by Gary Lovisi
Mars Needs Books.
Was there even a human colony on Mars?
Ryan remembered years back when the third President Bush had begun the project. Then when the fourth President Bush, his nephew, initiated settlement and the second President Clinton began colonization. But of course, that was all so long ago. Decades really. In the reckoning of present history it was ages ago to the current digital world.
He didn’t remember it that clearly. He didn’t know how long he’d been here. Weeks? Years? Decades? He felt old, but he couldn’t tell if he was old or not. He couldn’t tell much at all.
Ryan picked up the copy of Mars Needs Books. The old battered paperback had blurbs on the back cover that began:
A rousing novel of interplanetary intrigue and adventure as a slip of a girl, Arabella Rashid, seeks to change the world and set it free....
He turned to Chapter One and began reading....
“Everywhere he went on Mars they were always asking him about the paperbacks....”
Ryan wondered what the hell this was all about?
He never realized it then, but he was already on his way to Mars.
CHAPTER NINE
MARS GETS BOOKS
Everywhere he went on Mars they were always asking him about the paperbacks.
“When are the paperbacks coming in?” he heard a voice ask.
“What’s in the next shipment?” he heard another voice call out to him.
Ryan looked around him astonished by the huge dome, the red-brown mountains in the distance, the two moons hurling by overhead, and the men who were talking to him. Rough-looking characters all. Miners.
Was he really on Mars?
“Ryan, have you heard anything yet?” another voice asked, it was a miner named Williams. Ryan somehow knew the man’s name. A miner? On Mars? How Ryan knew this he was not sure, but he knew it—Williams was a miner on Mars—and Ryan was on Mars now too!
Ryan could not reply. His mind raced, trying to fill the void posed by a hundred questions.
He looked around him; finally he nodded knowingly, accepting it all.
Well, that had to be it. He was Ryan again. Okay, then he would be Ryan and he’d play his part as Ryan in their new game. He began speaking to the man standing there in front of him as if the words had always been ready to come out of his mouth. He knew the signs of programming.
“Well?” the man asked him impatiently.
“Well what?” Ryan asked trying to gather his thoughts.
“The paperbacks? Are they due soon?”
James Ryan looked at the man and suddenly found himself saying, as if it were the most natural response, “I put the order in a year ago and they should be on the way out here on the next supply run.”
He was Ryan now. He was here on Mars. That was his new name. Or was it his real name? Probably just the name he was using here. It did not matter. He was James Ryan now. So be it.
Other men were beginning to crowd around him. They were rough, they looked like...miners of some kind.
Another of these miners, one named Alvy, just shrugged and said, “I expected it. I was out on detail for two months, hell of a desert run, but I hoped when I got back the ship might’ve come in.”
Ryan didn’t say anything. Somehow he knew that all these men, everyone here, was waiting for the latest shipment. How he knew this he could not say, but it was an incontrovertible fact he knew deep within his mind, way down deep within his psyche. Programming for sure. But why? He realized that it was knowledge that must have somehow been implanted into his memory. It was scary really; them messing with your memories and thoughts like that, but links and implants were done all the time on Earth these days. Why not out here? You just had to learn to go with the flow.
He was some kind of agent again, apparently. But was he really here, on Mars? It all seemed so unreal, even surreal, but his mind seemed to know exactly what thought to think, which way to think it, and the right words to say. He was James Ryan now, an agent, after all. So he decided he’d go with the flow, at least for the time being. Until he figured out just what the hell was going on.
The miner named Alvy pulled out an old battered paperback from his back pocket, thrust it forward. “Look, Ryan, I’ve got a really great Raymond Chandler here, The Big Sleep. I’ll trade it for anything by David Goodis, Jim Thompson, or that other guy, Bruno Fischer. I got all the Dashiell Hammetts, and read all the Hal Masur’s that you turned me onto last week. That Scott Jordan is the lawyer that Perry Mason should have been! I finished up all the Daniel Woodrell’s—terrific! The James Crumley’s were tops too! Great stuff, but I’ll pass on those others.”
