Dylan
(Illinois, Wisconsin)

Zendexor, I quite liked both of your pages on Stirling's books! I appreciated them not only for their excellent world building, but for the way they included modern astronomical findings in their storytelling. Mars, I think, can only be improved by adding that it features both the Solar System's longest canyon and its tallest volcano.

In regards to the sinister nature of the Martians, I can see what you're saying. For myself, I prefer Martians to be a bit sinister. Not evil, necessarily, but certainly hard and dispassionate, indifferent to or even resentful of humanity and its concerns. I'm likely influenced by Ray Bradbury and H.G. Wells in this, since those two together first took me to Old Mars. It also might have to do with Mars' size: being a small planet makes it appear less threatening, especially since it's usually depicted as being on its last legs, and so might be easy to underestimate. That seems to be the case, anyways, for many fictional Earthly explorers.

I'm a bit sad about the biological technology of the Martians in Stirling's book, although for purely personal reasons. You see, I began writing Wanderers of Mars quite a while ago, and decided to give them biological technology as a way of making them seem more alien. A short while later, I picked up Crimson Kings, and found there a brilliant depiction of such technology, well thought out and expertly exploited for story telling. In an effort to avoid the appearance of plagiarism, I tried to change my biotechnology to imitate life, instead of being truly alive. I feel it might not have worked as well in the end.

In an unrelated note, the "My Martian Dreams" part of the title of this page is quite literal. I've had two dreams about Mars, and they seem as though they could be connected, so as to form the beginnings of my own slumbering adventures on breathable-air Mars.

The first dream found me bounding among the red mesas and pillars of the Martian countryside. I used a jet-pack/grappling-hook combination for locomotion - I would fire the grapple into the rock, and the moment the hook bit, the cord gave a sharp tug. Simultaneously my jet-pack would fire, and the two together would propel me upwards swiftly. After that, I would float gently to my destination, thanks to the low gravity. It was a singularly invigorating way to travel.

The Martian air was clean and cool, and each breath left me feeling refreshed. The sky was light blue, the sun was bright, and the landscape around me was surprisingly yellow given my expectations. I bounced my way to the top of the tallest mesa and rested there, looking out over Mars. I remember being exceedingly happy, as content as I have ever been in my life. It came to me that I would like to find the Martians, although I knew I would need to hunt them diligently, as they were not fond of humans and avoided us as a rule.

To my left, nestled in a valley, was the green foliage and silver infrastructure of a human settlement. My family was there, I knew. Apparently we had all, extended relatives included, immigrated to Mars. I bounced my way back to the valley to inform them of my intentions. (It was at this point, upon reading over this page for me, that my girlfriend scolded me for not including her among the immigrants. It was unintentional my dear, I promise.)

I found that the human colony was really more of a camp, composed of prefabricated structures amidst earthly trees. My mother was sitting with some aunts and uncles of mine, and I told her about my plan to go hunting for Martians. With an uncharacteristic lack of concern, she wished me luck, and warned me that the Martians were known to be dangerous to unwelcome visitors.

Having informed my relatives of my whereabouts, I began to walk about of the camp again to begin my journey. On the way, I was accosted by another colonist, who angrily told me that if it was my intention to stay on Mars, I would need to work to earn my keep.

Waking, this seems like a perfectly reasonable request, but as I dreamed I found the proposition most undesirable. To have finally reached Mars, a world I have imagined for years, only to ruin it with the tedium of labor? Never!

There my first dream ended, with myself facing a sentence of boredom on a world I wanted only to explore.

Fortunately, it seems I succeeded both in avoiding tedium and finding the Martians, for at the start of my second dream I was among them, accepted as a guest if not an equal.

Sadly, I remember this dream less clearly, but I do recall that I had befriended an older Martian man, and that he had long black hair and eyes like silver coins. It was our intention to take a journey down a canal, although toward what goal I do not recall.

The boat we were to take was prepared for us by a crew of adolescents. Apparently, when on the cusp of adulthood, Martian children are exiled to life on a canal boat until they finish maturing. I got the impression from my companion that this was to save the adults the annoyance of dealing with the rowdy youths, and indeed, there did seem to be a fair amount of merriment on the ship we would take as it was brought to dock. When the boat was close enough, a giant squid-like creature used its tentacles to ease the boat into its place at the dock. Apparently, the beast was trained or grown for dock management, although I am unsure which.

The Martian teens vacated the boat, and my companion and I took command of it. We sailed together down the canal, which was a deep and narrow trench with black water on the bottom. It was dug this way to keep the water out of direct sunlight as long as possible. The effect was a shadowy journey where every slosh of the water was made louder by echoing magnification.

After that, I remember little until we came to the first danger we had encountered. We approached a split in the canal, a Y divided by a great stone wedge. The canal to the right was illuminated by sunlight, the canal to the left shrouded in darkness. The wedge itself was white rock, setting it apart from the red of the canal walls, and it was dotted which ancient windows now filled in with bricks. My companion told me it was called "The Cleave Between Life and Death" or "The Sword that Cleaves the World." It seems that to go down one of the canals while it was in darkness would be a life-threatening mistake. To my dismay, it seemed that was exactly where the current of the canal was taking us.

And then I woke, and went to work. Despite his potential demise, a part of me envies the dream version of me. He gets to have adventures on Mars, after all.

{comment from Zendexor: you prompt me to mention my own Martian dream or dreams. My memories lack the detail of yours but the emotion remains strongly with me. I think my dream-Mars may have been more Clarkian than yours - not a breathable atmosphere, but some vegetation. And the intense nostalgia it leaves me with - for during that dream I really believed that travel to Mars had been achieved and that I was part of it. The disappointment upon waking was huge.
Anyhow, all this emotional impact of a planet upon our thoughts and feelings is profoundly significant for human nature. It makes one wonder whether such dreams perhaps could represent some kind of contact with reality, such as alternate dimensions which leak their truths to us while our conscious barriers are down.
A further point: it is of course darned useful for a writer to be able to remember detailed dreams! So my advice is, keep a notepad handy by your bedside, if you don't already!
This girlfriend of yours, by the way, sounds sympathetic to Mars missions; perhaps she ought to contribute to our website! The more the merrier.}