Matthew Hughes's Blog: barbarians of the beyond - Posts Tagged "ray-bradbury"

Old Mars ToC released

George R.R. Martin has released the table of contents for Old Mars, an anthology of stories set in the Mars of Bradbury, Burroughs, and other great writers of the science fiction of my youth. The anthology will be out in October, and I will have a story -- The Ugly Duckling -- in it.

I wasn't supposed to be in Old Mars. I hadn't originally been invited, but when someone dropped out just before deadline, Gardner asked me if I could fill in. I reread The Martian Chronicles for the first time in nigh on fifty years and wrote a story I thought fitted Bradbury's elegiac mood. Gardner and George liked it and bought it.

Coincidentally, yesterday when George was putting out the ToC, I got an email from Gardner to let me know that when the text came back from the proofreader, there was a note at the bottom of "The Ugly Duckling": "Beautiful, beautiful story. Brava!"

I'll take my reviews wherever I can get them.
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Published on February 14, 2013 11:17 Tags: george-r-r-martin, martian-chronicles, matthew-hughes, old-mars, ray-bradbury

First review of Old Mars

A couple of months before its scheduled October release, here's the first early-bird review of Old Mars, the theme anthology edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois beringing together fifteen stories about the red planet that could have appeared in the old pulp mags.

About my story in he antho, reviewer Mel Odom says, “The Ugly Duckling” by Matthew Hughes reminded me a lot of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles with all its psychological trappings and intrigues".

Which is exactly the effect I was aiming for.
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Published on August 08, 2013 09:44 Tags: gardner-dozois, george-r-r-martin, matthew-hughes, old-mars, ray-bradbury

My Old Mars story -- half a free read

With the retro anthology Old Mars scheduled for release in three days time, the publisher has posted the first fifty pages here.

Since my story, "The Ugly Duckling," starts on page 35, its first half is included in the free-read excerpt.

I'm pleased by the story, for two reasons. First, I was not supposed to be included in the invitation-only antho, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. But one of the initial invitees apparently dropped out, and I was asked shortly before turn-in date, if I could fill in. I was delighted to do so.

The second reason: I wanted to write a Mars story that had some of that wondrous sense of mood and tone that I remembered from my reading of Ray Bradbury's stories back in my teens and early twenties. I wanted it to be an homage to one of the favorite authors of my youth, and would have been delighted if he'd read the story and approved of it. But I had just gotten started on the first draft when word came that Bradbury had died.

So now it wasn't an homage; it was a tribute.
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Published on October 05, 2013 05:33 Tags: gardner-dozois, george-r-r-martin, matthew-hughes, old-mars, ray-bradbury

Reviews of "Ugly Duckling' (Old Mars) and "Stones and Glass" (F&SF)

At Tor.com, Robert H. Bedford has reviewed Old Mars, the George R.R. Martin/Gardner Dozois-edited retro-antho of stories set in the Mars sf authors used to imagine before robot probes and explorers revealed the hard, cold facts. Of my story, he says:

“The Ugly Duckling” by Matthew Hughes finds an archaeologist exploring the ruins of the Martian past in a place from which few have returned. Hughes plays with identity, past, and personality in this tale of obsession driving a man to discover what might be best left unexplored. Hughes conjured up a deep past for Mars in this story, and in some ways, a civilization that isn’t too dissimilar to our own.

Actually, Ray Bradbury did the conjuring. I borrowed the background from The Martian Chronicles.

And over at Tangent Online, Collen Chen reviews "Stones and Glass," my story in the November/December issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, now just out. She says the story is "engaging and tension-filled, with a solid fantasy world behind three-dimensional characters."
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Published on October 09, 2013 07:06 Tags: gardner-dozois, george-r-r-martin, matthew-hughes, old-mars, ray-bradbury

Paul DiFilippo reviews Old Mars

As an author of unabashedly old-fashioned science fantasy, I like Paul DiFilippo's take on Old Mars, the retro-anthology of stories set in the "Mars of the mind" that existed before the Mariner probe began the cold, hard factual exploration of the red planet.

He poses a good question: What is the relationship of the genre’s past to the present, actual and ideal? Should certain old-school tropes and themes be abandoned as false and inutile? Can we ever step in the same stream twice, and recapture glories and pleasures of old? Can postmodern approaches somehow lend a fresh aspect to the antique? Are attitudes toward such SF strictly determinable and predictable by membership in a given generation? Is the medium stagnating or advancing by continuing to create such stories?

Advancing, I'd say. The mileage of others may, however, vary.
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Published on November 25, 2013 02:46 Tags: gardner-dozois, george-r-r-martin, matthew-hughes, old-mars, paul-difilippo, ray-bradbury