Ryan shook his head, came back to reality, or what passed for reality now.
Last week? It must also be part of the programming, detailed background memory. Now he found himself pulling out some primo condition paperbacks from his pouch. They were like new. Even being over a hundred years old and made out of cheap browning pulp paper. It was amazing that they could still look like they did when they were new. They were thick, tight copies. Old editions from way back LastCen. Some of the best examples of hard-boiled paperback crime. One was a James Ellroy called Clandestine—bleak noir corruption and violence; the other was just titled Flood, by Andrew Vachss—hard-boiled action and attitude from a heroic advocate for child safety—and the last was a real golden oldie—Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliott Chaze. That one seemed to be in the original 1950s Gold Medal paperback edition. It was rare. It was impossible to find. How the hell did he know that? How the hell did he even have it? And when had he read all these books? Because Ryan suddenly realized that he had vivid memories of all the titles, authors, characters and plots of each of these books and many others. How could that be? And if he understood how—through brain implants and programming—then why?
Ryan remembered some of the best of the books he had read on the way out to Mars, or so his memories told him. There were many in the old yellow-spine Gold Medal series. These included the hard prison novels of Malcolm Braly like On The Yard, so true and intense. He could relate to those books right down onto his soul. There were other books by guys like Edward S. Aarons, aka Edward Ronns, Stephen Marlowe, Dan Marlowe about hard men who were spies and special agents. Emmett Grogan’s, Final Score was his one crime novel and a masterpiece that had been forgotten much as he had been sadly, but his other book, Ringolevio, was also very hard-boiled—all about his hard life experiences. Maybe true, maybe not, always fascinating, as it stated “a life played for keeps.” He fondly remembered reading copies of old crime digests like Trapped, Guilty, Manhunt, and others of that ilk full of great short hard crime stories. He smiled when he thought of the stories. Then his mind stuck on that E. Howard Hunt guy, who early on wrote as Robert Dietrich turning out paperback originals in his much-underrated Steve Bentley crime series. He did outstanding memorable work. Then there was Brett Halliday with his Mike Shayne private eye books that could always be counted on to be entertaining crime and noir reads. The Dell paperback editions of Mike Shayne all had cover art featuring lovely, gorgeous women by master artist Robert McGinnis. They were true beauties—the gals—and the books!
Alvy drooled. He wasn’t a collector, he was a reader. A reader who loved to read. Who needed to read. He couldn’t explain it really, but he was like most of the men on Mars, they were all seemingly compelled to read. Like it was an innate part of them, or some obsession.
Although Alvy had never read either of these authors before, he said he’d heard all about their stuff. They were some of the best. Miners would do whatever they could to find their books, or pry them out of the hands of other readers. Or some other dead miner/collector, who would have no use for them any longer. One of the most righteous things for a man to do on Mars was to pass on books they’d read and enjoyed to another fellow miner.
Ryan decided to make Alvy a happy man, he traded away the Ellroy book and took the Raymond Chandler in its place, putting it deftly in his pouch. He kept the Vachs
s and the Chaze. Those books he could always trade for more substantial matter, like food or shelter later on.
Ryan innately knew that some paperbacks were better than money out here on Mars. It was a strange truth but how he knew that fact he couldn’t exactly say, he just knew it was true.
There were no consumer goods on Earth any more, only relics leftover from last century. Everything on Earth now was ultra high-tech virtual, or holo. The bottom line was that it was all fake. It was all lies within lies within lies. All wrapped up in a neat little package of still more lies.
It was a funny thing how the settlers and frontier men here on Mars had evolved their own strange society. It was so separate from Earth. Not only in distance but in orientation and outlook. So very different. While it mirrored much of Earth, it was not the Earth of today, it was the Earth of LastCen. What had been termed ‘The American Century,’ back when there had been a separate America—a United States of America, that is. Before the one-world government dream of the internationalists had come true and created The Authority. Well-meaning but naive and dangerous socialist wet-dreams of power and social justice which had come true after decades of struggle, finally—which paradoxically meant the death knell to human freedom. All the well-meaning one-worlders accomplished was to make it easy as hell for a world-wide authority to control them and everything and everyone. A new kind of digital-tech totalitarian government that had never been accomplished before in human history and had become entirely successful.
