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California invented Mars. It did. Dont believe me? Take this
quick quiz.
Who wrote A Princess of Mars, the science-fiction novel that
launched the
famous Barsoom series of books, and inspired -- if thats the
word -- the recent
movie John Carter of Mars? If you said Edgar Rice Burroughs, I
dont know,
give yourself a Mars bar.
Ready for another? Who wrote The Martian Chronicles, the
great
groundbreaking book of connected fantasy stories about mans
colonization of
the red planet -- which many have read as an allegory for the
suburbanization
of Southern California. I know, too easy: Ray Bradbury.
But try this: Who wrote the science-fiction novels Red
Planet,
Podkayne of Mars, and Stranger in a Strange Land, the last of
which found
a huge readership in the 1960s with its portrait of a gentle,
freedom-loving
Martian who refuses to adjust to life on earth? Yes, its Robert
Heinlein -- you
hippie you.
I promise Im going somewhere with this, so sit still for one
more: Who
wrote Black Amazon of Mars, a delightfully cheesy novelette
about the
sword-wielding interplanetary hero Eric John Stark -- and then
went on to co-
write the screenplays for The Big Sleep and, 30 years later, for
The Long
Goodbye? If you said Leigh Brackett, Im impressed.
Now, what do all these Mars-obsessed writers have in common?
Stumped? In 1939, while Edgar Rice Burroughs was still living
near Encino on a
ranch he named after perhaps his best novel, a little spread
called Tarzana, in
1939 you could have walked into Cliftons Cafeteria downtown on
any given
Thursday and found Bradbury, Heinlein and Brackett -- and
frequently fellow
Martian pulp writers Fredric Brown and would you believe L. Ron
Hubbard, the
founder of Scientology -- all sipping Cliftons free limeade and,
just
incidentally, altering the future of American popular
culture.
These were the meetings of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy
Society. Its
now 73-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out
new life and
new civilizations, to boldly go well, you get the idea. IfH.G.
Wells, the
father of modern science fiction and author of Martian invasion
classic The
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War of the Worlds, couldnt make it on Thursdays in 1939, it was
only because
he was watching the world war he predicted, just starting to
come true all over
Europe. Cut him some slack.
Nowadays, a shortish drive from both Tarzana and Cliftons, most
of the
scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory prefer Kim Stanley
Robinsons epic
Mars trilogy, Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars. Although
Robinson was
born in Ray Bradburys hometown of Waukegan, Illinois, hes a
Californian too.
He lives up in Davis and went to school at UCSD, where it so
happens he
published a dissertation on the novels of Philip K. Dick.
Thats Philip K. Dick, the author of Martian Time-Slip and the
Mars-set
story Total Recall, which comes out in a new and one hopes
improved movie
adaptation next week. As any Dickhead could tell you, Dick
couldnt make any
meetings of The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society either. In
1939 his father
was taking him to the World's Fair on Treasure Island in San
Francisco Bay,
where on display were such seemingly benevolent gifts from the
future as the
television and the cyclotron.
For better and worse, TV and the particle physics have come a
long way
since 1939. But the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society actually
still meets,
at its present-day headquarters near the Van Nuys Orange Line
station. Its
hard not to hope that buildings lights will be on Sunday night,
while they
watch a new spaceship crash-land on the surface of a planet
their founding
members more or less invented.
-- David Kipen
