A Martian Odyssey!

I must have read "A Martian Odyssey" by Stanley G. Weinbaum at least forty years ago in the Science  Fiction Book Club edition of the first volume of the The Science Ficiton Hall of Fame. So while I remember it being good, I was far enough away from it to enjoy it all over again when I read it again a few weeks ago. And for the first time I read its sequel "Valley of Dreams".  The story is regarded as perhaps the first to deal with interplanetary travel with a degree of realism as opposed to the flights of fancy which had been inspired by Jules Verne and his imitators. There was a degree of scientific rigor applied to the creation of some truly bizarre aliens, the most notable of which is a character named simply "Tweel". 

It's difficult to discuss "A Martian Odyssey" without spoiling its surprises which are the very details of the varied lifeforms humans find on the planet Mars when they mount their first mission there. Suffice it to say that some of that life is friendly or seems so and some of it is deadly dangerous. The two stories are both mostly related to the reader in the past tense when Jarvis, a chemist on the team of four men who descended to the planet's surface finds himself lost. In both stories he is found by his colleagues, the second time in "Valley of Dreams" one of them in tow, and in both stories, he relates what wonders he has seen. The second story builds on the first and answers some questions raised in the first and then does what any good yarn does, raised yet more questions. 

These are stories of speculation in which we see intelligent people grapple with wildly bizarre events and attempt to come to some understanding. Those who are most fixed on their familiar human experiences have the most difficulty making the leaps of imagination needed to comprehend this truly bewildering world of Mars filled with oddball pyramid builders, peculiar canal builders, and critters that offer you all you want just before they kill you utterly. Reading "A Martian Odyssey" I am immediately reminded of later stories of Mars by other authors who seem clearly to have made the journey with Weinbaum and drawn inspiration from it. 

Stanley Weinbaum is exceedingly well regarded in the science fiction community for these stories produced in the 30's before James Campbell and his Astounding crew revolutionized the genre because these tales are precious and few. Weinbaum died just as his career was beginning and only produced a smattering of stories. Clearly much more was on the way. 

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