In the old days on Earth there’d always been another country to run to, a fast ship to sail away on, or an “America” that could be a haven across the ocean. Even an Australia, somewhere down under. Today even the faraway colony planets were under the control of Earth’s worldwide Authority and it was rumored the terrible DOC was lurking behind it all pulling the strings.
Paperback books were a key component for the men on Mars. They were not only throwbacks to an earlier and better age, they were the only existing methods of information storage that were free of any kind of mind control tampering, implanting, or manipulation. Hard copy can not be revised on a daily basis without evidence of the tampering detectable. Even in the event of reprints, comparison of different copies could show changes if they had been made. That was not true with the digital record. That can too easily be re-programmed, pre-programmed, and altered, and never show any evidence of tampering.
The Marsmen (what the men on Mars liked to call themselves these days) existed in a hostile, demanding, primitive, cruel world. They survived, and made it bearable only on a diet of luck, hard work, and individualism. They had few vices or pleasures, they just wanted to be left alone. In their very limited leisure time, they would read books. However, all they would read were mystery novels and hard-boiled crime fiction. They’d read a page here or there, catch a scene or chapter when they could, and they loved the damn things. They would talk about them—the stories, the characters—incessantly. Like they knew them. They trusted and loved the old books, the characters in them and the people who wrote them. But they only trusted paperbacks published on Earth during LastCen. Because they were published before any of the modern media existed. Before all that digital crap they hated and did not trust came into being—before there was complete control.
“Put that crap in your brain and it will change you forever,” they told each other passionately about all other information mediums. They believed it like a religion. They didn’t like much in the form of entertainment, except reading. None of them ever used an input slot or brain link, though most every citizen seemed to have been born with them these days.
But these Marsmen sure loved the old paperbacks. They loved to read the harder stuff—hard-boiled crime was their meat. Usually the harder the better. So-called mainstream fiction; romances, westerns, horror, and even fantasy porn left them stone cold. So-called Science fiction, was just a joke to them. Science fiction was seen as phony crap anyway. To them more lies. They saw it being as unreal as the vids, implants and software that too many citizens on Earth thought was only too real. A media believed to be truthful by the masses on Earth. That stuff was not even considered worthy of turning on and viewing here on Mars.
The miners all agreed there was something special about the old paperbacks. Those books spoke to them. They got inside them. In their hearts, in their minds, in their souls. The stories, the writing, and the characters bored right into their inner being like a laser and the stone cold truth of the stories had a real impact on these hard and lonely men.
Perhaps it was because of the hardship of living on Mars. The desolation, the danger, the cruelty of existence and the utter isolation. The best hard-boiled and noir fiction spoke to this so eloquently and realistically. There was the down-and-out, tough-guy private eye fighting his heroic war by himself, and living precariously by his own moral code among all the cheap lies and betrayals. There was the noir femme fatale each man dreamt of meeting. That was another big part of it.
See, there were no women on Mars. But the men hoped. Some day.
Then there was the aloneness in a world where every man and every bit of luck seemed to be against them. It was something the men on Mars understood only too well and the books told them they were not alone. That counted for a lot.
Or perhaps it was because the stories gave an accurate view of Old Earth the way many settlers had heard their home world had once been like—or the way they wanted to remember it. Both the good and the bad. The so-called ‘good old days’. Crime and hard-boiled fiction dealt with people like them, situations they could relate to, the day-to-day struggles of hard, tough, everyday working men. Every story was about an individual trying to stay afloat and hack out a life for himself against all the odds. Their love of private eyes in hard-boiled fiction was also a manifestation of their fanatical desire to see justice done in a world where none existed.
Who could really say why the men on Mars loved the old paperbacks so much—but they surely did. They read them, they collected them, and they talked about them endlessly. Some thought about them too damn much. They seemed to think about them all the time. Of course these books weren’t produced—the word for it had been “published” in the old days—on Earth any more. They hadn’t been produced since the days just after LastCen, before 2020. The old copies that survived from then and earlier were avidly collected on Mars. The older the better, to most men’s way of thinking.
Ryan didn’t know how he knew all that history, nor why and how it had happened. He just did. All he knew now was that he’d given up a primo James Ellroy for a classic Raymond Chandler. Traded the Chandler to Fat Jack for a pulpy Carroll John Daly Race Williams novel in a 1984 International Polygonics paperback edition with a great Nicky Zahn cover. It was a nice collector’s item. He then traded the Race Williams for a meal at The Martian Chronicles Café, with all the imported Earth beer he could drink. It was a good deal. Earth beer was scarce, but paperbacks were still worth more.
Later in the evening Ryan picked up a Harry Whittington crime novel and traded that for a beat up 1953 edition of an old Lion paperback called Bourbon Street by some guy named G.H. Otis. It was one of only two books by Otis, a whirlwind hard-boiled crime read. He’d never even seen the other Otis novel, Hot Cargo, rumored to be an even more obscure Lion Book. This was Ryan’s best trade all month and a great discovery for him personally as a reader and collector. Lion Books were hardly ever seen anymore.
Manny, the barman at the café was also the owner of The Book Snook. Snook being an early LastCen slang word for a kind of obsessional fool. Many of the book guys knew they were a bit odd, but what the hell, they reveled in that individualism. Anyway, Manny had tried all evening to get the Chaze book out from Ryan’s grubby little fingers without any results. Manny pleaded, begged, he even threatened. Sort of. Ryan laughed at that.
Manny shrugged, tried another tack.
Ryan was no fool. Ryan wasn’t giving anything up. Not just yet. Especially not that Eliott C
haze noir classic.
* * * *
For more than twenty years, since he’d first come out to Mars—or so his memories now told him—Ryan had marveled at the insatiable interest in private eye, noir and hard-boiled crime fiction shown by the settlers and pioneers. The men loved to read the stuff. They were fascinated, even obsessional about it. But only in the old paperback format. It was interesting, that with all the stuff on vid and available in neural implants—absolutely none of it took root with these men. None at all!
No one on Mars trusted that stuff. Everyone knew, or at least was totally convinced that it was all corrupted with mind-control commands and secret programs they hated and feared. That made it dangerous stuff. Stuff to stay away from.
There was no such risk with the paperbacks. To the men of Mars there was nothing like an old paperback from LastCen. A real book! They each had their own feel, even scent. The cover art, the type, the company logo, even the paper and binding were often noticed in detail by the men. It was a personal kind of thing, the book speaking to each man as an individual. Vids couldn’t do that. It just wasn’t the same. Implants and disks with virtual reality fantasy dreamscapes maybe seemed real—in some cases more real than reality itself—but those could never be trusted. Hence, never fully enjoyed. The men feared them all.
It was said by some that paranoia had become the national sport on Mars and they were probably right.
The men really appreciated the cover art on the paperbacks also, especially the older books. Sexy girls, often half-dressed, abounded. They were beautiful, lovely iconic images of gorgeous women and they were shown with strong, tough, virile men. The Marsmen saw themselves as being like the men on those covers and some of them were right. They saw the women on those covers and they each wanted a woman just like that.
The artists—whenever the guys could make out the miniscule signatures on the covers of the books—or the rare time the artist was actually credited on the book—made those books even more collectable and prized. Books with covers by the master artists of noir and dangerous femme fatales like Robert Maguire, Robert McGinnis, and Walter Popp were sought after by all. Covers by greats like ‘The Three James’: James Meese, James Bama, and James Avati were avidly traded and saved. Artists such as Bayre Philips, Peff, Reginald Heade, Robert Bonfils, Harry Barton and Harry Scharre among so many others were praised for their sexy, often dangerous women, and held in high regard by the men on Mars. Each man had his own favorites. But each man loved the cover art and what it said about that particular book.
